In our latest Theory piece, independent curator and writer Vanina Saracino examines how speculative visions of “human photosynthesis” in science fiction unsettle dominant ideas of energy, labor, and survival under capitalism. Through her close readings of Philip K. Dick, Kōbō Abe, and Kim Stanley Robinson, she traces how human metabolic independence emerges as a radical counter to fossil-fuel dependence, challenging extractive logics of growth, consumption, and exploitation while gesturing toward new political, economic, and ecological relations.