The Role of Technology in Climate Fiction and Beyond
(A Manifesto of Sorts) by Lauren C. Teffeau
“Technology will not save us.”
That has been the current drumbeat as we sail past the 1.5-degree warming threshold, protesters become increasingly intransigent, and the future that capitalism requires of us becomes increasingly stark. We cannot keep going as we have. We know this, even as the oil and gas industries do all they can to keep our politics fraught, our single-use plastics abundant, and our hopelessness high so they can continue to ransack our planet.
Surely there’s some magic bullet to fix everything. That’s how it works in stories, right? Our stories? Some invention somewhere will change the trajectory of our world for the better. Or for the worse. Or let’s just say, “It’s complicated,” like everything else that comes with late-stage capitalism.
Once upon a time, I was a university researcher examining how and why people adopted new technologies, which was a formative experience not only for me but the fiction I write. My debut, the solarpunk/cyberpunk mash-up Implanted, was a direct result of researching how people use internet resources and navigate the digital information environment. Similarly, my novella A Hunger with No Name, which comes out later this year from University of Tampa Press, also explores the role of technology and its intersection with environmental themes. I have a lot of opinions on how people incorporate technology into their stories, which has only strengthened with the time I’ve spent sifting through slush for a semi-pro speculative fiction market, reading the published work in our field, and critiquing my colleagues’ stories that are still in development as well as those from newbie writers.
What follows is an examination of all the ways the role of technology can and should play in our story worlds, pitfalls to avoid, and what you should be thinking about when inventing a new solution to save us all.
***
If there is one takeaway from this essay, it is: Technology does not exist in a vacuum.
For a technological breakthrough to become ubiquitous (which immediately begs the question for whom? Nation-states, industries, economic classes?), a lot of things need to have happened “right" in that technology’s discovery and rollout that either get glossed over or, worse, the author never even considered.
A common plot device in many science fiction stories is depicting a world just like ours with one thing changed. Sometimes, as in alternate history, it’s an event that shakes out differently than it did in our reality. Other times, it’s a technology that does or doesn’t exist, and the story stems from there. Too often these stories treat that technology as a gimmick because their writers don’t consider why a technology gets adopted, resulting in shallow explorations of all the ways such a change would ripple out into the world. Treat technological breakthroughs in your stories like the miracles they are, surprisingly rare and wholly unique.
Which brings us to: Technology is not frictionless.
Wouldn’t you love to live in a world where the obvious superiority of a certain technology was immediately understood, and decision makers and stakeholders at every level worked in concert together to make it happen? Me too. Instead, we live in a world where the technical superiority of a product at one company gets outgunned by the corporate coffers and marketing strategies of their competitors. Where one bad product rollout could mean a delay of years or decades. Where a new technology is too expensive or requires a lot of maintenance or technical know-how to implement. Where legacy systems fight back against scrappy upstarts (oil and gas, I’m looking at you).
Sometimes the consumer base just doesn’t get why they should start using something (case in point: how long it took to convince the American public they should use deodorant). Or perhaps the appetite for new products and technologies has plummeted because we simply don’t trust their value anymore out of exhaustion with things like planned obsolescence, licenses and subscription requirements, right to repair obstacles, or the addition of features no one wants or cares about.
Consider the William Gibson quote,
“The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.”
The elites can afford to invest in new technologies, regular people cannot until they meet some minimum threshold of accessibility (what is it for your story?). The same thing can be said for companies and countries. I often see Western writers using technologies in their stories that already exist (often in wealthy Asian countries), and it’s clear from the text they think they created it. Be sure you’ve done your homework on any new tech you develop for your stories. And if you do find it already exists, don’t be discouraged—you can learn so much from how it was developed, brought to market, and is currently being used and then use that as fodder for your stories.
All technology has resource demands and byproducts, which is another way of saying, No technology is perfect.
As technologies are discovered, refined, produced, used, and disposed of, consider the types of energy requirements as well as the organic and inorganic compounds that are needed to create them, plus the pollution, waste products, or scrap material that results. We’ve seen the world jockeying for control of sources of rare earth elements and lithium for the production of microchips. We are realizing just how much of our waterways are polluted by tire dust and fuel leakages. Nuclear power is among the safest modes of energy generation with a carbon footprint on par with solar and wind technology, and yet we still haven’t found a way to grapple with the radioactive waste it produces. That new smart fabric top might keep you cool as the world gets hotter, but how much water and plastic went into its manufacture? Knock-on effects are inevitable, but all too often I read stories that have the most simplistic of causes and effects for the technology in their story worlds. What I would say to those writers, and say to you now, is don’t overlook these potential source of conflict or complications for your plot.
