Description
Book SynopsisProgramming the Future examines how recent speculative television takes on the contradictions of the neoliberal order. Sherryl Vint and Jonathan Alexander consider a range of popular SF narratives of the last two decades, including
Battlestar Galactica,
Watchmen,
Colony,
The Man in the High Castle,
The Expanse, and
Mr. Robot.
Trade ReviewFrom the post-9/11
Battlestar Galactica to
Mr. Robot, from questions of neoliberalization and political polarization to surveillance society and the war on terror, Vint and Alexander's
Programming the Future is an exemplary study of twenty-first-century science fiction television as seen through the crisis of U.S. democracy. -- Gerry Canavan, Marquette University
By way of a vigorous engagement with the problematics and the politics of form, Vint and Alexander mobilize the generic operations of the utopian and dystopian imaginaries in order to decisively explicate the ways in which a selection of recent science fictional television series challenge the operations of the neoliberal order even as they refuse nihilistic resignation by way of figuring radical utopian alternatives. In doing so, they provide readers and viewers with a deep interpretive interrogation of our contemporary social order that generates a standpoint and politics of hope emerging from our dark times. -- Tom Moylan, author of
Becoming Utopian: The Politics and Culture of Radical TransformationTable of ContentsIntroduction
1. The Changing Shape of Science Fiction Television
2. Inventing Science Fiction Television as Political Narrative
3. 9/11 and Its Aftermaths: Threats of Invasion
4. American Civil Wars
5. Desiring a Different Future:
The 100 and
The Expanse6. Rebooting Democracy and
Mr. RobotConclusion: Democracy in Crisis
Notes
Bibliography
Filmography
Index
