About the Author

Douglas A. Van Belle is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. He is currently examining how science fiction as thought experiment shapes the conceptual space between science and society. Other areas of research include simulations of international politics, rational choice and revolutionary collective action, global media freedom, the social nature of science and SETI, Palaeontology and scientific progress in the Social Sciences, media’s influence on foreign aid bureaucracies, international information flows and the necessary conditions for the adoption of disaster risk reduction policies, the role of science fiction in society, and the use of science fiction to teach politics. His latest novel, A World Adrift, is set in the skies of Venus, 800 years after it was first colonized, and explores the human impact of the politics of extreme resource scarcity.