Speculative Fiction Research Articles (Page 1)

ABSTRACT Cherie Dimaline’s (Métis) Empire of Wild (2019) and Jessica Johns’s (Cree) Bad Cree (2023) refuse to frame the violent events at their centre as isolated or incidental. Instead, authors situate crises within the long historical continuum of settler-colonialism and its impact on Indigenous communities in Canada. Catriona Mackenzie et al.’s expansive intersectional taxonomy of vulnerability defines its pathogenic variant as emerging from entrenched ‘sociopolitical oppression or injustice.’ Pathogenic vulnerability demonstrates how specific groups can experience conditions that render them more vulnerable to violence. In this article, I argue Dimaline and Johns utilise speculative tropes to interrogate widespread decontextualised state narratives of individual vulnerability. Violent events are alternatively narrated as products of their specific context – the conditions of pathogenic vulnerability conferred upon Indigenous peoples in settler-colonial nations. A central protagonist’s individual search for truth foregrounds narrative engagement with contemporary issues facing communities – Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit People (MMIWG2s) statistics, land grabs, state-sponsored industrialism and environmental and psychological devastation within post-extraction communities. Yet authors resist reasserting victim paradigms or employing a reconciliatory politics. Speculative tropes instead encourage what Jo-Ann Archibald (Stó:lō) calls storywork. Such tropes, which denaturalise violent encounters, encourage lateral thinking via nested narratives/metanarratives and embed both traditional monsters and alternative worlds, instigate storywork through inciting deeper reader engagement while foregrounding Indigenous agency, knowledge and resistance.

This article examines the alternative future of Becky Chambers’s Record of a Spaceborn Few through the frameworks of circular economy, degrowth, and critical posthumanism. As I shall argue, Chambers’s novel envisions a future society that moves beyond extractive capitalism, emphasising a sustainable socio-economic system with communal labour and non-hierarchical social structures through the Fleet, a collection of ships inhabited by the descendants of the last humans on Earth. By analysing the Fleet’s socio-economic system, this article explores how and to what extent Chambers criticises lineal capitalism and proposes an alternative mode of existence, potentially more aligned with critical posthumanism. Drawing on economic theory and speculative fiction, including science fiction, scholarship, the article argues that Chambers’s novel offers a complex vision of post-capitalist futures, demonstrating the role of science fiction in imagining sustainable alternatives to the Anthropocene.

Nghi Vo’s Singing Hill Series follows the character of Chih, a monk that has been entrusted with the task of collecting and preserving stories that either have never been recorded before or that have been deliberately excluded from the canon because they contradict national, hegemonic and cis-heteropatriarchal discourses. Throughout the course of the saga, Chih learns and writes down stories that have been neglected, erased and forgotten, and we, as readers, see how these acts of narrative preservation help to build a present in which those that have been casted as “other,” and in particular, racialized sapphic women, are able to find and recognize themselves. My argument is that the speculative elements of the novellas help to question what is thought of as normal, as possible and as real, and thus, allow for the texts to be read as spaces of narrative hospitality where sapphic women can not only reclaim their (her)stories but can also build a home and a community through them.

Imago Dei is frequently problematized in speculative fiction (SF) as humanity’s own narcissism symbolized by a rigid adherence to simplistic taxonomic definitions of humanity. Accordingly, nonhuman lifeforms have little value or right to life, creating mass extinctions and ecoapocalypses. American author Sheri S. Tepper challenges this definition through non-terrestrial nonhumans with their own imago Dei beliefs – but with different gods which, in a reversal of roles, leads them to devalue and destroy humanity. Tepper’s oeuvre further satirizes these views by contrasting them with a performative imago Dei wherein nonhuman and hybrid humans are said to be human in that they communicate and display a superior intellect and empathy to that of “humans.” Tepper’s SF offers readers two futures: Humanity redefines itself based on kinship with all Creation and physically changes, making itself in a new image, or humanity rejects change, choosing extinction.

