Overview

From Tolkien to Star Trek and from Game of Thrones to The Walking Dead, imaginary worlds in fantastic genres offer us complex and immersive environments beyond capitalism. This book examines the ways in which these popular storyworlds offer valuable tools for anticapitalist theory and practice. Building on Hardt and Negri’s concept of Empire as a way of understanding globalization, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Politics shows how popular fantastic fiction has the potential of offering more than a momentary escape from capitalist realism in the age of media convergence and participatory culture. The book approaches fantastic world-building as an ideologically ambiguous way of imagining alternatives to global capitalism. By approaching transmedia world-building both as a narrative form and as a growing industry derived from fan culture, it shows on the one hand the limitations inherent in the political economy of popular genre fiction. But at the same time, it also explores the productive ways in which fantastic storyworlds contain a radical energy that can give us new ways of thinking about politics, popular culture, and anticapitalism.

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9781783484935

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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. -- Stephen Shapiro, Professor, Dept. of English & Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick 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. -- Henry Jenkins, Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts, and Education at the University of Southern California, Author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

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. -- Stephen Shapiro, Professor, Dept. of English & Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick

Author Information

Dan Hassler-Forest is Assistant Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Utrecht University.

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