Reading capitalist realism6/30/2023 ![]() If SF/F is a reflection of the now, how do we imagine a different future? If SF/F is an imagination of the future, should we let it be constrained by the now? Is it even possible to escape where we are right now, and what does that mean for the futures we are able to imagine? 1 Reading recent SF/F, it has seemed to me that while there are plenty of extrapolations from our present into future dystopias, and a fair few stories about mutual aid carve-outs within a current-or-future dystopia, there’s less in the way of true alternatives, compared to the writings of people like Le Guin or Delany in the ’70s and ’80s. ![]() If we as writers want to envisage, to create, an anti-capitalist, socially just future, how do we get there from here, and just how limited are we by where we are now? ![]() But inevitably those stories are also a reflection of the now: writers in conversation with what’s around them, growing ideas in the substrate around our rooted feet. Science fiction and fantasy are uniquely positioned to give readers (whether deliberately or accidentally) a vision of possible alternative futures an imagination of what could be, good, bad, or more complex. ![]()
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