Team member Pablo Gómez-Muñoz has published a new chapter in the edited collection Inhabiting Ustopia: Science Fiction in Film, Performing Arts, and Digital Media (Springer, 2025), edited by Aparajita Nanda (Santa Clara University) and Lucia-Mihaela Grosu-Rădulescu (Bucharest University of Economic Studies).

The volume offers a fresh conceptual framework for discussing science fiction across film, performing arts, and digital media, drawing on Margaret Atwood’s concept of “ustopia” — a space that is neither purely utopian nor dystopian — to address topics such as transhumanism, artificial intelligence, digital subjectivities, and the ethics of speculative world-building. The book brings together contributors from Japan, Romania, India, Spain, Ireland, and the USA, and spans a wide range of media forms including film, theatre, opera, videogames, and immersive platforms.

Pablo’s chapter, titled “Fast-Forward to the Future: Socioeconomic Change and Spatial Reconfigurations in Years and Years (Russell T. Davies, 2019),” examines how the BBC/HBO miniseries blends utopian and dystopian impulses through its depiction of neoliberal acceleration and spatial transformation. Drawing on theories of accelerationism and transnational space, the chapter analyses how Years and Years uses montage, crosscutting, and soundtrack to convey a sense of dizzying socioeconomic change, while keeping the experience of a Ukrainian gay refugee at the narrative’s centre. The chapter also reflects on the series’ attempt — and its limitations — to infuse a near-future dystopia with moments of collective hope.

The chapter is available on SpringerLink. The full volume can be accessed here.