In today's interconnected world, personal data generation and collection are growing exponentially. Increasingly, data from multiple sources, ranging from vital signs to environmental and lifestyle information, are combined to create detailed personal profiles (Brunning et al., 2023). While this enables more personalized care, it also raises questions about privacy, data reliability, ownership, and the desirability of collecting such data. To foster dialogue on these issues with a broad audience in an engaging and accessible way, the festival experience The Digital Data Divide (www.thedigitaldatadivide.nl) was developed (Groeneveld et al., 2024). This interactive experience draws on the concept of narrative learning, an approach that uses stories and dialogue to help individuals interpret and understand the world around them (Elsden et al., 2017). When applied as speculative fiction, narrative learning is especially effective for exploring potential future scenarios. By embedding these scenarios within a story, it encourages participants to critically examine and question their present viewpoints (Haste and Abrahams, 2008). The Digital Data Divide premiered at the Zwarte Cross Festival in the Netherlands in 2023 and has since been featured at various festivals, events, congresses, as well as in educational and healthcare settings and won the E³UDRES² Innovative Science Outreach Award in May 2025.

Engaging with the sociotechnical and geopolitical loopholes allowing Brazil to use a widely forbidden insecticide, this article presents a cultural history of ants and other insects in Latin America, including their depictions in speculative fiction (SF) and a discussion of the temporal and ecological discourse of Indigenous futurism. It proposes that speculative communities can be a way of addressing the deep entanglement of fluorosurfactants with ants, humans, transnational capital, international treaties, and temporality through synchronization and spectacle. After connecting SF and Indigenous futurism through their problematization of temporal discourse and its potential to synchronize collectivities, the article proposes that these practices can break the toxicity continuum of contamination, regulatory capture, and public suffering.

Abstract: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has evolved from a theoretical concept into a transformative force that is actively reshaping modern society. No longer confined to research laboratories or speculative fiction, AI is now embedded in our daily routines—ranging from voice assistants like Siri and Alexa, to complex medical diagnostic tools, self-driving vehicles, recommendation systems, and smart city infrastructure. Its growing presence has made it both an indispensable innovation and a subject of intense social, ethical, and political debate. This research paper aims to explore the intricate relationship between AI and society, investigating how these technologies are impacting various sectors while also highlighting the risks and challenges they introduce. AI offers considerable promise across domains such as healthcare, where it aids in early disease detection and personalized treatment; education, where it enables adaptive learning platforms; agriculture, through smart irrigation and crop monitoring; and public administration, by streamlining governance and improving citizen services. These applications enhance decision-making, increase efficiency, and improve quality of life. However, the widespread integration of AI also raises significant ethical and societal questions. As machines begin to replicate or even outperform human decision-making, concerns emerge around job automation, the erosion of privacy, algorithmic bias, and the opacity of AI decision systems. For example, automated hiring tools may unintentionally discriminate against certain groups due to biased training data, while AI-powered surveillance systems can compromise individual freedoms. Furthermore, the uneven global access to AI technology risks deepening the divide between developed and developing nations. This paper adopts a multidisciplinary and global approach by reviewing existing literature, government policy frameworks, and real-world case studies to assess the double-edged nature of AI's influence. By analysing both the benefits and the harms, the research emphasizes the urgent need for robust governance frameworks, inclusive policy-making, and ethical guidelines. It argues that without meaningful regulation and a commitment to human-cantered design, the risks associated with AI could outweigh its benefits—especially for vulnerable populations. The study also offers forward-looking recommendations for various stakeholders, including policymakers, AI developers, educators, and civil society. These include implementing transparent algorithms, enhancing public understanding of AI, promoting global collaboration on AI ethics, and ensuring fair access to AI-driven tools and services. Above all, it emphasizes that technology must remain a means to empower humanity rather than dominate it. In conclusion, this paper presents a balanced evaluation of Artificial Intelligence's societal implications, urging responsible innovation to harness AI’s full potential while safeguarding human dignity and social justice. As AI continues to evolve, its trajectory must be shaped not only by what is technologically possible but also by what is ethically and socially desirable.

This study utilizes a psychological research framework to investigate the extent to which the traumatic rupture in the mentor-protagonist relationship enables posttraumatic development in speculative fiction. We examine the “killing of the wise old man” motif in Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem and Ntsika Kota's and the Earth Drank Deep using Jungian theory and Calhoun & Tedeschi's Posttraumatic Growth (PTG) model. The protagonists’ voyages from separation, which is characterized by a psychospiritual crisis, to initiation, where cognitive dissonance and emotional turmoil induce a change in beliefs, are traced through qualitative narrative coding. Disillusionment and subsequent identity reconstruction are the outcomes of the symbolic ‘filial violence” against the mentor figure, which induces a psychic rupture that challenges fundamental values. PTG is facilitated by coping strategies, including self-disclosure, creative expression, and the revision of cultural schemas. This results in a redefined life purpose, increased resilience, and enhanced meaning-making. Our results emphasize the Antihero's Journey as a paradigm that is effective in elucidating the manner in which literature depicts adaptive transformation in the aftermath of tragedy. This research contributes to the disciplines of trauma studies and narrative psychology by emphasizing the relationship between personal growth and archetypal disruption. It illustrates that speculative fiction is a valuable instrument for investigating psychological resilience and the processes of meaning-making in the presence of adversity.

