This article explores the aesthetic, affective, and epistemological connections that bind together science fiction (SF) as a genre of cognitive estrangement, and the varied forms of waste that have come to permeate the genre’s filmic depictions of the future. Whether it be in the shadowy alleyways of Blade Runner 2049 (2017), the shantytowns of District 9 (2009), or the ravaged environments of Idiocracy (2006), waste is always there, lurking in the background, enveloping its human and nonhuman subjects with its elusive yet distinct atmosphere. And yet, it remains unclear what purpose(s), if any, waste might serve within these film-worlds. Because despite the seemingly central place that waste occupies in our cultural imaginaries of the future, no one has yet presented a systematic reflection on its affective, symbolic, and narrative significance. This article therefore brings together writings on ecological SF (Caravan 2014) and critical waste studies (Bauman 2004; Hawkins 2005; Viney 2014) to scrutinize the waste found across the above SF films. The article proposes that waste in contemporary SF film can be seen to operate mainly within three overlapping modes: ‘Wasted worlds,’ ‘Wasted lives,’ and ‘Becoming-waste.’ Drawing especially on Adrian Ivakhiv’s tripartite model for an eco-philosophy of the cinema, this article calls attention to the often subtle ways in which waste participates in (i) cinematic world-building, (ii) representations of otherness, and (iii) depictions of radical forms of change. Taken together, these three modes represent a suggestive image of how waste forms part of contemporary SF film.

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As a result of environmental advocacy of the previous decades, the harms caused by e-waste conjure up images of hellish wastelands. The images had provided fertile ground for cli-fi writer Chen Qiufan’s novel Waste Tide (2019) to reimagine what it might be like to live among humongous piles of electronic waste. The author elaborates this vision based on the experiences of a short visit to Guiyu, China’s most notorious e-waste processing site. He explores what will happen if humanity’s day-to-day reliance on electronic devices is to increase and lead to electronic prosthetics implanted in bodies, making electronics almost into biological waste but without the possibility of breaking down in nature. The present article explores how facts and fiction bleed into each other. Rather than exploring how Chen’s narrative builds on real life, it sets about to peel back the layers of imagination that make up the e-waste problem. The article turns the gaze to environmental advocacy reports as generative spaces of science fiction imagination, which had been instrumental at imbuing e-waste with a dark charisma. E-waste stories become useful sites to examine how narratives of climate breakdown, conceived to provoke action, provide a case for a dark re-enchantment with the world. This is only a problem inasmuch as the same narratives that work well in mobilising people may become the foundation for ill-fitting laws. Reflecting on my ethnographic fieldwork in Delhi, another well-publicised informal e-waste processing site, this article raises the questions: to what extent has the threat of e-waste’s toxic harm been conceived of in futuristic imaginations? And how do texts and narratives colour and prefigure academics’ and practitioners’ experience of the world?

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