The Near Future in Twenty-First-Century Fiction
Climate, Retreat and Revolution
Will be published approx. on 8. January 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
237 pages
978-1-009-27992-5 (ISBN)
Description
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.
Reviews / Votes
'David Sergeant works carefully through his chosen texts and key textual evidence to draw conclusions about their ideological commitments. The analyses here can be brilliant; what he manages to pull out of these texts is revelatory.' Amy J. Elias, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville 'David Sergeant's Fictions of the Near Future makes a crucial intervention in scholarship on utopian fiction, speculative fiction, and climate change fiction by demonstrating the contemporary political relevance of the near future as it appears in novels across a range of genres and styles' Rachel Greenwald Smith, Saint Louis University '... this study is most impressive in the way that it combines granular close readings with a form of 'distant reading', allowing speculative fiction's broad patterns to emerge alongside its finer details.' Arin Keeble, The Times Literary Supplement 'We need to get beyond apocalypse novels and zombie tales in picturing the future: Sergeant in this academic but still readable work, helps us see patterns in what's now a flood of fiction.' Nickie Aiken, Publishers Association's 'Summer Reading List for Parliamentarians' '... a nuanced and careful treatment of a proposed emergent genre, featuring extensive research, clever readings of texts, and interesting intellectual propositions.' Elizabeth Callaway, Genre: Forms of Discourse and CultureMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
322 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-009-27992-5 (9781009279925)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
12/2022
Cambridge University Press
€102.50
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
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.
Content
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.