Darkness Always Finds the Light

Mario Grill, BA

Darkness Always Finds the Light:

Emotion and Narrative in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Three Californias

MASTER THESIS

submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Programme: Master's programme English and American Studies

Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt

Evaluator Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alexa Weik von Mossner Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik

Klagenfurt, April 2019

Affidavit

I hereby declare in lieu of an oath that

• - the submitted academic thesis is entirely my own work and that no auxiliary materials have been used other than those indicated, • - I have fully disclosed all assistance received from third parties during the process of writing the thesis, including any significant advice from supervisors, • - any contents taken from the works of third parties or my own works that have been in- cluded either literally or in spirit have been appropriately marked and the respective source of the information has been clearly identified with precise bibliographical references (e.g. in footnotes), • - to date, I have not submitted this thesis to an examining authority either in Austria or abroad and that • - when passing on copies of the academic thesis (e.g. in bound, printed or digital form), I will ensure that each copy is fully consistent with the submitted digital version.

I understand that the digital version of the academic thesis submitted will be used for the purpose of conducting a plagiarism assessment.

I am aware that a declaration contrary to the facts will have legal consequences.

Mario Grill e.h. Klagenfurt, 01.04.2019

(Signature)* (Place, date)

For my sister

Table of Contents

AFFIDAVIT ...... II

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... V

INTRODUCTION ...... 7

PART I EMOTIONS, LITERATURE, AND SCENARIOS OF THE FUTURES ...... 12

CHAPTER 1 SETTING THE TONE: FROM EMOTION TO LEARNING THROUGH FICTION ...... 13 1.1 APPROACHES TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF EMOTION ...... 14 1.2 HOW LITERATURE FOSTERS EMOTIONAL UNDERSTANDING ...... 21 CHAPTER 2 IMAGINING UTOPIAN DREAMS ...... 28 2.1 HOW TO FULFILL A WISH – INTRODUCING UTOPIA ...... 30 2.2 THE DARK SIDE OF THE UTOPIAN IMAGINATION – WELCOME TO DYSTOPIA ...... 35 2.3 PARADISE REFORMED –THE CRITICAL UTOPIA ...... 39

PART II DREAMING OF POTENTIAL FUTURES ...... 42

CHAPTER 3 IMAGINING A BETTER PLACE: SIMULATION, EMOTION, AND THE STRUGGLE TO KEEP THE UTOPIAN PULSE BEATING ...... 43 3.1 IMAGINING A STORYWORLD TO FEEL WITH THE CHARACTERS ...... 45 3.2 PURSUING HOPES AND DESIRES FOR A BETTER FUTURE IN PACIFIC EDGE ...... 48 3.2.1 Utopia and its Flaws ...... 48 3.2.2 Struggle Forever to Keep the Dream Alive ...... 55 3.2.3 Criticism From the ‘Outsiders’ - Where Did We Go Wrong? ...... 57 3.3 CONCLUSION ...... 64 CHAPTER 4 BEING AN ALIEN IN DYSTOPIA: SUCCUMBING TO FEARS OR BELIEVING IN THE TRANSFORMATION TO RECLAIM UTOPIA? ...... 65 4.1 ON BEING AN ALIEN BOTH EMOTIONALLY AND SOCIALLY ...... 67 4.2 FLIGHT, FIGHT, FREEZE FOR A BETTER WAY OF LIVING IN THE GOLD COAST ...... 71 4.2.1 Fear of the Unknown ...... 71 4.2.2 Believing in the Possibility of a Better Place ...... 77 4.3 CONCLUSION ...... 83 CHAPTER 5 DRAWING ON THE PAST TO REMEMBER THE POST-APOCALYPTIC FUTURE ...... 84 5.1 THE POWER OF (EMOTIONAL) MEMORIES ...... 88 5.2 THE WILD SHORE: IF YOU WANT TO REBUILD YOU HAVE TO TEAR EVERYTHING DOWN FIRST? .. 91 5.2.1 Remains of the Eco-Apocalypse ...... 93 5.2.2 Re-Constructing a Bygone World ...... 98 5.2.3 Utopia Rearising – A Happy Beginning? ...... 102 5.3 CONCLUSION ...... 106

CONCLUSION ...... 108

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 111

Acknowledgments

Both researching and writing this thesis have been a lengthy process and I have many people that helped me realize this project. First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Alexa Weik von Mossner. It was her enthusiastic teaching approach that sparked my interest to explore utopian and dystopian literature from a cognitive literary perspective. Her constant help and stimulating feedback challenged me to refine my arguments and to push myself to create a work I am proud of. As this chapter in my academic life is about to come to a close, I am already looking towards the future and its myriad possibilities. I am particularly thankful to Dr. Weik von Mossner for providing me with the opportunity to continue researching literature from a cognitive literary perspective. While I focused on potential American futures in this study, I will soon set out to research Chicana/o literature and how a cognitive approach and our imaginative engagement with this type of ethnic American literature can help contribute to a better understanding of the contemporary political comate in the United States. A great thank you goes out to the members of the English department for the many productive and critical exchanges and conversations we had on this thesis which helped in so many ways. A special thank you goes out to Dr. Matthias Klestil and Marijana Mikić who encouraged me to keep on working even though this endeavor seemed too big from time to time. Thank you too, Rachel Köberl, for your meticulous readings of my chapters. A part of this thesis was written during my exchange semester at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and this stay helped me to refine many of my arguments and to put them into the right perspective. I am also grateful for the support of the Office of Academic Affairs and for the support grant I have received. This grant allowed me to travel to New York and to meet with Patrick Colm Hogan whose theories have been influential in my thesis. In addition, this grant also made it possible for me to visit San Diego where I could answer some questions I had had regarding California’s role in Kim Stanley Robinson’s novels. In San Diego, I was able to find essential sources for my research and already have learnt a lot about Mexican-Americans and seen the infamous border in real life. Both New York and San Diego provided me with valuable experiences and essential information for this and future endeavors. Finally, a special thank you goes out to my most beloved ones for their support during this time. I could never have pursued and fulfilled this desire if it were not for you. Your unwa- vering support, encouragement, and kindness shape this world into a happier and a better place. Thank you for making me brave.

“Sometimes the future changes quickly and completely, and we are left with only the choice of what to do next. We can choose to be afraid of it, to stand there trembling not moving, assuming the worst that can happen or we step forward into the unknown and assume it will be brilliant. “ (Grey’s Anatomy 2014)

Introduction

Looking into the future is quite unlike looking back into our pasts. The past is already written down and sometimes only a distant memory. The future, on the other hand, is filled with uncertainties and potential ifs for we do not know what may lie ahead. When we try to imagine the future, the scenarios that come to mind are quite broad. In the best-case things go as planned and wished for and in the worst-case everything fails. Needless to say, sometimes scenarios develop that often we would have never been able to imagine. What we do know, however, is, as formulated so clearly in the epigraph of this thesis: “the future is always changing. The future is the home of our deepest fears…and our wildest hopes. But one thing is certain, when it finally reveals itself, the future is never the way we imagined it” (Grey’s Anatomy 2009). Even if our imaginations are driven by desires or hindered by our own fears, the future is often unlike our first expectations. This insight also holds true for both utopian and dystopian narratives. At first glance, the classical utopia is constructed in a way that seeks to evoke solely notions of desire and hope in its readers. Dystopian narratives, by contrast, depict hostile futures and convey the realization of people’s worst nightmares in order to feed their fears. How- ever, things are far from being that simple. Various theoretical approaches have already been applied to texts in these genres, but only a few of them focus on the role of emotions in these potential futures. In this thesis, I argue that the emotional cores of these narratives are also built on the opposite emotions, as those they initially depict. I investigate the storyworlds of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Three Cal- ifornias series, which consists of the critical utopia Pacific Edge (1990), the dystopia The Gold Coast (1988) and the post-apocalyptic The Wild Shore (1984). Several scholars working on emotion and literature, such as Patrick Colm Hogan (2003, 2011a, b, 2013 a, 2017), Keith Oatley (1992, 2011, 2012), and Alexa Weik von Mossner (2014, 2017) argue that the core of every narrative, regardless of whether real or fictional, is significantly shaped by emotions. Oatley goes even further by insisting that emotions are essential for both our real lives and for fiction because they “signal changes to the world in which we are engaged. They are bases of our values. They give us our sense of ourselves” (2012, 126). Although not stating so explicitly, Oatley already hints at the fact that emotion and literature are intertwined as our responses to fictional stories are infused with emotions. Following these claims, the approach I pursue in this thesis is a cognitive one. The field of cognitive literary studies uses knowledge about the human mind and body to comprehend the construction and reception of narrative worlds more

fully. Liza Zunshine explains that scholars who use this approach draw on insights from “neuroscience, discursive psychology, cognitive evolutionary psychology and anthropology, cognitive linguistics, and philosophy of mind” (2010, 1). Using these insights will allow me to call for a better understanding of these texts and how reading them from a cognitive perspective can enhance our understanding of them. Oatley’s observation already alerts us to the fact that our engagement with imaginative worlds and fictional characters greatly influences our personal lives. Studying literature from a cognitive perspective allows us to explore, on the one hand, the different layers on which this happens and, on the other hand, how reading can foster our own emotional understanding. Readers who allow themselves to simulate these worlds in their own minds open themselves up to a variety of emotions – joy, anger, fear, hope, sadness, and sympathy, to name a few. Immersing themselves in these worlds might even result in the transformation of how readers feel about certain issues and evoke changes. While reading utopian narratives, for example, readers may find their own world lacking something they just experienced so vividly in the text. A dystopia, by contrast, can show them what could happen if things continue in a certain way, thus potentially altering readers’ perceptions. The emotional power that literature can evoke might then eventually trigger a change in its readers’ thinking and feeling if they are open to it. For these reasons, it is worthwhile to explore fictional texts to further our understanding of our own worlds. The texts chosen for this project are Kim Stanley Robinson’s Three Californias series, which all revolve around potential futures that may never come into existence. Pacific Edge depicts a utopian society that is aware of its flaws, but nevertheless has its protagonist Kevin Claiborne fight his fears to keep his utopian dream alive. The Gold Coast revolves around Jim McPherson and how he desperately seeks for hope and a better future in a world in which technology has run wild. Finally, The Wild Shore follows Henry Aaron Fletcher’s mission to recreate an Orange County better than the one which existed before a nuclear attack destroyed the majority of America. By examining the emotional layer of these novels, I hope to deepen our understanding of these worlds and outline how a cognitive approach might offer new perspectives on them.

Structure of the Thesis

I divide this thesis into two parts: In Part I, I lay the theoretical foundation of this project, focusing on cognitive literary studies and narrative genres which depict possible futures. In Part II, I explore Kim Stanley Robinson’s Three Californias series to investigate how these

futures are constructed and, using concepts introduced in Part I, I outline how a cognitive reading of these texts might offer a better understanding of the emotional cores of these narratives. In the first section of chapter 1, I am concerned with the different existing approaches towards an understanding of our emotion systems. Here, I turn my attention to the two main theoretical approaches to emotion in cognitive literary studies – appraisal theory and sub-appraisal accounts/perceptual-associative theory respectively – to consider which approach might prove more fruitful for the overall agenda of this thesis. I deem this necessary to make it clear that emotions should be understood neither as exclusively bodily nor solely as cognitive processes, but rather as a combination of both. Elaborating on the role of the mind in this discussion, I explore how memory is involved in both the conception and the perception of emotion. This then serves as the transition to the second section of this chapter, in which I turn my attention to the question of through which means literature can enhance our understanding of emotion. Since emotions do not simply happen, I also outline the various aspects that are involved in the activation of emotions in our minds. Cognitive literary scholar Patrick Colm Ho- gan claims in this context that “emotions are particular. No two cases of grief and anger are identical” (2017, 88), which is an argument I also investigate in this section. Eventually, I aim to contribute to the claim that emotions help to make meaning of the world by outlining the different approaches to this argument. Such approaches include theories of how emotions shape our understanding of the surrounding world, the imagined worlds which readers encounter in novels, and how readers respond to fiction by experiencing real emotions themselves as a result of simulating these events in their minds. Drawing on research conducted by Hogan and Weik von Mossner, I elaborate on theories of mental simulation to specify how literary texts can help to make sense of the real world and offer possibilities to see more than just the immediate surroundings. Chapter 2, which is divided into three sections, draws on the existing scholarship on the utopian imagination. Here, I critically review the genres of utopia, dystopia, and critical utopia. I outline the distinguishing characteristics of these potential futures and am thus able to use this chapter as the theoretical basis for the subsequent chapters. Simultaneously, in this chapter I lay down the argument that although utopias claim to depict perfect societies, there is evidence that utopias also cue negative emotions such as fear. Dystopia, called the “dark side of Utopia–dystopian accounts of places worse than the ones we live in” (Baccolini and Moylan 2003, 1), focuses on hostile and bleak scenarios of potential futures. I, however, will argue in this section that in order to function properly a dystopia should also convey notions of desires and hope. By building up suspense and despair, a dystopia functions as a warning to its readers

to hopefully have them do whatever it takes to avoid such a future, as can be observed in chapter 4. By contrasting the ‘better’ and the ‘worse’ possible ends societies could take, I indicate the variety of this genre. Which, in turn, allows me to use chapter 2 as the theoretical framework for the chapters in Part II. Starting in this chapter, I will further elaborate on the role and impact of emotions in Kim Stanley Robinson’s novels. In the three chapters of Part II, I apply previously established concepts, each of which offers a different focus, to analyze Robinson’s novels.1 I also bring in additional theory to better present my argument. In chapter 3, I investigate how the concepts of simulation and empathy create the framework for Robinson’s critical utopia, Pacific Edge (1990). In this novel, Robin- son does not claim that his utopian society, set in 2065, is perfect or flawless. Instead, he invites his readers to accompany his protagonist Kevin Claiborne on his struggle to keep the utopian impulse alive when his peaceful world is threated from the inside. Kevin’s mindset is marked by his being deeply afraid of his world changing for the worse. More precisely, Kevin’s experience of failure creates fear, which, in turn, is the vehicle through which change can happen. The central concern of this chapter is then to highlight how the state of fear can be an enabling condition for positive change. Chapter 4 draws on the term ‘affect alien’, coined by the poststructuralist affect theorist Sara Ahmed, “for people whose emotional responses are at odds with the emotional norms of their society” (Hogan 2017, 176). I argue that Jim McPherson, the protagonist of The Gold Coast (1988), is driven by notions of fear and nervousness because he feels alien to his society and the world he lives in. At the same time, he struggles to realize his hopes and desires to eventually reclaim utopia. All of this takes place in a potential future of Southern California in 2027 where technology has run wild and dominates people’s lives in this world. Jim sets out to find meaning and a way to end “the evil direction his country has taken for so long” (Rob- inson 1988, 111). Whether he will succeed or fail in his mission will be a central issue of this chapter. In Chapter 5, which focuses on The Wild Shore (1984), I explore the attempt of the protagonist Henry Aaron Fletcher to work towards a better future in a post-apocalyptic setting even though a majority of the people in his world believe they can simply start their world again from scratch. This novel, set in 2047, revolves around Henry Aaron Fletcher in a world in which people, in the words of M. Keith Booker and Anne-Marie Thomas, are attempting “to

1 Robinson’s novels hold a special place in the realms of utopianism. As Lyman Tower Sargent points out, there has been a resurgence of dystopias since 2000, many of which have depicted the horrors of a future environmental collapse (2010, 30).

recover from a disastrous nuclear war that had been provoked by American imperialism and greed around the world” (2009, 171). I believe that this setting can be understood as an underground form of utopian dreaming which, in a nutshell, proposes that in order to build this vision of a better life, people need to come to terms with their past instead of forgetting the past and starting with a ‘clean slate’. Whether this will be the case is then a central concern for chapter 5, which will also address the question of how to categorize the narrative of The Wild Shore in terms of emotional experiences. One aspect that will be crucial for said investigation is the role of memory since the people in this California can either learn from their past mistakes or repeat history. Finally, this post-apocalyptic setting also offers a different approach toward utopianism. Since Robinson’s novels are not set as a series and thus need not be read in a specific order, I have selected a particular sequence in which I analyze them.2 Each novel represents a distinct field of speculative fiction: in the order in which I deal with them, the scenario for the imagined future grows darker and darker. In addition, a further significant feature connects this series: instead of setting his future societies in a new remote place, Robinson sets his narratives in an already existing location, Orange County. In each of the three scenarios, California is transformed to a greater or lesser degree. While the process of rebuilding is only hinted at in Pacific Edge, in The Wild Shore Robinson critically investigates a prominent idea in post- apocalyptic narratives, namely that in order to rebuild the utopian dream, California first needs to be torn down first. Eventually, once a clear picture of these possible future scenarios has been drawn, I return in the conclusion to the initial question. At this point, I hope to have shown that my initial hypothesis can be proven and that these ‘impure’ forms of the utopian imagination indeed cue more positive than negative emotions. This in turn means that even though they depict less desirable perspectives on the future, they still function as the utopian dream and outline the pursuit of a better way of life. I can then also show that the cognitive approach used on these novels helps to show how readers can feel with these characters and that this form of reading offers a different perspective from the classical one which portrays these works as solely negative futures. My aim is then to make a valid contribution to both cognitive literary studies and also to the study of speculative fiction revolving around these potential futures.

2 In an interview with Irving F. “Bud” Foote, Robinson explains that his intention for this trio is that the “the base of the tripod, so to speak, was the present moment, and then the three legs would head off in three different directions that were as far apart from each other as I could imagine” ([1994] 2009, 278).

Part I Emotions, Literature, and Scenarios of the Futures

Chapter 1 Setting the Tone: From Emotion to Learning through Fiction

In chapter 1, I set out to investigate the different layers and notions involved in both the understanding and the conception of emotion. For this purpose, the two sections shed light on different areas in order to present the bigger picture. The first section focuses on a critical discussion regarding the current approaches to this field. This allows me to indicate what scholarly discussion is out there and how emotions are dealt with in the different research areas. Particular emphasis is given to the debate between appraisal theories and sub-appraisal theories to argue that it would not do emotions justice to treat them as straightforward and linear processes. In this context, it becomes clear that the mind plays an essential role in the question of how we feel. Memory and emotion are deeply intertwined and while some processes are alike, there are distinct factors that are unique to the retrieval of an emotional memory. In fact, the mind behaves quite differently in retrieving an emotional memory as compared to recalling a non-emotional memory. This, however, is also comprised of different factors that allow us to establish memories. One crucial aspect in this context is then the ‘power’ of imagination.3 While this may hint at a phenomenon exclusive to fictional experiences or narratives, imagination is as important as perception when it comes to the eliciting conditions of emotions. Said connection then sets the tone for the second section of chapter 1. In the second section of this chapter, I outline the different concepts involved in the conception and perception of emotions both in real life and in fictitious narratives. As this section will argue, the aspects of personification, attachment, and empathy constitute as the framework of emotion activation systems. Thus, all these concepts help to explore the issue of why it is that literature can affect us so deeply even although most events taking place in fictional realms happen through simulation. In fact, it is not the characters’ emotions that are felt, but rather our projections and imaginations through which literature is experienced. Ultimately, this section then offers an explanation as to how literature both depicts and contributes to the formation of emotion. Reading and immersing oneself in these storyworlds is like a journey towards and understanding of how to further develop emotionally as a person.4

3 In an interview, Robinson stresses the importance of imagination, saying that “[p]eople who have the ability to imagine what the other is like, what the life of the other is like, put themselves in the place of the other - they can imagine” (Foote [1994] 2009, 284) possible scenarios for the future. 4 David Herman coined the term in his Story Logic (2002) and defines it in Narrative Theory (2003) as follows: “Here, as in Herman (2002), I use the term storyworld to denote a global mental representation of who did what to and with whom, when, where, why, and in what fashion in the world to

1.1 Approaches Towards an Understanding of Emotion

When discussing emotions, people are quick to connect this term solely with inner states or as a description of how they feel. This is mirrored by the OED, which defines emotions as follows: “A strong feeling deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationship with others” (2018). It should be noted that while this basic understanding is correct, the dictionary definition already suggests that there are more factors involved in the conception and overall understanding of emotion other than simply experiencing a certain feeling. In fact, emotion involves various factors and facets, which will be explored in this section. First of all, however, it is advisable to outline the various existing approaches to and perspectives on emotion. Given the fact that various scholars from different fields already work in this area, I first review the overall idea of what constitutes emotion before moving into the area of cognitive narratology, which then functions as a transition to the second part of this section which contextualizes emotions in literature. To do this, however, the priority now is to investigate what exactly is meant in Hogan’s definition of emotion, in which he claims that this term refers to “a motivational state arising in an emotion episode” (2017,179). Thus, the journey into the realm of emotions is about to unfold. Historically speaking, Oatley et al. explain that although the three ground-breaking the- orists Darwin, James, and Freud were not the first to consider emotion, yet they laid the foun- dations of popular understanding of emotions in the 19th century (2006, 4). Firstly, while Charles Darwin used an evolutionary approach, an important claim he made was that “our emotions link us to our past” (6), an aspect that for now seems rather minor, but which already strongly hints at the connection between emotion and memory. Secondly, William James focused on the bodily (i.e. physiological) approach to investigating “the nature of emotional experience” (7). Thus, with this he laid the foundation for an embodied view of emotion. Finally, with his psychoanalytic approach, Sigmund Freud was “one of the first to argue that emotions are at the core of many pathologies” (10). Although more subtle and predominantly focusing on the psyche, Freud highlighted the fact that certain events in the past might affect someone for the rest of their lives, thus, also suggesting a crucial connection between emotion and memory. It is at this point that Oatley et al. establish ‘the’ most important concept of what is responsible for evoking emotions, namely appraisal. As we will see, however, this approach is not without its problems. which recipients relocate-or make a deictic shift (Zubin and Hewitt 1995)-as they work to comprehend a narrative” (169).

