Science fiction and/as ideology

This chapter provides an overview of science fiction (SF) as a rhetorical mode that has significant ideological power. After briefly reviewing the history of SF with a view to charting how it has been used as a tool for both left-wing and right-wing political projects, the chapter offers two contrasting case studies that show how SF shapes how we understand the social world today. The first considers N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy as a critique of how racial capitalism produces the structure of human races to consolidate power and capital with a chosen people. The second looks at how Silicon Valley uses SF rhetoric to conflate its own business strategies with visions of a better (because high-tech) future. The chapter concludes by articulating the importance of SF for ideological study in general.