We Need More Utopian Fiction

At a panel event themed on climate fiction, with my heart pounding, I raised my hand for a chance to pose a question to the author panelists. By the time I was handed the microphone, my limbs were shaking and my memory blacked out, so I don’t know if I said exactly what I’d been practicing in my head. But, the gist of my inquiry was: As our emerging technologies mirror, and are perhaps inspired by fiction, do authors have an obligation to write optimistic stories? 

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For The New Yorker, celebrated optimistic science fiction writer Ted Chiang recently wrote a critique of AI, commenting, “The task before us is to imagine ways for technology to move us toward a golden age without bringing about another Great Depression first.” 

Yes, and—not everyone has the imagination of a fiction writer. 

The Market for Optimistic Sci-Fi

Optimistic fiction exists in the sci-fi subgenre of solarpunk, which imagines future worlds with ecologically sustainable technologies. Soft Star Magazine is a literary journal devoted to optimistic science fiction. 

But, these stories remain on the fringes, with dystopian themes continuing to dominate. Fiction’s influence goes even wider through adaptations. According to television consultancy 3 Vision, only 46% of TV shows are original concepts, and nearly a quarter are adapted from literary sources.

Fiction serves many purposes, among them: entertainment, moral lessons, escapism. A dystopia is somewhat like a prophetic warning about what could happen, if we continue on a path. Some dystopias feel like a grasp for hope, despite the destruction already done to the planet. A mad scientist creating an optimal new species to replace humans, like in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. Living in underground bunkers, like in Hugh Howey’s Silo series. 

Utopias are a complementary approach. In a utopia, we break out of what we think is possible in order to feel into what we really want. 

The Utility of Optimism

Ideas are powerful. An idea can inspire action, movement, and investments. Why not spend more time imagining better outcomes, and in the process, pique the interest of innovators into making it happen?

Kim Stanley Robinson, who’s spoken at the United Nations’ climate summit about implementing some ideas from his optimistic fiction, calls writing utopias “lonely work.” 

When I told a developmental editor I was having a hard time finding comparative titles for my optimistic cli-fi manuscript, she joked, “Oh, right, where are all the climate crisis beach reads?”

Yes, I see the irony. But just as much as Robinson’s deeply-researched hard sci-fi is persuasive to policy makers, I also see an opportunity, and even an imperative, to inspire mainstream readers to fall in love with a sustainable lifestyle through fiction that celebrates harmony with nature. The current climate crisis requires both policy change and individual action. 

When fiction does imagine an optimistic outcome, like in Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, it usually begins with some sort of cataclysmic or mass extinction event. My own in-process novel kills off a big chunk of the global human population before the characters are able to invent a sustainable lifestyle, something I’m now reconsidering. 

Feminist utopias follow suit. Author Sandra Newman, writing for The Guardian about trans erasure in the genre, observes a common problematic premise: When those assigned male at birth are gone from a plague, the remaining “female societies are always better.” Modern renditions of the theme have evolved only by allowing a small number of those assigned male at birth to survive, and placing the catastrophic event in recent-enough history to make space for grieving. 

It seems we lack the imagination to conceive of female empowerment in a world where men still exist. Of course, our optimism here may be squashed with the entirety of recorded human history. One exception is the movie Barbie, which manages to make female power possible in an alternate universe, and only so long as that world stays protected from the timeline we’re currently in. 

Filmmaker Brit Marling also turned to writing sci-fi and fantasy to access a part of her imagination that could conceive of free women who are not either killed or drained of their femininity, making sensitivity a strength of her protagonist in the Netflix show, The OA. 

In his newsletter, author Matt Bell considers the currently pessimistic landscape that would lead  his climate novel to be labeled as “hopeful,” when it is “partly about the unintended extinction of the human race as we know it.” In searching for ways to write about a better future, he suggests finding a model in Rebecca Solnit’s 2009 book A Paradise Built in Hell, which recounts the best of humanity arising in times of disaster. Consequently, Solnit’s book was a key influence for my own cli-fi novel. 

How Fiction Impacts Real Life

A pushback to optimistic fiction may be that it’s wishful thinking. Fiction is, by definition, not real. But, how believable does a story need to be? When I build a fictional world, I aim for emotional resonance. Some things resonate because we’ve seen them over and over again, not because they’re how reality, or human nature, actually works. The technologies in mainstream sci-fi are often not scientifically sound (see: time travel), but the worldbuilding has to be consistent and compelling enough for readers to latch onto the story. 

Most notably, fiction has a cyclical relationship with reality, in which things seemingly beyond imagination, once captured in fiction, served as inspiration for the next generation of scientists and inventors. This argument is made most compellingly by climate reporter Kendra Pierre-Louis, who says, despite historical evidence that this isn’t always the case, it’s a commonly-held belief that “humans have an innate tendency to destroy their environment.” The story is repeated in entertainment media and reinforced by technology investments into space programs in search of new frontier. One key exception Pierre-Louis points to is Marvel film Black Panther’s Wakanda, a story that was influenced by indigenous cultures. 

What would an optimistic climate vision be?

One challenge of a utopia is that so much of storytelling relies on plot, and plot relies on a fearsome antagonist, so we wind up with evil corporation overlords, or at best, natural disasters that were only caused by humans accidentally. Finding the good in humans and also hooking a reader turns out to be a utopia writer’s dilemma.

Without many models, it’s up to a new generation of writers to make one, blending inspiration from the best of humanity with ideas that have yet to take root. Reconciliation with nature. Policy makers consulting with indigenous leaders. Harvard dropouts relocating to an organic farm and purifying a lake by rehabilitating an endangered species of fish all the while navigating a love triangle. 

Imagination Precedes Reality

Climate fear paralyzes action. I want to suggest that, while worst-case scenario climate stories are valid criticisms, they are having the opposite effect as intended. They’re warning us of the proverbial iceberg all the while steering us right into it. 

We’ve all heard the saying, If you can dream it, you can do it. The reverse is perhaps more convincingly true: We can only do what we’ve been able to dream. 

At the climate event, the panelists answered my question with a respectful, “Don’t tell me what to write.” I can get on board with that sentiment. We need every voice and every perspective to write their truth. 

So now, I’ll offer this as an invitation. Because, if fiction writers can’t imagine something better, who can? 

Fellow writer, free your mind! Take my course, Meditation for Writer’s Block