In 2006, Oatley et al. asserted that “emotions follow appraisal of an event” (21). This means that “[i]f we know what appraisals (or evaluations) are made we can predict the emotion; if we know what the emotion is, we can infer the appraisals” (21).5 Thus, such an approach leads to a cognitive judgement of the respective emotion. The main issue with this perspective, however, is that it presents cuing emotion as a solely rational and rather conscious process, leaving no room for alternative ways of evoking an emotion. In addition, this approach simultaneously denies the idea that emotional experiences might happen unconsciously. Working with this theory would subsequently hinder the analysis of Robinson’s novels or an investigation of the emotional core of his narratives because it does not allow us to incorporate subconscious or unconscious processes. The storyworlds of The Three Californias series, however, partially rely on processes revolving around memory and simulation that are not always consciously cued. By contrast, sub-appraisal accounts/perceptual-associative theories on emotion do allow for these processes, theories defined by Hogan as “theories of emotion that view emotions as resulting, not from appraisals, but from more elementary processes that may be components of appraisal (e.g., visualization or memory activation)” (2017, 184). In fact, sub-appraisal accounts emphasize automatic processes and highlight the importance of emotional memories and yet incorporate the claim that emotions could also be the results of judgments. Allowing for different methods – both conscious and subconscious – of evoking emotions enables me to draw a bigger picture of the impact of emotions and simultaneously differentiate between consciously and unconsciously evoked instances of emotion. In contrast to the definition of “emotion” given in the OED and cited above, scholars have often tried to come up with their own definitions to strengthen their own particular and distinct focus of interest. Thus, in 1992 the linguist Anna Wierzbicka refrained from separating emotions and bodily experiences by repeating Michelle Rosaldo’s (1984) claim that “[e]motions are thoughts somehow ‘felt’ in flushes, pulses, ‘movements’ of our livers, minds, hearts, stomachs, skins” (1992, 2). Including the mind in our discussion of emotions might open up new possibilities and observations. In addition, this argument supports the claim made by the psychologists Ortony, Clore, and Collins in 1988 that emotions do not only have many facets and involve feelings and experience, but that they also cover cognition and conceptualization (1988, 1). From this perspective, I can explore both mind and body and also investigate the claim that we sometimes ‘create’ emotions and sometimes they just ‘happen’ to us. Using this approach is then also a move towards a more holistic understanding of emotion. Offering an

5 In other words, they present a quite straightforward and binary approach.

additional layer, Dylan Evans suggests that “emotions are learned behaviors, transmitted culturally, much like languages” (2001, 3) which is also known as the cultural theory of emotion. Ironically, he remarks that even though the anthropologist Paul Ekman tried to find evidence for this theory in the 1960s, he failed in his quest (3). What is still referred to today from Ekman’s theory is his concept of what he termed ‘basic’ emotions.6 The unique feature of basic emotions is that they are not learned, but rather universal, and innate. Although researchers disagree about their exact number, all theories of emotion “include joy, distress, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust” (5).7 According to Evans, emotions cannot be categorized as either-or decisions that follow a clear structure, and he thus supports a sub-appraisal approach. He dis- tances himself from appraisal theory by emphasizing that “basic emotions such as fear and disgust are automatic, reflex-like responses over which we have little conscious control” (12). As a contrast to these innate basic emotions, Hogan points out that there is a second type of emotions. These “‘secondary’ emotions result from the integration of basic emotion systems with one another or with some sort of information” (2017, 53). Following these lines of argumentation, it becomes clearer that the previously mentioned sub-appraisal accounts/perceptual-associative theories offer more layers on emotions and consequently permit a more diverse investigation of this specific issue. Most of these experiences take place in the brain and happen through the process of ‘simulation, which Hogan defines in How Author’s Minds Make Stories (2013 a) as “our ordinary cognitive process of following out counterfactual of hypothetical trajectories of actions and events in imagination” (xiii). This most often refers to the brain ‘guessing’ at what might happen next in the immediate surrounding. These guesses help to identify experiences and, in a sense, categorize them and this aspect is thus a constant companion in the analysis chapters. To classify emotions, I want to take a closer look at memory formation as well as the eliciting conditions which aid the recall of certain past experiences. Previously, I briefly touched upon the role memories play in connection with emotion. The general understanding of memory is that although numerous things are experienced over a lifetime, we only actively remember a tiny amount of them. Most memories are stored somewhere in the brain, waiting to be retrieved. Even when they are actively brought back, however, they are not always an exact replica of what was experienced at that specific time, their pre- ciseness may be highly influenced by emotions. Evans explains that the emotional state affects

6 Often the term ‘primal’ is used instead. 7 Evans points out that some researchers use ‘happiness’ instead of ‘joy’ and ‘sadness’ instead of ‘distress’ (5).

both the ease and the accuracy with which an event is remembered and adds that “[e]motions help to etch events more deeply in our memories” (2001, 81). Thus, it seems that the stronger the emotion – either positive or negative – associated with a certain event, the more easily this memory is retrieved as opposed to the recall of non-emotional event. This claim is further underlined by Hogan, who defines emotional memories as “memories that retrieve an emotion when activated; emotional memories are themselves implicit, though they are often activated along with associated explicit memories of particular past events” (2017, 179). This specific form of memory then plays an essential role in our brains. Hogan also stresses the fact that emotions are cued through the retrieval of past experiences. He explores this specific eliciting condition and the origins of further eliciting conditions for emotions in What Literature Teaches Us about Emotion (2011a). According to Hogan, the initiator of these activations must be initiated by one or other of the following: “It must be a perception, a concrete imagination (thus an imagination that activates perceptual regions), or an emotional memory (which is also, ultimately, perceptual)” (46). Thus, the experience of an emotion need not necessarily be connected to a real event but can also be a fictional reminder of a past event. These “[e]motional memories” are, according to Hogan, “‘implicit’ memories, which is to say they do not, in and of themselves, bring representational context into working memory” (2011a, 51). The way he puts it, all memories connected to emotions are distinctively different from traditional ideas of memories. This claim supports Evan’s argument that emotions behave somewhat differently from other experiences. Hogan explains that an activated episodic memory allows us to explicitly relive a specific memory. An emotional memory, however, “leads one to re-experience the emotion” (51). Thus, an emotional memory does not require a corresponding experience, but rather allows us to feel something although we do not always know why we feel that way. In addition, this passage highlights the claim that emotions play an important role in both memory formation and representation. This discussion of emotional memories further adds to my explanation of why I chose to pursue a perceptual-associative account of emotions in this thesis. In fact, Hogan claims that appraisal processes elicit emotional indirectly and justifies this as follows: “Evaluating an event in relation to one’s goal involves direct perception, concrete imagination of precedents and outcomes, and the activation of emotional memories” (2017, 57). Again, to evoke an emotional response, the respective emotional memory is essential. In addition, the mental simulation of possible scenarios is also based in part on memories from different areas and sources (88). Needless to say, emotional memories also constitute a basis of the process of simulation as they

are used to cue certain responses and help to constitute the process of personification in literature.8 Further elaborating on the issue of simulation in fictitious narratives, Oatley argues in Such Stuff as Dreams that “[t]he emotions we experience are not primarily those of the characters, they are our own in the contexts we imagine” (2011, 115). This argument then goes full circle by offering a perspective on the importance of emotions in connection to memory. In fact, emotions play an active role in both the formation and retrieval of memories. While non- emotional memories are displayed as an active resurfacing of a certain event, emotional memories trigger the emotion that was felt in a similar event and do not necessarily allow us to recall the specific memory itself. Activating the different emotion systems, however, also entails additional factors as well. The experience of an emotion is inevitably connected to several factors. Hogan quotes Antonio Damasio’s claim that “we are wired to respond with an emotion, in preorganized fashion, when certain features of stimuli in the world or in our bodies are perceived alone or in combination” (2011, 48). With this, Hogan also stresses the fact that emotions do not simply happen to someone, but they are rather reactions to the surrounding world. It should be noted, however, that this is not the only viewpoint on this issue since there is a debate around the question of whether an emotion is a reaction or not. The psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett for example, claims that “[e]motions are not reactions to the world. You are not a passive receiver of sensory input but an active constructor of your emotions” (2017, 31). This means that, according to Feldman Barrett, we actively create emotions and there is no space for subconscious processes. From her perspective, the brain predicts every single possible outcome and tells the body how to react. However, there are also several unconscious processes connected to emotions to which I will return later when discussing fear in more detail. As the following para- graphs explain, the different aspects that contribute to the conception and perception of emotion make it clear that her argument is incorrect. The first important aspect on this construction is the role of mirror neurons and the process of mirroring as such. Hogan explains that our responses to the emotional expressions of others function partially in connection to parallel or complementary emotions in our own mirror neuron systems. These “fire either when one does something oneself or senses someone else doing it” (2011a, 49). Thus, this activation most often happens subconsciously without us actively constructing them. A second factor in this context is the role of attachment. Hogan asserts that “[a]ttachment may enhance our empathic sensitivity to emotions on the part of

8 The whole spectrum of this claim will be explored in chapter 3.

attachment object” (51). Emotional intensity is then partially influenced by the notion of either closure or distance. Linking this to the emotional memories previously mentioned, this process helps outline emotion episodes. The concept of emotion episodes also consists of different components in addition to memory, for example “subjective and objective conditions for the emotion” (51). Hogan adds that “[t]he subjective conditions include the background motivational state or mood” (51), which highlights possible reasons for experiencing an emotion. The objective conditions, on the other hand, refer to the previously mentioned eliciting conditions. Eliciting conditions can, according to Hogan, “be either directly perceptual or imagined” (54). This passage strongly suggests that cueing emotions might follow the same rules in real life as it does when reading literature. Finally, going full-circle, the activation of emotional memories is another essential component of emotion episodes. The important difference in this context, however, is that “the activation of memories, whether implicit or explicit, relies on some perceived parallel between the present eliciting conditions and the past experience” (56). Thus, these episodes are the larger entity and are comprised of more defined characteristics. Hogan explains that these range from emotion congruence and notions of identity, to emotionally defined perceptual sensitivities as well as a significant involvement of working memory processes as the latter coordinate basic processes at a meta-level (56-7). In fact, “[w]orking memory serves to integrate all this with new incoming information from perception and memory” (58). Thus, the working memory functions in a way that expands immediate experiences which in turn are also responsible for producing longer-term experiences. Memory formation then is an ongoing process that relies on both present and past experiences and is simultaneously understood as the cue for subsequent emotional responses. Ultimately, emotions are then an essential part of both the conception and the formation of memory. As this section has shown, research on emotion is not a recent development, but rather something scholars have been interested in for several centuries. However, although distinct theoretical approaches to emotion have evolved over time, there is still some connection between them. My discussion of the differences between appraisal theory and sub-appraisal theories on emotions has shown two major ways of thinking about emotion. Yet, both share the belief that there are numerous processes involved in the ‘creation’ of emotion systems which involve both cognitive and bodily notions, rather than seeing emotions as isolated entities. An- other important aspect explored in this section is the claim that emotions do not simply happen to someone, but that they are in fact reactions to the world through which one makes meaning of the surrounding environment.

In this context, I highlighted the strong connection between emotions and memories. While emotional responses most often cue similar reactions to those evoked by previous events of the same nature, they do not necessarily allow us to relive said event. While recalling these past experiences is a component of emotions, emotions are also a component of working memory used to create new experiences. Although the purpose of this section is to establish emotions as concepts, I inevitably had to touch upon the obvious connection between these emotional experiences and literature several times since emotions behave the same way in relation to fiction as they do in real life. This of course links back to Hogan’s claim that eliciting conditions for emotions do not necessarily always depend on events that take place in reality. This bigger picture of interconnectedness constitutes the main focus of the following section, where I investigate the full scope of the role of emotion in the imagined realms of fictional narratives.

1.2 How Literature Fosters Emotional Understanding

In the words of the ecocritical cultural studies scholar Alexa Weik von Mossner, “Narrative, then, is a means of making sense of the world; not only of the imaginary pages of a book or on the silver screen of a movie theater, but also of the actual world in which we live out our lives” (2017, 7). This means that narratives, both real and fictitious, might share numerous components. In this this section, I set out to investigate what these are and, furthermore, to argue how literature helps fostering our emotional understanding. In fact, most narratives are told through and by emotions, as they are like the blood running through the veins that keep the hearts of these stories beating. This affective layer is first established through exploring what Hogan has coined ‘affective narratology’ (2011b). This concept allows the drawing of a clear connection between eliciting conditions for emotions in general and the way these processes are portrayed and conveyed in fiction. Elaborating on the previously mentioned power of imagination enables me to vividly emphasize how this ‘unreal’ concept links to everyday life perception. In this section, I try to provide evidence for Hogan’s claim that “story structures are fundamentally shaped and oriented by our emotion systems” (2011 b, 1). This argument lays the foundation for my subsequent analysis of Robinson’s novels, in which I will investigate the emotional layer of his Three Californias series. Science fiction scholars such as Tom Moylan and Weik von Mossner have already claimed that there is hope in dystopia. As I argue in the case of Robinson’s novels, even though they depict less favorable futures, notions of hope and desire also light the path of these bleak potential what ifs. One concept that helps to make sense of these fictitious storyworlds is simulation, the process to imagine these worlds in our minds.9 One aspect of this emotional layer is the concept of simulation, which is sometimes accompanied by one of four different processes: personification, attachment, empathy, and sympathy. Hogan notes that empathy is about “sharing the character’s emotions”, while sympathy revolves around “sharing his or her interest” (2017, 102). This is supported by Weik von Mossner who argues that “empathy refers to a reader’s capacity to simulate a character’s emotional state (feeling with)” (2017, 25). Both scholars offer a layer through which emotions can be grasped and conceived in the context of fictional narratives. In addition, their diversity offers insights into the role of emotion in fiction and how fiction can impact us so deeply.

9 This layer and its significance will only be explored later, in chapter 3 where it helps readers to experience the spreading darkness in Kevin’s peaceful hometown.

In the final part of this section, I look at how literature contributes to the formation of emotion and how readers interact with storyworlds. When imagining a respective storyworld and conjuring up its this scenario, readers feel as if they are taking part in its narratives and they may even learn from fiction. Geetha Murali explains that this is the case because “[b]ooks, notably fiction, have the capacity to make us better people, contributing positively to our ability to recognize that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from our own” (2018). According to Murali, “[s]torytelling allows us to deeply consider someone else’s behavior, rather than dismiss the differences we see or accept similarities as rote” (2018). Our interactions with literature, thus, might make a significant contribution to shaping our emotional understanding of narratives and of experiences happening in the real world. At first glance, the realm of fiction might appear to consist of fabricated stories without any deeper meaning. However, there are a number of similarities between real and fictional experiences. This is Hogan’s essential claim in his Affective Narratology. The Emotional Struc- ture of Stories (2011a). Taking a cue from Hogan and his insistence on the significance of reading, this section investigates the impact fiction can have on its readers. I lay additional emphasis on the exploration of Oatley’s view that “[f]iction is a means by which we can increase our understanding” (2011, ix) as well as Weik von Mossner’s assertion “that it is just as important to understand how we engage with narratives and why it is that they can impact us so deeply” (2017, 13). To do so, I will take a closer look at how exactly stories are influenced by emotional experiences. Hogan points out that the most basic elements of an emotional experience are the following: eliciting conditions, which are the situations, occurrences, and events that activate an emotion system; expressive outcomes, the actual manifestations of emotions that mark the experiences; and the actual response or what someone does in reaction to the particular situation (2011b, 2-3). It has to be noted, however, that an expressive outcome of a situation can also be the eliciting condition for another emotion. This can be best outlined through an illustration of possible reactions to either hope or fear. At first, one might hope for a positive outcome or realization of something. If this is the case, the emotion felt as a response will be either relief or happiness. If not, one will feel disappointment or sadness. The same holds true in cases of fear, but this emotion is more complicated. Fear can serve as the eliciting condition for relief, disappointment or even despair, depending on the actual outcome. The depiction of these possible scenarios also supports Hogan’s claim that emotions most often involve more than one

possible actual outcome.10 He justifies this claim using the example of fear, which inherently has a variety of possible emotional scenarios. According to Hogan, these possible scenarios “are hierarchized – in fear, first try to flight, but if that does not work, try to fight (or in certain cases, freeze)” and adds that “actual outcomes are bound up with spontaneous, rapid, unself- conscious possibility assessments” (37). For this specific case, the ‘natural’ option would be to avoid a negative outcome once an event or object is perceived as potentially dangerous.11 If this first response fails, one is prone to take action, fight, and thus face this fear. However, if the sense of fear is overwhelming, and one sees no way out, the only option left is to freeze. This option is, as Hogan puts it, “preferential only in cases where one is not already the target of gaze motion, and/or address from the threatening target” (38). Thus, this makes it even clearer that there is no blueprint as to what one might feel in reaction to a specific situation, but rather a multitude of possibilities. In Literature and Emotion (2017), Hogan develops this argument further by stating that “emotions are particular. No two cases of grief and anger are identical” (2017, 88). We almost never react the same way when experiencing the same emotion because there is a variety of possible ways to elicit an emotion. As in real life, there are also multiple ways to cue emotions in fiction, the only difference is that we need to be capable of imagining these potential ifs in order to be able to experience them. Emotion elicitations are then the means to make sense of these worlds and as such they function on various layers. Indeed, according to Hogan, three different modes of emotion elicitation can be identified, these being “current perception, recollection, and imagination. Imagination operates because it is parallel to perception” (2011 b, 48). Here, there is a clear focus on the claim that both present and past experiences – either real or imagined – interact to combine memory and emotion. Taking these notions into fiction, Oatley outlines this connection as follows: Fiction is based on narratives in which characters act on their own intentions and encounter vicissitudes. Readers enjoy entering into the lives of characters, following their projects, and coming to empathize with them as their plans progress or meet obstacles. Readers enjoy, too, meeting characters with whom they sympathize, and being re- minded of emotional episodes of their own lives (2012, 15). Thus, by being able not only to imagine the storyworlds portrayed in fiction, but also to feel with the characters living in them, perception takes place through imagination. When interacting with fiction we are able to imaginatively simulate the events experienced on the pages of a novel and even able to experience and share these moments. Further elaborating on this, Hogan claims that “[o]ur sense of both time and space is structured by feeling” (2011b, 76). This claim

10 In contrast to an appraisal theorist’s approach, where this process is more straightforward. 11 It should be noted, however, that fear does not always have to be rational or even real.

in turn explains why we are able to read novels set in any time or place and are still able to access these worlds in our imagination as our perception of these storyworlds is guided by our feelings. Feelings, however, can also depend on the sense of closeness or distance, conveyed through attachment. This concept of attachment refers to both the creation and the loss of a relation. By losing this closure, Hogan maintains that “[t]he loss of an attachment relation entails an increased sense of loneliness and anxiety” and adds “that what was home is now an alien place” (140). In other words, the stronger the attachment, the more likely one is to experiences positive feelings. By contrast, severing all the ties that bind will result in negative emotions. This argument holds true for both utopian and dystopian narratives. As I investigate later, the protagonists of these narratives often inhabit the role of an outsider, very often a traveler of some kind. The resulting sense of detachment experienced by the protagonist leads him or her to experience, as expressed by J. C. Davis, “a sense of alienation, failure of duty, and compromised goodness” (2010, 28). This exile and loneliness can either cue anxiety in readers, fearing that the traveler will not find his or her place in this society or curiosity and excitement, as they want to learn how this story will unfold and whether the traveler figure succeeds in the endeavor.12 Something similar can also happen in dystopian narratives. Every one of Robinson’s protagonists at some point feels that they feel like they do not fully belong in their society. What they experience is the fear that things will only get worse again.13 This fear “involves the anticipation of future harm or frustration and thus necessarily goes beyond reciprocity for past actions” (238). However, unlike the classical utopian traveler, the stronger the sense of detachment felt by Robinson’s protagonists, the stronger their urge for hope. This shows that the forms of attachment are constant companions in both utopian and dystopian texts. As chapters 3 to 5 will further explore, this is mainly because the protagonists of these stories experience the fear of the unknown. In other words, they are always influenced by affect. The OED defines the term ‘affect’ as follows: “[t]ouch the feelings of; move emotionally” (2018), which establishes a strong link to emotions. However, different researchers hold different views of what constitute affect. While Feldman Barrett emphasizes that it is not an

12 By contrast, Robinson’s dystopia and post-apocalypse both open with a protagonist surrounded by his friends, a situation in which readers might feel curiosity and excitement about what is going to happen to him. 13 In Pacific Edge, Kevin is afraid that his community will destroy the last untouched place in their town. In The Gold Coast, Jim fears that the ongoing wars will get worse. In The Wild Shore, Henry is anxious about another nuclear attack.

emotion per se (2017, 74), Hogan asserts claim that “affects are perhaps best understood as either emotion episodes themselves, or subjective motivational tendencies that guide the onset, continuation, or alteration of emotion episodes” (2017,39). Thus, while the psychologist Feld- man Barrett denies this close connection, Hogan claims that there is an interconnectedness between emotions and affect and his approach makes it possible to show this. Through incorporating affects, one gains a clearer understanding of how to ‘read’ feelings and thus make sense of them. This holds true both for actually experienced real-life narratives and for imagined narratives. Weik von Mossner argues that “[f]unctionally, the brain does not really differentiate between consciously constructed and consumed narratives and other, less conscious forms of narrativization” (2017, 6). In other words, a narrative can be experienced as long as the brain is able to either perceive or imagine it. Simulating narratives in one’s mind cues empathy, which Hogan describes as “the experience of an allocentric emotion elicited by and parallel with the egocentric emotion of another person” (2017, 180).14 Feeling empathy for someone then is best explained as “[w]e cringe when we see someone mildly injured, become teary when we hear of someone’s joy or suffering, experience a sort of terror when we read about barbarous events that occurred in the distant past” (Hogan 2011b, 257). Thus, by cueing this process, literature manages to feed the senses and engage its readers emotionally. In this context, Hogan claims that “[o]ur emotional response to stories is inseparable from our emphatic response to the characters, their situations, actions, capacities, and so forth” (2011b, 276). Interestingly enough, readers are aware that literary figures are not real, but due to the connection to memory and past experiences, storyworlds are in fact somewhat connected with relationships with people in the real world. In general, “the basic form of empathy involves imagining the actual response of the other person” (277). Two other options are that this may happen either through imagining oneself into the other person or imagining someone in the position of said person (278). Thus, to fully feel with a character, the specific emotion must be simulated from the perspective of the target and not from the perspective of the reader. It can of course also happen that one feels negatively towards a character, but nevertheless it holds true that “[l]iterature relies on emphatic response for our engagement with characters and stories” (284). This in turn means that literary texts aim to evoke specific responses in their readers and although this is a form of identification, it

14 This, however, should not be confused with sympathy, which is “the experience of parallel, allocentric emotions by a target’s interests, though not necessarily his or her feeling” (Hogan 2017,185).

can also be linked back to mirroring as it does not always happen consciously.15 Thus, engaging emotionally with literature helps to define how we sense senses and experiences all kinds of stories, but this process does not end here. Imagining various storyworlds and narratives and feeling with or for these fictional characters might actually influence real life experiences as well. In fact, “[l]iterary works also create emotional memories that may inflect our responses to the world long after reading” (Ho- gan 2011b, 287). Similar to emotionally significant events that take place in the real world, those moments in a fictional narrative that manage to touch readers emotionally might actually stay with them and may be retrieved at some later point. Thus, a text that manages to reach its readers emotionally and has them absorbed into its storyworld might eventually enhance their emotional abilities. Ultimately, if this is indeed the case, this means that literature “contributes to the formation and operation of our emotion systems in a range of ways” (288). Hogan outlines the full scope of this process as follows: Literature not only depicts emotion; it contributes to the formation of emotion. It contributes to this formation in three ways, through its effect on 1) spontaneous response, 2) elaborative processes, and 3) actual outcomes. In addition, it bears on the social and interactive modulation of emotion, primarily through both experiential and communi- cative emotion sharing (2011b, 300) The interaction with literature fosters, both consciously and subconsciously, a range of different emotional processes and understandings. In addition, the events experienced in the realms of fiction are stored in our brains may be recalled the same way as in real life events, suggesting that moments encountered in literature might eventually be remembered as vividly as those experienced in real life. Hisham Matar formulates a similar observation when stating that “[b]ooks can’t install unknown feelings or passions into us. What they can do is develop our emotional, psychological and intellectual life, and, by doing so, show us how and to what extent we are connected” (2017). Experiences gained through literature might then eventually help to transform our general understanding of our worlds. Having provided the theoretical foundation for the claims that that reading can impact us so deeply and that engaging with literature helps foster our emotional understanding, I will elaborate on them and illustrate them in Part II of this thesis. Here, a central theme will be the interconnectedness between narrative, emotion, and possible future scenarios. An in-depth analysis of these tales and of emotion systems might subsequently outline that it is this interplay

15 “a neurological process by which an observer’s brain responds to the observed actions of another subject in a way that overlaps with the observer’s brain response when he or she produces parallel actions himself or herself” (Hogan 2017, 182).

of both positive and negative experiences and the retrieval of past events which is recalled during reading that allows readers to make sense of these storyworlds. Just as life can be understood as a book, books might offer more than just fascinating fictional storyworlds. Ulti- mately, they are a means to make sense of the real world and offer possibilities to see more than just one’s immediate surroundings. The next chapter aims to take a first step on this journey and pursues the question of how humans to imagine the future – in ways both bright and devastating.

