Transnational readings in the Trumpocene: Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140 and Chris Beckett's America City.

Abstract

This article discusses two climate fiction novels-one British, one American-that were written in the runup to two major political events on either side of the Atlantic in 2016-the Brexit referendum and the first election of Donald Trump to the US presidency-and considers how their focus on a future climate emergency serves as an apt reflection on the mutual reinforcements of neoliberalism, precarization, and far-right populism. By looking at these two novels together through the lens of the Capitalocene (Moore), the Trumpocene (Colebrook) and the "critical utopia" (Moylan), I consider how the future climate catastrophes that these novels imagine can also serve to highlight the deep political implications of an advancing sense of precariousness as a result of climate exposure. As Newell suggests, climate catastrophes are equally likely "to be used as opportunities to advance and entrench socially regressive forms of politics and unsustainable trajectories […] as inspire forms of 'disaster collectivism,' where acts of community and solidarity flourish" ( Newell, 2020: 157). As novels that are deeply concerned with the politics of the present, I consider how Robinson's and Beckett's novels are inspired by different utopian inflections that, nonetheless, lead to similar diagnoses: that the worst effects of climate change are inevitable because humanity seems bent on its current trajectory. In doing so they showcase the potential of near-future science fiction to make legible the immediate political, social and environmental implications of ongoing climate change.