|
|
Article: Jutta Weldes, ed. To Seek Out New Worlds: Exploring Links Between Science Fiction and World Politics.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- Utopian Studies
- Article date:
- March 22, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Society for Utopian Studies. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ix + 230 pp. $22.95.
"EXTRAPOLATION IS THE CRITIQUE OF A MIRROR" (210). Perhaps nowhere in popular culture is this truer than in the genre of science fiction. Simultaneously about the future and present, equally laced with utopian and dystopian potential, and endlessly self-referential, science fiction speaks to the realities of its own times while trying to escape them.
Analysis of the interaction between science fiction, or any form of popular entertainment, and politics always threatens to become facile and banal. The problems of predicting the future too often become merely the playing out of contemporary conceits ...