{"id":38599,"date":"2020-09-23T10:00:59","date_gmt":"2020-09-23T15:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/?p=38599"},"modified":"2026-01-16T20:17:55","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T02:17:55","slug":"the-realism-of-our-times-kim-stanley-robinson-on-how-science-fiction-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/the-realism-of-our-times-kim-stanley-robinson-on-how-science-fiction-works\/","title":{"rendered":"The Realism of Our Times: Kim Stanley Robinson on How Science Fiction Works"},"content":{"rendered":"

World-renowned science fiction novelist Kim Stanley Robinson is a world builder beyond compare. His political acumen makes his speculations feel alive in the present\u2014as well as laying out a not-so-radiant future. He is the author of more than 20 novels and the repeat winner of most major speculative fiction prizes; his celebrated trilogies include Three Californias<\/em>, Science in the Capitol<\/em>, and (beloved in my household) the Mars Trilogy<\/em>: Red<\/em>, Green<\/em>, and Blue<\/em>. In an earlier life he was a PhD student of Fredric Jameson, and he wrote his dissertation on the novels of Philip K. Dick. He is also, as this interview shows, an acute taxonomist not just of SF but also of its roots in and its relation to a longer, larger realist tradition.<\/p>\n

A longer version of this interview<\/a> aired recently on Recall This Book<\/em><\/a> (a podcast partnered with Public Books<\/em>) as part of our series on pandemic reading, Books in Dark Times<\/a>. <\/em>You can listen to the interview here<\/a> or by subscribing to <\/span>Recall This Book<\/span><\/i> on<\/span> iTunes<\/span><\/a>,<\/span> Stitcher<\/span><\/a>, or<\/span> wherever you listen to podcasts<\/span>.<\/p>\n

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John Plotz (JP): <\/strong>You have said that science fiction is the realism of our times. How do people hear that statement today? Do they just hear the word COVID<\/em> and automatically start thinking about dystopia?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR): <\/strong>People sometimes think that science fiction is about predicting the future, but that isn\u2019t true. Since predicting the future is impossible, that would be a high bar for science fiction to have to get over. It would always be failing. And in that sense it always is failing. But science fiction is more of a modeling exercise, or a way of thinking.<\/p>\n

Another thing I\u2019ve been saying for a long time is something slightly different: We\u2019re in a science fiction novel now, which we are all cowriting together<\/em>. What do I mean? That we\u2019re all science fiction writers because of a mental habit everybody has that has nothing to do with the genre. Instead, it has to do with planning and decision making, and how people feel about their life projects. For example, you have hopes and then you plan to fulfill them by doing things in the present: that\u2019s utopian thinking. Meanwhile, you have middle-of-the-night fears that everything is falling apart, that it\u2019s not going to work. And that\u2019s dystopian thinking.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019s nothing special going on in science fiction thinking. It\u2019s something that we\u2019re all doing all the time.<\/p>\n

And world civilization right now is teetering on the brink: it could go well, but it also could go badly. That\u2019s a felt reality for everybody. So in that sense also, science fiction is the realism of our time. Utopia and dystopia are both possible, and both staring us in the face.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say you want to write a novel about what it feels like right now, here in 2020. You can\u2019t avoid including the planet. It\u2019s not going to be about an individual wandering around in their consciousness of themselves, which modernist novels often depict. Now there\u2019s the individual and society, and also society and the planet. And these are very much science fictional relationships\u2014especially that last one.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

JP:<\/strong> When you think of those as science fictional relationships, where do you place other speculative genres, such as fantasy or horror? Do they sit alongside science fiction\u2014in terms of its \u201crealism\u201d\u2014or are they subsets?<\/p>\n

KSR: <\/strong>No, they\u2019re not subsets, more like a clustering. John Clute, who wrote the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction<\/em> and a big part of the Encyclopedia of Fantasy<\/em>, has a good term that he\u2019s taken from Polish: fantastika<\/em>. Fantastika<\/em> is anything that is not domestic realism. That could be horror, fantasy, science fiction, the occult, alternative histories, and others.<\/p>\n

Among those, I\u2019m interested mostly in science fiction. Which, being set in the future, has a historical relationship that runs back to the present moment.<\/p>\n

Fantasy doesn\u2019t have that history. It\u2019s not set in the future. It doesn\u2019t run back to our present in a causal chain.<\/p>\n

So the moment I say that, you can bring up fantasies in which Coleridge runs into ghosts, or about time traveling, or whatever. Still, as a first cut, it\u2019s a useful definition. But definitions are always a little troublesome.<\/p>\n\n

