Paranoid Imaginaries and Megatextual Utopianism

The article explores the hypothesis that Utopian and Paranoid SF, both of which produced some of their most influential texts in the 1970s, co-evolved under structurally similar pressures and developed analogous conceptual instruments to engage with the question of totality. It proposes a theoretical model that situates the two subgenres in a network of conceptual positions regarding fundamental categories such as space, time and subjectivity. The model is then applied in readings of key novels of Paranoid SF: Robert Shea and Robert Wilson’s Illuminatus! Trilogy, Philip Dick’s Ubik, A Scanner Darkly and VALIS, and Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow.