How Things Could Go Right | Kim Stanley Robinson

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.
00:00 Teaser
00:23 Intro
02:50 Why science fiction?
09:02 Utopias
11:43 Eco-Fascism
16:14 Deconstructing Power
25:18 Story-telling
33:33 Novel Form
38:36 The Ministry For The Future
47:41 The Role of Art
54:34 Platform
55:27 Outro
🔴 The Ministry for the Future: store.orbit-books.co.uk/produ...
🌎 Support Planet: Critical: / planetcritical
🌎 Website: www.planetcritical.com/
🌎 Twitter: / debeaudoir
#politicalcrisis #climatecrisis #economiccrisis #sciencefiction

[@vthilton]

Sharing will save the world.

[@TennesseeJed]

Thanks Rachel!

[@davidhuth5659]

I'm motivated to read this book now. Thanks for this interview and keep up the good work!

[@reynoldsVincent]

I started the book, watched this video, returned to this video and while it hasn't garnered tens of thousands of views yet, I think it must in the next couple years. I'm an old fantasy role-player and while it may come to knives and bows in the future those old political ideas, at least since Roman times, didn't care for our planet. Any idea that gets recycled needs firm physics vetting, and that means no waste and that means strict regulation of consumption, even by the powerful who want others to believe they run things. I'm a fan of Jameson and urge readers of Robinson not to stop before also reading Jameson. That will answer some the questions about the hinge of power, that so often among other postmodernists don't talk about taking back linguistic or individual power. I guess I am talking about Deleuze and Guattari, who I had hoped were more accessible about combating capitalist brainwashing and directing the individual against herself, instead of toward understanding and power. It has to at some point go beyond satire of capitalism toward more transformation. I think the lesson of all that deconstruction is that capitalism destroys our selves and our identity, transforming individuals, so transforming into a powerful individual is better than staying damaged or partial or divided. Definitely have to look beyond the capitalist canon, but unity can be had of identity after deconstruction, I assume and hope.

[@mcsmith732]

Wonderful, interesting, informative and revealing discussion. Thanks to both of you for this. I loved it! And the book, too. I've been a grateful reader of KSR's books since the Mars trilogy came out. I love his people, his social/political stories, the diverse cultures that interact and the worlds he builds. All his books introduce big, complex stories that are "chaotic" the way that fractal geometry is chaotic. And they all show how complicated things get when humans interact with each other and their environment. And how good humans can be at problem-solving, even when we created those problems for ourselves.

[@dianewallace6064]

Rachel, thanks for being on Spotify.

[@emceegreen8864]

It’s a great book. Pay attention to chapter 42. That’s the answer to the question of how to dodge the current mass extinction event. Technically called Carbon Quantitative Easing.

[@momegan]

Thank You for Your great work Rachel!!

[@joehopfield]

Read it as soon as I got my hands on it, barely put it down, but it was a firehose of deeply researched interconnected info.

[@goodnatureart]

OK! I'll read the rest of the book. Fun to see you two talking.

[@sebastianputzke7705]

Thanks for this.

[@rationalactor8695]

Rachel, I would 1000% pay good money to read the sci fi novel you wrote at 21.

[@PlanetCritical]

❤️❤️❤️ thank you!!! Maybe one day it’ll see the light of day

[@jthadcast]

when the economic collapse crushes the funding for corruption we may have an opportunity to find a collective solution but the population must suffer intensely before they willingly elevate a new environmentally sound policy. when our creature comforts regress to sustainability they may choose an improvement out of self interest. man, the last 10 years have purged my faith in humanity.

[@Slick-666]

Fantastic book. Seems less and less like science fiction . Great interview.

[@manashpratimsaikia1621]

Amazing interview. If possible, please invite Dr Vandana Shiva to your podcast. There are many remarkable scholars and activists from South East Asia as well. From Assam, India.

[@Adam-Flint]