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Related readings<\/div>\n\n
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\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
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\n Interviews<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \u201cTo Reach the Pure Realm of the Imaginary\u201d: A Conversation with Cixin Liu<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n John Plotz <\/a>, et al.\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

JP:<\/strong> So something that was putatively science fiction but set off in an alternate universe wouldn\u2019t be science fiction? It\u2019d be more fantasy? Star Wars<\/em> comes to mind. The important thing for you about whether something is science fiction is the point of departure from our own present.<\/p>\n

KSR:<\/strong> Yes, but when you point it out, it\u2019s clear that what I was describing is just one type of science fiction, one subgenre within the larger genre. Space opera is a kind of science fiction where you\u2019re zipping about the galaxy and the laws of physics are much relaxed. It claims to be set in our future, but in our far, far future.<\/p>\n

For this subgenre there used to be a term, \u201cscience fantasy,\u201d describing authors like Jack Vance or Gene Wolfe, who set stories so far in the future\u2014like five million years, or a billion years\u2014that anything could be happening then. So the story feels like fantasy but includes a cover story that makes it supposedly science fiction; it\u2019s part of our history, but very distant.<\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> Ursula Le Guin talked about a genre of the late \u201960s<\/span> and early \u201970s<\/span>\u2014\u201cSwords and Spacecraft\u201d\u2014in which space travelers arrive at fantastical worlds. Actually, a lot of Le Guin\u2019s work feels close to that. In the Hainish Cycle, she has that interstellar federation called the Ekumen, which is a space-technology world (that theoretically intersects with our own, real Earth). But then the places that the space travelers arrive at are essentially fantasy spaces.<\/p>\n

KSR:<\/strong> Yes, when she began there was a thing going on in science fiction that I would call the planetary romance. You get to a new planet and things there are wild and different. It goes back to works like David Lindsay\u2019s A Voyage to Arcturus<\/em> in the \u201920s<\/span>, but then in the \u201950s<\/span>, Jack Vance and Cordwainer Smith and many others. When Ursula began to read science fiction there was quite a bit of this going on. And she loved it and put it to use.<\/p>\n

Note that in science fiction you see the word planet<\/em>, while in fantasy it would be a world<\/em>, or in any case, never the word planet<\/em>. These little markers indicate which game you\u2019re playing.<\/p>\n

\n

JP:<\/strong> It sounds as if you\u2019ve got an ethos, a way of reading that really isn\u2019t affected by this crazy pandemic moment. Do you have any thoughts about why that might be? Does that say something about you temperamentally?<\/p>\n

KSR:<\/strong> Yes. My reading habits come from being a student for so long, getting a PhD in literature, and having since then been involved in various kinds of teaching, or selection committees, or award committees. All that was too much, and now I don\u2019t like to read anything that people tell me to read. I make my own schedule of reading. These days, I go to the used book sales at my local library and pick books randomly, and then read randomly, and I enjoy that feeling of randomness. Within that scattershot exploration I also have my particular loves, and I read those writers comprehensively, because I enjoy it. I enjoy getting to know those writers.<\/p>\n

For researching my own novels, I have to read a lot of nonfiction. It\u2019s mostly interesting, but typically I\u2019m strip-mining texts for information and going fast. I would like to be able to touch a book on the spine and immediately know everything in it.<\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> Download it.<\/p>\n

KSR: <\/strong>Yes. But only when it comes to nonfiction. I\u2019ve also got an influx of periodicals, led by Science News<\/em> and the London Review of Books<\/em>, so I have that contemporary reading, which is very instrumental. And then for deep reading, I have my literature track.<\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> I know you put novels first and foremost, but I was wondering about other, slower genres: say, poetry or philosophy or other genres?<\/p>\n

KSR:<\/strong> Yes, I read poetry with great pleasure, usually a poem or two a night, in collections by single authors, right before I go to sleep. I\u2019ll go through books that often contain a poet\u2019s career\u2014that might take up to a year. I love that. I also read a few short stories, and even more often, plays in print, because it\u2019s hard to get to many plays where I live, and I love the theater. And I read a fair bit of literary criticism for the fun of it. But the novel is at the heart of my project as a reader.<\/p>\n\n

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Related readings<\/div>\n\n
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\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
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\n Reviews<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n The Worst of All Possible Worlds?<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n \"\" <\/a>\n \n Mitch R. Murray <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

