By presenting a new political framework, the book looks at the sci-fi film genre's important critical role in a post-political world, deepening and elucidating our understanding of the post-political present and hence reopening the political imagination to possible future trajectories beyond the horizon of the present.

Opening a debate about the political dimension of science fiction films, this book uses Carl Schmitt's thought to provide a new theoretical approach to American cinematic sci-fi since the late 1970s. Drawing on Schmitt's notion of the state of exception and its basis in the unpredictability of tomorrow, it looks at the political ramifications when the moment of the future finally arrives.

With analysis of films such as Alien, Blade Runner and Minority Report, Eli Park Sorensen explores how power reconfigures itself to ensure the survival of the state, what 'society' means, who 'we, the people' are, and whether it will still be possible to retain a sphere of liberal, individual rights after the transformative event of the future.