How much power should we grant a state that fully commits to a green transformation? In Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel The Ministry for the Future (2020), the climate crisis is halted through the establishment of a climate regime. To compel non-compliant actors to abandon extractive forms of production and transportation, the regime uses a broad spectrum of tools, including terrorism and covert operations. In the seminar, we will discuss the use of violence in this piece of speculative fiction and discuss how it connects to contemporary discourses that reassess the role of state violence. We will discuss Andreas Malm’s argument against pacifism (How to Blow Up a Pipeline, 2020) and Troy Vettese’s passionate case for central planning (Half-Earth Socialism, 2022).

Assigned reading: Excerpt from Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (2020)

Bio: Dr Johannes Kaminski is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of World Literature at the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. He is interested in global science fiction and currently heads an IMPULZ research project on visions of the future, as circulating in contemporary fiction and non-fiction. Recent publications: “Inevitable Machines: Revisiting the Literary Imaginary of AI Singularity”, Topoi 44.5 (2025), “Universalising Government, Language and Race in H.G. Wells’s A Modern Utopia and Kang Youwei’s The Great Unity”, World Literature Studies 16.4 (2024).