Chapter 2 Imagining Utopian Dreams

In his triptych – Pacific Edge, The Gold Coast and The Wild Shore – Kim Stanley Robinson invites his readers into three different, yet possible, futures.16 He lures them into the realms of speculative fiction and in doing so has readers explore narratives ranging from the utopian to the dystopian. This becomes clear through Helen J. Burgess observation that The Wild Shore (1984) revolves around post-nuclear human ecologies, The Gold Coast (1988) focuses on un- sustainable growth and urban sprawl, while Pacific Edge introduces a community that might have prevented the first two scenarios (2006, 279). However, the novels are not meant to be considered a series and do not have to be read in a particular order. Brent Ryan Bellamy highlights this aspect when he states that “Robinson routes the Three Californias Triptych in parallel rather than in series” (2017, 409), adding that “each novel depicts a wildly different future for Orange County” (410). In addition, as noted by Carl Abott, a small, yet essential detail that also connects the three novels is that “from the roster of characters that Orange Country in the twenty-first century will be as much Latino as Anglo” (2003, 35). To fully explore these potential futures, their possibilities and limitations, I intend to focus first on the genre itself. In this chapter, I outline and investigate the basic understandings regarding these three distinct fields of speculative fiction – classical utopia, dystopia, and critical utopia. First, I discuss the oldest form, the utopia. Here, I pay special attention to the factors that contribute to a text being classified as a utopia and also consider possible limitations inherent in this specific type of narrative. These limitations support the claim that a utopia does not solely depict purely positive notions, but rather also inhabits negative aspects. These can be identified at the narrative’s core as such emotional experiences and memories are cued by notions rooted in fear. Next, I focus on the dark side of the utopian imagination – the dystopia. Here, it is important to highlight how this form came into existence and to pursue the question of whether the bleak dystopian perspective might actually be highly influenced and shaped by narratives building on the desire to hope. In the course of my discussion, this claim is supported by both a consideration of the origins of dystopia and typical characteristics of texts in this genre. I finally go on to look at the critical utopia, a form sited in-between utopia and dystopia, in order to outline what happens to narratives when authors create societies that are aware of the typical flaws within themselves. This chapter also functions as a transition to introduce the second part

16 This order is not chronological, but rather the order of the novels as discussed in this thesis.

of this thesis, namely the discussion of Robinson’s Three Californias triptych and of how these genre-related issues are interwoven into Robinson’s narratives. It should, however, be noted that, in general, the differentiation between utopia and dystopia is not always simple and clear cut. As Gregory Claeys puts it: “just as one’s person’s terrorist is another’s freedom-fighter, so is one’s person’s utopia another’s dystopia. Indisput- ably, thus, whether a given text can be described as dystopia or utopia will depend on one’s perspective of the narrative outcome” (2010, 108). One critical factor is, as Claeys explains, a question of race, as “[i]n some ‘utopias’ black people have been entirely eliminated (e.g., Wil- liam Hay, Three Hundred Years Hence, 1881, p.256) – but for non-whites this would be a dystopia” (111). Thus, it seems that to some extent the decision of as to whether the depicted storyworld is a glorious future or the worst possible scenario will depend on the readers’ viewpoints and their identities. A second factor to keep in mind in this discussion is the nature of the narrative outcome of the respective story. This outcome is most often based on morals and ethics since death and despair by definition cannot be the primary outcome of a utopia while a happily ever after is certainly not the overarching narrative goal of a dystopia. These considerations are frequently touched on in the discussions of Robinson’s novels and though not always explicitly mentioned are nevertheless a constant in this discourse. A further essential question to be addressed in this context is what kind of impact these texts could have on their readers. Tom Moylan expresses this as follows: “If humanity becomes too much taken with the present, we lose the possibility of imagining a radically other future. We lose the ability to hope” (1986, 21). However, it is not that simple since fear is needed to experience hope and fear is also experienced over the possibility of hopes either not being realized or perhaps even crushed. Ruth Levitas formulates this insight specifically in terms of utopianism as follows: “utopia is about hoping for a transformed future, which we may simultaneously hope for while fearing the worst” (2011, 191). In other words, by being able to picture various different scenarios for the times ahead, we can still hope and dream for a positive future, but at the same time we might well still feel afraid of what could happen if appropriate action is not taken to avoid a bleak outcome. Trying to convey these different possibilities convincingly is then one of the core tasks in the vast spectrum of utopianism, which opens up the possibility of being able to vividly conjure up these potential what-ifs.

2.1 How to Fulfill a Wish – Introducing Utopia

The word ‘utopia ‘was coined in 1516 when Thomas More used the term as the name for his imaginary country in his book of the same name (Sargent 2010, 2). Although the word is based on the “Greek topos meaning place or where, and ‘u’ from the prefix ‘ou’ meaning no or not”, utopia “has come to refer to a non-existent good place” (2). Thus, in its most classical sense, utopia refers to the realization of an idealized society. Sargent adds that these utopias “ask whether or not the way we live could be improved and answer that it could” (5). As a conse- quence, it can be observed in almost every utopian narrative that the worlds created in these texts must be thoroughly thought through in order to explain how an ideal society could potentially be realized – in the truly ideal case without flaws. For this reason, Sargent claims that “[l]iterary utopias have at least six purposes, although they are not necessarily separable” (8).17 He notes that depending on the dominant emotion evoked – whether hope or fear – the result of this view is either a utopia or a dystopia, although “basically, utopianism is a philosophy of hope” (8). For these reasons, creating a seemingly perfect and flawless place might be a more difficult undertaking than it initially appears. In this context, Fátima Vieira outlines as follows the formula for a classical utopia as a literary genre: A man or a woman travels to an unknown place, where they are aided by a guide who explains the specifics of this unfamiliar society. At the end of this revelatory journey, the traveler can either return home to tell others about this alternative way of life or they may simply decide to stay on and continue living in this new place (2010, 7). In addition, utopia feeds our imaginations by introducing alternative ways of living and alternative ideas on how to follow the pursuit of happiness. According to Levitas, one essential purpose of utopia is to create an image of how we could live and how this world would function. Utopia “is then not just a dream to be enjoyed, but a vision to be pursued” (2011, 1). Levitas insists that the three aspects content, form, and function should always be considered to both clarify and extend existing definitions of utopia. The first of these, content, refers to the “common assumption that utopia should be a portrayal of the good society” (4). The idea of what constitutes this ‘good’ society, however, is liable to differ radically depending on who conceives this society and will constantly be influenced by markers of race, class, gender, and ideology. Levitas argues that a flaw inherent in existing definitions is that these tend to be evaluative and normative, instead of reflecting just how differently these parts could be perceived (5). The second aspect, form, refers to the attempt to

17 “A utopia can be simply a fantasy, it can be an extrapolation, a warning, an alternative to the present, or a model to be achieved” (Sargent 2010, 8).

define utopia descriptively, but this aspect often neglects the question of possibility (5). Func- tion, the third consideration has always been a rather problematic aspect. Levitas explains that while Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels rejected utopia, Marxism today attempts to integrate utopia and its function “as a catalyst of radical change” (7). This example from Marxism shows that any definition and consideration of utopia has to be aware of constraints and negative connotations. In view of this, Levitas herself proposes a new definition of utopia, building on the aspect of function “which recognizes the common factor of the expression of desire. Utopia is the expression of the desire for a better way of being” (9). Although different aspects might undergo changes over time and thus be subject to transformation, the concept of utopia itself – both from an objective and a subjective perspective – reminds people about hope.18 Therefore, it is of lesser importance as to whether or not the wish to realize a utopia can be fulfilled right now. Rather we should reflect on the possibility of living in that particular way embodied in the utopia in question and on how these conditions might be achieved. According to Vieira, these perfect places which have their origins in the island of Uto- pia all share three main characteristics. First, these places are isolated from the world at large. Second, utopian societies present themselves as superior compared to the rest. Third, “its inhabitants and its laws are so wonderful that it should be called Eutopia (the good place) instead of Utopia” (2010, 5). Thus, this passage highly suggests that every traveler exploring a utopia for the first time will automatically feel alienated and, in a sense, will inhabit the place of the lesser developed human from outside the utopia.19 It should be noted here, that as long as these utopian societies are remote or hidden to the rest of the world, these wishes cannot be fulfilled. This might also serve as an explanation as to why most utopian texts are not set at the same time at which they were written, but rather in the future. This choice actually allows the utopia to more easily be conceived as a possible scenario for the future.20 Below the surface, however, utopian narratives are far removed from presenting a perfect and well-balanced society. A society in which everything goes smoothly and where crime does not occur at all might sound like the blueprint for a narrative which is rather plain and boring. Frederic Jameson supports this view, stating that “[r]eaders have a right to wonder what they will find to read in Utopia, the unspoken thought being that a society without conflict is unlikely to produce exiting stories” (2007, 182). Indeed, since utopias aim to present an ideal society, there is seemingly

18 Which can, of course, also be an answer to existing fear. 19 This claim seemingly links to Hogan’s explanation of Sara Ahmed’s concept ‘affect alien’, which is discussed more fully in chapter 4. 20 The same holds true for the dystopia, which is a negative yet possible future.

no place for negative outcomes. These societies are created as possible solutions for current issues and offer means that might be employed in order to prevent such problems. Thus, utopias have clear structures and rules in place to secure the lifestyle which they advocate. Nicole Pohl classifies these societies belonging to one of two predominant types of utopia. The first, archis- tic, refers to all those where either a state or government strictly regulates every single aspect of human life and society. The second type, anarchistic, encompasses those utopias which promote the idea of maximizing freedom and self-regulation. In the end, however, both types of utopia two always share the characteristic feature of “the desire to recognize, mobilize, and transform” (2010, 51-2). Ironically, even the human libido is sometimes presented as imperfect or an obstacle to be overcome. Patrick Parrinder claims that “the excitements of love and adventure are normally experienced by a visitor to utopia, not by the utopians themselves” (2010, 154). He adds that notions of passion, adventure, and danger are even completely absent in these texts (155), leading to the conclusion that utopian narratives are prone to be boring. An- other danger of utopias, however, is the fact that they are rather subjective. Depending on from whose perspective the utopia is viewed, the result can be either a utopia or a dystopia which of course mirrors real life. As history shows, ‘colonizing’ the Americas may have been the realization of a utopia for the settlers, but it certainly turned their world into a dystopia for the native Americans. In fact, while utopia may be all about hope, it needs something more active, namely desire. Levitas claims that “[u]topia expresses and explores what is desired”, thus, “[t]he essential element in utopia is not hope, but desire – the desire for a better way of being” (221). Interestingly enough, this claim hints at a darker side in establishing a utopia. Desire is defined in the OED as “a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing something to happen” (2018). In other words, to desire something, one must be de- prived of that very thing and feel incomplete without it. Hoping for a utopia, then, is like sitting by and waiting for it to happen, whereas pursuing the desire for utopia means actively working to realize it. In general, a utopia is intended to create a certain desire in its readers. In some cases, readers may be content with their lives yet nevertheless perceive this possible future as a future they would like to achieve. In other cases, readers may already be dissatisfied with their lives and their desire for a better life is enhanced by reading about a possible better way of life. In this case, their current perspective is not carried by happiness or contentment but rather filled with fear that their lives may never be lived like this. To avoid the realization of this fear, the utopia comes into existence. Utopia, then, is meant to be an eye-opener that instills hope and desire as the best way out of potential or current misery and a negative state of society.

This utopian mindset, however, is also used as a warning by opponents of utopia. Sargent explains that by choosing utopia to be the sole solution to humanity’s problems is not only a step away from utopia as such, but even turns utopia into an ideology (2010, 107). Utopia then can be seen as a powerful, yet dangerous weapon and is not as innocent as it seems on the first contemplation. Jameson argues that “it is a mistake to approach Utopias with positive expectations, as though they offered visions of happy worlds, spaces of fulfillment and cooperation, representations which correspond generically to the idyll or the pastoral rather than the utopia” (2007, 12). Jameson’s view seems to support the claim that utopia is not all about happiness and other positive attributes. Levitas also strengthens this claim by explaining that “[utopia] provokes fear that the revolutionary may make the mistake of taking it literally” (2011, 13). By opting for utopia, it seems people might actually lose the familiar world, in which all their voices, values, and virtues are rooted in exchange for a world in which all these experiences may never have existed. Thus, choosing utopia seemingly comes at a very high price, namely the need to leave, literally, everything behind to pursue an eventual possible improvement. Jameson calls this pursuit the “existential fear of Utopia” (2007, 191), which is to him “the possibility of a loss of self so complete that the surviving consciousness cannot but seem an other to ourselves, new-born in the worst sense, in which we have lost even that private happiness, that boredom and existential misery” (191). Parrinder falls in line with this view, claiming that the traveler “feels a growing horror at the contrast between this more perfect world and the world from which he has come, and as often as not he transfers his loyalty to the new society even as his return home (if not his physical expulsion from utopia) becomes inevitable” (2010, 157). This seems to suggest that utopia would ultimately result in the loss of one’s identity and the need for starting all over again. At its core, the utopian narrative may in fact be built on notions of fear. Jameson’s view even mirrors Hogan’s explanation of affect aliens as “Sara Ahmed’s term for people whose emotional responses are at odds with the emotional norms of their society” (2017, 176). The protagonist in the utopian narrative, the traveler, is then an alien on several layers, namely naturally the spacial, the cultural, and more importantly the emotional – and is by nature una- ware of any of these specifics. While this is the case for the traveler in the new society featured in the utopia, the also holds true for the protagonist in a dystopia, as Robinson’s protagonist in

The Wild Shore feels alien in his surroundings.21 The dystopia and the typical characteristics will be the focus of the following section.

21 This claim will be a central issue in chapter 4.

2.2 The Dark Side of the Utopian Imagination – Welcome to Dystopia

The societies described in the previous section clearly represent attempts of authors to embody the most ideal possible future scenario. However, not all utopian texts follow this. Gregory Claeys – without differentiating the various sub-forms – outlines the opposite dark path of the future as follows: ‘Dystopia’ is often used interchangeably with ‘anti-utopia’ or ‘negative utopia’ by contrast to utopia or ‘eutopia’ (good place), to describe a fictional portrayal of a society in which evil, or negative social and political developments, have the upper hand, or as a satire of utopian aspirations which attempts to show up their fallacies (2010, 107). The other side of this future utopian coin is seemingly always a ‘negative utopia’, an attempt to outline what will happen if things go south. Claeys states that these texts function as obvious or, in the case of satires, more subtle warnings. Levitas apparently supports this view by stating that “[d]ystopia (or anti-utopia) represents the fear of what the future may hold if we do not act to avert catastrophe, whereas utopia encapsulates the hope of what might be” (2011, 190). In their most basic sense, these claims indeed hold true, nevertheless they will be revisited. Vieira points out that “[t]he story of the darker side goes back to the eighteen century” (2010, 15), but the first recorded use of the term ‘dystopia’ only dates back to 1868 in an English parliamentary speech of John Stuart Mill (16). Thus, the idea of dystopia has been around for quite some time now, but has also undergone some changes. Kenneth M. Roemer explains that the basic idea of dystopia is that if the author or reader perceives the proposed culture or society as “significantly worse, it is a dystopia” (2010, 79). History, society, and current issues all play significant roles for the creation of dystopian texts. Tom Moylan adds that dystopias were on the rise in the twentieth century as they were used to show the uselessness of the utopian desire (1986, 9). A significant difference to the classical utopian texts is that in a dystopia we cannot find an exact blueprint of what constitutes these negative possible future scenarios. Two important texts in this genre are then Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four ([1949] 2008). These two are not only prime examples of horrible futures, they also serve to illustrate that not all dystopias are alike. Claeys argues that while Huxley’s future is “clean, efficient, complacent, defined by pleasure”, Or- well’s focus is on being “clumsy, crude, brutal and focused on pain” (2010, 125). As this shows, dystopian visions can be quite diverse, whether they focus on the psychology of terror or the horrors which a society can create. Such a vision is also found in The Gold Coast (1988). In the words of William H. Katerberg, Robinson takes the contemporary world, “our world of consumerism, a corrupt military-industrial complex, and suburban alienation and exaggerating

it, making a familiar Orange County seem strange by projecting it, in its excesses, into 2027” (2008, 139). Eventually, each novel of Robinson’s Three Californias manages to depict possible scenarios so unfavorable that readers want to do everything possible to avoid their realization just as the central characters in these storyworlds do. Even though Orwell’s protagonist Winston dies in the end of Nineteen Eighty-Four, his journey is driven by hope. In chapter 4, I will return to this issue and show that Robinson’s protagonist Jim McPherson is primarily driven by the desire to recover the once utopian Orange County. And it is here where I will also revisit the claim that dystopias are narratives that aim to evoke hope in their readers and to prompt the desire not to allow this negative vision to become a reality. Parrinder claims that unlike utopian narratives “[d]ystopias foreground the individuality, the self-absorption, and the capacity for emotion that novel-readers crave for but the architects of utopian societies look down upon” (2010, 156). Thus, dystopia invites the reader to actively feel for or against the characters and even places a strong emphasis on emotion. This might serve as an explanation as to why utopias are often considered boring since they leave out these essentials and the classical utopia often also focuses on the group as a whole while neglecting the single individual. 22 By contrast, most dystopias invite the reader to join the story of said individual. In addition to this focus on the individual, recent dystopias – among them Robinson’s The Gold Coast – incorporate the issue of how humanity ‘handles’ nature and ecology. Brian Stableford notes that Henry David Thoreau was the first writer to use ‘ecology’ and ‘dystopia’ in the same context in 1858. Ten years later, in 1868, John Stuart Mill did likewise (2010, 259). In fact, “[i]t was the mystical rather than the scientific aspects of ecology which forged a crucial bond with the history of utopian thought, helping to redefine notions of eutopia (and hence of dystopia)” (259). Eventually, this also led to “the coinage of the term ‘ecotopia’” (259). Ex- ploring the full scope of societies living this concept, Nuno Coelho and Ecotopia team members outline that “[e]cotopia is both a physical and virtual concept across multiple platforms exploring the appeal of utopian thinking in envisaging a sustainable and better future for our planet and society” (2016, 6). This can be observed in Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975), which is not only named after this idea, but also revolves around this vision. Peter Fitting explains that Callenbach “clearly intended his vision to be taken seriously, as a model for a more ecologically aware society (2010, 149). He adds that Callenbach’s “concern with the novel’s being taken seriously led him to write a ‘prequel’ – Ecotopia Emerging (1981) – explaining just how

22 As Weik von Mossner has demonstrated in Affective Ecologies, James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) is a notable exception to this generalization.

the new society would come about” (149). This trend can also be observed in a later book, namely in Marius de Geus’ Ecological Utopias: Envisioning the Sustainable Society (1999) in which he argues that “[m]y central thesis is that – completely against the spirit of the times – Utopian thought is important in the search for an ecologically responsible society” (5). Since Robinson is an environmentalist, this thesis can also be found in the Three Californias. Nature – and how humanity interacts with it – plays a prominent role in each of these three novels. In these narratives humans are depicted as either trying to preserve the environment or shown destroying nature. Stableford illustrates this ongoing debate regarding utopia and dystopia as follows: “In naturalistic and speculative fiction alike, eutopia and dystopia often sat side by side, as two sides of the same coin, the eutopia of the few being built on the expense of the dystopia of the many” (2010, 263). Thus, nowadays eutopia appears to be more and more often being portrayed as a negative outcome for the majority of a society. Nature as a force and thus a dangerous entity is no longer just an element in fictitious narratives but rather has become a reality as is clear from the news. However, most often nature is turned into a threat by humans. One example of this is the recent Carr Fire in California which was caused by humans. In her article about this devastating event, Madison Park also includes President Donald Trump’s official statement. In this tweet, he blames the government – and thus in a sense himself – by writing that “California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized” (2018).23 This is then a prime example of dystopia becoming reality. Supporting this observation, Levitas writes that dystopias are “not necessarily fictional in form; neither predictions of the nuclear winter nor fears of the consequences of the destruction of the rain forest, the holes in the ozone layer” (2011, 225), just to name a few. These visions of negative potential futures have become a reality, most promi- nently in the form of environmental pollution and the present threat of global warming, both of which are caused by humans. This is also the case in Robinson’s novels, which depict “the unfolding ecocatastrophe” (Stabelford 2010, 278), but Robinson writes about this in order to raise awareness and to try to prevent the worst from happening. A major cause of ecocatastrophe is that humans abuse nature and as a result we will have to suffer the long-term consequences of our own deeds. As illustrated in chapters 4 and 5, things will only get worse if not enough is done to tackle this current state of affairs. However, it is important to keep in mind

23 I will return to California’s water issues in the chapter on Pacific Edge, because water is also a central issue for this narrative.

that these bleak depictions of possible futures do not solely intend to cue negative emotions in their readers. As I will now go on to demonstrate, dystopias need to evoke notions of hope and desire in their readers in order to fulfill their missions. So far, dystopia has only been described in terms of unwelcoming and hostile environ- ments and futures, but at its core, a dystopia aims to convey the opposite. One purpose of a dystopia is to look beyond these dark waters. Although horrible images of a bleak future might initially lead the reader towards despair, they are also used as a wake-up call. Viera stresses that only those dystopias capable of evoking despair can result in readers taking such visions seriously. She goes even as far as claiming that “[d]ystopias that leave no room for hope do in fact fail in their mission” (2010, 17). Thus, Viera clearly supports the view that dystopias are not only about negative emotions such as fear and despair. Once readers experience these dark emotions, they able to feel the opposite way as well which means that even faced with misery and darkness, we can see the light and experience hope and the desire to keep on going. Con- sequently, a dystopia without a glimpse of hope seems to have failed. The importance of such glimpse is investigated further in chapter 4, which focuses on Robinson’s dystopia The Gold Coast. Here, it is not only a matter of how the narrative is related or which emotions Jim McPherson, the protagonist, experiences, but also how he even manages to keep going in this bleak world. In order to support my argument that hope and desire are Jim’s driving forces, particular emphasis is attached to the emotional core of the narrative, including the concept of ‘affect alien’. My analysis of Robinson’s dystopia using this approach will make it clear why Jim feels so alien in this world where he is apparently the only character that has not succumbed to this bleak life. Instead, he wants to fight the system even though everyone tells him – especially his father Dennis – that all is lost and that they have to accept this new world. I will now in the third and final section of chapter 2 turn my attention to narratives about societies that do not neatly fit into one or other of the categories established above. These critical utopias depict both utopian and dystopian elements and the citizens of these worlds are aware of the potential flaws and limitations of their utopia.

