This article examines science-fictional allegorizations of Soviet-style planned economies, financial markets, autonomous trading algorithms, and global capitalism writ large as nonhuman artificial intelligences, focussing primarily on American science fiction of the Cold War period. Key fictional texts discussed include Star Trek, Isaac Asimov\u27s Machine stories, Terminator, Kurt Vonnegut\u27s Player Piano (1952), Charles Stross\u27s Accelerando (2005), and the short stories of Philip K. Dick. The final section of the article discusses Kim Stanley Robinson\u27s novel 2312 (2012) within the contemporary political context of accelerationist anticapitalism, whose advocates propose working with “the machines” rather than against them
