Futures and Fictions is a book of essays and conversations that explore possibilities for a different ‘political imaginary’ or, more simply, the imagining and imaging of alternate narratives and image-worlds that might be pitched against the impasses of our neoliberal present. In particular, the book contributes to prescient discussions around decolonization, post-capitalism and new kinds of social movements – exploring the intersections of these with contemporary art practice and visual culture. Contributions range from work on science, sonic and financial fictions and alternative space-time plots to myths and images generated by marginalized and ‘minor’ communities, queer-feminist strategies of fictioning, and the production of new Afro- and other futurisms. Contributors to thsi volume include Ursula K. Le Guin, Theo Reeves-Evisson, Bridget Crone, Kodwo Eshun, Louis Moreno, Laboria Cuboniks, Luciana Parisi, Stefan Helmreich, Mark Fisher, Judy Thorne, Annett Busch, Harold Offeh, Robin Mackay, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Kemang Wa Lehulere, and Oreet Ashery.

In what ways could we imagine a world different from the one in which we currently live? This is the question addressed by the essays and conversations in Futures and Fictions, which explore possibilities for a different "political imaginary". With discussions around decolonization, new Afro- and other futurisms, post-capitalism, science fiction, and new kinds of social movements - and the intersections of these with contemporary art practice and visual culture - Futures and Fictions creates a space for alternate narratives and image-worlds that might be pitched against our neoliberal present. With contributions from Mark Fisher, Ursula Le Guin, Kodwo Eshun and Oreet Ashery.

Finalist, 2019 Locus Award for Nonfiction, presented by the Locus Science Fiction Foundation Traverses the history of imagined futures from the 1890s to the 2010s, interweaving speculative visions of gender, race, and sexuality from literature, film, and digital media Old Futures explores the social, political, and cultural forces feminists, queer people, and people of color invoke when they dream up alternative futures as a way to imagine transforming the present. Lothian shows how queer possibilities emerge when we practice the art of speculation: of imagining things otherwise than they are and creating stories from that impulse. Queer theory offers creative ways to think about time, breaking with straight and narrow paths toward the future laid out for the reproductive family, the law-abiding citizen, and the believer in markets. Yet so far it has rarely considered the possibility that, instead of a queer present reshaping the ways we relate to past and future, the futures imagined in the past can lead us to queer the present. Narratives of possible futures provide frameworks through which we understand our present, but the discourse of “the” future has never been a singular one. Imagined futures have often been central to the creation and maintenance of imperial domination and technological modernity; Old Futures offers a counterhistory of works that have sought—with varying degrees of success—to speculate otherwise. Examining speculative texts from the 1890s to the 2010s, from Samuel R. Delany to Sense8, Lothian considers the ways in which early feminist utopias and dystopias, Afrofuturist fiction, and queer science fiction media have insisted that the future can and must deviate from dominant narratives of global annihilation or highly restrictive hopes for redemption. Each chapter chronicles some of the means by which the production and destruction of futures both real and imagined takes place: through eugenics, utopia, empire, fascism, dystopia, race, capitalism, femininity, masculinity, and many kinds of queerness, reproduction, and sex. Gathering stories of and by populations who have been marked as futureless or left out by dominant imaginaries, Lothian offers new insights into what we can learn from efforts to imaginatively redistribute the future.

