Towards Ecocentric Futures: Environmental Imagination in Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 and The Ministry for the Future

Abstract

Climate change has become a central concern in contemporary literature, particularly in speculative fiction that examines the relationship between environmental destruction, economic inequality, and the possibility of collective transformation. Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 (2017) and The Ministry for the Future (2020) present contrasting yet interconnected visions of a world confronting the consequences of anthropogenic climate change. This article examines how the two novels challenge anthropocentric assumptions and reimagine ecocentric futures through environmental adaptation, economic restructuring, technological intervention, and collective responsibility. Drawing on ecocriticism, Anthropocene studies, and utopian literary criticism, the study analyses the submerged urban landscape of New York 2140 and the international climate governance imagined in The Ministry for the Future. In the former, rising sea levels expose the limitations of financial capitalism while revealing the capacity of urban communities to adapt to environmental transformation. In the latter, climate catastrophe becomes the catalyst for institutional reform, ecological restoration, and the development of alternative economic systems. Through their representations of environmental vulnerability and social cooperation, Robinson’s novels challenge the assumption that nature exists primarily to serve human economic interests. The article argues that their ecocentric vision does not depend on abandoning technological progress or human agency but on redirecting both towards ecological sustainability, intergenerational justice, and the preservation of non-human life. Ultimately, Robinson’s speculative futures transform climate fiction into a critical space for imagining social and ecological alternatives to the destructive structures of the present.

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