Resources of the Future: Energy Sources and Science Elites in Late and Post-Soviet Science Fiction and Popular Scientific Publications
The project is part of the DFG research group “Energy Entanglements. Actors, Spaces, and Narratives in Eastern Europe.” In the context of this group, researchers from Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Centre Marc Bloch, and the ZfL jointly investigate the following questions: In what ways are the extraction and circulation of energy intertwined with the reconfiguration of resource spaces? What formal and informal networks shape energy environments, and how do human and non-human actors influence them? Which concepts, topoi, and ideas shape discourses surrounding energy? To explore these complex issues, the interdisciplinary group works across and between the disciplinary boundaries of literary and cultural studies, political science, historiography, sociology, and economic sciences.
The subproject based at the ZfL analyzes how science fiction literature and popular science journalism in the late Soviet Union and during the first two post-Soviet decades depict the future extraction of existing and yet-to-be-discovered energy resources as a solution to sociopolitical, ecological, and social issues. The project explores the particular role of scientific-technical intelligence, especially in the energy sector, for such imagined futures.
In order to reconstruct these interrelations, the subproject addresses the following key questions:
- What immediate and long-term goals have been established in science fiction literature and journalism regarding the exploration, extraction, and utilization of energy resources?
- In light of threatening or even disastrous developments in the extraction of resources, what utopian models of society, ecological perspectives on the future, and alternative paths of development does science fiction literature offer? What role do scientific elites play in initiating and/or solving these scenarios?
- How are popular scientific and fantastical scenarios interrelated, and how have they changed over time? Are there any convergences or divergences between genres, and how do they relate to the real, historical developments of that time?
By answering these key questions, the subproject aims to contribute to the understanding of the ideological and imaginary expectations connected to the use of energy and large-scale energy infrastructure projects. At the same time, it demonstrates how the belief in progress and expectation of catastrophe shaped the discourses and debates on the energy networks of the post-Soviet territory, long after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Fig. above: Detail from the cover image of the Soviet popular science magazine Znanie – sila (Knowledge Is Power) 5 (1965), design by Max Sherebchevsky
