– are gone, and few are filling the void. At the same time, utopian stories have never felt so necessary.
“You could probably name the most important utopian novels on the fingers of your hand,” Robinson says in an interview. “But they get remembered, and they shape people’s conception of what’s possible that could be good in the future.” At 70, Robinson – who is widely acclaimed as one of the most influential speculative fiction writers of his generation – stands as perhaps the last of the great utopians. It can be lonely work, he says.
The real story is the one facing us in the next 30 years. It’s the most interesting story, but also the stakes are highest Futuristic stories about space exploration feel irrelevant to him now, Robinson says. He’s grown sceptical that humanity’s future lies in the stars, and dismissive of tech billionaires’ ambitions to explore space, even as he acknowledges, “I’m partially responsible for that fantasy”.
I unfortunately think we're too entrenched in this norm that's so dependent on growth and consumption at a level never seen before, and the changes we'd need to make would cause powerful folk to lose so much of their imaginary wealth. We as a species are in overshoot.
Pish. We are screwed. The profits won't allow it.