Speculative Fiction Research Articles

Subverting speculative urbanism: Cityscape in New York 2140

This article is divided into two parts. The first part foregrounds the logic of contemporary financial capitalism, emphasising the increasing role of ‘speculative urbanism’ in urban transformation. While the literature on the ‘financialisation of the city’ often highlights the commodity as the paradigmatic social form in urban settings, I argue that this perspective no longer fully captures the dynamics of contemporary capitalism. The second part contends that urban studies can significantly benefit from engaging with speculative fiction. Through its imaginative and projective capacities, speculative fiction mirrors empirical social and technological trends, while also illuminating the logical and structural relationship between speculative financialisation and urbanisation. Analysing Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140, the article demonstrates how the novel helps us understand the devastation caused by financial capital, while also presenting a city where people engage in horizontal forms of resistance against speculative urbanism. Ultimately, the article proposes that for urban studies to develop a pertinent theory of futures in the 21st century, it must engage deeply with the mechanisms of speculative financial capitalism and incorporate the critical potential of speculative fiction to analyse and understand speculation as a key aspect of financial capitalism, while uncovering suppressed contradictions and potentialities.

Interconnected identities and environmental justice in Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon: a vibrant materialist analysis of Afrofuturist narratives

ABSTRACT This paper offers a critical analysis of Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon through the lens of Jane Bennett’s vibrant materialism, examining how the novel reimagines concepts of identity, agency, and environmental justice within an Afrofuturist framework. By applying Bennett’s theories on assemblages, non-human agency, and the permeability of boundaries between entities, this research explores how the novel challenges traditional anthropocentric narratives and proposes a more inclusive understanding of the interconnectedness of all forms of life. The analysis reveals how Okorafor’s novel expands the scope of Afrofuturism by integrating non-human entities as active participants in the narrative, thereby reconfiguring social and ecological realities. Through detailed textual analysis, this paper highlights the novel’s contribution to contemporary discussions on environmental justice and the fluidity of identity, demonstrating how speculative fiction can provide new perspectives on pressing global issues. The study underscores the relevance of vibrant materialism in literary studies, offering fresh insights into the potential for non-human agency to shape more just and sustainable futures.

Thinking with speculative fiction to (re)imagine just futures for lactating teacher-parents in U.S. schools

In fall 2021, I interviewed 6 teachers about their experiences with lactation (pumping) in schools following the birth of a child. Participants recounted heartbreaking stories as the neopatriarchal norms of their institutions clashed against the unpredictable nature of the embodied labor of infant feeding. This pain, however, is an incomplete story; where there is pain, there is also joy. In this article, I discuss how attending to this complexity led to speculative fiction as a form of representation. Using my own utopian short story of lactation in education, I invite readers to consider the strengths of speculative fiction for critical qualitative inquiry broadly, particularly (1) how it creates space to attend to an ethic of reflexive embodiment required by education research into spaces as intimate as lactation, and (2) its limitless potential to (re)imagine just futures beyond the oppressive strictures of an inequitable present.

Dinero y futuro en tiempos de cambio climático. Un abordaje sociológico e histórico de El ministerio del futuro, de Kim Stanley Robinson

Seeking to contribute to current research on the future imagination, the article explores a scientific fiction text, The Ministry of the Future (2020), by Kim Stanley Robinson. This novel has two singularities: it begins in July 2024, so it narrates an imminent future, prolonging concrete possibilities of our present, and it proposes, based on existing academic articles, a currency —carboncoin— for the ecological transition. This makes the novel a speculative science fiction of strategy, a notion explored in the article to understand this way of imagining the future. After presenting a series of sociological concepts for the study of money (with emphasis on Nigel Dodd’s concept of “social fiction”) and outlining a history of imagining the future of money, and arguing that, since 2008, we live in a conjuncture of currency transformation, the futurization of money present in the novel is analyzed. The characteristics and implications of the carboncoin, which rewards carbon capture, are explored, analyzing moments of its design and evolution in relation to banking institutions, the dollar, technologies and the dilemmas of its adoption. By putting the plot of the novel into dialogue with historical phenomena, theoretical positions, political discourses, social and technological processes, we try to support the hypothesis that the way of imagining the future in a current science fiction novel, which speculates on the future of money in times of climate change, can offer new possibilities for the social sciences to think about the future.

