As scholars of science fiction have long noted, the genre is a powerful and engaging medium because it uses extrapolation and speculation to explore possible worlds and to encourage the reader to reflect on how those worlds came into being, how they operate, and how they differ from and reflect our present world. As such, they use the tactics of estrangement (pushing a reader outside of what they comfortably know) and defamiliarisation (making the familiar strange) as a way of creating a distancing mirror on society and to offer cognitive spaces to reconsider assumptions, rationales and viewpoints. In our cases, the stories seek to be plausible and consistent given existing technologies, business models, trends, news coverage and academic critique, though sometimes they push the logic, ethos, and the form and use of technology to an extreme to emphasize a point; they are sometimes satirical, sardonic and playful. They are designed to prompt critical thought about contemporary neoliberal urbanism and digital, networked technologies.