The Near Future in Twenty-First-Century Fiction

This book shows how novels and films set in the near future can shed light both on our failures of imagination before the challenges of climate change, and possible ways forward in the face of planetary disaster. It will appeal to researchers working in twenty-first century literary studies, climate and literature, and environmental humanities.

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A growing awareness of climate change and looming planetary crisis has put unprecedented pressure on the near future, leading to an increasing amount of fiction being set there. But what do these disparate works have in common, other than their temporal setting? And what can the imagination of the near future tell us about where we live now? The Near Future in 21st Century Fiction ranges across novels and films to reveal how our contemporary near future splits between two divergent paths. One seeks to retreat from climate change and the disruption it threatens to affluent lifestyles; the other tries to imagine new forms of community, and radical change, but struggles to locate a genre adequate to the task. It in this struggle, however, that we begin to glimpse the outlines of an emergent near future form: a revolution fit for the Anthropocene.