Popular science fiction provides classroom teachers multiple rich opportunities to adopt a critical lens in examining the ways in which governments and their people interact. Given the highly contested nature of both the social and natural sciences presently in the schools – particularly because of the ways in which these subject areas impact the political arena at the local, regional, and national levels – these serve as excellent fora in which to use popular science fiction to teach about and around socioscientific issues (SSI) and controversial public issues (CPI).