Rubik & ‘We Have No Future’: The science-fictionalised present

Abstract

This thesis investigates the intrusion of science-fictional tropes and iconography onto our current social reality, and the cultural anxieties that this has produced. I characterise these anxieties broadly as a fear of obsolescence – ‘obsolescence’ signifying a loss of agency, relevance, uniqueness, and competence. My collection of short stories and exegesis experiment and engage with narrative strategies drawn from two closely overlapping narrative forms, science fiction and postmodern fiction, to articulate and represent obsolescence.