Introduction: Worlds of Difference -- Chapter 1 -Goblin-ology: Eugenics and hysterisation in George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin (1872) -- Chapter 2 -"Lonely, tender, passionate heart": Melancholy and Isolation in Dinah Mulock Craik's The Little Lame Prince and his Traveling Cloak (1875) -- Chapter 3 -Building Beasties: Disability, Imperialism and Violence in William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954) -- Chapter 4 -On the Fringes: John Wyndham's The Chrysalids (1955) and Technologies of the Self -- Chapter 5 -"A Perversion of Nature? How Exciting!": Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990), the Freak, the Monster and the Limits of Inclusion -- Chapter 6 -"Blind. Deaf. Disabled. Wheelchair": Community, History and Resistance in Jane Stemp's Waterbound (1995) -- Chapter 7 -"This Magic Keeps Me Alive, but it's Making Me Crazy!": Amputation, Madness and Control in Adventure Time (2009-2018) -- Chapter 8 -"Loss is Loss is Loss": Embodying the Family-as-Trauma in Julianna Baggott's Pure (2012).

This book takes up the task of mapping discursive shifts in the representation of disability in dystopian youth texts across four historical periods where major social, cultural and political shifts were occurring in the lives of many disabled people. By focusing on dystopian texts, which the author argues act as sites for challenging or reinforcing dominant belief systems and ways of being, this study explores the potential of literature, film and television to act as a catalyst of change in the representation of disability. In addition, this work discusses the texts and technologies that continue to perpetuate questionable and often competing discourses on the subject.