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The final chapter considers Robinson’s two most recent novels, Aurora (2015) and New York 2140 (2017), that offer different visions of the future. Aurora drives a stake through the heart of interstellar romance by depicting the failed mission of a multigenerational starship to colonize another solar system. Narrated in large measure by the spaceship’s artificial intelligence, Aurora brilliantly experiments with the narrative structures of sf even as it explores the ecological and biogeographical limits of terrestrial life. New York 2140, in contrast, depicts the struggle for the city’s political and environmental future in a future where a sea-level rise of forty feet above today’s level has occurred and rampant financial speculation still drives a capitalist worldview. Rather than a dystopian struggle for survival, however, the novel offers a utopian comedy of political and ecological regeneration.

This chapter investigates the representation of the feminine subject in science fiction. It is shown that feminine subjects have traditionally been joined within the science fiction film. The 1990s saw the development of a different kind of female figure in science fiction cinema. The chapter states that female figures which emerged in science fiction/action films appeared to take on a functioning role more normally assigned to the male hero. Comparative analyses of three films in which a female hero appears are given: Hardware, The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Nemesis 2: Nebula. Both Hardware and Nemesis 2 exploit the Terminator films, but each in its way also subverts the narrative trajectory of their blockbuster counterparts. Starship Troopers effectively takes both the female hero and the femme fatale. An interview with Director Paul Verhoeven regarding the female heroes is also offered.

Whereas chapter 8 demonstrates how ideology can complicate a film’s artistic design, chapter 9 shows how a film’s artistic design can complicate its ideology. Starship Troopers illustrates the commercial risks, and the aesthetic excitement, of a Hollywood film whose formal properties muddle up its ideological content. The film’s unconventional use of genre devices leads to ideological complexities that pose challenges for spectators trying to make sense of the film’s form and meaning. Starship Troopers employs the conventions of the Hollywood war film and the war film satire in ways that make the film’s worldview incoherent. The film’s mercurial form limited its success in a mass market but exhilarated cult audiences engaged by the film’s unusual design.