Industrial Heritage in Science Fiction: Decay as Narrative and Visual Device

In 20th and 21st century science fiction, industrial heritage functions as both a physical setting and a symbolic element, employed to ground narratives, link different periods, and guide world-building through aesthetic and memorial qualities. This article investigates the role of industrial decay in science fiction as a narrative and visual device. It argues that industrial decay shapes narrative structure, thematic critique, and world-building, embodying dualities of past and future, decay and regeneration, failure and resilience. These representations provide a critical lens for architectural and cultural discourse, exposing the ideological failures and environmental costs of unchecked technological progress. Science fiction utilizes industrial ruin as a powerful symbolic device to articulate anxieties about systemic collapse, enriching the aesthetic and thematic scope of speculative world-building.

To investigate this, the study employs an interdisciplinary framework integrating architectural theory, narratology, phenomenology, and visual culture studies. Through case studies of Blame!, Blade Runner 2049, and The Last of Us, it demonstrates how decay functions as a critical device interrogating technological autonomy, late capitalist collapse, and social repression. This approach highlights how industrial decay functions as a critical device for reflecting on real-world anxieties about deindustrialization and technological obsolescence, revealing how remnants of the industrial age continue to shape our collective imagination.