If that’s not high stakes enough for you, keep in mind: Technology is not apolitical. Who controls it, who funds it, who makes it…these are all things to examine and explore in your story world. Politicians who make laws and enforce regulations are the most obvious, but you can go beyond that. Think about who controls the zoning for a power plant or factory and who gets a say in where it goes. These situations are ripe for corruption, plucky lawyers and mistakes in legal filings, backroom deals and desperate bargains. Which companies or research departments consistently get contracts? The ones best suited to do the work? Or the ones with the best network?
Also keep in mind what does it signal about groups or individuals when they adopt a certain technology? That they have the means to do so or are eager to convince others they are? Consider what are the intended, targeted uses of a technology or product compared non-targeted or unauthorized uses. The people who co-opt a certain technology—your hackers or activists or counterculture icons or even your meth-dealing chemistry professors—have their own agendas too which can complicate matters even further.
Ultimately, never forget that: Technology reflects the values of the society that creates it. Whether that system is capitalism or the military-industrial complex or your solarpunk commune, their values, their priorities, their abilities must be in line with whatever problem that technology is intended to solve. And if it isn’t, how do those systems plan to harness it to bring it in line with those values or hamper its development because it deviates from them?
***
I’ve spent a lot of time in the paragraphs above talking about how technology and new developments currently function in our world, but now, I’d like to shift gears to how they should function for a more equitable, sustainable, ethical future. That means moving away from our boom-and-bust focus on technological breakthroughs and profit-at-all-costs mindset. Instead, we should be thinking of technology across its entire lifecycle of utility. By which I mean all the factors that go into its development, implementation, use, and eventually its decommission as we discover new ways of doing things or the new products that render the original technology no longer necessary.
So much of our technology is iterative: incremental improvements on what came before whether it is a technique, process, or product. We must start to ask ourselves does a new technology demonstrate enough of an improvement over established ones to justify its implementation. Will it provide a greater benefit to more people than it does currently? Does its use warrant costly and/or wasteful replacement of the current technology? Is the new version repairable or not require propriety software or equipment to use? Does it use less water, create less waste, pollute fewer things? By adopting a lifecycle approach to technology, we can better assess the impact a technology will have at all stages, necessitating greater honesty and transparency around issues like accessibility, material usage levels, environmental impacts, and byproducts over time.
Some discoveries are truly paradigm-shifting, the disruptive kind we hear most often about in the media with either a “sky is falling” or “next big thing” framing. We must start to ask ourselves whether a disruptive technology actually improves things for a society or just shareholders of a particular company. If it’s the later, there needs to be more intentional planning to manage the potential fallout from such impactful technologies. One example would be creating ways from the outset to give displaced workers the training they need to support the new technology or be transferred to another field instead of being left hanging. We’ve already see some of this in terms of wind farms actively recruiting technicians from the oil and gas industry. Another example would be actionable roadmaps for the responsible retirement of the products or systems already in place that are now rendered obsolete that can be implemented during the rollout for the new technology.
By looking at the technology ecosystem as a whole, it’s clear we need to be doing a lot more work to plan for the end-state of a particular technology. Our landscape is littered with remnants of technologies that weren’t properly disposed of or left to molder, abandoned somewhere that’s leeching into our water table or finding its way into our food chain. This means formalizing and supporting a whole new field focused on ways to dismantle, reclaim, or remediate old technology without kicking the can down the road to the next generation to solve.
In the future, I’d like to see a large segment of our technology that isn’t focused on the creation of new things but the management of the old and out-of-date. We are already seeing some of this with some of our technological advances (plastic-eating fungi, anyone?), but we need so much more, not only to clean up what came before but mitigate what is still to come. If those technologies were valued as much as our breakthroughs are, just think of what more could we accomplish?
***
It’s easy to feel discouraged at the state of things when the much-touted recycling of plastics turns out to be a scam, carbon credits are meaningless, replanting trees is a lot more complicated than it sounds, scaling up carbon capture devices is spotty at best, and there’s no guarantee the political will is there to make the radical changes needed to stave off the worst of the coming climate apocalypse. But renewables are up just about everywhere, there are greater numbers of EVs on the road every day, and more and more people are interrogating their roles in late-stage capitalism.
We should all be taking a hard look at the values of the systems we support directly or indirectly through the politicians we vote for, the products we buy, and the causes we advocate for, because that has a huge impact on the direction our technology takes over the course of our lifetime. Even though it can feel hard to opt-out from our increasingly polluted, parasitic society, we can all contribute in to our collective future by focusing on harm reduction, no matter how small the scale.
