Posted on 01/15/2019 7:46:50 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
... In Kim Stanley Robinsons novel New York 2140, Manhattan is flooded after unabated climate change causes the sea level to rise by 50ft (15.25m). The amphibian city is now a SuperVenice, a grid of canals populated by vaporettos.
Robinsons 2017 climate-fiction novel belongs to a growing cadre of works about drowned nations, wind farm utopias or scarred metropolises decades into the future. As diplomats draft the rulebook for the global response to the climate crisis and engineers race to produce better solar panels, writers have found their role, too: telling what Robinson calls the story of the next century. In doing that, they might be helping readers across the world comprehend the situation in which we currently find ourselves.
Climate change is a notoriously elusive crisis to make sense of, particularly compared to other human-impact catastrophes.
This is where fiction comes in: it brings the abstract data closer to home by focusing on the faces and stories in these futures. Show readers a detailed and textured account of a climate-changed future, says Robinson, and they have an easier time imagining it.
In the quest to adopt climate change as a topic, writers are doing what they do best: trying to tell a good story. Sometimes they write with a touch of optimism as they negotiate the current crisis. But even with this optimism, these writers want to make sure the world knows they, at least, are paying attention. As one character in Robinsons New York 2140 concludes, the scientists published their papers, and shouted and waved their arms, a few canny and deeply thoughtful sci-fi writers wrote up lurid accounts of such an eventuality, and the rest of civilization went torching the planet like a Burning Man pyromasterpiece. Really.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
btt
Propagandist’s new idea...these people are persistent aren’t they? And RUIN EVERYTHING!
Too bad they can't find authors to tell the story of THIS century, the effort by federal government Deep State evil-doers to illegally elect the world's most corrupt woman to POTUS, the subsequent effort to destroy Donald Trump's presidency, and ultimately the goal of destroying the US as a Constitutional Republic. Maybe no author will touch it because the plot would be so far-fetched that nobody would believe it.
I like that science fiction book where the Graxlaxians come and take all the Liberals off earth to use them as fuel.
Its the only thing theyre good for.
Planet Hoth in Empire Strikes Back had global freezing.
They keep trying. All the while Europe is having a very very cold winter
I want to be entertained not brainwashed about the de rigeur acceptability of the the left-wing world view.
I already get that crap from the culture. I dont need it in science fiction.
“...Manhattan is flooded ...”
And? What’s not to like except that it would drive the rats elsewhere.
People learn to adapt to their new environment.
This seems like an optimistic view of the future.
Of course they could just move further inland to higher ground.
After all, even if all the ocean ice melted and water expanded with ocean warming there would still be vast areas of dry land to live high and dry.
But that's a different SyFy novel to be written.
Understanding that some works are fictional is important.
In one episode of Star Trek Spock uses the Vulcan Neck Pinch on a green alien who ran a coal fired power plant.
I like KSR as a writer. One of the best SF writers today. Not fond of his political stance. But I generally ignore them. It id fiction after all.
So, let me see if I have this in perspective.
Read Science Fiction novels as if they are non-fiction.
Right, that’s what they’ve been asking us to do since the 70’s when Time warned us about GlowBull Cooling.
AGW, or is it now ‘anthropogenic climate change’? In either case, it IS SCIENCE FICTION!
And if we could just get radioactive spiders to bite people then everyone would have super powers! It’s not like comic book writers could ever get the science wrong.
A 50’ sea level rise in 120 years is so far beyond science plausibility it’s completely fictitious. You may see in a century a 3-4ft change but I don’t see more than 2 feet happening at current rates of change.
Try being **in** SF fandom. Conservative fans are not welcome, and often are excluded and even uninvited. . . .
https://www.npr.org/2015/08/26/434644645/how-the-sad-puppies-won-by-losing
'Waterworld'
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