Green Planets (49 page)

GC
►
Is there a fundamental conflict between mystical and scientific ways of thinking the environment that is registered in your work, or across
SF
generally? Is narrative
SF
on some level incompatible with eco-religion, deep ecology, and other attempts to derive reliably transcendent categories out of “Nature”?

KSR
►
My principal criterion for science fiction is that it be set in the future, so if you depict a future in which some kind of eco-religion became widely believed, or was somehow revealed to be true, that's just another science fiction scenario to me, which will work or not as a story, but still be an example of science fiction. So I don't think there is a fundamental conflict.

For myself, I often regard the environment, meaning the planet but also the universe, as a miracle. I have mystical feelings for the Earth and the universe, but feel these can be joined to the most minute investigations of science; nor am I off-put by human attempts to manipulate the Earth or physical reality for human purposes. So science as investigation, and technology as manipulation, are both fine by me in principle, and not an impingement on my mystical feelings. We study and thus worship a sacred reality, which we manipulate in order to survive. This is an emotional state. It seems to me science is already the best eco-religion, in other words, therefore the one I adhere to, but as a lay person.

Deep ecology seemed to be suggesting that humanity was a planetary disease that would run its course and then die back or die out. This did considerable harm to the environmental cause, thus ultimately to the environment. To me deep ecology made it clear why environmentalism needs Marxist critical theory. That said, Marxism could often use a major infusion of ecological thinking, maybe even from the deep end of the pool, if not the drowned stuff. Quite a few of the original observations of Arne Naess were scientifically valid, or admirable in their values. But adding the adjective “deep” was a mistake. The point should have been that plain old ecology was already at the right depth to be very helpful.

GC: I'm reminded here of Gib Prettyman's observations in his chapter on Le Guin, which suggests the ways in which Marxism, ecology, and Eastern religion sit in somewhat uneasy relation with one another. You yourself have frequently taken up non-Western ways of thinking in your novels, for instance your use of non-Christian
religion in the Mars books and Tibetan religion specifically in both
Years of Rice and Salt
and the climate trilogy. Is this an attempt at crafting a synthesis, or more of an attempt to think the problem?

KSR
►
It's just thinking the problem. I'm not capable of a synthesis of those three. Maybe something more like a bricolage. I am interested in all three, and have tried plotting stories by putting them together in various combinations, and tracing what happens. I tend to use Marxist critical theory when thinking about history, ecology when thinking about the biosphere, and Buddhism when thinking cosmically or personally, although immediately when I say that I realize I often use all three in a slurry. My narrators often take “the most scientific view” of everything, even metaphysics, because that leads to funny sentences. And thinking of science as a critical utopian leftist political action from its very beginning—something like the best Marxist praxis so far performed in the real world—is very provocative and stimulating. Likewise thinking of science as a devotional practice, in which the universe is the sacred object of study. It can be almost a scissors-rock-paper thing among the three. The enjambments have been good for my books.

GC
►
Do you feel like these kinds of experimental enjambments are more successful than attempts to found “new” eco-religions, as Octavia Butler suggests in her Parables series and Margaret Atwood does in her MaddAddam books, especially
The Year of the Flood
? Perhaps this is really a question about historical continuity versus radical break, and the retention of old forms in the new.

KSR
►
I don't know. My inclination is to trying mixing elements we already have rather than invent something new, especially any kind of religion. We have the elements of a good eco-religion already, in science and Buddhism. So, possibly this new mongrel religion should be named, and its pedigree given, in order to impress it more clearly on the mind. As the exercise would hopefully be a thought experiment only (thinking of how several cults have come out of various books' fictional religions), it could be a way to reformulate the concepts of ecology into new and revealing stories. On the whole, I don't see any problem in trying both methods and seeing what kind of stories come.

GC
►
You've spoken recently about the ways scientists have become politically engaged, even radicalized, and in some ways this is a major theme of both
Science in the Capital
and
2312.
Do you find
SF
(of the kind you write, or even
SF
more generally) has a role to play in that? Do the scientists you meet still read science fiction? Does science fiction provide a framework through which scientists can begin to understand themselves as political agents?

KSR
►
I think science fiction can help scientists, yes. I hope for that, and try to write some of my novels with that goal in mind.

Now it has to be said, many scientists do not read fiction of any kind; they're like everyone else in that regard. Fiction readers are a subculture, maybe a big one, maybe a minority of the population and growing smaller; it's very hard to say, especially in this stage of technological change, where so many people are very engaged with computers and therefore perhaps reading a lot. And it seems to me that as we are all addicted to stories, there is bound to be a certain draw to the best stories, and written fiction has almost all the best stories. So as we are a species of story addicts, there is always going to be a place for fiction, as being the best stories.

But scientists are busy, and the scientists who read fiction may be a minority among scientists. Still, these are the ones who tend to have philosophical interests in what they do, and to realize that doing science is by no means a natural or self-evident activity. In their curiosity they read, and of course science fiction comes up as a possible source of good stories about science, even illuminating stories. So, many scientists will give science fiction a try. Many used to read it when they were young, then gave it up when they got too busy, or when they came to realize that it did not seem to know much about real science, that it was naïve, a collection of power fantasies for younger readers. It's hard to overcome that judgment and get those people reading
SF
again. It depends on their level of curiosity, but one very common personality trait of scientists is a lot of curiosity. So there is always the possibility that word of mouth will bring them to some interesting book that they will then check out; and if it pleases them, or even if it irritates them in a stimulating way, they may go on and read more.

