ABSTRACT
Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 is a new kind of Anthropocene novel called “cli-fi” (climate fiction), a genre focused on the projected and/or actual effects of anthropogenic climate change. His novel focuses on the complex interconnections between economics and ecology that drive both our globalized world and global warming, emphasizing the relationship between capitalism and climate change. In New York 2140, accumulating metaphors of a nation and world drowning in debt literally produce a world drowning in rising sea levels. Robinson demonstrates how living in the Anthropocene means that we can never really escape the past, as it remains materially embedded in the waters, atmosphere, and economic infrastructure of the present—and the future.