What is the Criminological Value of Fiction? Examining Postcolonial Speculative Storytelling as a Site for Theory Construction, Analogy and Pedagogy

In response to calls to counter-colonial legacies in criminology and to improve inclusivity, I examine the criminological value of postcolonial speculative fiction as a site for theory construction, analogy and pedagogy. This conceptual and qualitative project sought to develop students’ critical thinking skills and empathy through fiction and to generate ‘new’ and collaborative ways of thinking about harm, crime and justice. Participants were asked to read two short stories about sexual and gender-based violence against women and girls. The fiction was chosen to inspire critical dialogue in a predominantly white classroom. I begin by outlining the need for fundamental change in criminology’s approach to critical inquiry then explore how fiction can provide an avenue for pedagogical transformation. I find that fiction provides a site on which students can compare and interpret crime, harm and justice in the social world; moreover, that fiction can help students to engage with difference.

Norwegian Speculative Fiction in Translation

Norwegian Speculative Fiction in Translation

Environmental degradation and its symbolic representation in Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon

This paper investigates how Lagoon critiques environmental neglect, employing speculative fiction to engage with pressing ecological issues. Through an ecocritical lens, it emphasizes the novel’s call for reimagining humanity’s relationship with nature, advocating for sustainable futures rooted in both cultural and ecological resilience. Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon stands out as a landmark in African speculative fiction, blending elements of science fiction with sharp ecological and socio-political commentary. Set in Lagos, Nigeria, the novel vividly depicts environmental degradation, symbolized by the polluted waters of Bar Beach, as a microcosm of broader ecological crises. Through richly detailed descriptions of oil spills, marine life disruption, and urban pollution, Okorafor critiques human exploitation of natural resources and its devastating socio-economic and cultural consequences. The arrival of extraterrestrial beings introduces a speculative framework that critiques human inaction while envisioning pathways for ecological restoration. These aliens, capable of purifying polluted waters and reviving marine ecosystems, serve as a metaphor for humanity’s potential to reverse environmental harm through collective action and innovation. The novel also explores the symbolic role of water and marine life, portraying them as sites of both destruction and renewal. By examining the intersections of environmental degradation, governance, and resilience, Lagoon situates itself within the emerging field of African ecocriticism.

Ficțiunea distopică – divertisment sau cântec de lebădă?

Dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction stands out in the contemporary cultural landscape, both in terms of best-selling popular culture products, notably the best-selling novels or blockbuster movies aimed at an YA audience, and increasingly in the high culture sphere. The former contempt of the academia for science fiction has led to a reassessment and “repackaging” by the writers of their works as belonging to the speculative fiction genre. The inner space science fiction, sometimes rebranded as dystopian, cli-fi and post-apocalyptic fiction has gradually moved away from the outer worlds of the hard sci-fi. Several interpretation keys can be discerned from the analysis of the dystopian genre’s profitable market, including collective anguish during what may currently seem to be the End Times, guilt for the climate collapse, spiritual masochistic pleasure, gender issues etc., keeping in mind, though, the obvious peril of oversimplification. The insertion of the love theme supports the marketable and profitable segments of the entertainment dystopian or post-apocalyptic fiction. Cultural hegemony profits from the dystopian trend in fiction and, at the same time, adiaphorizes the meaningful messages which are supposed to be put forward by critical dystopias.

Review Article: New Definitions of the Female Adolescent Hero in YA Speculative Fiction

In lieu of an abstract:In 2023, we saw the publication of three new and important contributions to the feminist study of YA speculative fiction: Melanie A. Marotta’s African American Adolescent Female Heroes: The Twenty-First-Century Young Adult Neo-Slave Narrative (University Press of Mississippi); Leah Phillips’ Female Heroes in Young Adult Fantasy Fiction: Reframing Myths of Adolescent Girlhood (Bloomsbury), and Cristina Santos’ Untaming Girlhood: Storytelling Female Adolescence (Routledge). Each of these works expands the theoretical reach of feminism in innovative and provocative directions.

