The major currents of political and ethical debate within sf

November 3, 2024 4:52 AM

"The article illuminates ways in which sf functions as a resource for thinking concretely about multiple coming futures, in ways that can often eclipse so-called realist literature."

ABSTRACT

This article catalogs major recent trends in ecological science fiction (sf), focused primarily on sf published after the completion of N.K. Jemisin's paradigm-setting Broken Earth trilogy in 2017. Major subdivisions in the genre include dystopian and antiutopian narratives about climate collapse, technocratic solutionism, reckoning with climate change as a colonial project, intergenerational conflict, and posthuman formulation. Noting that sf both as literary genre and as fan community encompasses a wide range of political perspectives ranging from reactionary hypercapitalism to utopian socialism, the article does not seek to advance any particular political position but rather seeks to name the major currents of political and ethical debate within sf in this moment of ecological crisis. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the way the sf genre, in reframing the present as the history of multiple possible futures, calls on us to act to shape that future toward human thriving.

CITATION

Persinger, K., Sherryl Vint, and Gerry Canavan. "Science Fiction in the Anthropocene." Annual Review of Environment and Resources 49.1 (2024): 51-71.

posted by cupcakeninja (8 comments total)

Overall I've been more engaged with fantasy and horror over the years, both works and their criticism, and my exposure to science fiction criticism has been mostly glancing. Lately I've been thinking about and reading more SF, though, and this just-released article, written by some significant folks in SF criticism, was definitely the right article at the right time for me.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:59 AM on November 3 [4 favorites]

(Dang, the link is actually to the full paper! Wa-HOO!)
posted by wenestvedt at 9:38 AM on November 3 [3 favorites]

Fundamentally, I have a real issue with anyone setting genre boundaries based on what are ultimately political concerns, even if I might agree with some or many of those concerns. SF is a mode of literature, using an extrapolated change that is scientifically plausible within the world of the text to reflect our own society in a distorting mirror. It doesn't have to be about climate change, and it doesn't have to be manifestly progressive.

The casual dismissal of stories of colonization, a classic trope of SF and one that often was in the past very much less than progressive but is not inherently so, was the red flag for me, here. You could absolutely write a narrative of colonization that appeared naïve but was in fact a critique of one or more elements of terrestrial colonization. Or you could write one and make it super duper progressive. But it doesn't have to be about climate change.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 11:03 AM on November 3 [2 favorites]

huh, I just read this whole thing and I am not seeing any "casual dismissal of stories of colonization". I really don't get where your comment is coming from, hobnail?
posted by supermedusa at 11:31 AM on November 3 [5 favorites]

outgrown_hobnail, I don't quite get your critique, nor did I get that vibe from the article. Setting boundaries makes meaningful discussion possible, at least in academic discourse. No one can read every text/primary source, nor all scholarship/secondary source, so choosing a focus is helpful. Certainly there are many people who talk about colonization in SFF. It's one of the major themes of what's liable to be this decade's biggest SFF film franchise, adapted from one of the most influential SFF book series of all time. If this article had claimed to be a "this is what science fiction is right now" piece, I would understand your beef a little more, but these authors wanted to trace the ecological thread.
posted by cupcakeninja at 11:58 AM on November 3 [6 favorites]

One of the very popular SF 'Golden Age' novels which was not only not progressive, but was 2nd Amendment gun nut to the max way beyond anything the current crop of crazies even seem capable of imagining, was A E van Vogt's The Weapon Shops of Isher.

And it had lots of company. MeFi fave Alfred Bester's dys/utopian The Stars My Destination is the ultimate libertatian accelerationist dream come true.

I’m not contradicting the thesis of the paper, which I agree with insofar as I understand it.

Except for this:

The article concludes with a brief discussion of the way the sf genre, in reframing the present as the history of multiple possible futures, calls on us to act to shape that future toward human thriving.

I think the current crisis has already gone far beyond shaping the "future toward human thriving" to a point that demands we shift our focus to the future of multicellular life as a whole on the planet regardless of whether we thrive or not. In fact, I think the best even slightly plausible futures are ones in which we go extinct and leave the rest of the living world as intact as possible.
posted by jamjam at 1:06 PM on November 3 [2 favorites]

which we go extinct

I can't, even.
posted by sammyo at 1:38 PM on November 3 [1 favorite]

One of the very popular SF 'Golden Age' novels which was not only not progressive, but was 2nd Amendment gun nut to the max way beyond anything the current crop of crazies even seem capable of imagining, was A E van Vogt's The Weapon Shops of Isher.

As a fan of The Weapon Shops of Isher, i think this is a bad reading of that novel. It's definitely an extremely pro-gun novel but i don't think that makes it "not progressive", in the slightest. It's a novel about resistance to tyranny, and about the ways in which revolutionary organizations can go off the rails when they forget their actual goals.
posted by adrienneleigh at 3:30 PM on November 3 [1 favorite]