Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right

by Jordan S. Carroll

Reveals the alt-right’s project to claim science fiction and—by extension—the future

Fascists such as Richard Spencer interpret science fiction films and literature as saying only white men have the imagination required to invent a high-tech future. Other white nationalists envision racist utopias filled with Aryan supermen and all-white space colonies. Speculative Whiteness traces these ideas through the entangled histories of science fiction culture and white supremacist politics, showing that debates about representation in science fiction films and literature are struggles over who has the right to imagine and inhabit the future. Although fascists insist that tomorrow belongs to them, they have always been and will continue to be contested by antifascist fans willing to fight for the future.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History, Literary Criticism, Social Justice, Essays, Sociology

120 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 22, 2024

Reviews

[Gerhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

'But perhaps the most formally sophisticated rebuttal to fascists comes in the unlikely form of Chuck Tingle’s queer absurdist science fiction erotica. Tingle has often parodied the far right: he created a fake version of Breitbart.com that included the “Top 5 Alt-Right Basements,” and after Trump was elected he went on a mission to reverse this “timeline mistake.”'

Wow, a really important eye-opener on how the alt-right has appropriated SF's 'licence to imagine' as an ideological and epistemological affirmation of 'white' technoscientific supremacy. Um, the Terminator as an ubermensch? Interstellar as promoting Aryan cultural superiority throughout TIME???

Carroll rightly points out that SF has always been vulnerable to being hacked by extremists and reactionary ideologues, simply because that's how the genre started out.

It’s how reasonable fans respond to such misguided incitement that will be the true test of the genre's continued relevance, readability, and appeal to a global audience.

#Decolonise SF!!! #AfricaRising

[Rachel Ashera Rosen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating and chilling examination of the far-right's claim to science fiction. If you lived through the Sad Puppies/Rabid Puppies debacle or were baffled by the reactionary temper tantrums over Star Trek getting "woke," this won't be unfamiliar to you, but the author goes much farther in untangling the assumptions about time, technology, and colonialism that underpin sci-fi from its very roots. For antifascists who are also giant sci-fi nerds, this is a must-read.

[Silvana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the most readable book out there but an important one for the SFF genre. And maybe time to read those Chuck Tingle books if that is really the "most formally sophisticated rebuttal" to these fascists.

[Dale Stromberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in straightforward prose but with scholarly rigour, this slim volume packs in a great deal of insight about how speculative fiction, particularly science fiction, has long been and continues to be ridden with a strain of white supremacist thought. Carroll traces out the illogic and the paradoxes of such thought, showing how it crops up not only in overtly racist fiction but in otherwise “respectable” Golden Age or libertarian sci-fi, as well as offering examples of how the progressive movements within the genre have successfully resisted “Faustian” fascist strains.

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think all science fiction fans should read this book. Additionally, anyone who has ever giggled at elon musks “dark gothic maga” needs to be slapped in the face with this book.

[Jessica]

Gooooood NIGHT. Chilling and very readable deep dive into the Alt-Right's "colonization" of science fiction and fantasy for their own purposes. Holding up utopias and dystopias as evidence of white supremacy, created beings like the Terminator as an "Ubermensch" and all the stuff that people with morals and souls would never in a million years think about.

*I am not rating books read for the World Fantasy Award.*

[Oleksandr Zholud · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a non-fic about which SFF books US alt-right consider a must read for their ‘cause’, their views and interpretations of mainstream SFF from Dune and Lord of the Rings to movies like Terminator.

The book starts with one James H. Madole, a science fiction fan who led the first major neo-Nazi party in the United States. Then it discussed several famous texts, not necessary fascist per se, but used by neo-Nazi to ‘prove’ their points, including but not limited to the ideas that only whites have imagination (both to invent in general and write SF in particular), they are endangered, their birth rate is artificially suppressed and similar nonsense.

The pluses of this book are that it gives what alt-right see e.g. in Dune, where they see a new feudalism and a white savior as ‘proofs’ of white superiority and return to good old times. It also gives the books cherished by this group but relatively unknows elsewhere, like French Archeofuturism and The Turner Diaries.

