SARINA : Effective storytelling is a powerful device . How do you see your role as a storyteller ?
KIM : What I ’ m doing is what I call “ utopian science fiction .” I ’ ve been doing that for 30 years now since Pacific Edge , trying all kinds of different angles . Ministry for the Future has caused me to realize that people want a story of things going well in these next 30 years because it seems so dire and it is dangerous . The novel gives you a framework — a vision of us dodging the mass extinction event . Then you can imagine that your little project , whatever you personally are engaged in , is part of a bigger project and will slot in like bricks in a wall . And if everybody does that , we could be okay . A utopian novel gives people a sense that we could get there , or it would be like this if we got there . Hope is a moral obligation . Optimism is a choice .
SARINA : “ Hope is a moral obligation ” is going to be my mantra from now on .
CATHERYNNE : Part of the power of writing for younger readers is helping them see that empathy is a superpower . With my writing , I make this “ little empathy bomb ” and I lob it into the future , and I hope that it goes off for somebody who can build a path .
SARINA : I love the idea of books as little empathy bombs so much . I can honestly say that certain books have changed me for the better thanks to writers such as you . How has writing changed your own life ?
KIM : Ministry for the Future has changed my career . Because of it , I ’ m now doing consultations . I spent 12 days at COP26 ( United Nations Climate Change Conference ) in Glasgow , speaking multiple times a day . I ’ m off to India to do an event with the Dalai Lama . For a while there , I have to admit it was scaring me because I ’ m just a novelist . But recently when people come to me with a question or a hope , I can pass them along to someone who really does know . So , I have become like a networker , a bridge , a node , or a bridge between actual experts that as good as they are , this world is so big , they didn ’ t know about each other .
DAVID : Writing changed the projection of my life . While studying for my doctorate in astronomy , I wrote as a hobby . The success of my book helped me pay my way through grad school . And my second novel ... well , it was a hit . I ’ m still with NASA ’ s Innovative Advanced Concepts program . I give futurist consultation for defense agencies and businesses . I ’ m also running this series of young adult novels and mentoring young writers . There ’ s a role of science in art and art in science . That was my hope when I helped establish the Arthur C . Clarke Center for Human Imagination at UCSD .
Writers h ave the power to transport us . They give us a way to close our eyes and see futures that have yet to come , reveal alternate history to show how one decision can alter the path of many , take us to the stars and the bottom of the ocean , and capture worlds woven in dreams .
And their stories matter . The need for stories and the need to tell stories have been embedded in the human psyche since we learned to communicate with one another . They ’ re integral to our human existence .
UCSD — with its breadth requirements of science alongside arts and humanities , professors who are pioneers in their fields teaching young minds to think for themselves , and openness to change — has fostered many sci-fi and speculative fiction writers . In turn , they have been , in their own ways , trying to preempt horrible fictional scenarios from becoming reality , helping young minds form empathy toward other humans , and showing us alternate paths to a utopian world . Lofty goals . Optimistic goals . Necessary goals .
This type of teaching and learning is exactly why I am now a writer of speculative fiction . And that ’ s what ’ s in the water . •
38 FALL 2022