Irish cinema, in common with other forms of Irish cultural expression, has at times produced complex reworkings of mainstream cultural forms to articulate locally specific experiences. This chapter maps the ways in which the conventions of Irish cinema, itself a historically marginalized and shifting category, intersect with and draw upon the cinematic genre of science fiction, which has also eluded easy categorization. Rather than producing science fiction films which adhere to the Hollywood model, Irish cinema has invoked science fiction narrative conventions and visual iconography in onscreen expansions of established cultural tropes. I suggest here that the resulting intersections of science fiction conventions and recognizable Irish narrative themes fulfill both esthetic and critical functions, to rework and challenge traditional onscreen representations of ‘Irishness.’ Mainstream science fiction cinema contains a persistent contradiction located in the dialectical relationship between the science fiction genre's consistently realized capacity for critique and the capabilities of the cinematic form to emphasize and foreground visual spectacle. John Rieder recognizes the potential for critique in the alternative storyworlds depicted in science fiction cinema, and contrasts this with the uncritical appeal of special effects, suggesting that against science fiction's ‘formal obligation’ to present an estranged but coherent setting, ‘the power of spectacle in SF cinema typically threatens to evacuate this procedure of its exploratory, speculative qualities and replace them with mere sensory overload’ (2009, 85). In its invocation of recognizable science fiction conventions, Irish cinema eschews this tendency toward technologically impressive spectacle (in part perhaps because the Irish film industry usually lacks the resources to produce such pyrotechnical displays) but freely borrows science fiction iconography for repurposing. Unpacking how science fiction cinema has been theorized, Annette Kuhn (1991, 5) identifies recurring ‘accoutrements’ of science fictional worlds such as advanced technologies and futuristic machines, in the form of spaceships, robots, and AI computers. Irish cinema has selectively appropriated these iconic images in narrative strategies for multiple purposes.

Kuhn, along with Vivian Sobchack (1999), makes the crucial point that while science fiction cinema may signify strange new worlds through the evocation of advanced technology or exotic alien landscapes, in fact the stories in science fiction cinema tend to be reassuringly familiar.