Speculating Futures in Fiction for Teenagers: Westernized Perspectives.

Contemporary speculative fiction for teenagers reflects the concerns of western society. This chapter considers how the reader is placed by speculative fiction which reflects upon potential problems arising from the consequences of contemporary social and scientific attitudes and developments projected into imagined futures. Social concerns and environmental concerns are discussed through texts such as B.R. Collins’ Gamerunner (2011) set in a computer game and Marcus Sedgewick’s Floodland (2001) where rising sea levels resulting from global warming have devastated England.