Queer Utopian SciFi Reading Group

This is a queer reading group engaging with social theory and science fiction, to encourage thinking about radically different – hopeful – futures.

This is a queer reading group engaging with social theory and science fiction. It is purposefully set up to work against the anti-utopian logic of our times rooted in capitalist realism, the system of ideas that make it “easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism". Arguably many of our contemporary crises can be tied to an absence of collective imagination, which is why it is important to encourage thinking about radically different – hopeful – futures.

Before going into what will be covered in the group, it is important to elaborate on how these topics came together and what kind of attitudes will be represented.

Utopias are a means of critically engaging with our world. Setting them in spatial and/or temporal ‘elsewheres’ creates cognitive dissonance between the readers and their own society enabling a more critical stance. Moreover, utopias and utopian discussions are a form of praxis – of doing something practical to challenge the status quo and to create alternative ways of being.

While science fiction is neither essentially progressive nor conservative, the genre has produced outstanding counter-hegemonic works, and it has been an important place for imagining utopian alternatives. Combining utopian theory with utopian science fiction is a way to make the former more accessible and better suited to discussion by people of varied backgrounds.

The queer theorist Muñoz argues that queerness is a concrete utopia itself, meaning an insistence on potentiality for another world. While our spaces and existence are constantly under threat queer gatherings feel like they are overflowing with utopian potential. This reading group seeks to translate our queer cultural forms into a ‘crashing wave of potentiality’ that transcends the here and now.