Lothian, A. (2018). Old Futures: Speculative Fiction and Queer Possibility. New York: New York University Press. 333 pp.*

Alexis Lothian’s Old Futures (2018) returns to an archive of utopian, dystopian, and speculative artefacts to reflect on the insurgence of “futures” in the contemporary mediascape. Asserting the predominance of certain gendered, racialised, and reproductive visions of the future, Lothian looks closely at the uneven distribution of futures in the past and present. She argues that returning to “old futures” created in the past may enable her readers to navigate alternative futurities in the present to deepen their imaginative capabilities of the future. For Lothian, such notions look especially queer and resist the tantalising investments of neoliberalism, financial speculation, and capitalism’s foreclosures of risks yet to come. More than an attempt to reflect upon failed utopian ideations or speculative realisms in literature and visual media, Lothian incorporates creative practice into her discovery and analysis of old futures. Lothian takes from her own practice(s) to argue that vidding is a queer methodology which allows certain themes about race, gender, and sexuality to take priority over the dominant frames of mainstream media. Vidding elaborates upon the undercurrents of desire, pleasure, and futurity that emerge for subjects and viewers who experience (and are often displaced by) the normative messages of media cultures (p. 250). Readers interested in queer theory, Science Fiction studies, future studies, and feminist theory will find this book compelling. Lothian’s academic voice is full of passion, lending a familiar queer inclination to her investments in future-imagining projects.

*I was commissioned to review Old Futures for Fantastika Journal in April 2019. Full review is forthcoming 2019.