Gritwork: globalised infrastructure and rogue geoengineering in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future and Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock

[Geoengineering News]

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13825577.2025.2485953#abstract

Authors

Burak Sezer, Judith Rauscher & Nora Castle

Published online: 11 Jun 2025

https://doi.org/10.1080/13825577.2025.2485953

Abstract

This article investigates the portrayal of short-term technofixes versus long-term institutional climate action in two recent works of near-future science fiction: Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (2020) and Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock (2021). Both novels depict a variety of environmental actors, ranging from individuals, activist groups, and nation states to international institutions. In doing so, they interrogate the efficacy and legitimacy of schemes of solar geoengineering in light of the increasingly devastating impact of global warming on critical energy infrastructures. In both novels, infrastructural schemes designed to slow down the effects of climate change are undertaken by governmental as well as non-governmental actors with and without political legitimation, actions we conceptualise as “gritwork.” Instead of merely dismissing technofixes in favour of more sustainable projects of solar geoengineering, these narratives, we argue, raise pertinent questions about environmental justice and political participation in times of global crisis, highlighting the complex and often conflicting (geo)political, legal, and ethical dimensions of debates surrounding effective versus ineffective, short-term versus long-term, and democratically legitimised versus “rogue” climate action.

Source: Taylor & Francis