“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. The specialization of images of the world has culminated in a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived. The spectacle serves as a total justification of the conditions and goals of the existing system.” — Guy Debord

Alan N. Shapiro
media theory,
science fiction theory,
future design research

  • Alan N. Shapiro racconta “Star Trek” (RAI4 Italian TV interview)

    This is the transcript of an interview about Star Trek which I did on Italian TV (RAI4) in 2013. There exist also transcripts of interviews which I did on Italian TV about Lost and The Prisoner.

  • Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) Election

    I am currently a candidate for President of the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA). Anyone who wishes to discuss my candidacy with me is encouraged to contact me to engage in dialogue. You can write me an e-mail.

  • Four Reviews of “Decoding Digital Culture with Science Fiction”

    Here are short excerpts from four reviews of my book “Decoding Digital Culture with Science Fiction: Hyper-Modernism, Hyperreality, and Post-Humanism,” and some other quotations about the book.

  • Venice in Las Vegas

    My memoir book “Venice in Las Vegas: An American and European Auto-Socio-Biography, 1960s to 1980s” will be published later this summer in the Counterpoints Studies in Criticality series, edited by Shirley Steinberg, of the Peter Lang Publishing House.

  • Ayesha Mubarak Ali Podcast About My Book

    This is a transcript of Ayesha Mubarki AIi’s podcast about “Decoding Digital Culture with Science Fiction” that was part of her “Human Reimagined” series, January 2025.

  • Reply to a Critical Review of My Book

    In his review of my book Decoding Digital Culture with Science Fiction: Hyper-Modernism, Hyperreality, and Posthumanism in the journal Science Fiction Studies (July 2025), Miguel Sebastián-Martín makes many disparaging claims that are factually incorrect.

  • Reviews of Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance

    Here are excerpts from three reviews of my book “Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance,” beginning with the long review-essay in Science Fiction Studies, and some other quotations about the book.

  • Prominente: Groß und Klein

    Die Amerikaner träumen groß. Die größten Hamburger. Die größten Hot Dogs. Zum Mond und Mars. Der Football Super Bowl und die Baseball World Series. Die größten Prominenten. Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Madonna. Sie waren groß. Sie waren die Stars. Das waren die Prominente im Zeitalter der Massenmedien.

  • Donna J. Haraway’s “A Manifesto for Cyborgs”

    Donna Haraway’s text “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” was written in 1985, but it reads as if itwere written yesterday. A cyborg is a hybrid of living organism and machine. The cyborg is a person whose body has been supplemented by artificial components. The term is anacronym derived from “cybernetic organism.”

  • A New Alternative to Capitalism

    Let us reconsider two of the main arguments for the alleged superiority of capitalism over socialism. Both of these arguments were indeed valid in the past. But now we have advanced informatics and digital media technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, ubiquitous computing, blockchain, and the Brain-Computer Interface.

  • Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance, by Alan N. Shapiro

    Does Star Trek’s worldview coincide with the unbridled high-tech enthusiasm of recent years? Or is there a tension between the show’s originality and the Borg-like assimilation of its creativity by the Star Trek industry? Focusing on the stories themselves, the author reveals the basic principles behind Star Trek that contest the ideology of mainstream technoscience.

  • Methodology – Thirty Minute Statement at my Ph.D. Oral Defense

    I will begin with some autobiographical remarks. I have a double educational background in the humanities and natural sciences. I studied the former at Cornell University and the latter at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Later in life, I worked for twenty years as a software developer. I had earlier studied literature and philosophy.

  • Blade Runner 2049: Android Liberation Between Old and New Informatic Power

    Blade Runner 2049 is a brilliant sequel to the original Blade Runner. Thirty years after the events of the first film, the police discover evidence of the secret that Rachael, who was a replicant or android, became pregnant and gave birth in a “natural” fertility process to a child. Rachael died while achieving childbirth.

  • The “Science Fiction World” of Philip K. Dick’s Ubik

    Ubik is generally regarded as Philip K. Dick’s masterpiece. In this major literary work, the struggle to occupy an “outside” relative to the “inside” of an economic-technological-virtual system is poignantly illustrated. It is a scenario where the “science fiction world” becomes everything, leaving the “safe confines” of the clearly defined literary space of the novel.

  • Brain-Computer Interface

    The digital-neurological or Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is a key SF and “real” technology of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. BCIs can be interpreted as a “becoming cyborg” of humanity. One can distinguish between mainstream versus alternative/transformative designs and implementations of the user applications to be based on BCI – the command-and-control cyborg versus the feminist-theory cyborg.

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