The minuses IMHO are related to often anachronistic views on older SF, simplifications like linking libertarians (who are individualists) with totalitarian (i.e. anti-individualistic), but yes, there are people who support both in the same time. Some views are just assumed right-wing, which actually shows lack of knowledge of e.g. Soviet pulp SF of the 1920s, which e.g. supported eugenics. A fun episode from the book: “Faye has less to say about the Muslim immigrants and other people of color who were ethnically cleansed at the founding of the Eurosiberian Federation. When a visitor from the Indian Empire asks what happened to them, the protagonist pauses for a moment before explaining that they were forcibly deported to Madagascar. Nazi official Adolf Eichmann considered this island as an evacuation site for Jews before he oversaw their deportation to concentration camps to be murdered. Whether Faye is engaging in irony or prevarication, his Faustian future expels almost all nonwhite populations from history.” In “Эскадрилья всемирной коммуны” (1925) after the communist revolution took the globe, all forces of darkness, including Mussolini, Rockefeller and Poisson, fortified at Madagascar.

Overall, an interesting research.

[Yuri Krupenin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Я что-то думал что тут будет про феномен ностальгии по старому стартреку у людей которые не могут смотреть новый по причине "too woke" (я тоже не могу но по другим причинам) и попытки аппроприации творчества Бэнкса Маском, такого рода вещи

А здесь разбор широкого спектра попяченности от whatever the fuck Peter Thiel's worldview is и до полноприводной нацистской сф-шизы — книг где арийцы сбежали в будущее чтобы приготовиться к битве за будущее белой расы в прошлом или там еще цикла произведений в которых пробуждение расового сознания позволяет герою останавливать время

В целом очень интересно но непонятно зачем мне эта информация

И еще дай бог здоровья автору — там 150 ссылок на источники, и мне страшно представлять какие последствия имела вычитка всего этого

[sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

lowkey forgot i finished this but it was very good!! technically dense + reads like a thesis (I think maybe it is a thesis?) so if you're not into academic writing (understandable) this might not be for you, but I'm going to purchase my copy just for the wealth of citations alone. there were SO many things mentioned that could easily take you down an information rabbithole. i can totally see why this won a Hugo, it's a super important piece of work for a genre where a lot of racist tropes/themes/ideas still go unquestioned and rewritten. good stuff~

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this for the Hugos, so I'd say I'm not really the target audience for this book (political science acadamia), but I'm not really sure what argument this book was trying to make, which means I don't know whether it succeeded in making it. There was a lot of information about selected people within the alt-right movement and their interactions with selected science fictional concepts, but you could make those sorts of connections between pretty much any movement and any genre. It felt more like cherry-picking to me than saying anything deeper about either the inherent nature of science fiction or the inherent nature of alt-right thinking.

Also, what is my takeaway supposed to be? Is there something I, as a progressive and a science fiction fan, am supposed to do about what I've read? If there was any sort of call-to-action in the book, I missed it.

[Miquel Codony · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3,5/5)

[Natasha den Dekker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I fear this is too intellectual/academic for me however it's incredibly interesting and it's made me think of the crossover into other genres (fantasy) (romantasy) and how the alt-right is given credibility.

I really enjoyed how the author brought in references to Trek, Silvia Moreno Garcia, The Boys, N.K. Jemisin, Chuck Tingle and many more! To highlight that while sci-fi used to be the bastion of male/right wing thinkers it is changing. The obsession with 'owning the future' and how it ties to eugenics etc is disturbing.

(I especially enjoyed the mini chapter about Dune, we all know how that story pans out which is why the alt-right loves it).

It's not an easy read but definitely *worth* the read. That othering and orienalist approach coupled with colonial ambivalence is something that is such a *trope* in scifi and fantasy.

[Steph | bookedinsaigon · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I saw this work’s title and the fact that it won a Hugo, I knew I had to read it. It’s long bothered me that the reading community for my favorite literary genre, speculative fiction, is overwhelmingly white and male. r/Fantasy and other related subreddits look like Antarctica with how white they are. Why is this?

