The Realism of Speculative Fiction: Planetary Polyphony and Scale in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future

Abstract

In “Thinking in SF Mode” (2021), Isabelle Stengers distinguishes between philosophical thought experiments (such as Maxwell’s demon [1867] or Searle’s Chinese room) and the ability of speculative fiction to test hypothesizes in fully developed storyworlds, arguing for the heuristic power of fictional density and immersion. We push this hypothesis further by examining what embodied reading brings to the political and ecological exploration of terraforming (geoengineering) in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy (1992–1996).