Future Imperfect: sci-fi's nationalist narratives

BY GARY MORRIS, in Bright Lights Film Journal

excerpt:

The physical growth of America depended on the expropriation of land and the colonization of its owners, a process mythologized in stories of the Old West with its self-sacrificing settlers, brave pioneers, and romantic gunslingers. The enemies were Native Americans and Mexicans who resisted the white outsiders who came armed with both weapons and a self-derived moral/religious sanction. American appropriation of European science fiction followed a similar, if less bloody, pattern...