Informed by Helen Hester’s technomaterialist paradigm, this paper investigates the intersection of technology, labor, and embodiment in Naomi Kritzer’s “Cat Pictures Please” and Rich Larson’s “An Evening with Severyn Grimes.” The paper foregrounds the material infrastructures and power relations that sustain digital culture. Kritzer’s AI, driven by affection for cat images, personifies algorithmic systems that emulate care work and reproduce human biases within concealed circuits of emotional and computational labor. Larson’s vision of technological self-enhancement exposes the corporate control, bodily commodification, and stratified access to innovation that define techno-capitalist modernity. Through Hester’s technomaterialist and xenofeminist insights, these stories demonstrate that contemporary technologies remain governed by social, economic, and gendered hierarchies, dismantling the illusion of disembodied digitality. Foregrounding the interlinked economic and ecological costs that technology conceals, both narratives elevate speculative fiction into a critical ecology of thought—an imaginative counterspace that resists the mythic purity of techno-utopian optimism. This paper presents such narratives as laboratories for rethinking technological politics, embodiment, and futurity.

This research explores the ethical and political implications of child bioengineering in Umair Gilani's fictional novel The Lost Children of Paradise, with a focus on commodification and exploitation of orphaned and street children. The objective of this research is to examine how Gilani uses the genetically modified orphans to explore biological issues of scientific intervention, the commodification of marginalized bodies, and the fight for agency and resistance in a biopolitically controlled society. Using the qualitative literary analysis methodology, the research combines the theoretical framework of critical posthumanist theory with Michel Foucault’s idea of ​​biopolitics to analyze the moral, political, and social behavior of genetically modified children in the novel. This research highlights how “The Lost Children of Paradise” uses speculative fiction to question contemporary biopolitical control structures, the marginalization of genetically engineered children, and the moral misuse of technology. The paper argues that the novel, in addition to criticizing technological and biopolitical regimes, reimagines the limits of humanity and moral duty in the face of technological dominance. This research will contribute to scholarship by investigating how speculative fiction challenges technological control, dehumanization, and resistance in modern society by linking the domains of biopolitics and posthumanism.

Abstract This article explores American print archives to construct a canon of pre-1898 comic imaginations of advanced weaponry in the service of empire-building. It examines news articles, novels and short fiction, comic songs, and comic almanacs to situate Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court as a science fiction novel that participates in and responds to an extant tradition of futuristic, comic speculation about war, empire, and colonialism. In connecting Twain’s prescient account of the violent outcomes of American exceptionalism and expansionism to earlier examples of comic, speculative fiction and illustrations that imagine the convergence of techno-determinism, imperialism, and war, the article historicizes Twain’s satire within an emergent lineage of comic art that addresses (whether to critique, celebrate, or merely laugh at) U.S. imperialism.

ABSTRACT In this essay I argue that the cultural formation of Silicon Valley with its cult of the CEO can be read as a ‘financial science fiction.’ As such, it can be analyzed as part of a larger cultural (trans)formation in which the properties of speculative finance and speculative fiction have become dialectically intertwined. In this sense, the quasi-occultic veil that covers both finance and the tech-CEO is comprised of and pierced by the genre protocols of science fiction. Turning to Alex Garland's Devs series (2020) to flesh this out, the essay interrogates how the cult of the CEO is directly linked to the processes of disruption, preemption, and enclosure that undergird datafication. What first appears as disruption, I argue, is really preemption: the opening of a space for the gathering of profit from financially speculative futures. This preemption, then, is ultimately an act of enclosure, a delimitation rather than an opening of the future as possibility. Within this model, the CEO dictates the circumstances for spinning and mastering the complex algorithms necessary to perform these functions of disruption, preemption, and enclosure. Exploring these this through the Devs series, this essay helps to expose the dialectical relationship undergirding speculative finance’s turn to sf and sf’s turn to speculative financial novums.

