University-industry interaction has supporters and detractors in the scholarly literature. Whereas policymakers have mainly joined the former, science fiction authors have predominantly enrolled the latter. We illustrate how the genre has been critical to university-industry interaction via the analysis of the most positively acclaimed novels from the 1970s to date. We distinguish the analytical dimensions of type of conflict, and innovation helices involved other than university (industry, government, society). By doing so, we merge two streams of literature that had not encountered before: university-industry interaction and representations of science in popular culture. A methodological novelty is the creation of an objective corpus of the literature to increase external validity. Insights include the relevance of the time context, with milder views or disinterest on university-industry interaction in science fiction works after the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act; and the lack of an academic or policy narrative about the benefits of university-industry interaction so convincing as to permeate into popular culture. Discourse is crucial for legitimising ideas, and university-industry interaction may have not found the most appropriate yet.