Science Fiction Against the Margins
Explores independently produced media that uses science fiction to address societal and political issues
Today the genre of science fiction is widely associated with big-budget American films featuring space invaders and lab-made monsters. Outside of mainstream media, however, science fiction is often employed for political allegory, exploration of identity, and critiques of societal hierarchies and norms by diasporic, Indigenous, and independent filmmakers around the world. Science Fiction against the Margins is a compilation of fifteen essays by scholars and filmmakers that focus on B movies, television programs, independent productions, and experimental film, video, and media installations. Addressing four thematic areas—Outer Space/Out of Space, Imagining Violent Worlds, Remembering the Future, and Crossing Borders and Time—the authors examine nontraditional science fiction films for their potential to theorize social change.
Chon Noriega is a distinguished professor in the UCLA Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media. He is author of Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema and coauthor of Home—So Different, So Appealing. Maya Montañez Smukler is head of the UCLA Film and Television Archive Research and Study Center. Her book Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors and the Feminist Reform of 1970s American Cinema received the Theater Library Association's Richard Wall Memorial Award. Nicole Ucedo is programing coordinator at the UCLA Film and Television Archive and research and curatorial assistant on the archive's Science Fiction against the Margins project. She is an educator and filmmaker based in Los Angeles.