Titelangaben
Hannah, Matthew G. ; Mayer, Sylvia:
Scale and Speculative Futures in Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker and Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312.
In: Cortiel, Jeanne ; Hanke, Christine ; Hutta, Jan Simon ; Milburn, Colin
(Hrsg.):
Practices of Speculation : Modeling, Embodiment, Figuration. -
Bielefeld
: transcript
,
2020
. - S. 191-208
. - (Culture & Theory
; 202
)
ISBN 978-3-8394-4751-2
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839447512-009
Abstract
The essay discusses two science fiction novels that engage with contemporary key technologies: Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker (1980), which speculates about possible effects of nuclear technology, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312 (2012), which speculates about possible consequences of computational, biomedical, and geoengineering technologies. It focuses on the spatiality of the future worlds presented by these novels and demonstrate how “scale” as a narrative strategy draws attention to the relevance of spatial and scalar structuring in fictional future worlds—and, by implication, in nonfictional worlds, as well. The re-scaled future worlds of Riddley Walker and 2312 shed light on the dynamics of the social constitution of both space and time and on the potential hazards of technological modernization.