2.3 Paradise Reformed –The Critical Utopia

In the previous two sections, I outlined the apparently opposite poles of utopianism. By contrast, this section is concerned with narratives about societies that do not conform to one or other of those two genres, namely the critical utopia. Lyman Tower Sargent defines this genre as follows: Critical Utopia––a non-existent society described in considerable detail and normally located in time and space that the author intended a contemporaneous reader to view as better than contemporary society but with difficult problems that the described society may or may not be to solve and which takes a critical view of the Utopian genre (1994, 9). Through this definition, Sargent presents us with clear characteristics of this in-between form, sited between utopia and dystopia.24 He holds that the critical utopia conveys the idea that the utopian society is only in parts superior to the other society it is contrasted with in the text. Significantly, Sargent positions the critical utopia nearer to utopia than to dystopia, thus closely juxtaposing both the ‘perfect’ and the ‘imperfect’. The youngest form of utopianism, the critical utopia, is multi-faceted and thus may have a rich yield in terms of analysis. The genre of critical utopia is said to have originated in the 1970s. Tom Moylan claims that this form resulted from a transformation utopia had to undergo in order to be saved from its own destruction (1986, 10). He comments that the central concern of the critical utopias “is the awareness of the limitations of the utopian tradition, so that these texts reject utopia as a blueprint while preserving the dream” (10). Clearly, these texts do carry the utopian dream, but instead of completely destroying it and transforming it into a negative future, they portray the omnipresent conflict between the real and the imaginary world. Moylan observes that even though Pacific Edge recalls the strategies of the critical utopias of the 1970s, it is clearly a different text in a different time (1995, 4). Yet, he emphasizes that “it shares with the critical utopias a politically informed willingness to mediate upon its own textual limitations and op- portunities” (4). This allows the text then “to examine both the utopian society and the social situation from which it grew, to highlight the activism required for moving out of the dystopian present and into the utopian future” (4). Thus, readers of these texts need to be just as aware of the social setting and situation as with the classical utopia. Another important aspect regarding critical utopias is the way they handle the visitor to the utopia. Earlier in this chapter, I explained that in the classical utopia the traveler most often opts to stay in the seemingly perfect

24 He also defines another form, namely the anti-utopia: a non-existent society described in considerable detail and normally located in a time and space that the author intended a contemporaneous reader to view as a criticism of utopianism or of some particular eutopia (1994, 9).

utopian society. The critical utopia, according to Moylan, “breaks with previous utopias by presenting in much greater, almost balanced, detail both the utopian society and the original society against which the utopia is pitted as a revolutionary alternative” (44). Readers of the classical utopia learn only little about where the visitor came from and about the original society from which they have come. By contrast, the critical utopia incorporates this background and thus offers a more well-rounded narrative, which allows the reader to get to know the character of the traveler before they embark on their journey. This is also the case in Pacific Edge, where Robinson includes the traveler figure through the character of the town lawyer, Oscar Baldarramma, who stays corresponds with his friend Claire in Chicago. Nevertheless, there are clear differences between the classical and the critical utopia. Ashlie Lancaster outlines the basic characteristics of critical utopia as follows: “(1) a recognition of the contingency of language and identity; (2) an understanding of attainability as a continuous and evolving process; and (3) incorporation of the perspective of the ‘ironist’” (2000 ,112). Only by fulfilling these criteria, then, can a text be understood as a critical utopia. Consequently, this configuration allows readers to learn more about the text’s protagonist and who they were before starting out on this new journey. By exploring the travelers’ origins, the text might also offer a reason as to why they left in the first place. On a first consideration, pitting these two societies against one another might result in a binary opposition, yet this choice makes it possible to see the utopian society from a more critical perspective. A further change in perspective is, as Moylan points out that, this new society is no longer projected to be the superior one as most often “[t]he visitor becomes the hero, or in some cases the anti- hero” (45). Although this change of narrative perspective might be seen as a minor detail at first, it contributes to establishing a major difference between critical utopian and classical utopian texts. Now, the visitor has responsibility for their own story and is no longer portrayed in the role of the learner. This view is shared by Levitas who, also referring to Moylan’s claims, explains that in this genre, utopia is presented as imperfect, with flaws, faults, and with incon- sistencies (2011, 198). She observes that critical utopias sometimes even combine key features of both utopian and dystopian texts to serve as a warning of what might happen “if appropriate action is not taken” (198). Thus, the critical utopia – as shown through Pacific Edge – takes on a special role in the spectrum of utopian fiction as it can incorporate elements from of both visions of the future. This diversity of realizations in critical utopias is the reason why in this section I could not fully investigate which role emotions take on in this specific genre. Since it could be observed that such categorization can only be performed through ad- dressing the individual text itself, an in-depth discussion of this issue will follow in the next

chapter, where I return to these questions when exploring Robinson’s critical utopia. Thus, I can assume that it will feature both positive and negative emotions, but the narrative outcome will decide which ones will dominate this storyworld. In this chapter, I have aimed to review three major utopian/dystopian genres and their key related concepts in order to highlight both their possibilities and limitations. The original pursuit of utopia is enshrined in the United States Declaration of Independence as the unalien- able right to the pursuit of happiness. Following this idea, working towards a utopia or a dystopia can be seen as a journey to realize a dream that can go to either end of the spectrum. Sargent even concludes that “[u]topia is a tragic vision of a life of hope, but one that is always realized and always fails. We can hope, fail, and hope again. We can live with repeated failure and still improve the societies we build” (2011, 127). The utopian dream, with all its desires, hopes, fears, limitations, flaws, and maybe even impossibilities could then be considered as part of a learning process for humanity to either achieve the impossible or prevent the unspeak- able. The three chapters of Part II which follow deal with exactly these different visions of the future, with each chapter dealing with a different one of Robinson’s Three Californias and having a distinct focus. Just as the Three Californias depict quite different, yet possible futures for California: the direction our world will develop in the future will be to the choices made and the paths humanity decides to walk down.

Part II Dreaming of Potential Futures

Chapter 3 Imagining a Better Place: Simulation, Emotion, and the Struggle to Keep the Utopian Pulse Beating

The critical utopia differs from the classical utopia in that the critical utopia is aware of its own utopian society’s flaws and limitations. As previously outlined by Tower, the society portrayed in a critical utopia may or may not be able to resolve the issues it faces. An awareness of this situation can be observed in Pacific Edge, in which Tom Barnard, one of the novel’s two protagonists, writes the following:

Must redefine utopia. It isn’t the perfect end-product of our wishes, define it so and it deserves the scorn of those who sneer when they hear the word. No. Utopia is the process of making a better world, the name for one path history can take, a dynamic, tu- multuous, agonizing process, with no end. Struggle forever. Compare it to the present course of history. If you can. (1990, 95) Robinson’s imagining a critical utopia is not static: he aims to construct a place that is characterized by a constant change.25 Lancaster supports this conception of a critical utopia by argu- ing that “[c]ritical utopias are not blueprints for ideal societies, but expressions of the aspiration for human fulfillment towards which our political practice should always be directed” (2000, 111). This is exactly what Robinson proposes in the passage cited above. Another key difference between the classical and the critical utopia is that whereas in the former there is always a traveler who takes on a prominent role, the latter does not necessarily need to feature such a character. Even though Robinson decides to include a traveler figure in Pacific Edge in the person of the town lawyer Oscar Baldarramma, he is not the novel’s protagonist and his assigned role is thus considerably smaller than it would be the case in the classical utopia.26 With the traveler playing less of a major role, Robinson places more emphasis on the imagined future, including its potential flaws and dangers. In this novel, readers can witness protagonist Kevin Claiborne’s constant struggles between being consumed by fear or pursuing his desires for a better world. I argue that Kevin can only embrace his utopian desire because he is deeply afraid of his world changing for the worse. In this storyworld, fear is the vehicle through which change can happen. Because his peaceful world is threatened from the inside, Kevin never gives up hope and struggles to preserve his utopia. Before starting on the detailed analysis of the novel, I want to explore a device Robin- son uses to let his readers join and feel with the characters of Pacific Edge on their journey,

25 Robinson states in an interview that “when I was writing a utopian novel I was wondering why Uto- pias seem a bit dry, why people will make the common complaint that they wouldn’t want to live in a Utopia, that there’s something life-dampening about them” (Foote [1994] 2009, 280). 26 The character Oscar Baldarramma retains the function of communicator to the outside world.

namely the process of simulation. In this first section, I outline how it is possible that readers are able to imagine storyworlds. I lay special emphasis on the process of empathy, through which readers are able to feel with these characters. In the second section, I discuss Pacific Edge to argue that although this narrative sometimes seems bleak, Kevin Claiborne never gives up hope and maintains his struggle to preserve his utopia. He is constantly faced with the fear of losing important things, but in the end, he succeeds in keeping his utopia alive.

3.1 Imagining a Storyworld to Feel with the Characters

Storyworlds, whether in film or in literature, partially rely on their viewers/readers and how they interact with their fictitious narratives. Hogan argues that “we imagine emotions else- where and respond emotionally to such imaginations” (2017, 6) and calls this process simulation. According to Hogan, simulation is “the spontaneous or effortful, implicit or self-conscious imagination of hypothetical or counterfactual experiences; a key element in empathy and in literary understanding and response” (183). Simulation, then, is an important factor for making meaning of a storyworld and Weik von Mossner asks in this context “[w]hat is it that you actually do, and what happens to you if it is a book that ‘works’ for you in the sense of it being able to captivate your attention?” (2017, 19). Different facets of an event such as its cause, nature, and potential consequences are important for one’s own emotional response to the event and greatly influence how the event is experienced.

However, since not every event to which we respond is ‘real’, and since emotional memories do not necessarily relate to a specific event, what is imagined in the mind is also important. As Hogan puts it, “[s]imulation is the imagination of particular conditions and particular, usually causal sequences of events without the constraints of perception and memory” (2017, 43). For example, one might think about a potential what-if without ever having faced such an experience one’s self or think about how an unfamiliar scenario might play out. With- out this faculty for simulation, people would not be able to do these things. As Oatley observes “[f]iction and poetry are not false; they are about what could happen” (2011, 7). This means that in responding to literature, readers are able to simulate a potential world and imagine what it would be like. In Robinson’s novels this is central as the parts of the Three Californias triptych revolve around worlds that do not and may never exist. Oately adds in this context that “[a] piece of fiction is a model of the world, but not of the whole world” and emphasizes that “[f]iction is a means by which we can increase our understanding” (ix). Thus, the imagined realms we encounter in fiction may be as important as the ones we find in the real world. The process of simulation is essential in order to be able to imagine oneself in a storyworld. But in order to fully immerse oneself this world, empathy is crucial as well. Empathy is, according to Suzanne Keen, “a vicarious, spontaneous sharing of affect, [that] can be provoked by witnessing another’s emotional state, by hearing about another’s condition, or even by reading. Mirroring what a person might be expected to feel in that condition or context” (2010, 62). One factor that can cue empathy is mirroring, a kind of imitation that occurs across

a range of emotions. Oatley explains this using the following examples: “[w]hen we see someone smile, we tend to smile back. When we see someone frown, we, too, tend to frown” (113). This process, however, is not something that happens consciously but rather subconsciously and it also takes place during the reading of a novel. The emotions felt when reading fiction are then “not primarily those of the character, they are our own, in the contexts we imagine” (115). But what exactly happens in our minds during this act of simulation? It has been established that simulation is the imagination both of real possibilities and of potential what-ifs. Hogan states that one factor that is drawn on in such imagination is memory, deriving from various sources that the “mind integrates in ways that are currently not well understood but that result in new, particular (imagined) scenarios” (2017, 88). “Literary fiction” he adds is then “an extensively elaborated and more self-conscious form of such counterfactual and hypothetical simulation” (88). Basing their emotional responses to fiction on real events and experiences, readers and viewers think about various possible outcomes and how a story could continue. Hogan mentions in this context that the psychologist and film theorist Ed Tan came up with the following distinction between fiction emotions and artifact emotions: Fiction emotions are the emotions we experience in response to the fictional world – its events, situations, and characters. They are fundamentally immersive emotions, emotions that we experience, when, for example, we are caught up in a story. They are roughly the sorts of emotion that we experience in relation to events and situations in the real world. Artifact emotions, in contrast, are not immersive but reflective. They are emotions that we experience when we become conscious of the way in which a certain series of events has been shaped and directed (98). Fiction emotions allow people to respond empathetically to film or literature whereas artifact emotions are more concerned with aesthetics or style. Artifact emotions are in this sense more static and do not allow for much investment or attachment while fiction emotions are direct responses. This discussion then leads back to the issue of simulation. In view of the fact that differentiating between these two types of emotions is not always easy, Hogan proposes a new name for fiction emotions, namely simulation emotions” (101). This type of emotion is the emotional response to simulated events and conditions. Empathy is an essential part of this imagined experience. In order to simulate an event, readers or viewers must be able to feel with the characters. Paul B. Armstrong argues that this is only possible because this “embodiment of emotions can have transpersonal effects” (2014, 125). This claim is supported by Weik von Mossner who argues in Cosmopolitan Minds (2014) that “[c]ognitive processes thus play an important role in our emotional understanding to distant others. We need to be willing to imagine their concrete situations and to subject ourselves to the perhaps painful process of feeling some of their

feelings” (15). What happens as a result, if readers allow themselves to open up to this process, links directly to the notion of empathy. Weik von Mossner explains that “empathy is more crucial [than sympathy] because it allows us to understand what it is like to undergo a certain sensual experience” (2017, 25). She adds that “readers will map the sensations, emotions, and movements of a character onto their own brains, thereby understanding, and literally feeling their interaction with the character’s environment, its pleasures, and its pain” (25). By being willing to imagine narrative situations and through feeling empathy, readers are potentially able to understand what a character might feel in their respective storyworld. Only then is the reader’s mind fully invested in and drawn into the world which these characters inhabit. Weik von Mossner concludes that “[t]his blurring of the distinction between one’s own body and that of another – real or imagined – is what [neuroscientist Vittoro] Gallese calls embodied simulation” (26). As the subsequent analysis of Pacific Edge will show, Robinson invites his readers, if they are willing, to embark on a journey through his critical utopia, to let them feel with his characters, and to take part in their storyworld. Thus, he fabricates a narrative that calls on all these processes. By being open to these processes and through vivid simulations, readers feel along with the characters in this narrative.

3.2 Pursuing Hopes and Desires for a Better Future in Pacific Edge

3.2.1 Utopia and its Flaws

As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, the society envisioned by Robinson in Pacific Edge is not portrayed as a perfect world. Instead, he creates a critical (eco)utopia where his characters try to resolve the problematic issues which confront their society. Indeed, this novel is marked by a constant change in the course of which the protagonists struggle unceasingly to keep their dream of a better future alive. Compared to the other two novels in the Three Cali- fornias, the world in Pacific Edge portrays the most favorable of these three possible future scenarios. Helen J. Burgess supports this view, stating that it “offers a synthesis: a hopeful model of community development that might prevent the technological holocausts of the other two novels” (2006, 279). This optimistic future, however, needs a society that is aware of its limitations and also protagonists who take appropriate action when needed. In this section, I intend to explore the emotional sphere of this novel and how Robinson draws on the processes of simulation and empathy to have his readers join this journey. I lay particular emphasis on the struggles Robinson’s protagonist Kevin Claiborne undergoes and how he and the other people in his society deal with them. The storyworld in Pacific Edge is characterized as ecotopian, a society which “seriously attempt[s] to envisage future modes of ecological citizenship” (Weik von Mossner 2017, 165). Ernest Callenbach attempted to do something similar in Ecotopia (1975). However, Weik von Mossner argues that whereas Rob- inson’s ecotopian narrative has a critical edge, Ecotopia lacks this feature (165). This critical edge revolves around Kevin’s emotional struggles, as he constantly fears that his world may be destroyed from the inside. In particular, I am concerned with the positive emotions that are connected with the desire for the creation of a better world. Weik von Mossner concludes that “[i]n order to stimulate hope and desire for a better way of being, such critical ecotopias must engage readers emotionally in the storyworlds they present while at the same time making their fictional scenarios plausible enough to convince them that a better world is indeed possible” (172). I will also look at the negative emotions that are cued when the peaceful world of protagonist Kevin Claiborne is threatened from the inside. I argue that even though positive emotions dominate this critical utopia, it is the presence of negative emotions in Pacific Edge that evokes excitement and avoids a typical issue of a classical utopian narrative, namely the possibility of boredom.

In the novel’s opening sentence, Robinson immediately establishes an optimistic and hopeful storyworld that seems to be free of any negativity: “Despair could never touch a morning like this” (1990, 1). He then continues to introduce this world and its surrounding environment. The reader is given vivid descriptions of what this potential future for California could look like, descriptions which directly support Alan R. Slotkin’s claim that Pacific Edge “is a novel that stresses the importance of people living in ecological balance with nature” (1997, 440). Robinson describes this flourishing fertile place as follows: “beneath the foothills, stretching to the sea, the broad coastal plain seemed nothing but treetops: groves of orange, avocado, lemon, olive; windbreaks of eucalyptus and palm; ornamentals of thousand different varieties” (1). The mention that these “varieties” are “both natural and genetically engineered” (1) might strike the reader as odd, but this small detail already lets us know that science has advanced and that this storyworld is presumably not set in the present. This description is con- cluded with a vivid depiction of the panoramic view: “[i]t was as if the whole plain were a garden run riot, with the dawn flushing the landscape every shade of green” (1). Already here, we find the first instance of embodied simulation, as readers – if they are willing to – find themselves imagining a colorful and peaceful place free from danger, not harboring any harm. Weik von Mossner supports this interpretation by stating that it is this visual imagery, evoked through the intense light, the sense of such clear air, and the colorful groves, that enables readers to simulate this world in their minds (2017, 164). After this introduction to the blossoming storyworld of the novel, readers finally get to meet the novel’s protagonist Kevin and to find out more about his everyday life in the town of El Modena, California, in the summer of 2065. Robinson dedicates his first chapter to introducing Kevin, in order to establish who he is and what his life is like. Here, we also learn about the political form of the town’s government. Moylan explains that this is a governing council that “attends to issues such as land use, resource allocation, and the local quality of life” (1995, 12). The town government consists of a group of seven persons belonging to different parties, each of which has specific functions and programs. The position of mayor is held in rotation. Moylan adds that the two Green Party members are “committed to controlling growth and restoring land and cultural life of the area”, the two Federal party members are “interested in renewing development”, but the roles of the remaining three members of the so-called “fluctuating middle” are not specifically explained (12). In this first chapter, the reader also learns about Kevin’s emotional life, and that he is thinking about entering into a romantic relationship with his long-term friend Ramona Sanchez. Romantic love between members of the utopian community would not be a typical plot element

in a classical utopia, which generally only has the visitor from the outside experience romantic love but not the utopians themselves, who already enjoy full happiness in their lives and thus have no need to seek love interests. As Parrinder explains: “[u]topia, the good place which is no place, is also the place at the end of the traditional fairy tale, where ‘They all lived happily ever after’” (2010, 154). To Parrinder, this lack of romantic involvement in the utopia is because in “[t]he heart of romance are the physical and emotional torments suffered by its heroes and heroines and their determination in the face of adversary; utopia, by contrast, portrays a collective, not individual, reward for suffering humanity as a whole” (2010, 154). Parrinder draws the following conclusion: “In utopian (as opposed to dystopian) romances, the excitements of love and adventure are normally experienced by the visitor to utopia, not by the utopians themselves” (154). Thus, there is seemingly no need for romantic excitement inside the classical utopian society, but this does not hold true for Kevin’s narrative in this critical utopia. While playing baseball, Kevin looks at Ramona and how “she was sitting on the outfield grass, long, graceful, splay-legged, grinning, black hair in her eyes. And Kevin fell in love” (1990, 11). What is presented here as the straight-forward beginning of a romantic attachment is in fact the beginning of a complicated storyline. Kevin admits that “this isn’t exactly how it happened. This isn’t the whole story. […]. No, this was something else, something that had been developing for years and years” (11).27 This revelation immediately makes the storyline more interesting and complicated since Ramona just split up with the current mayor, and Kevin’s ‘rival’, Alfredo Blair. Alfredo is a member of the Federal party and also happens to be a friend of Kevin. Moylan notes that “El Modena is a multi-racial, non-sexist, lively place that appears to have reached a stress-free balance of play and work. While coupled marriages still exist, people generally live in group houses which include married and single adults and children” (1995, 12). Already by this point, we have learned that Kevin’s personal life is predominately driven by his emotions and how he interacts with his surroundings. The opening chapter of Pacific Edge thus sets the tone for a narrative that is clearly not characterized by the boredom and beautiful perfection of a utopian society, but rather is about a society that clearly has to deal with problems and issues and promises some excitement. Through the process of empathy, readers are caught up in this storyworld and already have a pretty clear picture of the novel’s protagonist, his environment, and his inner states. However, Kevin’s storyline is not the only narrative that is told in Pacific Edge.