This article interrogates the consolidation of digital masculinity in contemporary speculative fiction, with particular attention to the ways algorithms and digital representations regulate and enforce identity. Through a close examination of Ted Chiang’s “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” and Isabel Fall’s “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter,” the article explores the nexus of technological mediation, gender performativity, and systemic bias. Drawing on Jean Baudrillard’s theorization of simulacra and hyperreality alongside Safiya Umoja Noble’s analysis of algorithmic oppression, the paper argues that these narratives function as critical diagnostics of our present technological condition. Chiang’s portrayal of “Remem,” a flawless memory-recall device, discloses the protagonist’s subjectivity as a precarious simulacrum, a hyperreal identity contingent upon distorted memory. In parallel, Fall’s narrative—where gender is literally reprogrammed into the ontology of a militarized machine—exposes the entanglement of weaponized masculinity and algorithmic structures of control. By bridging speculative literature with critical theory, this article situates digital spaces as generative agents of oppressive gender constructs and underscores the imperative to dismantle the algorithmic infrastructures that perpetuate them.

As Earth’s resources are diminishing and concerns about sustainable growth are rising, humankind is obligated to explore new perimeter for eradication. Space mining[1] represents a life-changing perimeter in resource extraction, contributing the potential to reform industries by providing connection to bountiful outer-space resources. These perimeters attract with promises of indescribable riches in precious metals, rare – elements and even water. Space mining, once referred as speculative fiction, has emerged as a feasible solution for attestation of resource security and expediting future space exploration. As space exploration and development accelerate, ensuring sustainable practices is crucial for maintaining the outer-space environment and enabling long-term human presence. Likewise, including sustainable lunar development with space mining, represents very crucial advancements in humankind’s exploration, utilization of outer-space resources and it also highlights the regulative system to maintain a desired state without further human interaction, to support long-term human presence in outer-space. This research also investigates the technological, economic, and environmental dimensions of mining celestial bodies, with a particular emphasis on the Moon. The paper, likewise examines the legal and ethical frameworks for developing the governance on outer-space mining activities and for responsible resource management, as it also accelerates the questions of ownership upon outer-space resources. This surrounding complex issues also examines the tension within international law, national interest and private enterprise. As, the international space law has not evolved since the times of cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States[2]. Therefore, in the other hand, it also addresses the environmental costs of expanding humankind's reach into space, this paper proposes a comprehensive framework for appraising the ecological footprint [3]by rocket launches, engaging with the emission from carbon-burning engines and their impact on Earth's atmosphere. This paper aims to analyse mainly upon evolution of space law, addressing space mining and sustainable lunar development[4]. Also, the change in to overall environmental impact from space mining, and is there any need for international authority for cosmic governance.

Abstract This essay explores Larissa Lai’s dystopian speculative fiction through the lenses of Karen Barad’s theory of intra-action, Stacy Alaimo’s notion of transcorporeal material ethics, Jane Bennett’s vital materialism, and Rosi Braidotti’s postanthropocentric, Spinozist revision of Giorgio Agamben’s notion of bare life or zoe. Lai’s feminist posthuman communities, intrinsically embodied and embedded in nature, hold a position of resistance within the overall context of the anthropogenic destruction of the environment. Zoe-centered egalitarianism materializes in their interspecies enmeshment and horizontal relations with the more-than-human as unexpected material intra-actions enable their posthuman being and becoming. Furthermore, those communities lie beyond the grasp of the reproductive futurism that has been adduced as a feature of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s controversial utopia Herland.

Abstract As a result of a collaborative workshop on speculative thinking organized by Isabelle Stengers in 2013, Donna Haraway and Vinciane Despret engaged with fiction writing in their scholarly work. In 2016 Donna Haraway published the SF tale “The Camille Stories” in Staying with the Trouble, while in 2021 Vinciane Despret published a speculative fiction entitled Autobiographie d’un poulpe. While their fictionalized thought-experiments testify to the current need for new narratives, they also work within the coded purview of the literary genres they call upon. This article examines the literary strategies adopted by Haraway and Despret from an ethical and political point of view to outline their metaphysical consequences in redrawing human–nonhuman relationships.

