Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring – the famous 1962 book on the devastating impact of pesticides like DDT – is credited with revitalizing the environmental movement. It also helped to accelerate the transition of science journalism from its former stance as largely uncritical cheerleader to something more like a “watchdog” of the fourth estate, as well as paving the way for the founding of the US Environmental Protection Agency. Interestingly, Carson’s book did not begin with history or scientific fact, but instead with a form of science fiction, in which ecosystem disruption caused by unregulated pesticide use has killed off all life in Anytown, USA.

With its use of fiction next to fact and its demonstrable impact on society, Silent Spring was an excellent case study and just one of the examples analysed in Science Fiction, an elegantly written new book by media and cultural studies researcher Sherryl Vint. At the heart of this captivating book is the long and complicated relationship between science and sci-fi, in which fiction serves to reflect and reflect upon science, the production of which has in turn been influenced by science fiction. The work is the latest in the MIT Press “Essential Knowledge” series, which, as the publisher puts it, offers “accessible, concise, beautifully produced pocket-size books” delivering “expert overviews” on topics ranging from neuroplasticity and quantum entanglement to fMRI and nihilism.

Largely eschewing a potentially lengthy discourse on both the origins and history of science fiction, as well as the fool’s game of trying to define its boundaries, Vint instead concentrates on the core of the so-called genre: “a vision of the world made otherwise and what possibilities might flow from such otherness”. Science Fiction begins by briefly exploring sci-fi’s early grounding in utopian writings – and its more recent shift towards the dystopian tradition. The first half of the book also covers sci-fi’s popular associations with futurology and speculative design, as well as a relationship to colonialism that has long been baked into the texture of the genre.

The second half of the work, meanwhile, focuses on science fiction as a medium through which the reader can contemplate our relationship with both existing and potential scientific and technological advances in robotics and genomics, as well as with forces that are shaping our society, like climate change and the increasing dominance of finance in the economy.

Throughout, Vint is engaging and critical, and demonstrates a formidable command of the science fiction canon, from which she draws examples to show the breadth of topics onto which the genre can provide a lens. My primary regret, however, is that the book is not longer – and does not embrace wider themes. At the outset (and even on the back cover blurb), Vint makes it quite clear that her goal is to explore the engagement between science fiction and current research in science and technology, a place where visions of future technological changes might be imagined and interrogated. Such a frame likely aligns well with the interests of the Physics World readership.

Nevertheless, as Vint does note, “social as well as technological change is at stake in SF”. As a reader who has some background in the liberal arts and also in science, I feel that Science Fiction lacks important chapters for what is supposed to be an introductory text. I was anticipating, for example, some discussion of science fiction’s intersection with gender, race, sexuality and class. This is not to say that these topics are not touched upon – Afrofuturism, for example, gets a few mentions, with reference to the iconic works of individuals like Octavia Butler, Sun Ra and Janelle Monáe. However, these examinations are fleeting for a cultural-studies text that acknowledges that, as well as exploring plausible scientific extrapolation, science fiction equally serves “as a literature of social change, often using futuristic technologies to establish that its stories take place in different worlds, but remaining more interested in social than scientific change”.

I’m not against pull quotes in principle, but the value they add should exceed their capacity to disrupt the flow of one’s reading

My other criticism concerns a peculiar design choice that I suspect might be endemic to the “Essential Knowledge” series: the off-putting decision to punctuate every 10-or-so pages with full-page, inverted-colour pull quotes. I’m not against pull quotes in principle, but the value they add should exceed their capacity to disrupt the flow of one’s reading (which their scale does here in a way that, say, a picture would not have). I can’t help but feel their utility lies in attracting the interest of prospective buyers leafing through the work in a bookstore – but to the detriment of the ultimate readership.

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The fictional science of science fiction

These issues aside, Science Fiction nevertheless left me very open to more – both of Vint’s insights into science-fiction studies and also to some of the other, less familiar, offerings in the “Essential Knowledge” series. Overall, this is well worth a read.

• 2021 MIT Press $15.95pb 224pp