Speculative Fiction Writing in Classical Sociology

Daniel Huebner, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

A largely overlooked aspect of early social science is its engagement with fiction as a mode of theorizing social processes and transformation. This paper examines how the speculative fiction of H. G. Wells, Gabriel Tarde, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and W. E. B. Du Bois contributed to foundational debates on the nature of sociology, offering insights into the mutually-productive relationship between sociology and literature. Wells, a central figure in early science fiction, actively participated in British sociological debates, arguing that sociology should focus on “creating Utopias” rather than emulating the physical sciences. His widely read speculative works were grounded in social research and functioned as a form of social scientific inquiry. Tarde’s Fragment d’histoire future (1896), published in a sociological journal and introduced by Wells in its English edition, envisioned a future of intensified social relations as a way of exploring the implications of his sociological theory. Gilman, through her feminist utopian trilogy (Moving the Mountain, Herland, With Her in Ourland), theorized conditions for gender and labor equality, engaging in explicit dialogue with Wells and American sociologists. Du Bois, particularly in his novels and short stories like “The Comet” (1920), explored Afrofuturism and the role of literature in reconstructing historical experience and envisioning alternative futures. Each of these explicitly reflected on the relationship between their literary efforts and their social theorizing and research. Rather than treating literature as mere falsehood or invention, they saw it as a mode of social knowledge, offering plausible accounts of social transformation. This paper situates their work within recently renewed debates in sociology about the relevance of speculative literature and its relevance for studying and shaping possible futures.

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 Presented in Session 194. Thematizing Social Things: Heretical Literatures, Curricula, and Institutional Memories