
A post-/non-petromodern world is first and foremost a challenge to the imagination, ascertaining, fracturing, and, ultimately, breaking the shackles of our self-imposed hydrocarbon enslavement—which, paradoxically, is also a foundation of freedom: "The mansion of modern freedoms stands on an ever-expanding foundation of fossil-fuel use," Dipesh Chakrabarty has remarked (2009, 208). The contributors to this special section do their part in rising to that challenge by exploring cultural representations and artifacts that imagine futures beyond the "imagined disaster at the end of oil" (Szeman 2019, 96).
Table of Contents
Introduction to the Special Section: "Beyond Petromodernity" (Francis Gene-Rowe, Michael Fuchs, and Stefan Rabitsch)
Rough Guides and Carbon Ruins: The Role of SF (Studies) in the (Re)Construction of Decarbonized Futures (Paul Graham Raven)
Sunny Side Up? Solarpunk Futures for a Dying World (Reuben Martens)
The Steam Politics of Nanotech: Energy Entanglements in The Diamond Age (Moritz Ingwersen)
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