Episode 108: How Science Fiction Sold Us the Automobile

Back to the Future features a car that not only flies, it travels through time. Is there anything cars can’t do?

Cars have made our lives better in many ways, but they also kill a lot of people and damage the environment. Science fiction has worked hard to help us fall in love with the automobile, to the point where we can't imagine a future without it. Why do most of our favorite stories celebrate cars? And how can we break free from these car-centric narratives?

Citations, links, & etc.!

The first speculative fiction story to feature cars is arguably the 1908 novel The Wind in the Willows.

Batman gets his super-car, the Batmobile, in the early 1940s. Soon after, the federal government starts spending vast sums to build highways. At one point, Spider-Man drove the Spider-mobile and Doctor Who had the Whomobile.

James Bond gets his first gadget-laden car in the 1959 novel Goldfinger.

The opening credits of The Prisoner feature some very aggressive driving.

Rush’s song “Red Barchetta” warns of a future where cars are banned.

James Bond gets a submarine car in 1977, called Wet Nellie. James Bond creator Ian Fleming also gave us Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

By the 1980s, cars are turning into fighting robots in Transformers, becoming your best friend in Knight Rider, and traveling through time in Back to the Future.

The Jetsons helped popularize the flying car.

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is full of critiques of car culture, through its fake religion of Fordism.

"The Revolt of the Pedestrians" by David H. Keller contains an ableist critique of car dependency.

There were many anti-car protests in the 1950s and 1960s. Some cities had freeway revolts against Robert Moses’ freeway programs.

Death Race 2000 satirizes our love of reckless driving and vehicular manslaughter.

Steven King gave us Christine as well as Maximum Overdrive.

During the David Tennant era, Doctor Who critiiqued cars in the episodes “Gridlock” and “The Sontaran Strategem.”

A lot of 1980s science fiction criticizes urban sprawl, including the Judge Dredd comics and William Gibson’s “sprawl” trilogy.