This chapter surveys portrayals of money within US speculative fiction. While they may take us to alien planets or alternate universes, such works also serve to remind us how strange “ordinary” money already is. Speculative fiction has often sought to reimagine money in some more rational or explainable form. These thought experiments often propose money based on some purportedly stable and incontrovertible value, such as labor, time, energy, or motion. There is a second and somewhat distinct tendency, which envisions reputation-based currencies and other “storied moneys,” often capable of reflecting diverse incommensurable values. Then there are portrayals of large fortunes that, whether or not they come with overt speculative elements such as magic or futuristic technologies, can also take on an aura of the fantastic. In particular, large fortunes become storied money to the extent that they reflect and enact their owners’ personal characteristics, relationships, and histories. Speculative fiction also often blurs with speculative practices, from Josiah Warren’s Time Store in the 1820s to the Technocracy movement of the 1930s to contemporary cryptocurrency, Non-Fungible Tokens, and blockchain finance. This porous boundary invites the question: might money itself be understood as a kind of speculative fiction?

The concept of “genome time” is explored through the lens of a classic science fiction story by Samuel R. Delany, “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones.” Delany’s futuristic vision of “hologramic information storage,” which allows the interplanetary Special Services to discover and predict everything a suspect has done or will be doing at any time in the past, present, or future captures essential features of “genome time,” the illusion that data encoded in your DNA can reveal your entire life – not only where you came from but what you will become – and that it is knowable from a single test in the present. The temporal implications of genomics are compared with “queer time” and contrasted with the temporal implications of nanoscience and climate change in order to clarify what is distinctive about genome time. In conclusion, some practical consequences of genome time for public policy are discussed, focusing on privacy issues created by direct-to-consumer genetic testing.