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Welcome back.
We’ve got another banger from The Science of Fiction writer, Maddie Stone today (read her first essay with us here).
This week, Maddie covers the Philadelphia sanitation strike and compares it to the garbage-strewn landscapes of cyberpunk classics, showing us how the dystopian futures we love to watch and read about aren’t just entertaining fiction — they’re warnings about where we’re headed when we devalue essential workers, ignore environmental degradation, and allow inequality to fester.
From Philadelphia’s underpaid sanitation workers to the underground laborers in Matt Bell’s arcologies, Maddie reveals how science fiction has long understood that our trash problems are really about who we ask to clean up our messes, and of course what the hell you can do about it!
Enjoy.
Willow
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Philly’s trash-pocalypse is straight out of dystopian sci-fi
By Maddie Stone
Maddie is a prolific science journalist. She is the former science editor of Gizmodo, founding editor of Earther, and runs The Science of Fiction blog, which explores the real world science behind your favorite fictional monsters, alien planets, galaxies far far away, and more.
The sanitation convenience center is easy to miss; an unassuming driveway tucked between warehouses and lots of parked tractor-trailers on an industrial boulevard in southwest Philadelphia.
A lone city worker greets me as I drive in, directing me to park perpendicular to a rear-loading garbage truck bursting with black contractor bags.
I roll down my window, and the stench of rancid milk floods in with the July heat.
“I’m here to drop off recycling,” I tell him.
“Put it in the truck," he replies.
“It’s just getting thrown away, isn’t it?” I say.
“Yea,” he replies, with an apologetic half-smile. “It is.”
Dejected but resigned, I unload my bag of carefully cleaned cans and flattened cardboard boxes to add to the refuse heap. After all, I’ve come this far. The alleyway behind our house is overflowing with our neighbors’ trash. I’m worried it’ll attract cockroaches in the basement.
This is Day 8 of the Philadelphia District Council 33 municipal workers’ strike.
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