Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Politics - (Radical Cultural Studies) by Dan Hassler-Forest (Paperback)

About the Book

From Tolkien to Star Trek and from Game of Thrones to The Walking Dead, imaginary worlds in fantastic genres offer highly detailed political worlds beyond capitalism. This book examines the complex ways in which these popular storyworlds offer valuable conceptual tools for ant...

Book Synopsis

From Tolkien to Star Trek and from Game of Thrones to The Walking Dead, imaginary worlds in fantastic genres offer highly detailed political worlds beyond capitalism. This book examines the complex ways in which these popular storyworlds offer valuable conceptual tools for anti-capitalist participatory politics.

Review Quotes

As Europe's leading critic on transmedia culture, Dan Hassler-Forest's Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Politics guides us through the landscapes of contemporary film, television, and video. From Tolkien to Afro-futurism, from Raymond Williams to Hardt and Negri, Hassler-Forest delivers a set of sharp commentaries on the hazards of capitalist mythologies and pitfalls of post-capitalist desires in these alternative lifeworlds.

It is highly recommended

for scholars of early science fiction, as well as for those wondering about the

historical breeding ground for the US's contemporary cultural and political

morass

Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Politics explores the intersection between world-building as practiced in speculative fiction and the desire to imagine (or constrain) alternatives to contemporary capitalism. He writes knowingly, affectionately, yet critically, about franchises as diverse as Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones, Hunger Games, and The Walking Dead, mapping the ways each embodies contradictions at the heart of neoliberal capitalism -- contradictions that surface in terms of their formal properties as transmedia franchises, their commercial contexts, and the consumer practices they inspire.

Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Politics offers a wide ranging analysis of transmedia storyworlds and fan culture, covering branding, 'Quality TV', the HBO effect, political revolution, race and gender ... [The book] is certainly an interesting and worthwhile read.

About the Author

Dan Hassler-Forest is assistant professor of media and cultural studies at Utrecht University.