27 Kevin mentions that “he had known Ramona Sanchez since she first arrived in El Modena, when they were both in third grade” (11).

In addition to this main narrative revolving around Kevin’s life, there is a second storyline, which plays out in a different time frame. Carol Franko explains that this “counterpoint storyline is a first-person narrative that appears in short, italicized sections at the beginnings of chapters two through eleven” (1994, 204). The first entry of these various fragments is set in a snowy Zurich and dated March 2012 – which at the time the novel was first published was a time in the near future. At this point the reader only learns that this still nameless character intends to write a utopia (1990, 35). It is only later in the novel that his identity is gradually revealed. First, the reader learns that the writer’s first name is Tom (120) and near the end of the novel that his last name is Barnard (276): Kevin’s grandfather. Franko defines him as “white, Anglo-American, professional middle class, currently living abroad” (1994, 204). These fragments create not only a second narrative, but also serve as another character’s vision of the future. When the reader learns who this anonymous writer really is, it becomes clear that the possibilities he once imagined have now turned into reality. Franko argues that “the main storyline and utopia proper of Pacific Edge depend on/are generated by the fragmented other narrative embedded in it, but in a “historical” rather than a metafictional sense” (206) and concludes that “[t]his is a novel about a utopian novel that wasn’t written” (206). As I will later show, Tom Barnard’s role will gain in importance over the course of both plotlines. Soon after the introductory portrayal of this peaceful and idyllic future place in the opening chapter of Pacific Edge, a conflict arises between El Modena’s governing political parties. The town’s problems revolve around water, their issue mirroring the California Water Wars in the earlier part of the 20th century and the figure of engineer William Mulholland, who was infamous in the history of Californian water management.28 In the novel this historical event is discussed by Sally Tallhawk, a specialist in water law. She explains that the “Owens Valley was sucked dry, its farms and orchards destroyed. […]. Owens Lake dried up completely, and Mono Lake came close, and the groundwater fell and fell, until even the desert plants began to die” (1990, 99). In the Pacific Edge narrative, however, things only start to move in this direction. The town lawyer Oscar Baldarramma explains to fellow citizen Nadezhda Katayev that “[t]he American West begins where the annual rainfall drops below ten inches” and adds that “much of the United States was a desert civilization” (38). His main argument in concerning the water management proposal turns out to be the danger of drought

28 Back in 1913, Mulholland completed the Owen’s River Aqueduct and was widely respected for this achievement. However, a number of people living in Owens Valley felt wronged by this action, since by means of this aqueduct their water was transferred to a distant city and this resulted in a fight. The angry inhabitants went so far as to call it a “ruthless devastation” of the Owens Valley (Mulholland 1995, 112-114).

because people in the West “had mined its groundwater like oil” and “the search for water was becoming desperate” (38). During the real-world Californian Water Wars, Mulholland had proposed in 1928 to secure an additional water supply through the Colorado River, because there were droughts in California from time to time and also because the state’s population had increased enormously between 1880 and 1928, (Mulholland 1995, 463-465).29 In the case of El Modena in Pacific Edge, Oscar proposes that the Columbia River should be used as the town’s water source as it “poured enormous amounts of water into the Pacific every year” (38). He then justifies this solution as follows: “the Columbia carried more than a hundred times the water those states [in the North] were ever expected to need, and their fellow states to the south were truly in need” (39). Ironically, he indirectly refers to Mulholland and to California’s infamous tradition. “It’s what we have done in California for years; instead of moving to where the water is, we move the water to where the people are” (39). Of course, at first glance this seems like a worthwhile pursuit to allow townspeople “in need” to have more water. However, this plan is not only about providing water resources for people afraid of suffering drought. Oscar explains to Kevin that the real reason behind the proposal is actually “a method of growth control. If they don’t have the water, they can’t expand without special action. The Santa Bar- bara strategy, it’s called” (40). Unsurprisingly, this issue now turns into a power struggle to advance the advance of specific groups, and, at the same time, to promote the town’s scientific and economic status. Kevin’s developing relationship with Ramona is one reason why his fight to preserve the last untouched area, Rattlesnake Hill, becomes complicated. Katerberg emphasizes that “[t]his political drama is intermingled with Kevin’s relationship with Ramona, Alfred’s former lover” (2008, 151). In fact, “Kevin has had a crush on her since their school days. They become lovers, but near the end of the novel she decides to try to work things out with Alfred” (151).30 At the start of the novel, it seems as if Alfredo and Ramona are meant to be together, being “high school sweethearts at thirty-two” (1990, 18), but they had split up and it is now Kevin who starts a romantic relationship with Ramona. This plotline suggests what Hogan terms a prototypical romantic plot in What Literature Teaches Us about Emotion (2011). It “begins with two people falling in love. This love is, however, problematic. Specifically, it involves

29 It should be noted that even though many people benefited from Mulholland’s plan, many others suffered, and that it represented a highly questionable moral system and attitude towards Native Americans. 30 For some reason, Katerberg calls him Alfred instead of Alfredo.

some conflict of social hierarchy – commonly familial, though sometimes religious or political” (2011a, 90). A prototypical romantic plot can, according to Hogan, have either a “comic” ending, such as the happily-ever-after, or a “tragic” version involving emotions such as pain or a sense of despair (91). In the case of Pacific Edge, the latter is the case. Kevin has strong feelings for Ramona. When she is sitting next to him, “he was aware of that touch, of a strong hand, trembling slightly, supporting him. She was on his side” (1990, 83). Here, readers learn a lot about how he feels, and that he may have felt like this in her presence for a long time. In fact, almost every passage that refers to Kevin’s thoughts about this relationship offers more insight into how strongly he feels for Ramona. By including this plotline, Robinson avoids the exclusion of romantic love which is typical of utopian societies and simultaneously offers some excitement. A critical commentator as always, Oscar describes her as the town beauty and that “Kevin is interested in taking Alfredo’s place” (90), adding that “Ramona appears to reciprocate some of Kevin’s regard” (91). Their relationship soon inten- sifies when the two share their first kiss. “The coyotes’ ecstasy yipped from inside them now, a complete interpenetration of inner and outer. Their first true kiss. Kevin’s blood transmuted to something lighter, faster, hotter, freer–to wind. His blood turned to wind” (163). With the same attention to detail with which he normally perceives his environment, Kevin describes what he experiences when his desire to finally be together with Ramona is fulfilled. Here the reader can feel how intense and how breathtakingly rewarding this moment is to Kevin. In fact, this moment at night “[s]ilhouetted against the moon” (163) almost reads like a dream sequence and pure romance. Still not fully convinced that this has finally happened, Kevin recalls this night like a dream, but also remarks that “he was truly in love. And for the first time” (182). Unfortunately, this fulfillment does not last long. Soon afterwards, Ramona dismisses him because she and Alfredo need to sort things out. Given the fact that she split up with Alfredo just before she started things with Kevin, the reader cannot help but become suspicious that she may go back to Alfredo. Even though she tells Kevin “I love you. And I love the way we are together. I haven’t felt the way I have felt the last week in a long time” (201), she immediately adds that “I don’t know what I feel about things with Alfredo. He says he wants to go back together, but I don’t know…” (201). Understandably, Kevin is both hurt and afraid that he may lose her to Alfredo. He realizes that “this love made him so vulnerable…If she left. He couldn’t think of it. Was this what it meant to be in love, to feel this horrible fear” (202). Being in love for the first time at twenty-eight, Kevin only now becomes fully aware that love is not always beautiful or simple. Eventually, his fears are confirmed when Ramona tells him that “Alfredo and I are

going back together. Stay together. He wants to, and I want too” (211). Unsurprisingly, Kevin is left hurt and heart-broken as this short romance is already over and he just lost the woman he loves to his rival. In addition, he might lose something else important to himself to Alfredo, namely Rattlesnake Hill.

3.2.2 Struggle Forever to Keep the Dream Alive

Readers cannot help but feel with Kevin, who has been introduced as someone who is open to romantic love, and soon we leant that he also cares deeply about nature and his environment. The conflicts revolving around Rattlesnake Hill come to dominate, and the storyworld is now transformed from being a peaceful utopian society into a place where opposing parties in the water conflict are driven, on the one side, by capitalistic desires and, on the other, by the determination to preserve the natural environment. The parties who want to access more water are the town’s mayor, Alfredo, and his business partner Ed Macey. Oscar tells Kevin that “[t]hey were discussing a new complex, one which would combine labs with offices and shops” (40). Kevin realizes that the exact place they have in mind is the one so dear to him, Rattlesnake Hill. As, in Oscar’s words, “California water law is a swamp” (42), Kevin needs to come up with an answer to this potential threat. At this point Kevin’s grandfather, Tom Barnard, is introduced since he lives in that last untouched area in El Modena, Rattlesnake Hill, a place which has deep significance for Kevin. Hinting at the second narrative in the novel and foreshadowing its true meaning, it is explained that Kevin’s estranged grandfather might be able to help them because he “had had an active career in law and politics, and had been a prominent figure in the economic reforms of the twenties and thirties” (43). After taking some time to process what is going on, Kevin realizes just how much Rattlesnake Hill means to him. Overwhelmed and hurt, he tells himself “not Rattlesnake Hill! It was not just that it stood behind his house, which was true, and important; but that it was his place” (43, emphasis added).31 Kevin remembers all the positive memories he connects with this place, how he spent many moments of his life there, and now fears that everything could be destroyed and become nothing more than a distant memory. Kevin also emphasizes a spiritual connection to this place as he describes the Hill “as if inhabited by an old Indian hill spirit, small but powerful” (44). He concludes that “[h]e could only sit and touch the earth, and worry” (44). Again mirroring the events surrounding Mulholland’s experience in 1928, the reader then learns about an historical event involving Native Americans. In Alfredo’s opinion “the California Indians were noble savages, devastated by Junípero Serra’s mission system. Thus Mission Revival, which every thirty years or so swept through California architecture in a great nostalgic wave” (46) is a good thing. Kevin, however, rejects this view, which to him seems to be “no more than a kind of homage to genocide” (46).

31 This display of despair is picked up by Moylan, who claims that it is Kevin’s desire to save his childhood refuge (1995, 16).

Again, through the process of empathy, readers are exposed to two different worlds and value sets. On the one hand, they picture Alfredo as someone who is driven by his personal goals and ambitions to make El Modena a better place. On the other hand, readers are able to experience and understand what Kevin is going through. Thus, they may be able to feel with Kevin, and themselves experience his pain, his fear that he might lose this significant place in his life, and also his feelings regarding the potential destruction of culturally valuable objects. Instead of just sitting still and waiting to find out whether these development plans will be realized, Kevin decides to take action and to confront Alfredo with what he learned. In a state of high emotion, Kevin approaches Alfredo when his fears of Rattlesnake Hill being destroyed are growing stronger. During their argument, Kevin notices that “his hands [are] shaking” and quickly concludes that “[h]e needed help” (51). Here, Kevin physically experiences how afraid he is of losing this place. Trying to find a solution for his problems, Kevin seeks out his grandfather, Tom Barnard, who quickly rebuffs his grandson and instead tells him to “[s]top him, then. You know what to do, you don’t need me” and straightforwardly says “I’m done with that stuff, Kevin. It’s your job now” (55).32 Kevin, who readers have come to know as someone who deeply cares about his environment, is now consumed by his fears. It seems as if all his attempts may have been in vain since he may well be unable to preserve his utopian imagination. Now, he not only feels fear, but also rage, which can be observed during the next meeting of the town council. “Face red with emotion”, Kevin screams at Alfredo ‘That is the last empty hill in El Modena’” (77). Their discussion is what Carl Abbott calls “the process of representative democracy – lobbying, bargaining, the use and abuse of bureaucratic rules to advance local interests” (2003, 37). All this happens through the fight over Rattlesnake Hill since preserving this place could mean securing the Arcadian character of El Modena.

32 Eventually, Tom decides to leave his isolated home and reenters El Modena, where things only get worse.

3.2.3 Criticism From the ‘Outsiders’ - Where Did We Go Wrong?

The town lawyer Oscar Baldarramma, who is originally from Chicago, is the figure in the novel who primarily communicates with the ‘outside world’ and, thus, plays the role of the traveler. Unlike Ecotopia’s William Weston who writes journal entries, Oscar sends letters to his friend Claire. In the first one, he tells her that the citizens of El Modena are “extraordinarily friendly, healthy, energetic and beautiful” (87) and calls the town arcadian. Lisa Garforth pick up on the observation that Oscar functions as ‘the traveler’ and she argues that he is a “cosmopolitan and endlessly curious ‘visitor’ figure” who is “commenting in particular on the Arcadian elements of El Modeñan life” (2005, 407). Together with the other outsider figure, Tom, “the content of Robinson’s utopia is the object of dialogue and critique” (407). Garforth supports Oscar’s observation that life in El Modena can be called Arcadian in view of the following aspects: “its relative insularity, rejection of economic growth as a source of progress and well-being, and its apparent endorsement of a simple life in touch with nature, eschewing the complex pleasures of a diverse and sophisticated cultural sphere” (409). She does point out, however, that Oscar brings these tendencies into explicit focus and that he often acts in a critical and detached way (409). What is learned through Kevin’s perspective is sometimes made fun of by Oscar. To Garforth, Oscar’s role is “a narrative juxtaposition between El Modeña’s modest, nature-loving way of life and elements of our own commodified and spectacular culture” (410). Her argument seems to suggest that Oscar is, like the traveler in the classical utopia, someone who initially fails to understand this new way of life and judges everything according to his old standards. In comparison, Callenbach’s protagonist William Weston remarks at one point that “[l]ittle emotional dramas like this seem to be common in Ecotopian life. There’s something embar- rassing and low-class about them, but they’re delightful in a way, and both participants and observers seem to be energized by them” (1975, 97). William clearly lacks the understanding for the fact that, for Ecotopians, dealing openly with emotions is considered a healthy way of living. This also seems to be true for Oscar’s depiction of the lifestyle and values of El Mo- dena’s citizens. One reason for Robinson’s inclusion of the character of Oscar might be as a counterpoint to the Arcadian perspective and to draw attention to the fact that this utopia is not flawless. Garforth supports this when she concludes that Oscar’s viewpoint presents an Arcadia that “is immediately relativised and disrupted” (2005, 410), which, of course, is because this text depicts a critical utopian society, not a classical utopia. Another noteworthy detail is the suggestion in one of Oscar’s letters that he did not come to El Modena by choice. He writes

that “I am joined here by a fellow exile, a Soviet woman named Nadezhda Katayev” (1990, 90), but he does not go into more detail. This revelation is followed by the previously mentioned critical attitude to El Modena when he writes that “[n]ot that the town is free of trouble” (91) and then describes their systems as inefficient. At this point, he is apparently unhappy about living in El Modena because he tells Claire that “I miss you. I miss almost all of my life in Chicago, which has disappeared like a long vivid dream” (92). Here it is suggested that Oscar is either homesick or he thinks that El Modena’s proposed lifestyle is inferior compared to Chicago. Interestingly enough, he phrases this as if his old life were a dreamlike apparition, unlike El Modena’s utopian society. In contrast, Tom Barnard’s fragmented entries from an earlier period give an opposite perception of California. He rejects Thomas More’s original idealized visions and claims “[w]hat a cheat utopias are, no wonder people hate them” (95). He rightfully criticizes that utopias are static places in a far-off world “[s]o they don’t have to deal with our history” (95). What he proposes as a ‘real’ utopia is the following: “Must redefine utopia. It isn’t the perfect end-product of our wishes, [..]. Utopia is the process of making a better world, […], with no end” (95). At this point in Tom’s narrative, his plan still remains a dream for a potential future.33 While readers learn more about his vision, they are witnesses to his struggles and his dissatisfaction with his present time, in which he experiences some kind of epiphany when he decides that humanity could indeed works towards utopia. “Save the twenty-first century. Plau- sible?” (147), he asks himself and answers “No. A story. But at least it’s possible, I mean we could do it! Nothing stopping us but inertia, ideology” (147).34 In these passages, it seems as if Tom is directly calling on his readers to join him on his quest to save his world and is also inviting them to feel his emotional struggles. With that, he is also asking readers to make use of simulation and to imagine “particular conditions and particular, casual sequences of events without the constraints of perception and memory” (Hogan 2017, 43). According to Tom’s argumentation, utopia can only become real if people work for it, believe in its realization, and overcome their fears of failing in their pursuit. What happens in these and the following passages are instances of embodied simulation where “readers will map the sensations, emotions, and movements of a character onto their own brains, thereby understanding, and literally feeling their interaction with the character’s

33 The further the plot progresses, the clearer it becomes that Tom Barnard’s entries plant the seeds for Kevin’s current life and El Modena’s arcadian lifestyle. 34 Tom thus concludes that the main issue why this is not yet possible is because of a “[l]ack of imagination!” (1990,147).

environment, its pleasures and its pain” (Weik von Mossner 2017, 25). In Tom’s world in 2012, however, people are “[g]etting desperate. Marcuse: one of the worst signs of our danger is that we can’t imagine the route from here to utopia” (148). This passage supports Moylan’s explanation of why people are unable to imagine utopia as he claims that “[i]f humanity becomes too much taken with the present, we lose the possibility of imagining a radically other future. We lose the ability to hope” (1986, 21). People need to be open to change and believe in it, otherwise there can be no path towards a better potential future. Just as a reader needs to be able to imagine a specific storyworld and actually feel it, Tom asserts that this must also be the case for people in his own time. “Take the first step and you’re there”, he starts this message, “Process, dynamism, the way is the life. We must imagine the way. Our imagination is stronger than theirs! Take the first step and you’re on the road” (148). Here Tom urges his fellow citizens to hope for a better future. He tries to persuade them, telling them to “imagine the way” and insisting that “our imagination is stronger than theirs!” By describing his desires in this urgent way, readers can feel how important this quest is to him and will be inclined to share his vision. This also cues curiosity in them to find out whether or not Tom will achieve his goal and also the hope that he will.35 Halfway through the novel, Tom reveals where he pictures his utopia. Before doing this, however, he emphasizes that “[u]topia is when our lives matter!” (181), an idea which at this point has already become clear through Kevin’s narrative. Constructing a powerful image in his readers’ minds, Tom sees his planned future narrator in the following terms: “I see him writing on a hilltop in an Orange County covered with trees, at a table under an olive tree, looking over a garden plain and the distant Pacific shining with sunlight” (181).36 Calling on readers’ imagination, he depicts a young man in a flourishing environment “covered with trees”, and the “distant Pacific shining with sunlight”. Readers who share this passion for nature can vividly see and feel this image in their minds.37 In Tom’s own time, however, when he was a younger man and writing up his thoughts, California looks radically different and is actually a dystopian world compared to El Modena in 2065. This further emphasizes that the immediate future would see history taking a turn for the worse and, understandably, Tom wants to rebuild this place in the form of a utopian vision. In 2012 he writes, “people are afraid. They’re afraid of what’s happening, and they’re afraid

35 At this point in the narrative, readers do not yet know that Tom actually did achieve this goal. 36 He adds that this narrator could also be on Mars and, thus, already hints at his Mars Trilogy (1992- 1996). 37 This imagery also bears striking resemblance to Kevin’s opening depiction of Orange County, which is in fact the realization of the utopia Tom had once imagined.

of the changes we would have to make to stop it from happening. But we’ve got to change! [He] cried” (298). His description of people’s fears and uncertainties mirrors to how Kevin feels after his initial losing out against Alfredo. Kevin is afraid of what is happening in own time and also knows that they “would have to make it stop from happening”. Tom refuses to be consumed by his fears and actively chooses to fight them. Eventually, he takes steps by acknowledging that “I have to do something. Not just write a utopia, but fight for it in the real world – I have to” (299). This utopia, then, will be the once happy place of his childhood, California, but with a completely new look and radically different ‘ideologies’. In 2065, the future indeed looks different, yet Kevin fears the repetition of the infamous water wars of the 1920s. Hoping for a better outcome this time, he remarks that “[i]t would be better to avoid disaster in the first place” (103). However, “with people like Alfredo running things” (107), he fears that that he himself might lose this battle because Alfredo is mayor, “he is powerful” (107). In these passages, Kevin voices his fears that history might repeat itself and also sees Alfredo and his plans as the personification of his fears. His friend Doris reminds him that his plan to save Rattlesnake Hills will not be easy. “You’ve got to expect a lot of resistance to what you’re trying to do”, she tells him. “Saving the land for its own sake goes against the grain of white American thought, and so it’s a fight that’ll never end” (107, emphasis added). In this passage, readers can observe how critical the author, Kim Stanley Robinson, is of a capitalistic viewpoint. He critically remarks that American thought is characterized by constant change and neglecting the environment for the sake of ‘progress’. Overwhelmed by the prospect of losing Rattlesnake Hill, Kevin heads up there, takes a deep breath, and fully realizes what is at stake: “the wind, spirit of the mountains, breathed. Water, the soul of the mountains, seeped downward. Rock, the body of the mountains, stood fast. Held in a bowl like God’s linked hands, they slept” (109). In this passage, Kevin almost humanizes his environment, describing how the wind breathes, how water is the soul of the mountains, and rock the moun- tain’s body. Thus, he further emphasizes his deep connection with his surroundings and allows readers who are willing to share this passion to vividly imagine this scenery in their minds. This passage makes it clear that the preservation of this place is not a selfish desire on Kevin’s part. Instead, it is about securing a site where the citizens of El Modena can be in tune with nature, and readers can easily sense how strong this connection is. Soon afterwards, the council votes against Alfredo’s proposal. Kevin is initially relieved, but Tom is certain that Alfredo will find another way and reminds his grandson that “it’s a battle won, not the war” (211), thus further feeding Kevin’s fears. Eventually, the true reason emerges why Alfredo wants to rezone Rattlesnake Hill.