Turns out it’s NOT just me, as Carroll unpacks for us in this academic thesis… except that this is really, really dense academic writing, which means that it’s not going to be most people’s cup of tea.

In the simplest of terms, Carroll argues that the ideology of “speculative whiteness” consists of these key tenets:

1. White people, and only white people, have the mental capacity to imagine and innovate. All other races are inherently concerned more/only with surviving day by day or indulging in base desires.

2. As a result of the above, speculative fiction is the realm of white people. All other people, be they authors or characters, don’t belong in this world.

3. White supremacist thinking is SO sure of their superior nature that they believe that a high-tech speculative future, such as the ones often described in sci-fi, are the inevitable due of white people. In other words, for them, the speculative future isn’t so much an imagination or a prediction as it is an inevitability. White supremacists read sci-fi as if those worlds of possibility are bygone conclusions for them.

4. Alt-right white readers therefore “read” this white supremacist version into almost all works of speculative fiction. Many of them are incapable of noticing irony or satire, such as when a sci-fi writer is actually critiquing fascism by writing about a fascist sci-fi future.

I find this fascinating because it makes it clear, to me, why there is no point in using facts to try to get these kinds of people to change their minds. Their neural pathways are LITERALLY programmed in a totally different way. This is why engaging in debates with people like He Who Must Not Be Eulogized in a Positive Light is fruitless. Their brains cannot ever conceive of a different reality in which people of color, women, etc are as equally capable and deserving of the future as themselves.

Now, it’s really too bad that “Speculative Whiteness” is written for a really niche (read: academic) audience. It’s only around 100 pages long but took me a loooong time to get through with how dense and academic it is. I mean, read the following and tell me if you understand it:

“Whiteness appears as consubstantial with speculative futurity.”

Confused? The whole thing is written like that. Fortunately I have extensive experience speaking academia, but it’s definitely not for everyone lol. Which is a shame, as the points are really important and illuminating.

[Julie Capell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating investigation into the obsession with science fiction by some in the alt-right. This first came to my attention when a group called the "Sad Puppies" hijacked the Hugo nominations in 2015 with a slate of works characterized by many as racist, fascist, misogynistic and homophobic. Most of these works were, not coincidentally, written by white males. The Hugo awards are chosen by members and attendees of the annual World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) and that year, they soundly rejected the reactionaries by voting "No Award" in every category where only Sad Puppy nominees made the ballot.

While the average scifi reader may not have paid much attention to the Sad Puppies controversy, for the hard-core fan (I include myself in this group, even though I've never attended WorldCon or voted for a Hugo), it was a wake-up call. I think most of us realize that a lot of scifi, especially older, military scifi and space opera, contains heavy overtones of racism and authoritarianism. But I, for one, always glossed over that aspect of the genre, focusing instead on the witty banter, cool technology, and weird aliens. After WorldCon 2015, I started paying a lot more attention to the underlying themes of what I was reading, and who was writing it.

Speculative Whiteness dives back into the fray to reveal the deeper motivations of some of the people involved in the Sad Puppies controversy as well as other culturally influential individuals who are at the forefront of advancing neo-Nazi and white supremacist thought today. I'm not going to give these disgusting excuses for human beings the honor of typing their names, but suffice to say, I recognized many of them as prominent podcasters and thought leaders whose words have instigated and/or inspired many of the worst atrocities that have occurred in the last several decades.

This book did an excellent job of explaining many of the historical touchpoints that form the basis for today's alt-right and neo-Nazi fantasies of why straight, white men are the only ones who can save the world--and, by extension, why non-whites and women are the enemy. I learned a lot about Faust and what Faustian means in alt-right circles: to be capable of taking great risks in order to access the infinite spoils awaiting humanity out in the cosmos--of course, only white men are deemed to have this "Faustian" capacity. It also shows how the alt-right takes seminal science fictional works, including Dune and Star Wars, and twists them into supporting their own dreams of an authoritarian cosmos led by white men. Even works whose authors described them as anti-fascist satire are taken by the alt-right at face value and lauded as road maps for a white supremacist vision. The final analysis of the author reveals the self-contradictory nature of the alt-right's assertion that white men are the only ones with enough vision to lead humanity into the future by colonizing the stars . . . a vision that is surely more stuck in the distant past than it is a view of a bold, new future.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right by Jordan S. Carroll examines the intersections of racist / white supremacist thinking and the development of science fiction as a genre. With numerous examples spanning decades, he argues that “the alt-right seizes upon the speculative genres to dictate who has the right to speculate in the first place.”

