Weaponizing Wonder: Review of Reactionary Worldbuilding

Chandra Clarke Under Review:Reactionary Worldbuilding: From Speculative Imagination to Political Practice. Eds. Anindita Banerjee, Sherryl Vint, David M. Higgins, and Jordan S. Carroll. The MIT Press, May 2026. When you hear the word “worldbuilding,” you probably think of something fairly innocuous: a writer thinking up magic systems for their fantasy world, perhaps, or dreaming of alien worlds for a science fiction novel. Something cool, something new, and a place where the good guys win over the villains. If you’re an SFF scholar, perhaps you think of worldbuilding as part of a progressive, utopian toolkit—a way to critique the present and imagine better, more egalitarian futures. Worldbuilding, however, isn’t exclusive to progressive authors. It and other science fiction and fantasy writing techniques can be used not just to imagine reactionary settings, but as a form of right-wing political praxis. That’s the central premise of Reactionary Worldbuilding: From Speculative…