The Near Future in Twenty-First-Century Fiction - Climate, Retreat and Revolution

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.

List of contents

1. The domestic near future 1: renewing time; 2. The domestic near future 2: bodies; 3. The state of art: creativity and scale; 4. Diagnostic dead-ends: seeking the emergent form; 5. The art of history: Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Moon; 6. Identity and power: historical returns and breaks; 7. In search of revolution: territory and history; 8. The genre of revolution: Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140.

About the author

David Sergeant is Associate Professor in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature at the University of Plymouth. He is the author of a monograph on Rudyard Kipling, three poetry collections, and essays in journals including Novel, Genre, and Twentieth-Century Literature. He is co-editor of volumes on Robert Burns and Doris Lessing.

Product details

• Authors: Sergeant David
• Publisher: Cambridge Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 31.12.2025
• EAN: 9781009279925
• ISBN: 978-1-009-27992-5
• Weight: 250 g
• Illustrations: Worked examples or Exercises
• Series: Cambridge Studies in Twenty-First-Century Literature and Culture
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Art history; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), FICTION / Literary, Nature / Environmental Conservation & Protection, LITERARY CRITICISM / General, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Environmental Policy, ART / History / General, History of art / art & design styles, The environment, History of Art, Environmentalist thought & ideology, Literary studies: general, Science / Environmental Science, Environmentalist thought and ideology, Art forms, The Arts: art forms, Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general