I've seen scientists react very strongly against my assertion that science is a form of politics and that scientists should get more involved as scientists in policy making. That breaks what for them was a dichotomy, in which science was clear and good and pure, while politics was dirty and bad and corrupt. They say to me, “But if we spoke politically as scientists it wouldn't be science anymore, and what is good in science would get wrecked.” There is some truth to that objection, and yet I still think it's good to irritate them in that way. Subsequently they may see things from a different angle. There is a lot of “dirty politics” inside science, as they know better than anyone; they have to struggle to keep science “scientific.” Part of that struggle involves precisely diving into funding, policy, and politics. So it is a good problem to bring up in their minds. Really, scientists
need science fiction, or could use it; but it needs to be good on science, or they will see that it isn't, and it won't work for them.

GC
►
A recent slogan of yours—again echoed by one of your characters in
2312
—has been that social justice is a survival technology. You've also recently discussed the ways in which scientific praxis (at least in some idealized form) reflects a kind of actually existing communism—cooperative, collaborative, rewarding work done outside a market logic. And yet in the bleakest of our dystopian fictions—John Brunner's
The Sheep Look Up,
for instance, to choose one book you have been influenced by—we find reflected the ways in which science and scientific progress seem to be hurling us faster and faster toward final cataclysmic disaster. Where is the intervention point, or the Archimedean lever, for science to reorient itself toward survival and justice as ultimate goals? If story and narrative have power here, why don't they seem to be working?

KSR
►
But let's imagine that they are working, just slowly, and against resistance from countervailing forces. This is how I imagine it to be happening. Also, you said “scientific praxis (at least in some idealized form)”: no, I mean to say that actually existing science is already working, not just outside market logic, but against market logic. This is my point, and it can be stated in different ways, one of them being that economics should become a subset of ecology, which already measures and values things that economics mismeasures and does not value.

Brunner is a good example of how stories can help here, and have. He did often represent science in a mode of reckless hubris, making the environmental situation worse; but he was writing in the era of the atomic bomb and thalidomide and
DDT
being sprayed in the streets. There was a postwar moment, in other words, when the scientific community was painfully overconfident in its ability to manipulate the world for human good. In essence they were being unscientific in this attitude, because they were acting on a belief not based on enough evidence to justify it. Their confidence was an arrogance, but having just won the biggest war in history (by way of radar, penicillin, and the atom bomb), as a community they lost their head and thought “We can do anything!”

But the scientific community is very self-regarding and reiterative; it is always trying to make a better scientific method, it is explicitly an unfinished project at all times, and implicitly, maybe even unconsciously, it is a utopian project trying to push history in directions that will reduce suffering and increase justice. So now the 1950s moment of hubris looks embarrassing to the scientific community, and in general there is a much more careful attitude and methodology.
Science is better than it was in the 1950s, in ways that can be demonstrated; here too we have to historicize, to be aware of change and progress. In that longer account, Brunner's books were one part of the corrective to the 1950s moment of hubris, joining the stories of Rachel Carson and many other sources of critique from all directions.

There's always going to be the need for this kind of self-examination and corrective action. We are better now at doing science, partly because we're better at doing theory, and partly because science fiction retold all the old stories about pride going before a fall. However, we're still allowing capitalism to shape our actions and wreck the Earth, meaning our bio-infrastructure, meaning ourselves. So our culture is not yet scientific enough; when it becomes so, we will be making more rapid progress toward both justice and sustainability, as the two are stranded parts of the same project. At least this is the story I'm trying to tell.

Of Further Interest

GERRY CANAVAN

What follows is an annotated list of selected
SF
works (very broadly defined) that stake out some position on questions of ecological futurity and the environment. Not all of the authors and creators listed necessarily understood themselves to be producing “ecological
SF
,” and by no means are all of these texts equally recommended from either a political or an aesthetic perspective. All, however, are at least potentially of interest to readers interested in the way
SF
has both drawn from and influenced ecological thinking and environmentalist politics.

Literature and Nonfiction

Douglas Adams,
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
. Earth is demolished to build an interstellar highway in this timeless satire of progress, technology, capitalism, bureaucracy, life, the universe, and everything. Adams's concern for the environment is also evident in his elegiac
Last Chance to See
(1989), cowritten with Mark Carwadine, on endangered species across the globe.

Richard Adams,
Watership Down
(1972). Rabbits are people, too.

Chris Adrian,
The Children's Hospital
(2006). A hospital must shut its doors and become a completely self-sustaining entity following a global flood in this American magical realist novel.

Brian Aldiss,
Non-Stop
(1958;
Starship
in the United States). The novel explores life inside the artificial environment of a generational starship that has lost all memory of its mission or even that it is a spaceship at all. Aldiss fans might also be interested in
Hothouse
(1962), set on a hot future Earth whose new temperature has caused the entire planet to be completely overrun with plant life, as well as
White Mars, or, the Mind Set Free
(1999), his quasi-reply to Kim Stanley Robinson's
Mars
trilogy.

Ibn al-Nafis,
Theologus Autodidactus
(c. 1268–77). One of the earliest
SF
texts ends with an apocalyptic vision of radical climate change.