Climate Change, Geoengineering, and Science Fiction

Andrew Mathews
Anthropology
UC Santa Cruz

Matthew Wolf-Meyer
Anthropology
UC Santa Cruz

How has imagining the world as a unified biogeochemical system come to inspire fictional and technological imaginaries of terraformation and geoengineering? These projects seek to make habitable worlds by acting directly upon geochemical cycles, through gargantuan projects such as ocean fertilization, geochemical carbon capture, or cloud whitening. This conference invited eminent science fiction writers, environmental and social scientists, and humanists to reflect on practices of speculative world making in the face of climate change. The conference aimed to foster an interdisciplinary conversation about how stories of possible geochemical and other futures become material in making emergent livable worlds.