Tom explains to Kevin that the Heartech corporation produces cardiac aids and that “Alfredo and Ed Macey started the company eight years ago” (251), their main investor being an illegal source from Hong Kong.38 Alfredo’s intentions mostly revolve around capitalistic developments when he declares “I want El Modena on the map” (268), obviously caring little about preserving this peaceful town location, which had previously been described as Arcadian. Upon learning this, Kevin is fully consumed by his fears, and experiences a variety of other emotions. He feels “a surge of strangely mixed emotion: hatred, disgust, a weird kind of sympathy, or pity” (268). He finds himself in a state of being overwhelmed and hopeless, not knowing whether he can win this war against Alfredo. Readers feel with Kevin when he witnesses his world crumbling and appears unable to do anything about it. Adding further anguish to Kevin’s distress, another painful event awaits him. Tom goes sailing and a tropical storm arises. Kevin learns that the “ship was wrecked in a storm, and Tom–he was washed overboard” (301). As a result, Kevin “really believed in the disaster. Tom was dead” (303). Now the person who Kevin has always looked up to is gone as well. In addition, in the next meeting, the council votes again on the proposed zoning change at Rattlesnake Hill, this time in Alfredo’s favor. Kevin, who has tried so hard to prevent this from happening and who never gave up, has just lost a critical battle and for a moment it seems that he has to accept his defeat and gives into his misery. Understandably, “Kevin couldn’t sleep this night” (310) and sets out to climb “the trail up the side of Rattlesnake Hill, moving slowly in the dark. Rustle of small animals, the light of the stars. In the little grove on top he sat, arms wrapped around his knees, thinking” (310). In this passage, he again emphasizes his connection with nature and that this place is where he can be at peace. Facing up to his fears that he might lose the Hill and sitting there for what might be the last time at this special place, Kevin eventually has an epiphany. “He found he had a plan. Somewhere in the night…he shivered frightened by what he didn’t know. But he had a plan” (311). He decides to hold a memorial service for Tom Barnard up on Rattlesnake Hill and puts up a plaque for Tom on the largest sycamore tree in the grove (313). This scene is significant because these are the same trees Tom had planted himself decades before and this communal memorial service has a tremendous result. When Alfredo confronts him about it, Kevin tells him that “[a]ll of the people there would now think of the hill as a shrine, inviolate” (413). In a very direct way, he adds: “Don’t fuck with this hill any more, Alfredo. There’s no

38 Since Alfredo depends on his investors, they are both his supporters and his blackmailers. Thus, he is turned from a player into a pawn who is being used by powerful capitalists and readers might even start to feel with him and pity him.

one will like you if you do” (313). With that, Kevin finally won the battle for Rattlesnake Hill and managed to turn this place into something even more significant.39 For the community, this place is now a reminder of their past and the achievements of Tom Barnard, who had worked so hard to realize his utopian desires which his grandson Kevin has now managed to preserve. Some time later, Ramona and Alfredo get married and Kevin realizes that he is in love with Doris, who is now with Oscar. He bikes away madly, “[b]ehind him Orange County pulsed green and amber, jumping with his heart, glossy, intense, vibrant, awake, alive” (1990, 326). At first, “it seemed to him then that he was without a doubt the unhappiest person in the whole world”, but “at the thought (thinking about it) he began to laugh” (326). This final passage highlights how much more vividly Kevin now perceives his beloved Orange County. For a final time, he describes a flourishing environment, that pulses “green and amber” and by using adjectives such as “intense, vibrant, awake, alive”, readers understand the intensity of this landscape. Kevin realizes that he was able to avert the impending catastrophe and the possible destruction of Rattlesnake Hill, thus keeping his own utopian dream alive. His laughing at the end is then the laughter of a joyous young man who did not let his fear govern his actions. Instead, Kevin echoes Tom’s mission to “fight for [utopia] in the real world – I have to” (299), knowing well that this will not the end of his story. This narrative has neither a real closure nor an ending. Instead, the final lines mirror the idea that “[u]topia is the process of making a better world, […]. Struggle forever” (1990, 95). Right now, Kevin has accomplished a significant feat by letting his hopes being stronger than his fears. Garforth explains this ending similarly, stating that: “[c]losure around a final set of green values is resisted through the subtleties of a narrative that entwines the personal and the political so that no final resolution is possible” (2005, 408). Moylan goes in line with this, claiming that these final lines are less about an ending per se. “Robinson leaves his readers with their own experience of the gap between their present world and utopia”, he explains, adding that “but perhaps with more capacity for vision in the darkness” (1995, 18). Robinson does not argue for a perfect place or that this life as depicted is the dream, instead he makes it clear that realizing utopia is a long and hard process. Abbott notes in this context that “the process is more important than the end state, and victories can be real even if small and sometimes morally ambiguous” (2003, 45), clearly pointing at the fact that Kevin in the end did exactly what Alfredo wanted to do – change Rattlesnake Hill. What becomes clear in these

39 According to Bellamy, this victory is proof that “Pacific Edge dreams that the communal past of California triumphs against state-backed corporations” (2017, 410).

various observations is that this is neither the end for Kevin nor for this society. Katerberg also recognizes that this storyworld is far from perfect.40 Instead, “[i]t is scarred by death, broken relationships, and sorrow” (2008, 151). This scarring can be observed in Kevin’s struggles to face his fears and acknowledge that there is no easy way towards a better life. El Modenian life is not about perfection but rather about unceasing change, with both positive and negative events and emotions. Kevin, by constantly allowing readers to vividly imagine his quest eventually evokes the hope for its realization in readers. Weik von Mossner explains that, in such a storyworld, “[r]eaders are cued to simulate that vibrant world in their minds and, by implicit comparison, find their world lacking” (2017, 179). This works so effectively in Pacific Edge because “[t]his is the kind of imaginative engagement that ecotopian novels and other literary texts can provide because, within certain boundaries, they give readers the freedom to envision what they find desirable” (179). By constantly creating peaceful, vivid, flourishing and Edenic visions of the environment, Kevin reminds readers what they find desirable. In this novel, Kevin was presented with two options. As pointed out in the epigraph to this thesis, he could have ‘chosen’ to be afraid of what might happen because he assumed the worst. Or, he could choose to step forward into the unknown and assume it will be brilliant (Grey’s Anatomy 2014). In his journey, Kevin has learnt that the future is uncertain and that it can change in an instant. However, as long as people keep on hoping that a better future will be possible and keep on working for it, they will keep on dreaming the utopian dream. Kevin’s narrative has shown that there is no single finite way to realize their desires and there is seemingly no real end or answer to these endeavors. It is a constant struggle with no real end and only those who do not let themselves be overwhelmed by their fears can eventually hope to realize their vision.

40 To Katerberg, “El Modena is not a pocket utopia but part of a larger world struggling in a historical-utopian process to achieve and preserve utopian accomplishments” (2008,151).

3.3 Conclusion

Pacific Edge is a critical utopia that is often compared with Callenbach’s Ecotopia. However, while Callenbach’s novel is a classical utopia with apparently no inherent shortcomings, Rob- inson’s novel features an awareness of the utopian society’s flaws. Both Callenbach’s protagonist William and Robinson’s Kevin often vividly describe their environment, thus inviting readers to imagine their worlds. The key difference between them is that Kevin does this from an insider perspective because he has grown up in the environment he describes. This allows readers to feel with him and his fear as they witness his struggles to protect Rattlesnake Hill. Kevin makes it his mission to preserve what his grandfather Tom Barnard has built, and he emphasizes how deeply afraid he is of losing this place. Tom’s narrative is set in the past, over a period which, at the time of publication (1990), was then the near future. This allows readers to experience the pursuit of realizing utopia from another perspective. Tom outlines in compelling terms why he is so dissatisfied with the Or- ange County of his (future) present, why he has developed such a strong desire for a better place, and emphasizes that achieving utopia is a constant struggle. Kevin continues the fight to realize this dream, and he shows that Tom was indeed successful. By incorporating the fears and struggles which realizing a utopia entails, Robinson avoids the typical features of a classical blueprint utopia, such as perfection, lack of excitement, or the exclusion of love interest. Instead, readers’ engagement allows them to witness with great immediacy the tension involved in Kevin’s quest to save Rattlesnake Hill. They feel with him when he fears that his hopes have been crushed, and also feel relief when – in the midst of a grove, a spiritual site – he experiences an epiphany that ultimately helps him save this pre- cious place. In this imperfect, less static, utopian society it is the risk of failure which gives rise to Kevin’s fears and, in turn, generates narrative tension. Pacific Edge is not about a world awaiting its end. Instead, Kevin’s fears are in the foreground. Readers become engaged in response to this sense of fear and awareness of risk of failure as experienced by Kevin. It is the fear experienced by a citizen of the utopian society which establishes Robinson’s Pacific Edge as a critical utopia. While this desire for a better life does end on a positive note in Pacific Edge, the future depicted in The Gold Coast is less bright.

Chapter 4 Being an Alien in Dystopia: Succumbing to Fears or Believing in the Transformation to Reclaim Utopia?

While the future depicted in Pacific Edge can be described as a flourishing, bright, and vivid environment, the narrative in The Gold Coast constructs a scenario for Southern California in 2027 in which technological advancements have got out of hand. This world is, according to Katerberg, “a dystopia of elevated highways, shopping malls, designer drugs, and military- industrial plants” (2008, 133). In this novel, the protagonist James “Jim” McPherson’s dissatisfaction with his life “leads him to nihilistic acts of sabotage against defense contractors and the malls and offices where he and his friends work and shop” (141). In these acts, Jim is driven by his emotions which range from sadness to anger. Although Lisa Simpson tells the audience in a recent episode of The Simpsons, that “dystopian movies have taught me two things: […], B: There is no hope” (2018), Jim’s narrative will demonstrate the opposite. Even though he is afraid of what might happen to him if found out or arrested, Jim is driven by his strong hopes to affect the present and potentially change the future. In other words, fear plays a prominent role in this narrative, but instead of being governed by it, Jim tries to overcome it and reclaim the once utopian Southern California. As in my discussion of Pacific Edge, here it is also important to bear in mind the work- ings of the process of simulation because we should not forget that literature and other forms of art are constant interactions between different worlds. In The Gold Coast, we find a protagonist who feels alienated from both his fellow citizens and his surrounding world. Before discussing this narrative in more detail, I want to outline poststructuralist affect theorist Sara Ah- med’s concept of ‘affect aliens’, a term used to refer to characters whose emotional state is at odds with the rest of their community. I believe that this term describes Jim well, touching on a significant factor in his makeup and highlighting that his primary motivation is his feeling of not belonging to this place, of being an alien. The key ideas underlying Pacific Edge remind readers that a better world is possible and the novel has them sharing in this desire for a better world. The Gold Coast, by contrast, cues different emotions which help readers to imagine the radically different potential future which is depicted, in this case a catastrophic one. In this scenario of the future, utopia was once the ideal dream and people had tried to pursue it, but the storyworld of The Gold Coast is often described as a developer’s dream gone mad. Jim and the other inhabitants of Orange County

try to adjust to this world and figure out how to survive in this hostile environment. Its technological advancements combined with “our world of consumerism, a corrupt-industrial complex” (Katerberg 2008, 139), and the rise of designer drugs have turned it into a California that is dangerous on various levels. Jim’s narrative will show that not everyone accepts this reality as ideal and some people want to change their futures. Moylan summarizes Jim’s quest as the articulation of “a modest utopian hope in the ability of people to learn the scope of new capi- talism” caught in “a system that shows no signs of changing” (2000, 205). The typical dystopian anti-hero Jim, however, is more than just a character lost in a world that he is unable to change. By reconceptualizing dystopian protagonists as affect aliens, I want to highlight that, using Jim's narrative as example, these characters can in fact be the ones capable of inducing change in a bleak world. Jim may seem excluded from the rest of his society, but he is able to ‘fight’ for a better future. If we perceive Jim in this way, we realize that a dystopia is not exclusively about bleak futures, but also about the struggle of anti-heroes either to realize their hopes or to resist succumbing to society’s dominant mode of thought by simply giving in. I hope that this approach will allow us to gain a deeper understanding of dystopian narratives and to grasp the essential fact that these worlds are not lost.

4.1 On Being an Alien Both Emotionally and Socially

There are many different reasons why someone might be an alien in a society. The most obvious is that someone is new to a place and does not know their way around or is unfamiliar with the specifics of a culture. It can also happen that someone is put into the position of an outsider because the majority of a group feel that this individual does not belong or is too different from them, for example in terms of race, class, gender, or even such a trivial matter as the color of their eyes. Over the course of U.S. history, for example, different ethnicities have been considered the ‘other’, among them Native Americans, African Americans, Hispano Americans, and Asian Americans.41 Jim’s status, however, is fundamentally different from that of the ethnic outsider as he is not excluded from mainstream society on account of his race. Nevertheless, although he is native to California, he feels that he does not belong to this place and his sense of alienation is crucial for the events of the novel. He also cannot be described as simply an outsider in the conventional sense. He clearly belongs to this society and has a support system, but he feels that he is lacking a certain connection and it almost seems that he is trapped in this state and governed by fears. For these reasons, Ahmed’s term ‘affect alien’ is an apt term to refer to Jim’s inner state. Being part of a group is not always a matter of outward appearances or behavior. In situations such as responding to peer group pressure, enjoying the success of a team as a member of that team, or a shared feeling of grief over the loss of a loved one – whether human or nonhuman – different people may be expected to experience the same kind of emotion. If one of them feels otherwise, they can be described as an ‘affect alien’. In connection with happiness, Ahmed explains that “[t]he affect alien is the one who converts good feelings into bad, who as it were “kills” the joy of the family” (2010, 48). She adds that “[a]ffect aliens are those who do not desire in the right way. […]. Appropriate desire is expressed in an appropriate way towards appropriate objects” (240). According to Ahmed, this means that our responses are alienated when we display an emotion that seems inappropriate for a particular situation. In his attempt to build a bridge between cognitive narratology and affect theory, Hogan picks up on Ahmed’s ideas and seeks to “extend them by means of integration with affective science”

41 This ‘othering’ is still an issue today as the Trump administration often resorts to discriminatory stereotypes when referring to African American, Mexican American, and Muslim American communities (Weik von Mossner 2018 (a)).

(2017, 8). He argues that her analysis “might be phrased more accurately in terms of experiencing hope or anxiety at the prospect of happiness and sorrow” (36). Hogan adds that she “isolates those members of a group – for example, a family or a nation – who do not share the dominant and normative emotional attitudes within the group” (36). Thus, othering does not only happen between different groups, but can also take place within a group itself. Although Ahmed lists three different types of affect aliens, Hogan classifies them into two major categories.42 First, there are those people who are “genuinely alienated from socially normative emotional attitudes” (2017, 36), for example sexual minorities that are denied equal rights. Second, he positions Ahmed’s figures “in the sense of imagined types of emotional dissidents, classes defined ideologically by the dominant society” (36). This means that for Hogan the severity of the degree of exclusion is decisive for the categorization of the affect alien. This distinction also makes it possible to determine whether we are dealing with individuals who are “genuinely alienated” or those who experience an “imagined” affective alienation. Hogan then suggests that “once the idea is mentioned, it begins to seem as if affect aliens constitute the majority of literary heroes” (37). While Hogan subsequently uses the term to work on the storyworlds in Romeo and Juliet and Imogen Binnie’s Nevada respectively, I propose that it is also applicable to describe Robinson’s protagonist Jim McPherson in The Gold Coast. Jim McPherson’s initial discomfort about the world he lives in is not unique to the dystopian world of The Gold Coast. In Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948), Orwell’s protagonist Winston Smith observes at the beginning of the novel that “[y]ou had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinised” ([1949] 2008, 5). In this passage, it becomes clear that Winston Smith is clearly opposed to Big Brother’s reign and that he feels alien in this world. Similar to this, Tom Moylan explains that The Gold Coast’s narrative is about alienation and it is “Jim’s crisis and coming of age” which “offers the most direct instance of the dystopian sleepwalker who turns against the system” (2000, 220). What both protagonists share is that they are both the “‘typical man’ of the times” (174). Perceiving them as such allows us to understand that ‘heroes’ do not always have to be the fittest or strongest. Those who feel that they do not belong, the affect aliens, can induce a change in their worlds because they have not yet been fully integrated into a system of oppression. When thinking about his circumstances, Orwell’s Winston realizes that “[a] sense of complete helplessness had descended

42 According to Ahmed, these types are “feminist killjoys, unhappy queers, and melancholic mi- grants” (2010, 49).

upon him” (([1949] 2008, 9). Eventually, he decides to fight the regime and tries to change the present. As readers who are familiar with the novel know, he ultimately fails in this endeavor, when “[t]he long-hoped-for bullet was entering his brain” (311), subsequently ending his life. Guy Montag, Ray Bradbury’s protagonist in Fahrenheit 451 (1953), also displays a clear sense of feeling alien in his world. “He was not happy”, he confesses at the outset of the novel and “[h]e recognized this as the true state of affairs” ([1953] 2012, 9). Just like Winston, he also sets out to change his present – in his case to prevent books from being burnt – but Bradbury ‘ends’ his novel on a more positive note as Montag survives in the end. However, since there is no closure it can also be observed that this is not the end of Montag’s journey. Jim McPher- son’s journey is to some extent similar to the journeys of the other two. Angry about what Orange County has become, he cries out that “It didn’t used to be this way!” (1988, 3) and explains that “[t]his whole basin was covered with orange groves, over two hundred square miles of them. There were more oranges then than there are lights now” (3). Already in this short passage it becomes clear that Jim hates the present version of Orange County and feels that he does not belong here as it makes him so unhappy and even depressed. He works in part- time jobs as a writing teacher and in a real estate agency and is frequently criticized by his family for not having a proper job or income. In addition, Jim initially helps his friend Arthur in underground resistance, but eventually he learns that he has been used by Arthur all along. Growing more and more dissatisfied, Jim recognizes that he shares neither the mind-set of his family nor that of his friends. After discovering an untouched natural environment, Jim sets out, like Winston and Montag, to work towards a better future. Unlike the other two, however, he decides to choose a completely non-violent way by writing a critical history of Orange County. The Gold Coast’s storyworld is inhabited by other characters besides Jim and every one of them feels that their present cannot be changed. In order to draw a clear picture of this claim and to establish that Jim truly is an alien in this world, I want to take a closer look at the other characters and at Jim. This stark contrast is best illustrated through his father, Dennis McPher- son, who feels that the world cannot be changed. He works for the military and, thus, indirectly supports the ongoing wars and the cruelties of this world. As an engineer, he develops technologies to aid the Pentagon and initially believes that he may one day create technologies that no longer need human pilots. However, he soon realizes that this is just a naïve dream. While Jim’s father Dennis is dominated by notions of fear, with his decisions being influenced by the flight, fight, and freeze ‘responses’ (Hogan 2011b, 37), Jim constantly struggles in his attempt to find a silver lining. Eventually, the fact that he is an affect alien allows Jim to experience

things differently from the rest of his community and, as a result, he attempts to change his present.

