Writing A Better World | Kim Stanley Robinson
Writing A Better World | Kim Stanley Robinson
How things could go right
Appears in this episode
“History is malleable and is constantly changing in people's heads. I say there was a moment that was intensely revolutionary in the new wave science fiction between 1965 and 1975. Then, along with Reagan and Thatcher, came this kind of reactionary, defeatist science fiction, sometimes called cyberpunk. And that was dispiriting, and science fiction kind of lost its way and fantasy came in to replace it.
“So I have a macro story for even my own field that is very personal, but what I can say is that now it has blown up. There are scores of writers with scores of stories coming at it from every possible angle trying to say, we can make a better world. In other words, I think utopia keeps rising to the top; the story of things getting better is something that people are hungry for, and so people keep writing it. And sometimes it does feel like magical thinking. Other times it's like social planning.”
Kim Stanley Robinson is a science fiction writer and author of the acclaimed novel, The Ministry for the Future. Set in the near future, this work of climate fiction explores the geopolitical, technological, political and economic demands of the climate crisis, imagining how nations around the world will respond to its impacts—resulting in the destruction and reimagining of the world order.
Stan joins me to discuss the role of writing, of art, of fiction in particular in the face of a crisis. He gives a fascinating overview of science fiction’s response to the world over the past few decades, exploring the role of stories, narrative, and how citizens can both grapple with and demand change in their societies.
Writing A Better World | Kim Stanley Robinson
I enjoyed your discussion very much and am looking forward to reading Mr Stanley Robinson's book!
Thankyou.
“And sometimes it does feel like magical thinking. Other times it's like social planning.”
Between magical thinking and social planning is a radical rethinking at the intersection of art/imagining and philosophy/critical thinking for new learning about the sociology of social decision making to innovate new social structures for social decision making that will be constructed by design to be fit to our purposes, and right for our times in the 21st Century and beyond
That intersection exists in a space of synchronicity between the PUSH of disappointment with what we have now, and the PULL of possibility for what we can make now.
This is a fiduciary space that will be a safe space at the vanguard of public discourse (credit: Rachel) where we can break free of the inherited narrative of Keynesianism vs. Neoliberalism to explore a new way of being human in the world in an economy of popular sufficiency for keeping a good society ongoing into a dignified future, for all, forever, through technological propriety, social equity and habitat longevity for living our best lives in the 21st Century, and beyond.
In that space, we can name that new way The Fiduciary Way, and the write The Story of Now as a hero’s journey to shift the social narrative to this Fiduciary Way.