This collection focuses on the cultural, global, political, and social narratives of future space(s).

We suggest that critiques of narratives and discourses about digital and virtual spaces,

artificial intelligence, space exploration, and even the colonization of space and planets can

provide needed insights about global futures, especially as they inform how we ought to and who

ought to live in the present with environmental destruction, information capitalism,

neoliberalism, and the remaining infrastructures of colonialism. The works here complicate the

cultural logic of systemic futures that are outside of dominant political imaginaries, including

images and narratives of new spatial politics. It critically engages with alternative visions that

encourage us to live with and escape from the systemic conditions of neoliberalism and late

capitalism, and it considers what these alternative visions might do or fail to do in combating

anti-democratic futures, environmental degradation, and new forms of imperialism.

Potential paper topics might include narratives and discourses around corporate, individual, and

outer space such as, Big Tech’s rocket launches, Russia and US relations on the ISS, the potential

colonization of Mars, or the tracking of multi-galaxy telescopes. Additional paper topics could

include virtual and cyberspaces, including the development of the metaverse, issues of

information technology, and artificial intelligence, as well as explorations from science fiction

and its subgenres including Afrofuturism, indigenous futures, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic

fiction, ecofiction, feminist science fiction, etc.

Ultimately, within the subjects of future space(s), this collection seeks to question

how neoliberalism preserves the status quo, including creating the conditions of late

capitalism, as well as imperialism and white supremacy. Further, how does neoliberalism work

across different cultures to push down potential radical alternatives?

Methodological approaches to explore these questions and topics may include: discourse,

literary, visual, narrative, and textual analysis; ethnographic work; digital ethnography;

pedagogical analysis; problematizing; diagnoses; theoretical analysis; Foucaldian genealogy;

historical analysis; or poiesis.

Keywords: neoliberalism; metaverse; outer space; virtual space; cyberspace; simulation;

science fiction

Abstracts of approximately 300 words should be submitted to: calphin1@vt.edu;

emckagen@vt.edu; and sward@tusculum.edu by July 31, 2023. Final chapters should be between

6,000-8,000 words.

Editors:

Caroline G. Alphin, PhD

Instructor of Political Science

Instructor of English

E. Leigh McKagen, PhD

Virginia Tech

Instructor, History and Political Science

Shelby E. Ward, PhD

Tusculum University

Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies