{"id":59569,"date":"2025-04-25T10:00:33","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T15:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/?p=59569"},"modified":"2026-01-16T20:10:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T02:10:19","slug":"planetary-boundaries-are-non-negotiable-kim-stanley-robinson-and-elizabeth-carolyn-miller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/planetary-boundaries-are-non-negotiable-kim-stanley-robinson-and-elizabeth-carolyn-miller\/","title":{"rendered":"Planetary Boundaries are Non-Negotiable: Kim Stanley Robinson and Elizabeth Carolyn Miller"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our partner podcast <\/em>Novel Dialogue<\/a> invites a novelist and a literary critic to talk about novels from every angle: how we read them, write them, publish them, and remember them. This season\u2019s signature question is: If\u00a0you could spend a year anywhere, where, when, and how would you spend it?<\/em><\/p>\n

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In Season 9, Novel Dialogue set out to find the Venn diagram intersection of tech and fiction\u2014only to realize that Kim Stanley Robinson<\/a> had staked his claim on the territory decades ago. With influential series on California<\/a>, on the terraforming of Mars<\/a>, and on human civilization as reshaped by rising tides<\/a>, KSR has established a conceptual space as dedicated to sustainability as his own beloved Village Homes<\/a> in Davis, California.<\/p>\n

All of that, though, only prepared the ground for Ministry for the Future<\/em>, his 2020 vision of a sustained governmental and scientific rethinking of humanity\u2019s fossil-burning, earth-warming ways. In only five years, it may have become the most influential work of climate fiction ever\u2014perhaps right up there with Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin<\/em> in its thoroughly shocking ability to jump into the political fray.<\/p>\n

Flanked by Novel Dialogue\u2019s John Plotz, KSR\u2019s friend and ally Elizabeth Carolyn Miller<\/a> (celebrated eco-critic and UC Davis professor) asks him to reflect on the book\u2019s impact. He brushes aside the doom and gloom of tech bros forecasting the death of our planet and hence the necessity of a flight to Mars: Humans are not one of the species doomed to extinction by our reckless combustion of the biosphere. However, survival is not the same as thriving. The way we are headed now, \u201cthe crash of civilization is very bad. And ignoring it \u2026 is not going to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

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