A comprehensive approach to studying Brandon Sanderson’s works allows the authors of the article to conduct an original analysis of the methods of forming occasionalisms as derivatives involved in creating unique figurative units within the writer’s worldview. The study of derivational morphology made it possible to identify the features of word-formation processes used in shaping Sanderson’s worldview, including compounding, affixation, complex formation, and blending. The results of the study provide a deeper understanding of the author’s linguistic creativity and its significance for contemporary literature. The findings indicate that compounding is the dominant strategy, enabling semantic transparency and intuitive understanding for readers, while affixation and blending play a minor role in lexical innovation. In the presented work, the authors highlight the role of grounding in the emergence of new lexical units, demonstrating the process of lexical items transitioning from an activated to an established concept. This process influences how occasionalisms are perceived and integrated into the narrative. Initially perceived as foreign or inventive (e.g., spren, chull), such words evolve into functional elements of the fictional world through repetition and narrative embedding. Conversely, already familiar lexical units (e.g., storm, shard, mist) may undergo contextual redefinition, acquiring new in-universe meanings and emotional weight. The study also distinguishes between primary occasionalisms (authorial neologisms serving as base words) and grounded (derived) occasionalisms, which are formed from them through additional semantic or structural transformations. Derived occasionalisms, in turn, are divided into ordinary ones — where existing words undergo shifts in meaning — and pure ones, which arise directly from the original occasionalisms. This classification provides a framework for tracing the semantic and morphological evolution of invented vocabulary. Ultimately, the study underscores the dynamic interplay between language and storytelling, demonstrating how occasionalisms not only function as markers of a linguistic personality but also serve as tools for immersive worldbuilding. The findings contribute to the broader field of fictional morphology and speculative fiction linguistics, illustrating how fictional languages mirror real-world derivation while maintaining their unique narrative functions. The analysis of Sanderson’s lexicon offers valuable insights into the creative potential of neologisms in fiction and emphasizes their role in shaping the overall depth of a fictional universe.

Amid fears of looming global catastrophe, an apocalyptic political sensibility dominates, perhaps best captured in repeated laments that the future has been cancelled. In such a moment, hope can feel both necessary and impossible, can feel decidedly utopian. But is a critical utopian hope possible? The answer ultimately lies in the world of practice rather than theory, but here I offer cautions and resources for those with a will to hope. First, I consider the relationship between utopianism and resentment of the world, suggesting both apocalyptic and utopian politics are motivated by feelings of disappointment. The dangers of this affective orientation are illustrated by examining the excesses of twentieth-century utopian urban planning. Further, the utopian desire to inhabit a new and better world requires the destruction of existing worlds. The necessity of destruction to creativity, explored through fictional representations of architects in the work of Ayn Rand and J.G. Ballard, reveals an ambiguity in our hope of make the world anew. This tension is further developed by examining speculative fictions from Ursula Le Guin and Octavia Butler, which dramatise the link between solipsism and the destruction of world-building. I then identify a source for a critical practice of utopian hope in William James’ claim we have a right to believe in anything we are willing to work to make a reality. While making space for hope, such a right demands action to build a different world, a practical effort requiring care for the world as whole, for those elements we hate as well as those we love. To extend what this careful practice of hope offers a critical utopianism, I end by reflecting on community-led urban innovations and outlining a democratic utopian disposition that embraces a heterotopian politics, which accepts our ideal visions are ultimately impossible but necessary to alleviating contemporary injustices and creating space for unexpected developments.

Speculative Fiction and Empathy: A Case Study of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower

This article examines the convergence between humour, horror, and science fiction in contemporary Brazilian cinema. Drawing on a corpus of films released after 2016 – a period marked by intense political crises and radicalised culture wars – it focuses on a relatively new phenomenon in Brazilian film culture: the emergence of narratives that blend speculative genres with comic strategies to address sociopolitical turmoil. Rather than relying solely on the mobilisation of fear, these films articulate distinct modes of comic engagement to process societal anxieties and confront institutional violence. The analysis centres on two core narrative strategies: satirical allegory and symbolic revenge. It situates these within a broader cultural landscape shaped by digital cultures, conspiracy theories, and a frequently cruel, punitive online humour. In doing so, the article highlights how comic and speculative elements operate not merely as stylistic devices, but as expressive tools for social critique and political positioning in a moment of democratic fragility.