Fighting a war you've already lost: Zombies and zombis in Firefly/Serenity and Dollhouse

This article explores the use of zombie imagery in two sf narratives created by Joss Whedon: Firefly (US 2002-3), Serenity (US 2005) and Dollhouse (US 2009-10). The translation of the zombie from its traditional horror-movie context to the far-future space opera of Firefly/Serenity and the near-future cyberpunk of Dollhouse reveals the zombie's allegorisation of the consequences of biopolitical governmentality and neoliberal capitalism. In both series zombies function as a figure for both the dehumanisation caused by state and market forces and the possibility of Utopian resistance to these forces.