Summary: Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | John Clute ‘Truth Is Consequence’ This talk will examine, briefly, three fictional/semifictional texts published in the last few months – by Francis Spufford, Ian McEwan and Ralph Nader – to see what clues they give as to how to narrate ‘planetary’ truths – truths about the shape of the near future – so that they can be conceivably acted upon. How do these three texts succeed or fail in the test of making truth consequential? I will end with a peroration drawn from my recent brooding on the matter, to the effect that most of the literatures of the fantastic – what I continue to call ‘fantastika’ as a whole – have shown scant grasp of the complexity of the task of making a lived-in future storyable. John Clute is a science-fiction writer, Director of the Department of Story Future in the Centre for the Future at Slavonice, and co-author of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993) and The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997).