This is a predominantly historical book. There are contemporary figures discussed – both right-wing racists and the diverse sff authors who directly oppose them while visioning futures for everyone – but the bulk of the focus is on older texts. Television and film are mentioned (ex. the right’s hate for Star Trek’s vision of the future and the particular vitriol Nichelle Nichols has received) but written science fiction is the primary focus. The book is short, and quite narrowly focused – I can think of a lot more examples & issues in contemporary sff that I’d be keen to read an article from Carroll on in future.

The text is academic and rigorous, and the endnotes are very much worth reading for further exploration. As someone with an academic background I’d say this is quite readable to non-academic audiences for the most part. I’m glad this book won a Hugo – it’s well deserved, and an important read for all of us invested in science fiction’s potential to be liberatory.

Content warnings: discussion of racism, sexism, misogyny, xenophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, colonialism; mentions mass shootings and hate motivated violence

[mouwwie · Rating 4 out of 5]

real rating 4.5

this is excellent work with so, so many very interesting ideas. but yes this is very much academic work and i do not say this lightly. walk into this and prepare to engage every single one of your braincells

[H]

this book made me download a dictionary app because i was so sick of looking up words and getting the google AI summary. dense but good. the kind of reading that made my brain work for it. my god but white supremacists are just breathlessly self-obsessed and stupid.

[anri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deep, well-written analysis that is crucial for understanding what's been happening in the US and other Western countries for decades and now more than ever. Highly recommended!

[Victor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short, but accomplishes everything it sets out to do tidily.

[David H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short, fascinating book about the alt-right's effort to claim science fiction for themselves (white people). Instead of being outsiders trying to hijack a "progressive SF," Carroll shows they were there all along inside fandom (as much as the rest of us may dislike it). I was intrigued by their willful misreading of books with fascist/totalitarian elements and pretending they were positive portrayals, and I appreciated Carroll's angle of time preferences and their delusions, which I hadn't considered before (because I usually try not to pay attention to white-nationalist thoughts).

It's a short read, though written in a more academic style than casual readers will be expecting. I lucked out in that I had read or was familiar with many of the SF works mentioned within, and having read many of Camestros Felapton's Debarkle articles which touched on a few similar issues in SF history.

[Stoffia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Petit essai des Presses Universitaires du Minnesota sur les liens entre la science fiction et les mouvements de suprématie blanche. L'essai s'oppose à cette vision de la SF comme un genre fondamentalement progressiste. Sans en faire un genre raciste par essence, il démontre comment les outils de la SF peuvent servir ses desseins plus sinistres.

L'essai explore plusieurs cas de figure : les supremacistes qui ont fait de la SF pour servir leur propos, et d'autres qui ont utilisé des "vrais" œuvres de SF pour en détourner le sens (ou parfois pour mettre de l'avant y sens qui y était réellement).

J'y ai découvert qu'il existait, par exemple, un sous-genre complet de la SF maintenant oublié d'histoires ou "les Blancs sont oppressés par des Noirs, ou des aliens à la peau foncée dont la société tombe en ruine parce que seul le génie des Blancs peut construire et maintenir une civilisation". Et quand je dis un sous genre complet, c'est une cinquantaine de nouvelles, romans, certains ayant gagnés des prix, et certains par des noms connus. Heinlein ou Niven, par exemple.

(Pour Heinlein, ça ne me surprend pas, je connais déjà ses histoires basés sur le "Péril Jaune". J'ignorais tout des politiques de Niven par contre et en fouillant... Ouf, ça ne s'est pas amélioré avec le temps. Il a travaillé au gouvernement américain sous Bush où il a proposé un projet pour réduire les coûts des soins de santé en faisant croire aux latinos qu'on leur prélèverait secrètement des organes s'ils se rendaient à l'hôpital. En 2007.)

