ABSTRACT
This chapter considers two remarkable Canadian examples of dystopic speculative fiction that imaginatively 'foresee' such cataclysmic effects in the neoliberal globalized transnational hubs of Toronto and Vancouver, respectively: Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring and Larissa Lai's Salt Fish Girl. It examines how both novels imaginatively depict the conflation of time and space characteristic of postmodern globalization and the new forms of community they envision in response to late capitalism. It is the main thesis of the chapter that the grim futures that they project in their dystopic novels constitute powerful destabilizing ideological tools that may be instrumental in the construction of alternative social spaces and practices in global cities. Ingrid Thaler has pointed out that 'writers identified as and identifying themselves as speculative fiction authors tend to be more interested in philosophies of time and communal organization rather than the effects of science and technology in future worlds'.
