A burning conversation about the planet

Greetings, new subscribers!

Thank you so much for singing up for The Science of Fiction before the first “real” post even dropped. As a teaser of what’s to come, I wanted to share a recent conversation I had about our burning planet with io9 co-founders Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders for their podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. This award-winning podcast is all about how science fiction can help us make sense of real world problems in science and society, so naturally, I’m very into it!

Recent events provided an eerie backdrop for our discussion. The week that we spoke, virtually the entire West Coast was choking on wildfire smoke and San Francisco’s skyline would have fit right in on the set of Blade Runner 2049. As we get into on the show, there are no easy fixes to the West’s burgeoning fire crisis, which is being fueled by humanity’s continued encroachment on wild spaces, the warming and drying effects of climate change, and a legacy of well intentioned but ultimately misguided fire suppression policies. We discuss the rise of ecofascism and how science fiction can help combat it, by showing us futures in which we learn to live within the boundaries of nature instead of constantly attempting to dominate it. We also speculate about what the Green New Deal would look like if it were a pie.

Listen to the full episode above. After you’ve done that, why not go read the first installment of Annalee’s newsletter The Hypothesis, in which they explore what a volcanically-vitrified brain can teach us about neuroscience and history?

See you all on October 30!

Top image: Christopher Michel/Flickr