Mitchell R. Murray

This project tells a new history of American science fiction since 1938. Using unique archival discoveries, the study traces the origins of this popular genre to a forgotten cohort of fans and amateur writers who built the US science fiction publishing industry in the interwar and postwar periods. These publishing workers saw science fiction as a democratic, anti-fascist, utopian political program. But today, science fiction has been co-opted by far-right extremists as a tool to imagine, narrate, and assert their domination over the future. “Universe Makers” recovers a long-neglected history of science fiction to argue that its lost utopian aspirations for a democratic, egalitarian U.S. matter now more than ever.