Wellbeing and Worldbuilding: The Science Fiction of Wellbeing Measurement

Wellbeing has evolved into a fragmented, contextual, and multi-dimensional construct, underpinned by numerous measurement methodologies at many different scales. To explore wellbeing through science fiction and fantasy (SFF), we don’t just need SFF about health and happiness. We also need SFF about measurement: SFF that explores surveillance, data infrastructures, the political economy of personal data, ‘the metric gaze,’ social analytics, and the social life of metrics. This chapter explores just a few linkages between wellbeing, measurement, and SFF, mainly emphasising dystopian fiction. Has SFF struggled to imagine wellbeing policy — or any holistic stance on the myriad factors that inform the happiness and flourishing of populations — except where the interested party is some sinister elite? How might SFF's narratives of distant planets and more-than-human intelligences help us to formulate a more inclusive understanding of the wellbeing of the many morally weighty beings and worlds that inhabit this planet?