I have mixed feelings about the book. Many qualities: I like the dispersed format of the story, some aspects of the style, some useful reminders such as "climate change is real and caused by humans," or "we are in the sixth mass extinction," or "this is the Jevons paradox." But too many things are plain wrong. Chapter 56 in the book: "The US and several other big countries had withdrawn from the court’s jurisdiction (The Intertnational Criminal Court of The Hague) after negative rulings against their citizens." whereas in our real world: "The General Assembly (of the UN) convened a conference in Rome in June 1998, with the aim of finalizing the treaty to serve as the Court's statute. On 17 July 1998, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was adopted by a vote of 120 to seven, with 21 countries abstaining. The seven countries that voted against the treaty were China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar, the U.S., and Yemen." Quite another reality... Chapter 55 in the book, writing about France: ...the Commune of 1848... No. The Revolution of 1848 (the third one) from February 22 to February 24, 1848, led to the abdication of King Louis Philippe and to the foundation of the Second Republic. The Commune was in France a Parisian insurrection against the Third Republic, from March 18 to May 28, 1871. The two are never confused, neither in French nor in English. When you know Switzerland, it is kind of hilarious to see it portrayed as a welcoming country for refugees, and in Chapter 47, you might be led to believe that the Swiss banking industry is an old thing of the past that has little to do with Swiss prosperity (LOL). And about Germany and France, chapter 50: "...the rest of the world was irrelevant, or at most instruments to be used." What should one say, then, maybe, about the USA? About China? etc. But the worst thing is the substance of the book. The reader might be led to believe that, yes, the climate situation is very, very bad (it starts like that in Chapter 1), but don't you worry too much, "clean energy", geoengineering and human goodwill will save us... in some decades, when many scientists today estimate we may have already crossed irreversible tipping points, when James Hansen writes "Eventual global warming due to today's GHG forcing alone - after slow feedbacks operate - is about 10°C." An increase of 5°C is generally considered beyond the point of extinction for humans. So false hope not based in reality is noxious, an anesthesic against action. Really, this is the only kind of book our contemporary fiction literature has to offer other than apocalyptic/survivalist, Rambo type, or stupid zombie series? At the most defining time in human history, maybe the end of humanity, I'd like to give this excerpt of "Where is the fiction about climate change" by Amitav Ghosh, in The Guardian (the whole article is online and worth reading). "In a substantially altered world, when sea-level rise has swallowed the Sundarbans and made cities such as Kolkata, New York and Bangkok uninhabitable, when readers and museum-goers turn to the art and literature of our time, will they not look, first and most urgently, for traces and portents of the altered world of their inheritance? And when they fail to find them, what can they do other than to conclude that ours was a time when most forms of art and literature were drawn into the modes of concealment that prevented people from recognising the realities of their plight? Quite possibly, then, this era, which so congratulates itself on its self-awareness, will come to be known as the time of the Great Derangement." As global warming and overshoot don't happen in a vacuum but are descending on our society with politics, here is an excerpt from "Parable of the Talents" by Octavia Butler (1998): Jarret was inaugurated today. We listened to his speech-short and rousing. Plenty of “America, America, God shed his grace on thee,” and “God bless America,” and “One nation, indivisible, under God,” and patriotism, law, order, sacred honor, flags everywhere, Bibles everywhere, people waving one of each. His sermon-because that’s what it was-was from Isaiah, Chapter One. “Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate as overthrown by strangers.” Adam Flint, author of "Mona," on Amazon.

[@Bookhermit]

Destruction, yes, but any "restructuring" depends a lot on how the destruction goes. Trying to plan ahead for it is unlikely to work.

[@ko6el]

Destruction is ongoing

[@SolaRoof]

I love this interview - thank you for your openness - and I hope that you read comments because I am eager to connect with both of you! I am a long time fan of Stan's work that is so outstanding in 21st century SciFi and envisioning our near term future. I'm the Canadian inventor of SolaRoof technology, which no doubt you have never heard of before but which you need to know about because these innovations (that focus on human habitat and our built-environment) that will a massively transformative impact on the near future. I'm @solaroof and I would love to connect - I might just have that new simplicity and almost magical power to mobilize people for revolutionary change - a real capacity (not fantasy) to build the world we know is possible.

[@sudd3660]

things can go right, and want to be a part of that :) but we have to do a lot of changes, right now we do everything wrong. politically, economically and personally.

[@steveberkson3873]

I read it.

[@johnbanach3875]

So Nate Hagens is also going to interview this writer in the coming weeks. I'm hoping he asks more critical questions rather than only offering effusive praise, but we'll see. A recent guest on Hagens' podcast has said KSR is offering a model for the future, but is it the correct one, or at least one that is helpful?

[@felipearbustopotd]

It is a critical time for US... Not the planet. Please stop saying, that the planet is in crisis. Thank you for uploading and sharing.

[@Gabcikovo]

It is

[@felipearbustopotd]

@@Gabcikovo You think the planet is in a critical position?

[@psikeyhackr6914]

Double entry accounting is 700 years old. Large organizations began programming computers to do accounting in the 1950s. Accounting/finance could have been mandatory in high schools since Sputnik. How would that have affected society and economics by now? It would not even be science fiction. Alternate history? Economists might have to explain ignoring the depreciation hundreds of millions of automobiles.

[@georgepotter1820]

Evolution or extinction? Are we able to learn to live in harmony with each other, nature and technology including AI? Sustainability not profitability. Mindfulness and self love, respect not exploitation. Our species faces a major die off, the population is passing the peak, passing a tipping point where our population goes from exponential growth to a transition to a new sustainable relationship with the ecosystem that has sustained us up until now. That downward curve can be as steep as a cliff which falls to zero, extinction, or it can begin steeply and recover as it returns to historic levels of sustainability, pre-technology levels such as pre-Columbian America. This could lead to a selection pressure that would produce a new species of hominid, speciation. The curve could be more gentle and could include technological solutions that would level off at a population that could both live more harmoniously with nature and each other and incorporate technology that would represent an evolution into a new species of technologically enhanced humanity, cyborgs. Taking life to other planets, terraforming and evolving new species of humans who could survive other planetary ecologies is another path that will require technologies including genetic engineering to reach for the stars. Managing these changes in a moral and humane way brings hope to a future that appears very scary from our selfish and ethnocentric perspectives. Keep up the good work or as John Perkins says "Dream True" instead of living like the hero of his book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman." Be blessed, you are a blessing. Aboriginal cultures have much to teach us.