Science Fiction and Organization

Science fiction can be seen as a diagnosis of the present, and a vision of possible futures. It therefore provides an excellent resource with which to interrogate both contemporary organizing processes and organizations as institutions. The marginal activity of science fiction has, however, been largely ignored in writing on organization theory. This international collection is the first book of its kind to explore how science fiction can enrich studies of organization by drawing on perspectives across the arts and social sciences.

Introduction: More Amazing Tales1. 'Give me your Mirrorshades': Science Fiction 'Mehtodology' Meets the Social and Organisational Sciences2. Science Fiction and the Making of the Laser3. Metropolis, Maslow, and the Axis Mundi4. The Rape of the Machine Metaphor5. Organizing Men Out in Joanna Russ's The Female Man and Fay Weldon's The Cloning of Joanna May6. Drowned Giants: Science Fiction and Consumption Utopias7. Spectacle and Inter-Spectacle in the Matrix and Organization Theory8. Reading Star Trek: Imagining, Theorising, and Reflecting on Organisational Discourse and Practice9. From the Borgias to the Borg (and Back Again): Rethinking Organisational Futures10. Of Philip K. Dick, Reflexivity, and Shifting Realities: Organising (Writing) in Our Post-Industrial Society11. 'I am a Man, and Nothing Human is Alien to Me': Alienation and Freakishness12. 'Repeat Harlequin', Said the Ticktockman: Digesting Science Fiction13. Cyberpunk Management