How Science Fiction Helps Us Understand the Economy

Underlying our fears of robots stealing our jobs are more basic anxieties about money. We're using fantasy to confront fears

Sci-Fi has become a measure to assess what's happening in the real world to see if we should be concerned. It doesn't take us away from our problems but allows us to identify what's wrong.

• The Hunger Games gave us a neo-Depression dystopia where media-obsessed elites torment the starving lower classes.
• The Expanse is about class warfare.
• The 1950 Foundation series was partly about saving the galaxy with sound economic programs.
• The 2012 novel Three Parts Dead, was a mythical reimagining of the 2008 financial crisis. The author, Max Gladstone, said you couldn't tell a story like the financial crisis with realism. You need fantasy to explain it.