This study employs spatial poetics as its analytical framework to compare Chinese writer Han Song’s “Metro Trilogy” and British author J.G. Ballard’s disaster novels (High-Rise, Crash, etc.), exploring the cultural coding mechanisms of apocalyptic narratives in Chinese and Western speculative fiction and their responses to modernity’s crises. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s theory of spatial production, Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, and critical frameworks of catastrophic modernity, the research reveals how enclosed spaces (metro systems/skyscrapers) function as pathological laboratories for ideologies.

The analysis demonstrates that Han Song’s subterranean spatial narratives reconfigure metro systems into topological models of authoritarian self-replication: tunnel loops symbolize the eternal implosion of techno-bureaucratic systems, passengers’ “insectification” metaphorizes collectivism’s annihilation of individuality, while revolutionary broadcasts and zombie imagery encode the lingering specters of historical trauma. In contrast, Ballard’s vertical spatial experiments mold skyscrapers into micro-theaters of late capitalism: glass façades reflect consumerism’s reified landscapes, middle-class self-destruction rituals expose the symbiosis of order and violence, and crystallized apocalypses distort Christian apocalypticism. Through a “subterranean-skyscraper” axis of spatial dialogue, the two authors respectively critique the technological alienation of Third World authoritarian modernity and the entropic desire-logic of First World consumer capitalism, culminating in divergent ethical paradigms: “inescapable cyclicality” versus “destructive rebirth.”

Moving beyond traditional techno-determinist paradigms in science fiction studies, this research proposes a novel “spatial ideology comparison” approach. It highlights the unique structural critique in Chinese apocalyptic writing: unlike Western hero-centric redemption narratives, Han Song’s “spectral realism” emphasizes systemic inescapability, transforming metro spaces into archaeological sites of post-revolutionary collective unconsciousness. These findings provide transcultural insights for diagnosing global civilizational crises while repositioning Chinese speculative fiction within world literary discourse.

This paper is a brief exploration of a thematic concern that can be considered to form a relation between Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, ‘The Oval Portrait’ (1850), and Kevin Carter’s photograph, commonly known as ‘The Vulture and the Little Girl’ (1994). While art is often attached to the qualities of compassion, life, and humanity, the thematic concern that forms the subject of this paper is about the potential that art has to bring harm upon its subject(s), artistic distance and the complex position of the artist, and the problematic yet frequently noticeable connection between art and death. In order to explore this theme, the paper will proceed through the concepts of artistic stillness, the obsessive pursuit of perfection through the artist’s distanced gaze and the costs of this pursuit, the art/life binary and its implications, death’s relation to art and the aestheticization of death, and finally the questions both works raise for the reader/viewer to think about. In totality, this paper attempts to highlight how a juxtaposition of the chosen short story and poem leads to a more nuanced reading of each of them.

In late medieval China, lyrics (ci, 词) about the boudoir were a popular subject matter for both male and female literati. While existing studies have overlooked the contrasting writings of male and female literati when describing the same boudoir space, this study is centered on the tradition founded by Among the Flowers 花間集 and focuses on the significant gender differences in imagery choices, particularly regarding the depiction of screens (pingfeng, 屏风)—a key piece of boudoir furniture that appears frequently in male-authored lyrics but rarely in female-authored works, which is crucial for understanding how literati perceived and represented the boudoir space. By examining the portrayals of screens in lyrics by male and female literati, this study explores the gendered viewing structures within the boudoir, the cross-media interaction between screen and mirror, and the differences of screens, as well as blinds and curtains (lianmu 簾幕) as spatial separation, seeking to highlight the way gender influenced their perspectives in these boudoir-themed lyrics.