Bringing Utopia Down to Earth: Kim Stanley Robinson’s Science in the Capital Trilogy | Adeline Johns-Putra

Summary: Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Adeline Johns-Putra This paper examines the Science in the Capital trilogy, in terms of Robinson’s adaptation of the utopian impulse of his science fiction to the question of climate change. Robinson defines utopia as a ‘working towards’, which, in the Mars trilogy, results in a vivid description of the scientific methods by which Mars is painstakingly terraformed, alongside a detailed explanation of the ‘eco-economics’ developed and debated by the colonisers over hundreds of years. In the Science in the Capital novels, Robinson depicts the ideologically committed terraforming of Earth. However, this time, he must do without the imaginative appeal of the Martian ‘novum’, i.e. the world of ‘strange newness’ that characterises science fiction. He thus locates his progressive utopian impulse in a meticulous description of an ideological and scientific milieu inhabited by an impressive ensemble of characters. This paper explores the extent to which the Science in the Capital novels succeed, both politically and artistically, within these constraints. Adeline Johns-Putra is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Exeter. Her books include Heroes and Housewives: Women’s Epic Poetry (2001), Domestic Ideology in the Romantic Age (2001) and The History of the Epic (2006). She is currently co-writing a monograph on representations of climate change in contemporary fiction.