Of Time Loops and Derivatives: Christopher Nolan's Interstellar and the Logic of the Futures Market

Abstract

AS W I L L B E O B V I O U S T O T H E M O S T C A S U A L V I E W E R, S P E C U L A T I V E F I C T I O N of the twenty-first century has been characterized by an extraordinary proliferation of apocalyptic narratives, all featuring the end of the world as we know it. Sometimes the end comes through a gradual fraying of the social fabric, as in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower series (1993; 1998) or Edan Lapucki’s California (2015), until society is reduced to a Hobbesian world ruled by roving bands of thugs, arsonists, and cannibals. Or maybe it’s a nuclear conflict that initiates Armageddon, as in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2007) or the Hughes brothers’ The Book of Eli (2010). Some visions of the end, like Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam trilogy (2002–14) or Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl (2009), feature a biogenetic-induced ecological catastrophe. In others, various threats to planetary survival mutually reinforce one another; in John Howard Kunstler’s World Made by Hand series (2009; 2011; 2015) or Omar El