J'ai appris que, si Le Monde des Non-A est le livre le plus connu de Van Vogt en français, en anglais c'est plutôt À La Poursuite des Slans. Et qu'une raison de ce succès vient d'une interprétation du livre qui a subi la réappropriation des supremacistes Blancs, avec tout plein d'organisations eugénistes où près du Klan se réclamant de Van Vogt. (Avec même un plan pour construire une ville eugéniste basée sur le livre, mais qui a dû se rendre à l'évidence qu'une bande d'hommes Blancs célibataires ça ne pouvait pas vraiment passer beaucoup de gènes.)

Je donne ici les exemples les plus marquants mais le livre en déborde. On y revient sur la polémique des Hugo entourant les Sad Puppies, on y parle de superhéros et tout ça. Le dernier long chapitre analyse plus en profondeur la "philosophie" supremaciste blanche, ses fondements et ses errements. Son "archéofutur Faustien". Cette section, bien qu'intéressante, s'éloigne un peu trop (à mon goût) du sujet d'origine du livre, qui reste très bon et fouillé malgré tout.

[Nils · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although only two years old (published in 2024), Jordan Carroll’s book is already somewhat dated because it reflects on a tradition on the American right — oriented toward a futurity of white supremacy — that was at that time still a somewhat fringe faction but which now (with Stephen Miller’s Goebbels-like ascendancy) has become absolutely dominant. The result is a writing tone that treats the people Carroll is talking about as gnarly freakazoids more than as the dominant political force on the American right — the reason why the term “Alt-Right” (which is in the subtitle) has disappeared is that it’s no long “alt” — it IS the right.

With that said one of the great strengths of this book is that it has a quite nuanced take on the figures of the far right, regularly noting divergences between them. For example, he notes that Richard Spencer‘s vision of white supremacy is not of a retreat to whites, only enclaves, but rather white domination of the entire planet. Or as another example, he notes the French far right figure Guillaume Faye’s transhumanist science fiction vision is at odds with many other on the right who see this as a plot to dissolve the identity categories they hold dear.

With these subtle points aside, what Carroll is really doing here is unpacking the intellectual genealogy of this set of ideas with the world of science fiction writing. It does this well, though there is one curious lacuna: how can one write a book on this topic and not place HP Lovecraft at the center of the story? (I don’t think Lovecraft gets so much as a mention.) I’m also not fully convinced by Carroll’s suggestion that this rightwing lineage within SF serves as a lind of gateway drug for young men into white supremacy.

Particularly interesting is his discussion of the role of “the Faustian“ in alt-right mythology, as represented by “a white man whose constitution enjoins him to speculate on the future…. The Faustian proves his aptitude for future greatness by pledging entire populations and planets as collateral. Only one who displays a disregard for the present has access to the future. That is the story they tell themselves at least.” (76-77)

[Amanda books_ergo_sum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fighting fascism with alien peen. Any book that concludes that “the most formally sophisticated rebuttal to fascists comes in the unlikely form of Chuck Tingle’s queer absurdist science fiction erotica.”

Is my kind of book 😂

Now when someone side-eyes my queer sci-fi erotica, I can confidently say that I’m defeating fascism. One weird alien peen at a time.

The argument in this book was fascinating—you know the joy we feel when we read a queer normative sci-fi, with a critique of late stage capitalism plus a climate change allegory or two?

Welllll… turns out alt-right white supremacists have been experiencing the same joy about seemingly normal sci-fi books—except for fascist reasons 😳

This is the perfect ‘know thy enemy’ anti-fascism book for Bookstagrammers. It’s bookish, well-cited, rigorous enough for me (as an academic with a background in the philosophers covered), yet super introductory-friendly too! It:
▪️ explains what the alt-right white supremacist dog whistles in fascist sci-fi books are
▪️ introduces the ‘Dark Enlightenment’ political philosophies of people like Curtis Yarvin, Nick Land, and Richard Spencer—the theoretical mentors of your least favourite evil-doers (like JD Vance and Peter Thiel)
▪️ gives you even more reasons to love your favourite progressive sci-fi authors (NK Jemisin has been ✨in the trenches✨ battling these douche bags)

And, maybe most importantly, this book perfectly explains why sci-fi with queer, POC, and disabled characters isn’t just about representation—it’s a political statement about how, when we dream about the future, contrary to what the alt-right wants, that future is full of queer, POC, and disabled people.

