ABSTRACT
The Marxist interest in and connection to sf is longstanding and well known, but also highly complex, uneven, and mediated. Like its counterparts in feminist, postcolonial, queer, and ethnic literary and cultural theory, Marxist theory is always connected in both spirit and practice to objectives that range beyond a specific literary text, and thus employs cultural analysis in the interests of social and political praxis. The first and longest section of this chapter will outline fundamental Marxist theoretical concepts and concerns with relation to sf; the second identifies representative theorists and studies; the third surveys some significant sf works of fiction and film that have been of interest to Marxist critics.