Essays on speculative/science fiction explore the futures that feed our most cherished fantasies and terrifying nightmares, while helping diverse communities devise new survival strategies for a tough millennium. The explosion in speculative/science fiction (SF) across different media from the late twentieth century to the present has compelled those in the field of SF studies to rethink the community’s identity, orientation, and stakes. In this edited collection, more than forty writers, critics, game designers, scholars, and activists explore core SF texts, with an eye toward a future in which corporations dominate both the means of production and the means of distribution and governments rely on powerful surveillance and carceral technologies. The essays, international in scope, demonstrate the diversity of SF through a balance of popular mass-market novels, comics, films, games, TV shows, creepypastas, and more niche works. SF works explored range from Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi, 2084: The End of the World by Boualem Sansal, Terra Nullius by Claire Coleman, Watchmen and X-Men comics, and the Marvel film Captain America: The Winter Soldier, to the MaddAddam trilogy by Margaret Atwood, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wandering Earth by Liu Cixin, and the Wormwood trilogy by Tade Thompson. In an era in which ecological disaster and global pandemics regularly expose and intensify deep political-economic inequalities, what futures has SF anticipated? What survival strategies has it provided us? Can it help us to deal with, and grow beyond, the inequalities and injustices of our times? Unlike other books of speculative/science fiction criticism, Uneven Futures uses a think piece format to make its critical insights engaging to a wide audience. The essays inspire visions of better possible futures—drawing on feminist, queer, and global speculative engagements with Indigenous, Latinx, and Afro- and African futurisms—while imparting important lessons for political organizing in the present. Contributors: Ben Abraham, Emmet Asher-Perrin, Brent Ryan Bellamy, Gerry Canavan, Andrew Ferguson, Fabio Fernandes, Dexter Gabriel, M. Elizabeth Ginway, Sean Guynes, Ouissal Harize, David M. Higgins, Veronica Hollinger, Allanah Hunt, Nicola Hunte, Nathaniel Isaacson, Ayana Jamieson, Darshana Jayemanne, Gwyneth Jones, Brendan Keogh, Sami Ahmad Khan, Cameron Kunzelman, Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada, Isiah Lavender III, Caryn Lesuma, Karen Lord, Sarah Marrs, Farah Mendlesohn, Cathryn Merla-Watson, Hugh Charles O’Connell, B. Pladek, John Rieder, Lysa Rivera, Kim Stanley Robinson, Steven Shaviro, Rebekah Sheldon, Alison Sperling, Alfredo Suppia, Bogi Takács, Taryne Jade Taylor, Sherryl Vint, Kirin Wachter-Grene, Ida Yoshinaga.

A theorization of how the bioeconomy and biotechnology remake 'life itself,' creating crises in ethics and governance.

An exploration of the utopias and dystopias that could develop from present society Peter Frase argues that increasing automation and a growing scarcity of resources, thanks to climate change, will bring it all tumbling down. In Four Futures, Frase imagines how this post-capitalist world might look, deploying the tools of both social science and speculative fiction to explore what communism, rentism and extermininsm might actually entail. Could the current rise of the real-life robocops usher in a world that resembles Ender's Game? And sure, communism will bring an end to material scarcities and inequalities of wealth—but there's no guarantee that social hierarchies, governed by an economy of "likes," wouldn't rise to take their place. A whirlwind tour through science fiction, social theory and the new technologies are already shaping our lives, Four Futures is a balance sheet of the socialisms we may reach if a resurgent Left is successful, and the barbarisms we may be consigned to if those movements fail.

In a capitalist system, consumers, investors, and corporations orient their activities toward a future that contains opportunities and risks. How actors assess uncertainty is a problem that economists have tried to solve through general equilibrium and rational expectations theory. Powerful as these analytical tools are, they underestimate the future’s unknowability by assuming that markets, in the aggregate, correctly forecast what is to come. Jens Beckert adds a new chapter to the theory of capitalism by demonstrating how fictional expectations drive modern economies—or throw them into crisis when the imagined futures fail to materialize. Collectively held images of how the future will unfold are critical because they free economic actors from paralyzing doubt, enabling them to commit resources and coordinate decisions even if those expectations prove inaccurate. Beckert distinguishes fictional expectations from performativity theory, which holds that predictions tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies. Economic forecasts are important not because they produce the futures they envision but because they create the expectations that generate economic activity in the first place. Actors pursue money, investments, innovations, and consumption only if they believe the objects obtained through market exchanges will retain value. We accept money because we believe in its future purchasing power. We accept the risk of capital investments and innovation because we expect profit. And we purchase consumer goods based on dreams of satisfaction. As Imagined Futures shows, those who ignore the role of real uncertainty and fictional expectations in market dynamics misunderstand the nature of capitalism.