Wolves in the Woods: An Ecocritical Analysis of Natural Motifs in Marissa Meyer’s <em>Scarlet</em> 

Marissa Meyer is a popular American author of young adult literature, known for writing retellings of famous fairy tales. One of her best-known works is The Lunar Chronicles (2012-2015), a speculative fiction series of which Scarlet (2013) is the second instalment. The novel is loosely based on “Little Red Riding Hood”, centring on Scarlet Benoit and her endeavour to save her kidnapped grandmother. To do so, she joins forces with Ze’ev Kesley, nicknamed “Wolf”, and must leave her grandmother’s farm and travel to the city (the futuristic Paris). Meyerʼs protagonist is an active heroine, an agent in her own journey, while the places she travels through and animals she encounters are not typical, fairy tale topoi serving only as metaphors for human concerns. Instead, they are represented as having innate value, inviting an ecocritical reading. In addition, the novel comments on ecological issues and paints a sharp contrast between the countryside and the cityscape. The article presents an ecocritical analysis of the motifs of the forest and the wolf in Scarlet, tracing their transformation from the traditional versions of “Little Red Riding Hood”. It also explores Meyer’s representation of the future Earth and follows Scarlet’s journey to show how the city has become the main locus of danger, with the text promoting a stronger link between humans and nature.

Contemporary Pakistani Speculative Fiction and the Global Imaginary: Democratizing Human Futures, By Shazia Sadaf and Aroosa Kanwal

<i>Contemporary Pakistani Speculative Fiction and the Global Imaginary: Democratizing Human Futures</i>, By Shazia Sadaf and Aroosa Kanwal

From Embodied Abuse to Mass Disruption : Generative, Inter-Reality Threats in Social, Mixed-Reality Platforms

Extended Reality (XR) platforms can expose users to novel attacks including embodied abuse and/or AI attacks-at-scale. The expanded attack surfaces of XR technologies may expose users of shared online platforms to psychological/social and physiological harms via embodied interactions with potentially millions of other humans or artificial humans, causing what we define as an inter-reality attack. The past 20 years have demonstrated how social and other harms (e.g., bullying, assault and stalking) can and do shift to digital social media and gaming platforms. XR technologies becoming more mainstream has led to investigations of ethical and technical consequences of these expanded input surfaces. However, there is limited literature that investigates social attacks, particularly towards vulnerable communities, and how AI technologies may accelerate generative attacks-at-scale. This article employs human-centred research methods and a harms-centred Cybersecurity framework to co-design a testbed of socio-technical attack scenarios in XR social gaming platforms. It uses speculative fiction to further extrapolate how these could reach attacks-at-scale by applying generative AI techniques. It develops an Inter-Reality Threat Model to outline how actions in virtual environments can impact on the real-world. As AI capability continues to rapidly develop, this article articulates the urgent need to consider a future where XR-AI attacks-at-scale could become commonplace.

The Price of Extinction and the Epic Journey to Mourn Beyond the Human in Ned Beauman’s Venomous Lumpsucker

This article aims to explore how contemporary speculative fiction contributes to the current debate about the extinction crisis in the context of the Anthropocene by the critical analysis of Ned Beauman’s latest novel Venomous Lumpsucker (2022). First, it explores how in a future speculative world, where the exploitative drive of the neoliberal economic system interlocks with the latest technologies, the monetisation of life ends up detaching the notions of extinction and death. Additionally, it follows and interprets the epic travel of a cognitive scientist from apathy to environmental awareness and her complex journey towards mourning beyond the human.

There and back again: A materials scientist’s journey into speculative fiction

There and back again: A materials scientist’s journey into speculative fiction

Reproductive conscription and eugenic horror in Hulu’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale

First released in 1985, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale has since become a seminal work of feminist speculative fiction. Set in the former United States, the fictionalized Republic of Gilead presents a terrifying reproductive theocracy in which all women are subjugated and fertile women are forcibly conscripted into biological slavery. Often satirical and wry, the novel has been celebrated for its depictions of biological essentialism which reduces the titular Handmaids to the status of reproductive vessels for the state. Such representations of biological essentialism define Atwood’s novel as a work of eugenic fiction which echoes the policies and practices of reproductive control that dominated the early eugenics movement in the first half of the twentieth century. Furthering this connection is the novel’s use of botanical and agricultural metaphors that continually liken women to both fertile plants and breeding stock, reflecting the language employed in early eugenic rhetoric. In transforming the novel for television, the Hulu adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale (2017–present) extends such metaphors, visually literalizing them to create a work of eugenic horror, which violently and emphatically depicts the consequences of reducing women to their reproductive capacity. In doing this, the television adaptation not only heightens its source text’s eugenic themes but also provides a space in which to reframe Atwood’s Handmaid protagonist, Offred, reconfiguring her as the horror genre’s Final Girl, who not only survives the eugenic horror to which she is subjected but also overcomes it.

