Beyond Star Trek: Latin American science fiction and the ELSI of emerging technologies

Science fiction has been recognized as a place of anticipatory governance, with audiovisual productions such as Star Trek serving as prominent references in ELSI’s research on genetics, biotechnology, and human enhancement. Latin American science fiction has developed parallel and largely unrecognized imaginaries involving genetics, computing, and biotechnology from structurally distinct social positions rooted in inequality, colonial erasure, and the historically expendable body. This paper aims to demonstrate that Latin American speculative fiction constitutes an underexplored form of anticipatory governance of the Global South, one whose significance lies not in having anticipated ELSI’s core debates, but in framing them from a different standpoint: that of the communities on whom the risks of genetic engineering, algorithmic systems, and human enhancement are most likely to fall. Using a qualitative methodology that combines comparative narrative analysis and self-reflexive autoethnography, three case studies are examined: The Unproductive, which constructs a dystopian society based on human cloning and genetic stratification that anticipates contemporary debates on eugenics and corporate biotechnology; Quipucamayoc, which reimagines Andean information systems as protocomputational knowledge, anticipating issues of algorithmic sovereignty and epistemic justice; and El Yachak, which proposes an organic biotechnology incorporated rooted in indigenous epistemology as a countermodel to reductive enhancement frameworks. The analysis reveals that these narratives encode ELSI concerns through the sociological realities of structural marginalization, demonstrating that anticipatory governance is not a monopoly of northern science fiction. This article proposes a pluriversal framework for expanding research on ELSI and anticipatory governance studies beyond the Anglo-American canon, with direct implications for inclusive and culturally situated policy design in an era of growing genetic and biotechnological capacity.