Alien: Earth
Minor spoilers but not really.
The two films that gets cited in reference to accelerationism, both following Nick Land, are Terminator (a threat from the future projected back through the past to birth itself) and the original Blade Runner (in which distinctions between human and machine are collapsed). I think the Alien franchise is on par with these: a world in which techno-capitalism has accelerated to the point of mundanity. This might get lost because xenomorphs, with their squishy body horror, are front and centre. But, as any Alien nerd will tell you, they’re bioweapons hunted by a corporation; Aliens in particular makes a point of their military utility. Alien: Romulus, which I found unbearably shit, did well to foreground the endgame of accelerated capital, with that early scene of the main character tied to her contract.
Alien: Earth pushes it even further with its explicit neorectionary backdrop: in episode 4, it’s revealed historical democracy wasn’t working so five corporations “solved all the problems”, franchise villains Weyland-Yutani being one of them. It plays other common tropes like pensive conversations about what constitutes human, such catnip to sci-fi writers. Although Alien: Earth has known rifts in its bag, including little references to the movies (morally ambiguous synthetic beings, the whole truckers-in-space feel) its strength comes from finding a fresh voice quickly and confidently.
To the series’ credit, it does away with the Alien Cinematic Universe entirely and starts from scratch: the xenomorphs were found on what viewers can only imagine was a pretty fucked up planet and brought to Earth for study; there aren’t only synthetics in this world, but cyborgs; a whole range nasty beasts populate the halls of a research facility to the point where they nearly upstage the xenomorph! Thinking specifically of, let’s call it, the Eyehugger.
Alien: Earth does well to criticise this world while humanising it. The “boy genius” villain - a cross between the smugness of Elon and the frat boy vibes of early Zuckerberg - is a stand in for the forces that are midwifing this new world. The series never glorifies this hellscape but stares at it frankly. All the while, a brother/sister relationship holds the story together. Franchise fans need not worry, though: we get all the xenomorphs, horror gore and slimy eggs we want from the first episode onwards.
Having watched, and been impressed by, Alien: Earth, I’m left wondering what accelerationism can do with organic matter. Its literature is usually so metallic, so cybernetic, that it’s neglected to consider how AI/androids/synthetic beings might shepherd bacterial life on other planets or the range of anomalous phenomena categorised under UFO discourse. Indeed, Cute Accelerationism attempts to reintroduce the organic.
Wherever the future pulls us, it wont be a monoculture.