To Build a Future Without Police and Prisons, We Have to Imagine It First
A strain of science fiction called visionary fiction empowers activists, artists, and organizers to seed a better future
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Science fiction is still regarded as the province of space opera and high technologies run amok — but at its best, it shines a light on the problems and possibilities of our world as it is. Visionary fiction, a practice developed by Walidah Imarisha, author and editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, goes a step further, and actively asks practitioners to build better futures from the ground up. (We’re also publishing Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild, a prime example and inspiration for the form, in its entirety.) Given the rise of the police abolition movement and the fraught state of American democracy, it’s an opportune time to examine the importance — and techniques — of conceiving, constructing, and organizing better futures. At OneZero, we’re always interested in probing how such deep thinking about the future helps engender tangible change. This story by Imarisha explains why we need visionary thinking now more than ever.
I have been a prison abolitionist for almost 20 years. I have held firm to the belief that prisons, policing, and all parts of the carceral system have made us less safe, less free, and less human. That we can create community-based institutions to address harm and hold people accountable that focus on healing, transformation, and wholeness, rather than punishment and control. This is also why, for 10 years, I have created, nurtured, and taught a practice called visionary fiction — a means of imagining better, more just futures and then doing the work of building them into reality — and why I hope we will embrace it today.
A lifelong nerd, I began to see that not only could science and speculative fiction co-exist with social change, but they were intricately connected. I recognized the need for spaces, both real-world and digital, that allow us to imagine beyond the limits of what we are told is possible if we are to build liberated futures. I used the term “visionary fiction” for the first time in a 2010 issue of Left Turn magazine, where I guest-edited a section called “Other Worlds Are…
