Science Fiction is the Realism of Our Time – Kim Stanley Robinson | BLOOM

Throughout his writing, Kim Stanley Robinson has been preoccupied with testing the scenarios that await us as an extension of the climate and biodiversity crisis.

His writing is like a laboratory that methodically examines the possibilities that man has to avert disaster – and to deal with it once it has occurred. His large and detailed novels, based on years of intense research and dialogue with scientists, are about everything from the colonization of Mars to the flooding of New York.

In Robinson's latest novel, the critically acclaimed bestseller 'The Ministry for the Future', we find ourselves in the near future where global warming causes a heat wave that kills 20 million people in an Indian city.

In response to the situation, the UN creates a ministry on behalf of future generations, the Future Ministry, which has to contend with both climate campaigners and capitalists.

Robinson is known for his ability to use complex scientific research as the focal point of his grand narratives, often containing philosophical and technical passages on everything from politics and economics to glaciology and geology.

The heroes of his novels are the scientists who work at the frontier of our knowledge and who, by virtue of their research, help us to become wiser about ourselves and our surroundings.

In his works, Robinson insists that science fiction as a genre can help us understand the future that awaits us. Because, as he has previously said, the world has gradually begun to look like a piece of science fiction literature - and therefore science fiction is not so much a far-off and fabulous genre as it is the realism of our time.

Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the world's most acclaimed science fiction authors, best known for his award-winning Mars trilogy. His novels deal with man's relationship with nature, the climate crisis and the sciences. He is a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of California in San Diego and studied in the 1970s under the author Ursula K. Le Guin.

In 2020, he published the climate novel 'The Ministry for the Future', and in May 2022, 'The High Sierra: A Love Story' was published - a large-scale narrative about his annual hikes in the American Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Robinson visited Denmark for the first time for Bloom 2022, and the video interview was created in connection with his visit.

Photographer: Rie Skou
Music: Jeppe Lauritsen