Uninhabited: Science Fiction and the Decolonial

Is it inhabited? This question makes the shared stakes of science fiction and colonialism obvious, wherein the wide imaginaries of empire and what counts as life - scientifically, ethically, politically - and the moral and technological possibilities of terraforming and the impulse for exploration are all fused. Science fiction, and the genres that preceded and grounded it, such as scientific romance and tales of lost civilizations, emerged alongside the birth of industrialized global trade...