American Fantastic
Myths of Violence and Redemption

Derek J. Thiess (Author)

9780299355104

Hardback, published 2 December 2025

206 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.399 kg

“Offers an original contribution to American, folklore, and fantastic studies. The selections analyzed are eclectic but the argument that surfing, pirates, John Henry, and rags-to-riches stories actually do have something in common is convincing. All are expressions of the American colonialist impulse and all involve transformative (perhaps ritualized) violence. An important, provocative study.” - Brian Attebery, author of Fantasy: How It Works

“Thiess convincingly interrogates mythologized violence in speculative literatures and media and how this mythmaking relates to Christianity and capitalism while continually generating a sense of entitlement, an American exceptionalism or Christian supremacy, that allows an ongoing exploitation devoid of guilt.” - Isiah Lavender III, author of Afrofuturism Rising: The Literary Prehistory of a Movement

American Fantastic challenges readers to recognize an organizing myth in America’s perception of its imperialist past, “the myth of redemptive violence.” Derek J. Thiess persuasively argues that this myth serves to obscure the deep thread of Christian supremacy that underwrites America’s colonial and imperial impulses, from the early colonial period to westward expansion to the contemporary global order. This American imaginary, which enmeshes religion with violence, is constructed in multiple contentious and productive contact zones: between genres, between cultures, and between past and present.

Thiess’s interdisciplinary study examines America’s past and present imperial projects, from the Hawaiian Islands to the Eastern Seaboard, as they proliferate in popular story forms. By interrogating American myths, legends, and fantastic narratives across an impressive array of genres, including folk narratives, science fiction, movies, and more, Thiess exposes how the “myth of redemptive violence” manifests in contemporary constructions of America’s fantastic imaginaries.

Introduction
Chapter 1: Violence and Redemption at the Edge: SF Sport and Mo‘
olelo Nalu
Chapter 2: Closer to Center: The Franklin Expedition, Myth, and the Embodied Horrors of History
Chapter 3: Myth and Violence on the Homefront: The John Henry Legend
Chapter 4: “
Only the Devil and I”
: Pirates, Missionaries, and the Blackbeard Legend
Chapter 5: Bootstaps and Pederasts: Child Protectionism and the Horatio Alger Myth
Chapter 6: From Defecation to Deification: Religion and Empire in Torture Porn
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index