4.2 Flight, Fight, Freeze for a Better Way of Living in The Gold Coast

4.2.1 Fear of the Unknown

Southern California in 2027 is the realization of a potential future in which humanity depends more on technology than ever before. This once peaceful place is now hidden beneath ruins and sand, suggesting that the inhabitants of this storyworld are disconnected from their past and have instead constructed a new world. The only way for them to learn about their origins is through history books, which has given Jim “an uncontrollable urge to recover something – to see, to touch, to fondle some relic of the past” (1988, 4). This severing from the past and the resulting feeling of alienation drives Jim to actively seek to create a better place, sometimes even through resorting to criminal acts. The narrative of The Gold Coast revolves around fear of what may become of this environment. Jim’s fears motivate his refusal to succumb to despair, his resignation of his reality, and his persistent desire to survive in this world. All of this means that even though Jim spends a lot of time with family and friends, he feels like an alien both physically and emotionally. He does not feel that he belongs because he does not share their beliefs. From the outset, The Gold Coast is quite unlike the two other novels of Robinson’s Three Californias trilogy. Pacific Edge is divided into 11 long chapters, The Wild Shore into 23 long chapters, The Gold Coast into 83 short chapters. Each is written from a third person perspective, taking the viewpoint of one of the characters as a focalizer.43 Hogan calls this form of narration ‘parallel narration’, which “occurs when there are two or more narrators telling versions of the same story or treating the same storyworld” (2013 b, 184).44 Moreover, this novel is narrated in present tense unlike the two others, which are narrated in the past tense. Through this choice, readers are cued to imagine themselves witnessing the story as if it were happening right now. Even though following the different characters can sometimes be complicated, the use of multiple narrations allows the reader to gain a sense of the everyday lives of these characters. This technique also allows Robison to emphasize that this is a narrative about a society rather than about one individual, as “parallel narrators invite the reader or viewer to relate the individual narratives to one another” (186). The only exceptions are those chapters that recount the history of Orange County from its prehistory to the year 2027, when

43 Robinson switches between the perspectives and lives of 21 different characters. 44 Hogan adds that “[s]uch multiple narrations are, in general, of interest to the degree that they di- verge from one another-through contradiction, differences in emphasis, filling in or leaving out different details, and so on (185-6).

the novel is set. Only at the end is it revealed that these chapters are Jim’s own critical history of Orange County, written as his form of resistance against the system. A further point of contrast is that whereas Pacific Edge often emphasizes the glory of daytime, the storyworld of The Gold Coast highlights the night.45 In the opening of the novel, readers are introduced to Jim and his friends during “[n]ight in Orange County, here, and the four friends [Jim McPherson, Abe Bernard, Tashi Nakamura, and Sandy Chapman] are cruising in autopia” (1988, 1). Like a large part of this narrative, this beginning does not take place during daytime, allowing Rob- inson to make use of the darkness and to cue in his readers a feeling of heightened uncertainty as everything appears to be more dangerous when the sun is gone. The world Jim and his friends inhabit cannot be described as a warm or welcoming place. Carl Abbott claims that this Southern California is “a straight line projection of an over- crowded ‘condomundo’ where alienated young people do designer drugs with eyedroppers, drive automobiles with electronic guidance systems, and toy with terrorism against the transnational corporations that twist their coils around every activity” (2006, 121). Evidence for this view can be found in the novel, when Jim observes that “[w]e’re in a postmodern world, […], every person is a sovereign entity, free to do what they want” (1988, 37). What Jim implies here is the fact that no one in his world feels any obligation to one another. Abbott sees in the novel’s Southern California a critique of contemporary California, stating that “The Gold Coast comes closest to Orange County’s popular image of political conservatism, military dependence, and mindless consumption” (123). Even though some characters rebel against this system, their attempts “are little more than slapdash terrorism that turn out not only to be ineffec- tive but also to be corrupted by corporate power” (123). For Abbott, this world is marked by misery and every attempt at resistance made by the characters in the novel is in vain. He makes this view quite clear when he argues that “[t]he twenty-something characters who populate the story have few long-term goals. They party, do drugs, and work jobs that promise little for a career” (135). This vision of California seems to be a future in which everything has got out of hand and where everyone has stopped dreaming about a better future. That is, except for Jim, who does not want to accept this reality and painfully remembers the California that once was. At the same time, he wishes that the California of the future will once again become just like this memory. Burgess claims that this story is marked by a “loss of control that has accompanied technological dependency” (2006, 279). She adds that

45 In Pacific Edge, nighttime is reserved for epiphanies and spiritual moments.

“[i]n The Gold Coast, a dystopian vision of the toxic, traffic- and pollution-choked city, Rob- inson describes multi-level freeways piled high” (279). An illustration of her observation can be found on page two, where this so-called ‘autopia’ is described in great detail as follows:

The northbound lanes swoop up as they cross the great sprawl of the intersection with the San Diego, Del Mar, Costa Mesa, and San Joaquin freeways. Twenty-four mon- ster concrete ribbons pretzel together in a Gordian knot three hundred feet high and a mile in diameter – a monument to autopia – and they go right through the middle of it, like bugs through the heart of a giant. (1988, 2) Here, readers can imagine how massive the highways have become, and how they have come to replace the once beautiful landscape of California. This strong emphasis on roads and long automobile journeys already suggests that in this world there may be little room for communities and groups that share a sense of rooted belonging. It almost feels as if the characters in The Gold Coast have also lost touch with the environment itself. Jim observes that “they are a hundred feet above mother Earth. Nighttime OC, for miles in every direction. Imagine” (2). It seems as if Jim addresses the reader directly because he wants to have the reader witness this world and be part of it, right from the beginning. In addition, this first impression of Jim’s world is both terrible and fascinating, because Robinson does not create a completely dark future, but instead plants a seed of hope. Katerberg observes that “[t]he novel provides a utopian horizon that contrasts the OC of the present to that of the past, through Jim’s poetry and historical writing” (2008, 139). In addition, it is not only Jim’s writings but also his whole personality that offer a positive perspective on this future. Burgess describes him as “young and optimistic, brimming with revolutionary fervor and convinced that the only way humanity will become free is if the human psyche can be unshackled from its dependence of technology” (2006, 280). “Ironically,” she adds, “for him the ‘breakdown’ holds hope for the future: the carbrain cleansed of the sickness of over-dependence on imperfect technological systems” (280). Unlike Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which people are, in an open and obvious manner, oppressed by their government and by the environment they have created, The Gold Coast depicts this state on a more subtle level. Standing in the midst of this enormous monument of autopia, Jim cries out that “[w]e’re at the center of the world” (1988, 3), claiming that “Orange County is the end of history, its purest product” (3), and criticizing humankind and the capitalistic world view he sees at work by stating that “everything here is purely organized, to buy and sell, buy and sell, every little piece of us” (3). At first reading, this passage tells the reader only that Jim resents such an ideology. Later it becomes clear that his hatred toward such a system, one which makes Jim feel that it not only owns the land but also the people, is deep-rooted. Clearly, Jim feels alien

in this place and remembers with more attachment a past he has only read about. He tells the others what this place had looked like in the past to which they only reply in disbelief.46 Nev- ertheless, the four friends together embark on a quest to recover something from what used to be El Modena. Here we learn how and why everything from the past is now literally buried in the ground. In order to find the remains of El Modena Elementary School, Abe explains that they need to “[b]ust through the concrete surface [of the parking lot], and dig through three or four feet of fill, and get down to the–get down to the debris” (4). Eventually, they are successful in their quest and recover a stone. “Jim regards it dubiously. So this is the past…” (7) and it seems that this relic triggers something in him. Unfortunately for him, their field trip is illegal and they make a run for it so as not to be caught by the police. Things are worse than this for Jim, as, the reader discovers on learning about his family and his father’s job. Dennis McPherson, Jim’s father, is revealed to have been employed for 27 years at Space Research, a company which works for the Pentagon and supports the numerous wars currently being waged in 2027. Dennis is an engineer who develops high precision guidance systems and thus is one of the people responsible for millions of deaths. He constantly argues with his son, who strongly opposes his father’s work. Dennis is not in fact pro-war, but although he hates his job and the effects of the technologies which he develops, he has to make a living. As will become clear, Dennis’ behavior is driven by fears. Fear of not being able to effect change in the world, fear of being unable to feed his family, and fear of not having a purpose. Like his son, then, Dennis feels lost in his world. Hogan explains in What Literature Teaches US about Emotion (2011a) that such feelings of fear and sorrow “include an inclina- tion to characterize one’s life in terms of darkness and cold. Darkness concretizes the bereaved person’s sense of fear and disorientation” (141). For now, Dennis decides to fight this feeling, as “[f]ear involves the anticipation of future harm or frustration and thus necessarily goes beyond reciprocity for past actions” (238). Over the course of the novel, Dennis will follow the hierarchized potential actual outcomes of fear, which Hogan explains as “first try flight, but if that does not work, try to fight (or in certain cases, freeze)” (2011b, 37). Dennis first tries to fight, then tries flight. Once his fears are realized, he starts to freeze. Later in the novel, Dennis has a heated discussion with Jim, which allows readers to learn more about Dennis’ position regarding the ongoing wars, telling his son that “[w]e’re in

46 Readers who are familiar with Pacific Edge will notice that what Jim describes here is very similar to how Robinson opens his critical utopia. If one read the novels following the fictional chronological order of the events depicted, one might think that Jim was eventually successful in his pursuit.

several wars, there’s a body count every day. And we provide the weapons for those wars. And for a lot of others too” (1988, 342). Dennis justifies his company’s operations by saying “[w]e don’t start the wars by ourselves. We don’t make all the weapons, and we don’t start all the wars” (342). Through the novel’s use of parallel narration, readers read each focalizer’s narrative separately, but also as part of a whole. Following Jim’s perspective, they learn that he is deeply afraid of thousands upon thousands of innocent people being killed. From Dennis’ arguments readers can better understand why he justifies his company’s involvement in this horror. In the specific chapter in which tus discussion takes place, Jim is the main focalizer and readers are therefore more inclined to feel along with him, rather than with his father. How- ever, unlike Jim, they can know why Dennis seems to support the war. He tells Jim that “[y]ou can’t make war impossible. I didn’t say that. Nothing can do that. But you can make it damned impractical” (343). Dennis confesses that “[t]he world is on the brink of a catastrophic breakdown. You think I haven’t noticed?” (344), making it clear that he is afraid of what has become of their world. In order to fight his fears, Dennis clings to his own vision of the future:47

if we could make the deterrent more precise, see–a kind of unstoppable surgical strike that could focus all its destructiveness on invading armies, and only on them–then we could dismantle the nuclear threat. We wouldn’t need it because we’d have the deterrent in another form, a safer form. ‘So’–he looks up at Jim, looks him right in the eye– ‘so as far as I’m concerned, I’m doing the work that is most likely to free people from the threat of nuclear war. Now what’ voice straining– ‘what better work could there be?’ (344-345) So far, readers have witnessed Dennis’ struggles to accept his present, here he asks both readers and his son to imagine a drastically different future. If “readers will map the sensations, emotions, and movements of a character onto their own brains” (Weik von Mossner 2017, 25), they might imagine a scenario filled with war, destruction and hatred when picturing this surgical strike, “thereby understanding, and literally feeling their interaction with the character’s environment, its pleasures, and its pain” (25). In this chapter, readers are asked to sympathize with Jim rather than with Dennis and they know at this point that Jim is both terribly afraid of and strongly opposed to such violent solutions for the war. By envisioning such a violent scenario, Dennis resorts to the fight response to fear. Ultimately, Dennis’s plans cannot be realized, as he soon afterwards “finds out that he is forcibly retired. Dismissed. Fired” (1988, 367). In the chapters in which Dennis is the main focalizer, we learn that the Pentagon “is obliged to offer all their programs for open bidding by contractors” (15) to ensure a fair system.

47 Although this imagination is rather hard to digest, it unfortunately mirrors some current world lead- ers’ viewpoints.

However, when a major contract goes to another company, Dennis fights this decision by filing a protest, which also fails. Realizing that right from the beginning he was destined to fail, Dennis is shaken and depressed. He had been fighting his fears by creating weapons to support the war effort, but he now knows that he is nothing more than a pawn in a world where power and technology matter more than people (182). Eventually his boss, Stewart Lemon, convinces Dennis to give up and accept their defeat (334). Every hope Dennis has harbored finally dies and his despair leaves him broken. He can no longer hope for a better future or fight his fears regarding the increasingly destructive war. He can no longer work towards creating a better world. Instead, he has to live with a constant fear of what might happen, knowing that everyone is at the mercy of those in charge. Dennis concludes that “[h]e doesn’t know what he feels. […]. [h]e feels a kind of despair, he feels trapped–this is his life, his work, he’ll never escape it. It’ll never end” (371). Over the course of the novel, Dennis has experienced all three possible outcomes of fear as he is now frozen by his fears. Although initially hopeful and optimistic, his fears keep on growing and he eventually has to acknowledge that he cannot accomplish his goals. This changes his reaction to his fears and he resorts to the flight response overwhelmed by his fears. Things change again near the end when his actions lead to him being fired and he loses his ground. This feeling of despair leaves him broken “[a]nd the next morning at 5:00 A.M., their traditional hour of departure, they back out of the driveway and track down to the Santa Ana Freeway, and they turn north, and they leave Orange County” (372). This once so beautiful and promising place has become a prison. Leaving everything behind, he literally flees. Dennis’s narrative shows how the majority of a community in a dystopia feels. Even though he tries to fight all the negativity and cruelty, he ultimately acknowledges that there is no point in doing so. What this shows is that people in dystopias do not always initially submit to the circumstances of their worlds, but, at some point, they are forced to acknowledge that they do not stand a chance and some, like Dennis, flee because their fears grow too strong to be bearable. Jim, on the other hand, does not follow this mindset because he does not feel in the same way as the rest of this community. Jim, from the start the affect alien anti-hero, feels helpless and distanced from everyone else. This isolation and othering may actually be the key reason for Jim’s choosing a different path. His hopes are not crushed because he does not start off hopeful, but rather struggles to discover a possibility of change.

4.2.2 Believing in the Possibility of a Better Place

In the previous section I highlighted how, living in this California, Jim’s father Dennis is dominated by fear and negative emotions as he struggles to find the ‘right’ response for his problems.48 The way Dennis perceives life is how the vast majority of the people in this storyworld feel. But Jim does not feel this way. He wants to change things and to realize his utopian dream of a better life. This desire, combined with his feeling of being disconnected from everyone else, is what constitutes him as an affect alien in this world. In this section, I set out to show that even though everyone else has already given up, Jim, mirroring Tom Bernard’s attitude from Pacific Edge, is not ready to give up yet and continues to struggle to change his future. There are several instances where Jim feels he does not belong into the world which surrounds him. Early on, during a family dinner, his father Dennis confronts him about his work and insists that Jim should get a real job. To Dennis, Jim is not fit to do a real job because all he can do is “read books like nobody’s business” (1988, 23). Clearly, his father thinks very little of Jim’s profession. Jim realizes that he is depressed because “[h]is father thinks he’s a failure; his friends think he’s a fool” (27). On a larger scale, he remarks that he is a fourth- generation Orange County citizen and that “I have it in my genes, this place, I have a race memory of what it used to be like when the orange groves were here” (28). Even though Jim has not himself experienced how flourishing California once was, he misses the natural environment and experiences disgust at the sight of contemporary Orange County. He discusses his dissatisfaction with his friend Arthur Bastanchury.49 When Arthur is first introduced in chapter seven, he tells Jim that he wants to make a difference in the world. In this chapter, Jim is the focalizer and readers only learn about Arthur and his intentions through Jim. Even though he hates the governing military system, Arthur’s approach is similar to that of Dennis as he wants to use the oppressors’ weapons against the oppressors, but he has not yet killed anyone. He presents Jim with a poster “and it becomes a holo of a dead American soldier, perhaps taken in Indonesia. The legs are gone” (38). It is a poster intended to raise awareness, stating that 350 American soldiers die every day in the ongoing wars. Arthur justifies this poster using the First Amendment, the right to freedom of

48 This also holds true for other characters such as Stewart Lemon, Dennis’s boss, who constantly fears that his career is about to end; Jim’s friends, Sandy Chapman, who designs drugs to make a living, Tashi Nakamura, who tries to flee from Orange County’s urban developments, and Arthur Bas- tanchury, who fights his fears through violent resistance using stolen military equipment. 49 Arthur can best be described as an idealist since he is part of an underground resistance network against the war-mongering military system. He is also part of a group willing to use military equipment against weapons manufacturers.

speech. Consideration of this poster might cue fear in citizens in the novel and also in its readers, as it also calls on memories of the horrors of war. Quickly, Arthur tells Jim that “I’ve heard you talk about the way OC used to be” (41) and quickly adds that while he thinks that some of Jim’s arguments are correct, “most of that citrus utopia bit is bullshit” (42). Jim responds by urging that “we have to remember [the serious attempts to make cooperative agricultural communities], or, or their efforts were wasted”, but Arthur shuts him up by replying that “[t]heir efforts were wasted” (42).50 Here, it becomes clear that Jim is the only one who still hopes for a better future and Arthur, just like Dennis, is too afraid to imagine a better place. Indeed, he does not believe in the possibility of restoring Orange County to what it once was, but wants to fight his current fears in the form of military action. At this point in the narrative, Jim is even haunted by dark visions in his dreams concerning present-day California. In chapter eleven, where Jim is again the focalizer, he:

walks over a hillside covered with ruins. Below the hill spreads a black lake. The ruins are nothing but low stone walls, and the land is empty. Jim wanders among the walls searching for something, but as always he can’t quite remember what it is he seeks. He comes across a piece of violet glass from a stained-glass window, but he knows that isn’t what he is after. Something like a ghost bulges out of the top of the hill to tell him everything (62). By describing how the landscape is “covered with ruins”, “a black lake” is spreading and “the land is empty”, Jim allows readers to project his feeling of loneliness onto their minds and to empathize with how lost he feels. Through the vivid description of this bleak dream, readers might literally see the darkness spreading, feeling as helpless as Jim. Jim has not yet figured out how to stop the darkness, but he knows that he has to. Waking up in his room immediately afterwards, Jim realizes that while present-day Orange County looks like “X-rays of a cancer on your walls” (63), the maps from 1930 and 1990 show the opposite. “Taken together, Jim believes, these labels make up Orange County’s first and only utopia, a collective vision of Mediterranean warmth and ease astonishing in its art deco vividness. Ah, what a life!” (63). Clearly, Jim longs for this version of California. Trying to learn more, he visits his Uncle Tom in his retirement home, where he only grows more depressed. Jim urges his elderly uncle to tell him stories about his childhood and what California used to be like. At first Tom explains to him that “[t]hat’s where it all rests, boy. This whole edifice of privilege and exploitation” (76). Soon afterwards, he shares with Jim how the land had looked when Tom was a child himself. He fondly recalls the past and how

50 The society he imagines here closely resembles El Modena’s in Pacific Edge.

idyllic everything had been until it was destroyed for the sake of ‘progress’. He states that “No one could imagine that all the groves would be torn down” (79), adding that after nature was destroyed for the sake of progress, “it was a different place. Then it wasn’t so much fun. But by then we weren’t kids anymore either, and we didn’t care” (79). Just like everyone else, Tom has given up on the thought that things could once again change for the better. Indeed, he accepts the bleak reality because he believes that too much damage has been done to the country to repair it. Jim, by contrast, grows more and more frustrated. When Arthur and Jim meet up later, they once again discuss the ongoing wars. During their discussion, Arthur tells his friend that sabotage is the only possible option to work against the system because any other way would mean that “you just become another part of the war” (110). Jim is now seemingly convinced by this argument as “[h]e’s thinking of the evil direction his country has taken for so long, in spite of all his protests, all his votes, all his deepest beliefs” (111). Eventually, he concludes that “[i]gnoring the world’s need, profiting from its misery, fomenting fear in order to sell more arms, to take over more accounts, to own more, to make more money . . . it really is the American way” (111). In these passages, Robinson once again voices his criticism of a capitalistic America and how the government controls its impoverished citizens’ by filling their minds with fear and so leaving them unable to fight the system. Through Jim, he also voices his belief that this has often been the case in the US. The image Robinson paints here is also his prophecy for the future, that everywhere in the world, govern- ments will always care more about financial power than about their citizens. Together Jim and Arthur start a missile launcher and fire it without thinking about what it could hit. “That was great. Great. I actually –– did something,” Jim cries out and remarks that “I feel like this is the first time in my life that I’ve actually done something” (114). Proud that he has persuaded Jim to perform this act, Arthur tells him that he feels this way because “[t]ake that first step, perform an act of resistance of even the smallest kind, and suddenly your perception changes. Reality changes” (115). After this, apparently mirroring his father’s attitude, Jim also starts to change his present using violent means. However, he soon experiences a change of heart when he realizes that this is not his solution. While driving along the southern Californian coast, Jim thinks about Arthur’s plans and what they could mean for his beloved country. However, all these events “drive Jim ever deeper into depression. There is no way back; because there is no way back. History is a one-way street. It’s only forward, into catastrophe, or the track-and-mall inferno, or . . . or nothing” (151-2). Near the end of chapter thirty-six, Jim experiences an epiphany. The first thought that

crosses his mind is that “[y]ou want to make a difference, he thinks. You want to change Amer- ica!” (191). He already knows how, namely “[i]n the writing, in the resistance work, in the teaching, in everything you do!” (191). However, he also admits to himself: “[t]o change Amer- ica, whoa–– you can’t get much more grandiose than that. Remarkable, then, how lazy he is, and what a huge gap there is between his desires and his achievements!” (191). Even though Jim knows exactly what it is he wants to do and how he might be able to realize his vision, he is simply too lazy – or maybe too afraid and frozen by this fear– to take the first step towards the realization of his vision. After this, Jim is again haunted in his dreams and the following morning he decides to leave the US and travel to Europe. His fear of impending doom is further underlined when he sings “World War Three? It isn’t just on its way. You’re in it, you’re a part of it, you win every day” (213). With those words in mind, he sets off for the Old World. In Europe, Jim and his friends try to find a place that does not look as horrible as Cali- fornia, but both in Stockholm and in Moscow Sandy realizes that “‘[i]t’s just like––just like–‘ and they all pitch in: ‘Orange County’”(227). Finally, in Greece Jim finds the place that has been haunting him in his dreams. Here, he realizes “[s]omething about this place . . . ‘They’re part of the land, it’s not abandoned. The story’s not over here” (238, emphasis added). In this passage, it becomes clear to Jim that there are still unspoiled places on the earth and that the future can still be changed. Once back in Orange County, “Jim can’t shake a feeling of uneas- iness” (242), because he has found hope again. He confesses that “[t]his trip, it just reinforced everything I was feeling before!” (245). Now questioning all his actions during the time he was a part of Arthur’s group, Jim thinks about his passion for writing poetry.51 He no longer believes that the resistance should be his answer to the world’s problem, but rather that he should be writing. At this point, Jim is torn between working for the resistance and following his own dreams, trying to achieve change through writing. He wants to change the present, stating that “[i]t’s OC [he] is concerned with, Orange County, the ultimate expression of the American Dream” (261). Then, he thinks about the potential powers of literature and asks himself “[c]an it be turned to use? When you read a book, and go back out into the world: can it be turned to use?” (261).52 Convinced that he has found the answers to his desires, Jim turns his attention to California’s past. He learns that in the 1870s “a utopian project [was] started by a group of Germans” (276) and that they were “completely cut off from the world” (276). As we later learn, Jim decides to write a critical history of OC in which he explains why every attempt so

51 Jim learns later that he has been used by Arthur all along. 52 This essential question Jim asks himself here is the same question I am exploring in this thesis, but unlike Jim, I already have clear arguments that this is the case.

far at creating utopia has failed. Echoing one of Pacific Edge’s central messages, he is convinced that utopia is not something situated in a specific location, but rather a constant struggle to preserve the dream. In chapter sixty-nine, in which Sandy Chapman, Jim’s friend, is the focalizer, Sandy struggles with his conscience, wondering whether to “[t]ell [Jim] what was really going on, so that he wouldn’t continue thinking he was part of some idealistic resistance to the war machine, or whatever he is thinking––so he could get out of it before something went wrong” (330). In this passage, it becomes clear that Jim still remains an affect alien because he does not share any of the motivation of the other characters and does not want to fight his fears by resorting to violence. In the final chapters of the novel, Jim’s worldview is finally overturned. Dennis tells him that he will continue to produce weapons for the war even though people are starving. Repelled by this, Jim flees into the wilderness, not knowing what to do next, and he stays there for three days. Upon his return, Jim realizes that “he is happy. Body is a wreck, mind at ease. At least temporarily. He’s discovered a new country, and it will always be there for him” (373). This experience has visibly changed him and he tells himself “I’m ready to start up in a new way. Begin a new life. But how? It’s just the same old materials at hand . . . How do you start a new life when everything else is the same?” (377-8). Jim knows how to do so, namely “he is going to have to find his own way, […], some way that will actually help to change the thinking of America” (380). Here, in chapter eighty-one, readers again share in Jim’s narrative and experience his urge to raise awareness and to show how Californians have destroyed their country. Jim expresses his desire for a better place in the strongest terms. The fact that he does this supports the claim that he is an affect alien. Because his mindset differs from that of everyone else in the novel, Jim is not governed by his fears. On starting to write his critical history, he “fills the country’s short and depressing history of exploitation and loss. Dreams have ended before, here” (384). But this is not the end, as “it seems to him that it has been more than that. It is, in fact, the central moment, the hinge point in the story when it changed for good. He’s been afraid to write it down” (384). Now, his central motivation is to use his writing as a weapon in the struggle to realize a better world. He makes it his mission is to find the light within this dark place, by acknowledging everything that has happened, and by creating a warning for everyone. As with Pacific Edge, Robinson decides to leave the ending of the novel open. By doing so, he stresses that this story is not over, this is just another beginning. In an interview with Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Robinson supports this interpretation by stating that “[i]t will take hun- dreds of years to restore that landscape to something decently livable” (2012). This means that

Jim’s critical history will serve as a constant reminder of all the mistakes people made in the past and what will happen if they do not work to overcome them. This message clearly mirrors George Santayana’s well-known aphorism: “those who cannot remember the past are con- demned to repeat it” (1905). What Jim’s narrative has shown, however, is that even though he experiences loss after loss and failure after failure, he does not give up on believing in the possibility of one day living a better life in a California which is flourishing once again.

