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"Economics and science fiction rarely have much to do with each other. As a discipline, economics is far removed from creative writing. Science fiction arguably tells us little about the reality of day-to-day capitalism. Economic Science Fictions challenges and changes that. By treating our economy as a series of 'fictions' - stories and expectations regarding the future - and treating science fiction-writing as a means of anticipating different economic futures, this book offers various imaginative and surprising new syntheses. It brings together social science with fiction-writing; critique of everyday economic life with visions of alternatives; design with politics; utopias with dystopias; and academic scholarship with new styles of writing. Rooted in a sense that contemporary 'economic reality' is no longer working and no longer credible, it explores how we might draw on imagination and the inherent uncertainty of the future, both to revitalise economic thinking, and to re-imagine the present. This book will appeal to those working in cultural studies, creative writing, sociology, political economy and history of economic thought. Above all, it provides fresh and unusual perspectives for anyone who believes that the economy is too important to be left to the dry technicalities of economics" --

It is not news that the history of economics is disesteemed by most economists. There have been almost annual discussions at professional meetings about the institutional role of the history of economics. Indeed, a conference in 2001 documented the precarious state of the field in North America, and its even more perilous position in the United Kingdom and the Antipodes (Weintraub 2002b). With the exception of Duke University there are no longer any regularly scheduled graduate courses, let alone programs, in the history of economics at any "top" university in North America (Gayer 2002).

From the libertarian economics of Ayn Rand to Aldous Huxley's consumerist dystopias, economics and science fiction have often circled each other's spheres. In Economic Science Fictions, editor William Davies has deliberately merged the two worlds, asking how we might harness the power of the utopian imagination to revitalise economic thinking.

"In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden's central bank) established the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize. The Prize in Economic Sciences is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, according to the same principles as for the Nobel Prizes that have been awarded since 1901. This volume is a collection of the Nobel lectures delivered by the Nobel laureates, together with their biographies and the presentation speeches, for the period 2011-2015"--

Adam Smith defined economics as "the science of the nature and causes of the wealth of nations" (implicitly appealing – in reference to the "wealth" – to the "value"). Neo-classical theory views it as a science "which studies human behavior in terms of the relationship between the objectives and the limited funds that may have a different use of". The main reason that turns the neo-classical theory (that serves as the now prevailing economic mainstream) into a tool for manipulation of the public consciousness is the lack of measure (elimination of the "value"). Even though the neo-classical definition of the subject of economics does not contain an explicit rejection of objective measures the reference to "human behavior" inevitably implies methodological subjectivism. This makes it necessary to adopt a principle of equilibrium: if you can not objectively (using a solid measurement) compare different states of the system, we can only postulate the existence of an equilibrium point to which the system tends. Neo-classical postulate of equilibrium can not explain the situation non-equilibrium. As a result, the neo-classical theory fails in matching microeconomics to macroeconomics. Moreover, a denial of the category "value" serves as a theoretical basis and an ideological prerequisite of now flourishing manipulative financial technologies. The author believes in the following two principal definitions: (1) economics is a science that studies the economic system, i.e. a system that creates and recombines value; (2) value is a measure of cost of the object. In our opinion, the value is the information cost measure. It should be added that a disclosure of the nature of this category is not an obligatory prerequisite of its introduction: methodologically, it is quite correct to postulate it a priori. The author concludes that the proposed definitions open the way not only to solve the problem of the measurement in economics, but also to address the issue of harmonizing macro- and microeconomics.