Jeanne Cortiel is Professor of American Studies at Bayreuth University. Her research interests include American science fiction, post-apocalyptic film, and global catastrophic risk in fiction.
Christine Hanke is Chair of Digital and Audiovisual Media at Bayreuth University and conducts research in the fields of media resistance, postcolonial studies, and image theory.
Jan Simon Hutta is Assistant Professor in the Cultural Geography Research Group at Bayreuth University. His research focuses on formations of power, affect and citizenship in Brazil, sexual and transgender politics, urban governmentality, and relations of subjectivity, movement and space.
Colin Milburn is Gary Snyder Chair in Science and the Humanities and Professor of English, Science and Technology Studies, as well as Cinema and Digital Media at the University of California, Davis. His research focuses on the intersections of science, literature, and media technologies.

Frontmatter 1
Contents 5
Practices of Speculation 7
Chapter 1: Cultures of Speculation—Histories of Speculation 31
Chapter 2: The Working Planetologist 51
Chapter 3: The Rule of Productivity and the Fear of Transgression 77
Chapter 4: Lagging Realities 97
Chapter 5: "La vie impossible" 119
Chapter 6: Spores of Speculation 145
Chapter 7: Enacting Speculation 167
Chapter 8: Scale and Speculative Futures in Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker and Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 191
Chapter 9: The Lifecycle of Software Engineers 209
Chapter 10: Uncertainty between Image and Text in Ben Templesmith's Singularity 7 221
Chapter 11: This World Which Is Not One 243
List of Figures 275
Biographical Notes 277