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 first 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 far-right populism. By looking at these two novels together through the lens of the Capitalocene (Moore), the Trumpocene (Colebrook) and the “critical utopia” (Moylan), I consider how the future climate catastrophes that these novels imagine can also serve to highlight the deep political implications of an advancing sense of precariousness as a result of climate exposure. As Newell suggests, climate catastrophes 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, nonetheless, lead to similar diagnoses: that the worst effects of climate change are inevitable because humanity seems bent on its current trajectory. In doing so they showcase the potential of near-future science fiction to make legible the immediate political, social and environmental implications of ongoing climate change