Admissions: A report from a pilgrimage to an alternative university

“Admissions” is a speculative fiction invoking two traditions – science and literature – that reflects on creativity in education. The overarching frame is that of a science report and the literary construct is a pilgrimage, very loosely modelled on the work of Geoffrey Chaucer, as well as on the tales of imagined travel by Sir Francis Bacon (New Atlantis) and Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (The Blazing World). The intent is partly to evoke the critical power in creative work that simultaneously engages the inherent criticality of creative expression across disciplines. More specifically, each voice offers a different “plane” of creativity and learning that together intersect and combine to make a more complete education.

Future girl? Exploring girls’ digital sexual cultures through speculative fabrications

ABSTRACT Research reveals a significant gap between young people’s lived experience with digital technologies and the scripted content of online safeguarding programmes that focus on young people’s rational, individual decision-making regarding safe and responsible use. Rarely do online safeguarding programmes engage with the wider gender and sexual norms shaping young people’s digital cultures. This paper outlines how experimenting with speculative fiction offers generative possibilities for digital sexualities research and education. Drawing on group interviews and arts-based data produced by five girls aged 11–12 years old, it explores the competing and contradictory demands of contemporary digitally-networked girlhood. The paper briefly outlines how girls are promoted as empowered, choice-making agents in contemporary digital culture before examining the difficulties girls encounter when expressing their frustration at enduring gender and sexual inequities at school and online. It moves to explore how experimenting with speculative fiction through arts-based methods allowed new forms of voicing to emerge which challenged the vision of girls as vanguards of a new socio-economic order. By engaging in a diffractive analysis of the cut-up poem ‘Test Subject 15066’ and the fabricated future girl figure produced by three girls in the study, this paper explores alternative figurations of future girlhood.

Hyphae Networks of Queer Love

Set against the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic future where as a result of infections due to rapid mutations in most earthly organisms, human civilisation has significantly declined, the Danmei Novel Little Mushroom by Shisi narrates the tale of a mushroom on a quest to recover the spores stolen by some humans. At the beginning of the novel the mushroom attempts but is unsuccessful in saving the life of an injured human, however, in the process the mushroom absorbs the human’s genes and memories, and is able to shapeshift into a human form called An Zhe and thus sets on a course towards the location of human civilisation whereby he encounters Lu Feng the other protagonist of the novel. The research paper examines how this work of speculative science fiction embodies the concepts of post-humanism and queer masculinity and rejects the narratives of strict binaries and the superiority of the human race over others. The paper highlights the novel’s attempt to move away from anthropocentric and heteronormative thinking as the novel engages in narratives that showcase queer love and queer masculinities in a positive way that does not conform and restricts itself to the boundaries set up by a backward society.

The Problem of the Sexy Cyborg: The Ethics of Cyborg Imagery

In this article, I discuss two popular tropes about the cyborg in speculative fiction visual media: apotheosis — the pinnacle of human form and function; and grotesquerie — the violation of that perfection through fascinating horror. I look at these tropes in service of discussing the effects of such images and cultural understandings on actual cyborgs. The everyday or common cyborgs that are disabled people; the ones with prosthetics, who use wheelchairs, hearing aids, beta blockers, and Ritalin, who have artificial valves, knees, and pacemakers. I argue that the imagery of perfection and horror that surround cyborgs in media reinforce problematic tropes about disabled people, specifically the tropes of the super crip, pity, and bitter cripple narratives, and the ugly is evil trope where physical disfigurements and disabilities are often shorthand for moral failing. I connect these tropes to longstanding beliefs that were foundational to the eugenics movement of the 19th and 20th centuries, and that still cause resistance to robust social services for disabled people.

“I hate science fiction”: Genres and Planets in Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods

ABSTRACT This paper reconsiders the critical promotion of science fiction in the Anthropocene. It highlights the genre’s technocentrism and ethnocentrism, and its historical alliance with empire and globalisation, but specifically argues for the genre’s association with an emerging planetarity whose hegemonic dynamics are underscored by Matthew A. Taylor (2016), among others. The paper revisits Margaret Atwood’s distinction between science fiction and speculative fiction, and calls attention to theorisations of planetarity that are not premised on scale or totality, to raise the question of genre and planetarity in and beyond science fiction proper. As a literary illustration of how genre my bear upon planetary thinking, the paper examines Jeanette Winterson’s 2007 novel The Stone Gods, which varies genres, scales, and planets. In the novel, a critique of imperial, world-making, planetarity is implemented as a parody of science fiction, whereas a change of genre opens for a different understating/practice of planetarity.