JP:<\/strong> Has your reading struck or affected you differently over these last few weeks? I suddenly discovered that I like reading quickly: I was reading Hilary Mantel\u2019s Wolf Hall<\/em> and I suddenly found myself slowing down. Rather than wanting to just get through it and get out the other end, I found it was acting as a solace world for me.<\/p>\n

KSR:<\/strong> Hilary Mantel is one of the greatest living novelists. But I read at the same pace at all times. I can\u2019t hurry, I can\u2019t slow down. It\u2019s not a fast pace, it\u2019s just my pace. And I love reading in the way that puts you under, like a hypnotist puts you under. It\u2019s that willing suspension of disbelief. I don\u2019t read critically. I don\u2019t read as a writer trying to figure out how they did it. That might come later, but mainly I\u2019m under<\/em>. And in that sense I\u2019m out of conscious control. I only read at that pace, at least with fiction and poetry. Nonfiction is different.<\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> Can I ask whether you ever go back to your childhood reading?<\/p>\n

KSR:<\/strong> Yes, sometimes. I read lots of my old favorites aloud to my sons when they were young. My parents had me in the Scholastic Book Club: for a quarter, a book would come once a month. I adored many of those books. And there were enough of them printed that I could find them 40 years later in used bookstores. Books like Secret of the Old Postbox<\/em> or Pursuit in the French Alps<\/em>; then also, not in that club but favorites, the books of Joan Aiken, or Freddy the Pig<\/em> by Walter Brooks.<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m getting set to look into Robinson Crusoe<\/em>. It\u2019s often read as a children\u2019s book, but it\u2019s much more than that. I\u2019ve been reading Defoe, most recently The Storm<\/em>, and he\u2019s great.<\/p>\n\n

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Related readings<\/div>\n\n
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\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
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\n Reviews<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n All Tomorrow\u2019s Warnings<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n \"Rob <\/a>\n \n Rob Nixon <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

JP:<\/strong> I don\u2019t know The Storm<\/em>.<\/p>\n

KSR:<\/strong> In November of 1703 a big hurricane blasted England. It lasted about four days; the damage was stupendous. In the aftermath Defoe went around interviewing people about it. He even put out advertisements asking for people to send in their eyewitness accounts. I\u2019ve had a recent interest in eyewitness accounts, so that caught my eye. As for Defoe, he may have made some of them up. He was tricky when it came to attribution. He often wrote things and then claimed someone else wrote them.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s unclear how much of The Storm<\/em> is really other people and how much is him using the eyewitness format. He definitely made up eyewitness accounts in Journal of the Plague Year<\/em>, which he wrote probably 50 years after the event. It\u2019s one of the first historical novels and a great work.<\/p>\n

The Storm<\/em> is nowhere near as good. Defoe wrote a staggering amount of stuff, and a lot of it is not at the level of his famous novels. But it\u2019s interesting anyway.<\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> Do you think of him as an inventor of the novel? Do you feel a sense of distant kinship\u2014like he\u2019s your great-great grandpa?<\/p>\n

KSR:<\/strong> Sure. Ian Watt, in The Rise of the Novel<\/em>, tells that story well. There was a group of people inventing the novel, who don\u2019t get remembered as well as the famous ones. So it isn\u2019t as if Defoe invented anything from whole cloth. We have Cervantes; we have older things that look like novels all the way back to the ancient Greeks.<\/p>\n

But what Defoe was doing in Robinson Crusoe<\/em>, Moll Flanders<\/em>, and Roxana <\/em>are first-person narratives that tell the story of a life, or one period in a life. These are novels as we recognize them, and they\u2019re better than Richardson and Fielding. (Laurence Sterne is a different story, an amazing case of his own.) But for me, when you\u2019re looking at the 18th-century novel, Defoe, even though he\u2019s earlier than most of them, is more interesting.<\/p>\n

\n

JP:<\/strong> So you don\u2019t understand science fiction as outside of the realist tradition then. You think of the science fiction that you\u2019re doing as a continuation of that realism, which leads back at least as far as Defoe?<\/p>\n

KSR:<\/strong> Say that maybe science fiction is a proleptic<\/em> realism. In other words, you\u2019re trying to cast realism into the future, which is a weird thing to try. Say you\u2019re asked to consider: This is what\u2019s happening on the moons of Jupiter in the year 3000<\/em>. Immediately that sounds like a fantasy, or a romance. Something like a dream. But if you love novels, you want that novelistic sense of this is the way life is<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So in the science fiction I do, I have to overcompensate for the weirdness of the basic concept by adding even more realistic detail to it. That way it doesn\u2019t look like a cardboard TV stage set, but rather something you can really believe in. Or at least it helps in the willing suspension of disbelief, so that people reading science fiction can fall into it in the usual way. And then they might think: I guess Mars must really be like that.<\/em> That is indeed how you would build the first shelter on Mars. <\/em>Because there\u2019s so much detail there in the account.<\/p>\n