… who may or may not be getting banged by hot aliens aka, thriving 😉

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, the framing through the lens of scifi literary theory limits its scope and ability to discuss the more tangible impacts of fascism as it applies to technology, politics and science. The latter half of the second part seemed unfocused. However, it was very informative and a must-read for scifi fans.

The ideas presented are not surprising, but intriguing in a "finally, someone has connected the dots, this makes sense" way. The core of fascism is an appeal to authority and a racist belief that white people are the intellectually and culturally superior race. Carroll argues that fascist attraction to scifi is an extension of this - that white people are the only ones capable of technological advancement to the stars, while BIPOC are stagnant. Not only are white people the only ones who have the intellectual capability and desire to imagine a speculative future, but fascists actively seek to determine who is allowed to engage in speculation on our future.

Ultimately, I feel as if the framing puts this book into a box. Carroll mentions some of the real-world consequences of this connection - the fascism of Silicon Valley tech bros like Peter Thiel - but doesn't elaborate on this. Maybe it's an unfair thing to critique (at 120 pages, it's essentially a very long essay) but I think this would've served better as a long chapter or section in a larger work about fascism, technology and science. This is mostly a reflection of an issue I have with a lot of sociological criticism which is that it is more focused on theory and ideas rather than practical consequences.

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating. Intriguing. Thought-Provoking. Exhausting.

This short book, basically a long essay in multiple chapters, won the Hugo Award for Best Related Work in 2025.

It shows the connections between Science Fiction and Science Fiction Fandom with the Alt-Right and White Supremacy. There was a lot to take in and much that I had not heard of. But I could have used an intro to the subject. And really it was more than one subject.

It also covered a related subject which one might describe as Science Fiction Works with the trappings of white supremacy. In this aspect various books were taken up and described in terms that white supremacists have used to make use of these books including especially Dune.

Other books covered include Farnham's Freehold and Lucifer's Hammer - but there were many more.

Any book discussing science fiction books, I'm going to find some merit.

And when a white straight cis-male writes about white straight cis-males, he's clearly leaving people out. But when he writes of other things he risks being accused of writing outside his line, of doing it wrong. And really the same is true of everyone else. But that doesn't change the fact that the world is a rich one and risking getting it wrong is worthwhile.

Often the quotes in this book seemed ironic in the context of the impact of LLM AI's on geek jobs such as software creation.

This was a hard book and worth reading - but really I'd get more value out of easier versions of the same.

[Charles Korb · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book pretty annoying. For someone who wants to be so specific about the alt-right vs any of the other forms of right wing in his discussion he sometimes paints with a broad brush.

I didn't know that the alt right believed that the justification for their racism was that people of color had a steeper discount rate for future value than white people (ie they fail the marshmallow test). The section that pushed me over the edge on this book was lumping together this together with the EA longtermism which in turn is lumped together with Elon Musk's pro-natalism; none of which I think go together very well. There are other examples of him doing this in the book as well but this was the simplest and most egregious.

It's an interesting history of the intersection of the two fields but there's only so many times you can rest about some guy writing science fiction books where the future is dominated by white people and all the black people are savages

[Tim Ubels · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chuck Tingle gang rise up!

A little dense reading, but an interesting dive into the alt-right’s obsession with misinterpreting speculative science fiction and spinning into Aryan propaganda slop 100% of the time.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only reason I didn't give this 5 stars is I need it to be longer!

[Gregory Amato · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful enough that the white supremacist Vox Day (aka Theodore Beale) tried to tear this book down, and inadvertently confirmed Carroll's central thesis in the process.

[Corrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

really interesting but i think it could’ve been organized a bit better / more clearly