With each new book, the prolific sci-fi writer Kim Stanley Robinson presents a deeply researched climate-change scenario, focussing not just on environmental havoc but on solutions that might stop it.
Last summer, the science-fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson went on a backpacking trip with some friends. They headed into the High Sierra, hiking toward Deadman Canyon—a fifty-mile walk through challenging terrain. Now sixty-nine, Robinson has been hiking and camping in the Sierras for half a century. At home, in Davis, California, he tracks his explorations on a wall-mounted map, its topography thick with ink.
Climate change has long figured in Robinson’s plots. “Antarctica,” a novel from 1997, revolves around glaciologists at a fictional version of McMurdo Station, the principal U.S. outpost in Antarctica. In the two-thousands, climate started to become his central subject; his wonky brand of sci-fi turned out to be well suited to a reality in which the future depends on fast, unlikely, and coördinated global reform.
After reading the novel, I contacted Robinson to propose writing about him. He immediately suggested that we go backpacking in the Sierras—his “heart’s home.” I’m in good shape but not outdoorsy; I was a little intimidated by what he had in mind, an ultralight off-trail jaunt near twelve thousand feet. But I also liked the idea of entrusting myself to the experience and judgment of the only writer who had offered me some hope about our collective future.
One of Robinson’s first Sierra excursions was over Bishop Pass. We retraced the route on our first day. At ten thousand feet, the air was clear. The seven-mile hike to the pass was easy. A groomed path ascended gently along a series of lakes; the terrain was desktop-background beautiful, with sky shining in the water and morning sun in the pines. Our packs were surreally light. We had no tents, no water, no stoves—I’d carried more with me to work.
Frank invites people from the neighborhood to take shelter inside his clinic, where his generator powers a window A.C. unit. The rooms are soon packed with families. But then armed men steal his generator and air-conditioner. Someone suggests taking refuge in a nearby lake, where crowds have gathered; stepping into the sun-blasted water, Frank can feel that it is hotter than body temperature. He notices that some of the people are “redder than the rest”; they soon die.
The map on the inside of your hotel-room door becomes suddenly riveting once the alarm goes off. This is one reason “The Ministry for the Future” can wring suspense out of financial negotiations. But the novel’s concreteness is also compelling because it puts into relief the strangeness of our outlook. Whenever we stare directly at the mess we’re in, the solutions we think of seem implausible.
We followed a little more slowly. Robinson, dressed all in khaki, grinned from behind his sunglasses as he climbed. It was fun, fluid work, made easier by our ultralight packing and the leverage of our poles. Soon, the pass came into view—a broad, inclined, rocky field stretching between two peaks. We seemed to hike toward the cloudless sky. Biagioli waited for us, Dusy Basin opening up behind him.
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