Ice-Sheet Collapse and the Consensus Apocalypse in the Science Fiction of Kim Stanley Robinson

• Main Author: Canavan, Gerry
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: e-Publications@Marquette 2022
• Subjects: apocalypse; ecological humanities; ice-sheet collapse; Kim Stanley Robinson; science fiction; English Language and Literature; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://epublications.marquette.edu/english_fac/596; https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009057868.012

The breakdown of what Donald Wollheim once called the ‘consensus future’ of science fiction – a spacefaring human civilisation migrating to the moon, Mars, the outer solar system, and beyond – has coincided with increasingly dire warnings about the true consequences of technological modernity on the planet. Where the future once seemed to be a site of unlimited possibility, it now appears to be a site of ever-worsening catastrophe and collapse. This chapter considers what might be called the ‘consensus apocalypse’, but also looks beyond it to consider techno-utopian and ecotopian visions of a non-disastrous future for humanity, with a thematic focus on figurations of sea-level rise due to ice-sheet collapse, especially in the work of Kim Stanley Robinson.