KSR -- A Sci-Fi Author's Boldest Vision of Climate Change: SURVIVING IT! (an interview)

A Sci-Fi Author's Boldest Vision of Climate Change: Surviving It

Kim Stanley Robinson's
novels imagine environmental collapse in
arresting precision—and humanity finding a way
forward

by senior staff reporter Russell Gold
The Wall Street Journal (Online)
Feb 6, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-sci-fi-authors-boldest-vision-of-climate-change-surviving-it-11581004678

NOTE TO BLOG READERS: This KSR interview is behind a paywall but...


Kim Stanley Robinson, a leading writer of climate fiction, or 'cli-fi,' dreamed up a devastating storm called Sandy
five years before the superstorm swept the East Coast in 2012.

Kim Stanley Robinson spends his days inventing fictional versions of a future where the climate has changed. In
his 2017 novel "New York 2140," sea levels in the city have risen by 50 feet; boats flit over canals between docks at
skyscrapers with watertight basements. In 2005's "Forty Signs of Rain," an epochal storm called Tropical Storm
Sandy floods most of Washington, D.C. It came out seven years before Superstorm Sandy pummeled New York.

The 67-year-old author of 20 books and winner of both Hugo and Nebula awards for excellence in science-fiction
writing, Robinson is regarded by critics as a leading writer of "climate fiction"—"cli-fi" for short. He considers
himself a science-fiction writer, but also says that books set in the future need to take a changing climate into
consideration or risk coming across as fantasy.

The term "cli-fi" first appeared around 2011, coined by an American blogger named Dan Bloom, and has been a
growing niche in science fiction ever since. Books by Margaret Atwood and Barbara Kingsolver are often included
in the emerging category. In general, cli-fi steers clear of the space-opera wing of science fiction and tends to be
set in a not-too-distant, largely recognizable future. [END OF FREE WSJ CONTENT]

BUT:


Mr. Robinson's next novel is scheduled for release this fall. He spoke with The Wall Street Journal about the
public's evolving views on climate change, how he invents plausible plots and the technology he finds thrilling.
A lot of climate fiction is bleak, but "New York 2140" is kind of utopian. Things work out. What do you think—will
the future be dystopian or utopian?
They are both completely possible. It really depends on what we do now and in the next 20 years. I don't have a
prediction to make. Nobody does. The distinguishing feature of right now and the reason that people feel so
disoriented and mildly terrified is that it could go really, really badly, into a mass extinction event [for many animal
species].
Humans will survive. We are kind of like the seagulls and the ants and the cockroaches and the sharks. It isn't as if
humanity itself is faced with outright extinction, but civilization could crash.
In some sense, [dystopia] is even more plausible. Like, oh, we are all so selfish and stupid, humanity is bound to
screw up. But the existence of 8 billion people on a planet at once is a kind of social/technological achievement in
cooperation. So, if you focus your attention on that side, you can begin to imagine that the utopian course of
history is not completely unlikely.

What role, if any, can fiction or other art forms play in helping people adapt to a future in which the Earth's climate continues to warm?

Venture capitalists and entrepreneurs are in the business of making guesses about the future, as you do in your
fiction. How do you create something plausible?

I read the scientific literature at the lay level—science news, the public pages of Nature. I read, I guess you would
call it political economy—the works of sociology and anthropology that are trying to study economics and see it as
a hierarchical set of power relations. A lot of my reading is academic. I am pretty ignorant in certain areas of
popular culture. I don't pay any attention to social media, and I know that is a big deal, but by staying out of it, I
have more time for my own pursuits.

Then what I do is I propose one notion to myself. Say sea level goes up 50 feet. Or in my novel "2312," say we have
inhabited the solar system but we still haven't solved our [environmental] problems. Or in my new novel, which I am
still completing, say we do everything as right as we can in the next 30 years, what would that look like? Once I get
these larger project notions, then that is the subject of a novel. It is not really an attempt to predict what will really
happen, it is just modeling one scenario.

Mr. Robinson believes climate change demands looking beyond high-tech innovations, to fields such as law and
economics, for solutions. 'These are also technologies,' he says. 'They are software for society.'

What technologies excite you?

Clean energy. If we add clean energy, which is to say we are not burning carbon to get our energy for power and for
transport, a lot of good things can follow. A lot of clean energy means people in the future don't have to live like
saints. They don't have to reduce their lifestyle to something that is very much constrained. It will just be cleaner.
And of course, I am like anybody who is paying attention: Modern medicine is rather thrilling, because all of us are
benefiting from it with extended, healthier lives.
Also, if you could drag carbon dioxide out of the air and turn it into a replacement for concrete , then you get a
beautiful double gain.
Justice and the language and law and the global economy—these are also technologies. They are software for
society. The most crucial technology is that we get into a better social relationship to the planet at large. That is
not just a matter of machinery or of hardware. It is really a software question.

How did you predict Superstorm Sandy in "Forty Signs of Rain"?

It is just a coincidence. If you write enough science-fiction novels, you are going to end up with a handful of
uncanny coincidences.

How do you think the government's or the public's views of climate change have shifted since you wrote that
book?

It has changed enormously and in a good direction. It is very encouraging. If I had made up the Paris Agreement
[an international climate accord signed in 2016 from which the Trump administration has subsequently withdrawn
the U.S. ] in a science-fiction story 10 years before it happened, which I did not, everyone would have just laughed
at me as a utopian, but that really happened.

There is more awareness of climate change as the overriding issue of our time. If we don't deal with it, we're in
horrific trouble . If we do deal with it, all kinds of other good will happen from dealing with it. That is almost a night-
and-day situation from 15 years ago.

Interview was condensed and edited.
.