After Cold War Studies.

This essay review examines the persistence and transformation of Cold War cultural and literary forms in the post-Cold War era, roughly spanning 1989 to 2016, through analyses of three recent books by Penny Von Eschen, David L. Pike, and a study of Cold War-era writer Philip K. Dick. Von Eschen's work highlights "critical nostalgia" as a key to understanding how Cold War memories and cultural artifacts continue to shape contemporary society, including through popular media like Tom Clancy's techno-thrillers and digital adaptations. Pike focuses on the "bunker fantasy," a Cold War symbol of survival and apocalypse, tracing its adaptation into twenty-first-century narratives and physical spaces, while also exploring its utopian and dystopian potentials. The discussion of Philip K. Dick's science fiction emphasizes the "half-life" of Cold War forms, illustrating how his works depict the instability and decay of inherited social realities and continue to influence post-Cold War cultural imagination. Together, these studies suggest that post-Cold War culture is marked by the simultaneous endurance and disintegration of Cold War-era forms, now giving way to new symbolic structures such as border walls and tunnels that reflect contemporary geopolitical anxieties.