Transnational readings in the Trumpocene: Kim Stanley Robinson’s “New York 2140” and Chris Beckett’s “America City”

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article discusses two climate fiction novels –one British, one American– that were written in the runup to two major political events on either side of the Atlantic in 2016 –the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency– and considers how their focus on a future climate emergency serves as an apt reflection on the mutual reinforcements of neoliberalism, precarization, and populism. By looking at these two novels together through the lens of right-wing populism and notions such as the Capitalocene (Moore), the Trumpocene (Colebrook) and the “critical utopia” (Moylan), I consider how the future climate catastrophes that these novels imagine are equally likely “to be used as opportunities to advance and entrench socially regressive forms of politics and unsustainable trajectories […] as inspire forms of ‘disaster collectivism,’ where acts of community and solidarity flourish” (Newell, 2020: 157). As novels that are deeply concerned with the politics of the present, I consider how Robinson’s and Beckett’s novels are inspired by different utopian inflections that lead to different outcomes but similar diagnoses: that the worst effects of climate change will not be averted because humanity seems bent on its current trajectory.

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY: This article discusses two climate-fiction novels –Kim Stanley Robinson’s “New York 2140” and Chris Beckett’s “America City”– in the context of the social and political moment in which they were written and published. It argues that the 2016 Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump as US President that same year are important background elements –even if never explicitly mentioned in the novels– that help us to consider the interrelation between climate change denialism, precarization, and far-right populism.