So my books have a craziness to them; there\u2019s some risks being taken. But the method serves my purposes; it seems to me to solve the problems I set myself.<\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> What do you think of that Frederick Turner epic poem, about the terraforming of Mars? Do you think of it as an accomplishment that is comparable to what you\u2019re aiming at with your own Mars Trilogy<\/em>? Or do you think of them as in different registers?<\/p>\n

KSR:<\/strong> I love all Frederick Turner\u2019s epic poems. They are for sure in different registers from my science fiction; he\u2019s more like Le Guin. What I admire in Le Guin and in Frederick Turner is an ability to compress, and to find the beautiful phrase.<\/p>\n

I aspire to that, but I see that they\u2019re especially good at it. They have a clean line. They don\u2019t need or they don\u2019t want the intensive realist details that might make something feel more substantial. They\u2019re willing to go with the power of poetry alone, with phrasing. They\u2019re evocative and mythic. Turner is a true poet; his epics are not just novels lined out. They\u2019re poetry too. He has his own special project.<\/p>\n\n

\n\n
Related readings<\/div>\n\n
\n\n
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\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
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\n Reviews<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n Ted Chiang: Realist of a Larger Reality<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n \"Jenn <\/a>\n \n Jenn Stroud Rossmann <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

JP:<\/strong> Can I ask how the Darko Suvin phrase \u201ccognitive estrangement\u201d fits in with the way you\u2019ve just described what your own realist science fiction does?<\/p>\n

KSR:<\/strong> Yes. Suvin\u2019s very important theoretically. His cognitive estrangement comes out of Brechtian verfremsdungeffekt<\/em>, the estrangement effect. Both are using ideas from the Russian structuralists.<\/p>\n

It works like this: you present to the reader a skewed vision, in which at first they think, This is very, very different from my world, but let\u2019s look at it anyway<\/em>. Then there\u2019s a big turn of the screw, which says: But wait\u2014we were describing your reality all along<\/em>! Then the reader hopefully thinks, Wow, my reality is actually much weirder than I thought it was. It\u2019s not to be taken for granted. It\u2019s historical, it\u2019s constructed. We can do it differently<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019s a lot of utopianism in the estrangement effect. The way I\u2019ve been putting it over the last few years is that science fiction works by a double action. This is maybe another way of talking about the estrangement effect. Think of the glasses that you put on at a 3D movie. Those special glasses have one lens showing you one thing and the other lens showing you another thing, slightly different. And your brain puts together a 3D view from these.<\/p>\n

So one lens of science fiction is a real attempt to imagine a possible future. The other lens is a metaphor for the way things are right now. What you get when the two coalesce is a vision of historical time, cast into the future. Like a trajectory of deep time.<\/p>\n

JP: <\/strong>That\u2019s an amazing analogy.<\/p>\n

Similarly, when you look back at your own novels over the years, do you see your understanding of what you\u2019re doing changing? Can you look at the early books and say, Oh, I thought about it so differently then from how I think about it now<\/em>?<\/p>\n

KSR:<\/strong> Mostly not, because I don\u2019t see my novels very well. But I do see a break that came with Red Mars <\/em>(1992).<\/p>\n

All of my novels before Red Mars<\/em> were operating within a style sheet, you might call it, an agreed-upon understanding of how science fiction should be written. It had to do with Heinlein\u2019s \u201cthe door dilated\u201d: you don\u2019t explain things; you avoid exposition and let the action describe the world. Everybody did that, and it became the norm. If you went back to an earlier style, it was seen as clunky.<\/p>\n

Even so, I decided with Red Mars<\/em> that we had a mass of new information about Mars, from the Viking missions, that I wanted to convey. And I wanted to emphasize that reality effect too. So I dispensed with the style sheet and said, I am going to talk about rocks<\/em>. People say I talk about rocks for 20 pages at a time, but really it\u2019s only two paragraphs at a time. It just felt different.<\/p>\n

So in Red Mars<\/em> I formed a different style, partly an older style, partly my own style. That\u2019s made it a controversial book, but there\u2019s nothing I can do about that. The idea you can please everyone is quickly lost. You just have to write what you want.<\/p>\n

This article was commissioned by John Plotz<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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