The truth is we need not just one new technology, but a whole host of others, to face the future together. (And preferably ones sanctioned by world scientists and not billionaires with a god complex.) Just like there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to the climate crisis, there’s no one technology that will fix everything. But I hope what you’ve read here will help you evaluate the ones that we do have, support the ones on the horizon, and advocate for ones that will help us build a better future, through your stories and beyond.
Read Implanted now.
Lauren C. Teffeau was born and raised on the East Coast, educated in the South, employed in the Midwest, and now lives and dreams in the Southwest. When she was younger, she poked around in the back of wardrobes, tried to walk through mirrors, and always kept an eye out for secret passages, fairy rings, and messages from aliens. She was disappointed. Now, she writes to cope with her ordinary existence. Her novel Implanted (2018, Angry Robot) was shortlisted for the 2019 Compton Crook award for best first SF/F/H novel. Her novella A Hunger with No Name is forthcoming from University of Tampa Press in 2024. Her short fiction can be found a variety of professional and semi-pro speculative fiction magazines and anthologies.
Literary Agent Database
The Climate Fiction Writers League website now has a database of literary agents open to receiving climate fiction. If you know of any others, please email info [at] climate-fiction [dot] org.
Solutions Spotlight
Today, Brianna Craft shares an extract from YA novel We Don't Have Time for This, about a group of teen activists. The extract shows the value of politics in climate activism.
Mr. Mendoza responds. “The Environmental Justice Club is just borrowing the creative space to start preparing for the end of the year rally.”
“Ah, that’s right,” Principal Banner says. “A collaboration with the pep squad.”
“And several other clubs, yes.” Mr. Mendoza nods.
“All geared toward school spirit and celebrating another year at Lakewood High.”
The room goes very quiet. Mr. Mendoza looks lost for words.
Isa clears her throat. “Well, it is a coming together, sir.” She smiles. “To showcase all the ways LHS clubs engage with environmental justice.”
Mr. Banner looks between her and Mr. Mendoza. Isa pokes me in the ribs.
“That’s right,” I say. “The pep squad has screen printed some secondhand shirts to sell. The Future Foresters club and the fire department are doing a talk about how to prepare for wildfire season.”
“The FFA are selling drought-resistant seeds,” Isa adds.
“And the diversity club is raising awareness about environmental racism,” I say. “Environmental racism.”
Principal Banner’s eyes have taken on a disapproving stare. “We’ve certainly seen an uptick of social media comments that bring this to mind. It’s a shame the school’s profiles have been generating so much negative attention. And the clubs are selling things to raise money for . . . the school?”
“Well.” I hesitate and look at Mr. Mendoza. He’s got a hand pressed to his temple, but he nods once. I guess there’s no point in trying to hide things. “Actually, we’re raising money for a mutual aid fund for wildfire victims. And to appeal city council’s ruling to continue with the natural gas pipeline.”
Principal Banner’s eyebrows raise. “You want to hold an environmental justice rally now, to raise money for a political campaign?”
“Lakewood City Council is a nonpartisan body, sir,” Mr. Mendoza says. “Petitioning them is a civic act, not a political one, as I explained in my most recent email.”
“I doubt it will be seen that way. I would hate to attract even more negative attention to the school,” Principal Banner says. “Mr. Mendoza, a moment of your time in my office, please.”
Hi Lauren. You've made a very thorough and intelligent analysis of technology's role and how, in particular, it should be treated within speculative fiction. But I feel that its position within a story shouldn't be overstated. Any tech which is ubiquitous shouldn't require explanation or direct mention. Your characters wouldn't talk about it, so info dumps or copious details are unnecessary, only there to explain to a reader. If it takes them a leap of imagination then so be it, but tech shouldn't get in the way of a story. On the other hand, a technology whose introduction or corruption is a key plot point or dramatic pivot in a novel of course deserves more pages. A balance needs to be struck without technology becoming an intrusive textual presence.
Narrowing down to cli-fi for a final point: the intro phrase "technology will not save us" is undoubtedly true. As always, it's also going to take lots of people and new processes - and more time than we might have. But it's the "us" I find more interesting. When most people implore others to 'save the planet', they don't really mean that, they mean saving "us" - humans - and, by extension, themselves. This implicit human-centricity is, for me, the real underlying problem to truly saving a planet which has the current misfortune of being our dying host.
Thank you for the intellectual stimulation. I'm now going to seek out your fiction...
Love this ❤️