The Greatest Depressions (and Economic Recoveries) of Science Fiction

Science fiction never fails to predict bizarre, unwelcome futures and the current global economic meltdown is no exception. We love to imagine all the ways our world will end not with a bang, but with a flood of hemorrhaged garbage cash. Two of this year's scifi film crop, Babylon A.D. and The Road, predict a geopolitical landscape shredded by scarcity. But unlike most politicians, science fiction tales offer a wide range of solutions to economic peril: everything from time-travel-enhanced investments to interstellar hypercapitalism. And yet at the heart of even the most Utopian solution to financial collapse there lurks a tale of human self-destructiveness, a not-so-buried wish to see the species destroyed or enslaved for its economic choices. Do our fantasies doom us to financial failure? More »