4.3 Conclusion

On first consideration, Robinson’s The Gold Coast is a novel about a potential future, in which all citizens have given up hope and accept misery as part of their lives. This is true for almost every character except for Jim, who is both anti-hero and affect alien. Using parallel narration and different focalizers, Robinson shows how Jim differs from almost all the other characters. Dennis’s narrative is dominated by his trying to cope with his fears concerning his world as it has become, and readers are given vivid imagines of his struggles. As explained by Hogan earlier, feeling fear can lead to different outcomes, something which can be observed in Dennis. Initially, he decides to fight his fears of mass destruction by believing in the possibility that he may one day change the world for the better. He is eventually fired and cannot realize these hopes, which increases his fears. For a minute, he is left frozen, unable to decide as to what to do next, but ultimately resorts to the third, and first, outcome of fear – he literally packs everything up and flees. He and the other characters occupying the storyworld of The Gold Coast show that the vast majority of the people in dystopias eventually succumb to their fears and feel like hopelessness. By contrast, the main focalizer and the novel’s ‘hero’, Jim McPherson perceives things quite differently. Initially, Jim appears to be hopeless and depressed and out of touch with everyone else. He, however, is the only one who does not want to accept the state of the world as it is. Jim is not only alien to this world, he is also emotionally at odds with the rest of the society – he is an affect alien. As I argued previously, there are several instances when Jim is shown not to be part of any group, and he frequently voices his not feeling a sense of belonging to the place all the others call home. The events depicted in this chapter, as well as Jim’s strong sense of feeling lost, lead him to flee the country and visit Europe, where he hopes to find out whether there is any way to prevent further devastation of California. Understanding him as an affect alien supports the claim that his othering is something positive because it allows him to perceive the world differently and he does not succumb to his fears, but is driven by other emotions. Jim ‘uses’ his emotional distance to gain perspective and to seek a solution that does not continue the ongoing suffering. It is only because he can be described as an affect alien that he avoids sinking as deeply as everyone else in The Gold Coast into a spiral of despair. Eventually, la- beling him and other protagonists of dystopias affect aliens helps to understand these narratives as strong means to convey hope. Using this approach, we can see that affect aliens constitute not only “the majority of literary heroes” (Hogan 2017, 37), but also anti-heroes. They are the ones who can initiate change because they do not believe that their world is lost forever.

Chapter 5 Drawing on the Past to Remember the Post-Apocalyptic Future

In the previous chapters, I have considered the second and third part of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Three Californias Trilogy. The final chapter now focuses on the first part, The Wild Shore (1984), which depicts a possible future that is significantly darker than the other two. In the opening pages of Pacific Edge, readers could already find the seeds of a better place and share in Kevin’s journey to realize his utopian dream. In the dystopian The Gold Coast, Jim’s storyworld was hostile and most people had already given up hope, yet he was able to seek the light in the darkest places and, eventually, succeed in his quest. However, Henry Aaron Fletcher’s narrative in The Wild Shore is set in 2047, when America hast been quarantined after a nuclear attack.53 Nevertheless, this post-apocalyptic storyworld also presents a hidden road towards utopia and it is Henry’s quest to find hope. The back cover of the 1994 Harper Collins edition of the novel includes a short blurb. We learn that “[s]eventeen-year-old Henry wants to help make America great again”, a sentence that is today remarkable on two levels. The first, and quite ironical, level is that readers in 2019 will find this sentence strongly reminiscent of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan.54 While running for president, Trump declared that “[W]e will make America strong again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And we will Make America Great Again” (Donald J. Trump) – thus proclaiming that the US is in desperate need of a savior and that he himself can fulfill this role. Similarly, Henry’s narrative revolves around the struggles people have to rebuild America. The key difference is that while Trump refers to America in the second half of the 20th century, the people in The Wild Shore want to rebuild America into what it had been like before the nuclear attack. Henry and the others in the novel want to reclaim their country’s past, a quest that allows readers to feel with them and hope that they can achieve their dreams. Second, it is no coincidence that precisely this sentence from the novel is featured in the blurb. The mayor of San Diego, Timothy Danforth, who is also the leader of a resistance movement against the current regime in the US, asserts that their aim is “to make America great again, to make it what it was before the war, the best nation

53 Mary Manjikian outlines the storyworlds depicted in post-apocalyptic narratives as follows: “Amer- ica’s citizens are described as at sea in a world which is virtually unrecognizable. In this new world, the state no longer exists, citizenship and rule of law have been forgotten, and America’s sense of his- toric destiny and role as world leader and beacon of progress are only distant memories” (2012, 1). 54 Trump was not the first to use this slogan as Ronald Reagan also used it during his 1980 presiden- tial campaign (Museum of the Moving Image 2016). His optimistic use of that slogan could be the source for Robinson.

on Earth. That’s our goal” ([1984] 1994, 96). This passage not only reminds present-day readers of Trump’s 2016 electoral slogan, but also conveys the core message on a stronger and more personal level. Simultaneously, this passage incorporates some of the novel’s main issues, namely the struggle to find a place where one can belong, and, unlike Trump’s agenda, the desire to make a change in the world instead of being afraid of current events. It is these issues which are taken up as the starting point for my main argument in this chapter, which is that this bleak storyworld may actually be a strong call for hope, bearing testimony to the fact that even in the direst circumstances people do not stop believing in their dreams. In the first section of this chapter, I want to revisit a concept mentioned in Part I of the thesis, namely memory, both emotional and non-emotional. These forms of memory are important for this chapter, since the protagonist Henry, a first-person narrator, explains early in the novel that “I write down this account of this month, deep in the harshest winter I have ever known, I have the advantage of time passed” ([1984] 1994, 6). Not only is he writing down the events that readers will later experience in the novel, he is also using this as a warning to his fellow citizens in the town of San Onofre not to repeat the mistakes of the past.55 In the analysis, I pay close attention to how Henry remembers different events and how he understands them. This makes it possible to show how certain moments are realized in Henry’s writing, and also to consider whether he appears to be a reliable narrator or not since a frequent feature of first- person narration is that it tends to be the most unreliable form of narration. Memory as such is by no means a straightforwardly reliable recollection process because, as Henry’s story will show, there is a constant interplay between the different forms of memory. In the subsequent analysis, I claim that it is the emotional memories that Henry remembers more vividly than the non-emotional ones. As outlined in chapter 1, an emotional memory “leads one to re-experience the emotion” (Hogan 2011a, 51). In addition, emotional memories trigger the emotion that was felt in a similar event and without necessarily recalling the specific memory itself. Neither Henry nor readers have witnessed at first-hand the nuclear attack thus direct memories of the attack cannot resurface in their minds. Emphasizing this indirect form of memory allows readers to recall their own memories and re-experience emotions felt in similar situations. They are then better able to feel with and understand Henry and his journey, thus enhancing the impact of his narrative.

55 Although this is a fictional town, it may be a reference to the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Sta- tion, a nuclear power plant located south of San Clemente which was shut down in 2012 (Power Technology).

Initially, Henry’s main mission is to reclaim pre-war California as people in his world display a strong nostalgic longing for their lost past.56 The present analysis will explore the interplay of memory and narration in the novel while keeping in mind the process of simulation which allows readers to imagine Henry’s storyworld. The novel is divided into four main parts, each one widening the scope of Henry’s community and giving a partial revelation of the truth about the political system of the world in 2047. Part One centers on Henry’s home town of San Onofre and portrays the mindsets of the local people. Part Two focuses on San Diego and the resistance to America’s current regime. Part Three, The World, takes Henry and his friends to different parts of the world and leads them to confront their histories while reading about them. Finally, in Part Four, Orange County, Henry decides that resistance is his longer-term goal and he finishes his book. Henry’s written account of his experiences may be filled with loss and dissatisfaction, but he never gives up on his dream. At first glance, this novel seems to depict a world that has been torn down, a tabula rasa that people can rebuild and reshape for the generations to come, a feature that many post-apocalyptic narratives seem to share, but Robin- son’s novel does not fully follow this template. To underpin this claim, I examine more closely how the storyworld depicted in The Wild Shore is set up and connect this setting to what Jesse Ramírez considers to be “the dominant mode of apocalypse today, namely environmental or eco-apocalypse” (2016). To Ramírez, this “interpretation of apocalyptic enjoyment as deferred utopia, [is] an ‘underground’ form of utopian dreaming” (2016). Elaborating on this claim, I present the argument that although the storyworld found in The Wild Shore may initially seem to be one that evokes fear, it actually contains a strong utopian impulse. Manjikian explains that American post-apocalyptic novels often use “fears to create an apocalyptic moment in which the old America—the superpower and the hegemon in the international system—has been erased entirely, leaving the physical geography of America untouched while its inhabitants float through the landscape, leaderless and lost” (2012, 66). This leads to a ‘clean slate’ which allows citizens to simply start all over again. Critics, such as Claire P. Curtis, point out that this idea of starting over “always has the hope of something better; and the blank slate, which is of course not so much blank as it is largely destroyed, of the postapocalypse can open myriad possibilities” (2010, 4). Henry’s realizing that they cannot ignore past events is a clear indicator that Robinson does not follow this ‘clean slate’ approach but counteracts this typical feature. In The Wild Shore, Robinson displays a reminder of the

56 Nostalgia is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition” (2019)

‘end of humanity’ through a strong nostalgic longing for a lost world to emphasize that this world is not blank but rather left in ruins. Some people are aware of what has happened to their country and the reminders of past events pose challenges for potential attempts of trying to create a better world. The core struggle in this novel thus occurs on an ideological level. On the one hand there are those like Danforth, who believe that they can simply start again from scratch. On the other hand, there are people like Henry, who acknowledge that their world is in ruins but insist that they need to include the lessons from the past in their plans for a better future. Following Henry’s journey, in my analysis I explore the claim that even though everything may initially seem doomed and bleak in this storyworld, there is hope. Robinson demon- strates in The Wild Shore that change is possible, however it requires hard work and there is no easy way to achieve it. Eventually, analogous to the Mexican proverb “[h]e who falls today may rise tomorrow” (Muñoz Ryan [2000] 2018), I want to highlight that only in such circumstances there is a path towards utopia and to a better place.

5.1 The Power of (Emotional) Memories

Hogan explains in Narrative Discourse (2013 b) that “[a]uthors create a character by imagining traits, a history, interests, and current conditions” and “[m]oreover, they are bound with com- plexes of authorial memories” (38). This is essential in the case of The Wild Shore since our first-person narrator, Henry, is seemingly remembering and writing down events from his past. Hogan, however, notes that “[s]such memories are almost entirely un-self-conscious” (38). According to him, the result of this is, that “[t]hose imagined properties and conditions, along with the associated, un-self-conscious memories, produce the sort of semitechnical trajectories of character action that one finds in everyday hypothetical imagination” (38). This means that the way a character is created in fiction is similar to the ways in which people think about potential what-ifs in real life, which makes it easier for readers to imagine both character and storyworld. Readers’ imaginations, however, are not always in line with authors’ imaginations. Ho- gan goes so far as to claim that there are cases in which “the author’s imagination is less plausible than a given reader’s imagination” (39). One example of this is Toni Morrison’s Home (2012), which follows the story of the Korean War veteran Frank Money, who is trying to find peace for himself after the Korean War. Morrison constructs a narrative in which readers feel with Frank and his pain, especially when they learn that he had witnessed a fellow soldier shooting a young girl in the face. Near the end, however, Frank reveals that “I shot the Korean girl in her face. I am the one she touched” (133). At this point in the narrative, readers may find it difficult to believe that Frank is capable of such a gruesome act, yet afterwards they may no longer sympathize with him. In this context, Howard Sklar explains how perceiving characters in a way which changes over the course of the narrative can happen in novels. He refers to Meir Steinberg’s theory of ‘primacy and recency effects’ and explains that initially “a narrative leads reader to form impressions of a particular character (the ‘primacy effect’) (2013, 57). Once these impressions are established, a narrative “then strengthens, modifies, or reverses those impressions by the subsequent (or more ‘recent’) revelation of expositional detail (hence, the ‘recency effect’) within the sequential unfolding and processing of the narrative as a whole” (57). This shows that narratives have the power to change how readers perceive characters, something that also occurs in The Wild Shore when Tom confesses to Henry that he made most of his tales up. Hogan points out, “as communicator, the narrator manipulates that information” (2013 b, 39) produced by the author and sometimes even becomes unreliable. This tells us that readers imagine characters and their history and may initially be prone to believe that their

narratives are reliable. In order to provide theoretical background to the question why it is important how these characters draw on their past experiences, I will now turn to the issue of memory. As explored in chapter 3, simulation is one way of engaging with the imaginary worlds of a narrative, but there are also other ways. Alexa Weik von Mossner explores different options for theorizing these narratives. She explains that the psychologist Richard Gerrig “suggests that [narrative] is in part unconscious mental performance that involves what he calls readers’ ‘memory traces’” (2018, 54), while other psychologists such as Oatley have claimed that fiction is “‘a kind of simulation that enables exploration of minds and their interactions in the social world’” (Weik von Mossner 2018, 54). She adds that Hogan takes a different approach, one in which “[t]he fact that we are responding to fiction and thus to something that does not actually exist is irrelevant” (54). Hogan claims that when reading fiction “our emotional responses are generated by the concrete imaginations and emotional memories, not by inferences of such” (2013 b, 56). Following this approach, I also claim that reading involves readers’ minds interacting with texts as they draw on their personal experiences and memories during their reading.57 Indeed, Weik von Mossner claims that “[h]ow we react emotionally to something imagined tends to be influenced by our memories, and the strength of that reaction can be modi- fied by our perception of our actual environment” (2018, 58). She adds that “how we feel about our memories is in turn influenced by our current perception, by other memories, and by our imagination” (58). Thus, the way we perceive the storyworld of Robinson’s novel The Wild Shore will be an emotional interplay of different factors, as our emotional reactions are influenced by our individual personal lives. As I will argue later, this can help explain why this novel’s narrator paints a picture of a peaceful and untouched world, even though his reality looks vastly different. Like Henry, Tom Barnard also relies heavily on memories and he, too, cues readers’ own (emotional) memories through referring to important events in U.S. Ameri- can history such as “what Americans did to the Indians” (Katerberg 2008, 138). Memory thus becomes crucial to our individual understanding of the characters of The Wild Shore. Robin- son’s novel works on the same level as the Dale Jamieson and Bonnie Nadzam short story collection Love in the Anthropocene (2016), which Weik von Mossner argues helps readers to align “with the emotional experience of characters who live in an imaginary future” (65). In

57 Instead of readers constantly questioning whether these events and the characters in these worlds are real.

addition, just as in Weik von Mossner’s example, the world in The Wild Shore depicts a future that is marked by the consequences of an eco-apocalypse and filled with characters “who cue us to share their helpless longing for a bygone world—the world in which we currently live” (Weik von Mossner 2018, 65). Sharing these characters’ feelings with readers can be understood as an attempt on the part of the author to evoke readers’ emotional memories. Hogan points out that emotional memories can themselves be a possible source of emotion.58 He explains that “[e]motional memories are memories that, when activated, produce the related emotions, whether or not these are relevant to current circumstances” (2017, 57). Rob- inson’s choice to incorporate a nuclear attack as a central element in the narrative is bound to remind readers of Hiroshima and the devastation caused by atomic bombs at the end of WWII. Even though most people have not directly experienced this historical event, these collective memories are deeply emotional. The pictures of the nuclear holocaust are etched in our minds, evoking the whole gamut of feelings associated with the prospect of a nuclear attack. M. Keith Booker and Anne-Marie Thomas note that on account of the Cold War and its ensuing political climate, it is not surprising that many works of literature from the era deal “in one way or the other with the possibility of nuclear holocaust and its aftermath” (2009, 53). When they include such an overwhelming, apocalyptic event in their fictions, writers evoke strong reactions in their readers’ minds. Before my closer analysis of The Wild Shore, I therefore want to discuss the characteristic features of the post-apocalyptic genre in more detail in order to position Rob- inson’s novel within this framework.

58 The other two are innate sensitivities and critical period developments (2017, 57).

5.2 The Wild Shore: If You Want to Rebuild You Have to Tear Everything Down First?

Claire P. Curtis defines post-apocalyptic fiction as “any account that takes up how humans start over after the end of life on earth as we understand it” (2010, 5). This radical change, however, “does not require the destruction of all humans or even the destruction of all potential conditions of human life” (5). What all post-apocalyptic narratives share is a disaster of some kind that has drastically changed the survivors’ lives. Booker and Thomas offer a slightly different definition, stating that this is “[a] type of science fiction narrative dealing with the aftermath of such catastrophic event that destroys or radically alters human civilization, necessitating an attempt to rebuild civilization (perhaps along different lines) on the part of the survivors” (2009, 328). Both definitions agree that such a catastrophic event induces a drastic change in the lives of humankind, and both emphasize the aspect of rebuilding the respective society. James Berger deals with the representations of societies ‘after the end’ and outlines that “[t]he study of post-apocalypse is a study of what disappears and what remains; and of how the remainder has been transformed” (1999, 7). Berger adds that the apocalypse is thus the definitive catastrophe that ‘clarifies’ the world (8), and the following “post-apocalypse in fiction provides an occasion to ‘go back to basics’ (8). The genre has often been criticized on account of this defining idea because such a ‘clean slate’ approach suggests that humanity can easily start again from scratch. Robinson makes it clear in his novel that he does not support such an approach and some of his characters are indeed aware of the fact that their world is in ruins. Other characters, however, simply choose to ignore the harm they have done to their environment. Instead, they continue believing in the idea that they can just build everything anew because there is nothing left of their past. One aspect that creates distance between Robinson’s three Californias is that both Pa- cific Edge and The Gold Coast show their protagonists trying to overcome immediate problems or working to resist an upcoming potential doom. In The Wild Shore, however, most events happened in the past and the narrator is writing them down in the way he remembers them. He displays a strong nostalgic longing for a now lost version of California.59 His nostalgia is partially shaped by his experiences in his storyworld and the tales others tell him, in line with Jennifer K. Ladino’s assertion that “nostalgia experienced by an individual is rarely, if ever, just personal. Like all emotions, it responds to and gestures toward broader contexts” (2012, xi). Most characters in The Wild Shore have not seen this lost California themselves but rather

59 The same holds true for Jim McPherson and his narrative in The Gold Coast.

cling to every word they learn about it. Indeed, they long for a world that was destroyed sixty years before and are still suffering from the consequences of that destruction. I now want to uncover the different layers of this, showing how Henry only gradually comes to term with the past. After he realizes that he cannot ignore the country’s past, he finally starts to look for a glimpse of hope even in the darkest of places.

5.2.1 Remains of the Eco-Apocalypse

Unlike in the other two of Robinson’s California novels, readers do not immediately learn much about The Wild Shore’s protagonist in the opening. The novel starts in medias in res and introduces a group of five friends who are digging up a coffin in a cemetery in the hope of finding silver.60 The narrator, at this point unidentified, explains that “[w]e were on the point of the cliff above the rivermouth – Steve Nicolin and Gabby, Kristin and Mando Costa, Del Simpson and me – all old friends, grown up together” ([1984] 1994, 3). Nothing seems to suggest that the world of these five characters has been horribly damaged by a nuclear attack several decades earlier. It seems clear that they are on a questionable mission, but their motives are unknown. Soon afterwards, the narrator leaves the group to enjoy a magnificent view, over- looking the valley. There,

[t]he trees of the forest blanketing the hills all waved their branches in the sunset onshore wind, and their late spring greens were tinted pollen color by the drowning sun. For miles up and down the curving reach of the coast the forest tossed, fir and spruce and pine like the hair of a living creature, as I walked I felt the wind toss my hair too. […], and as I walked the amber cliff’s edge I was happy (5).61 This powerful passage immediately paints a strong picture into readers’ minds and lets them imagine what this country looks like.62 Simultaneously, they may be able to imagine how the surge of the wind that “tosses” the narrator’s hair touches everything located in the valley. Through the mental simulation from this sensual impression of the landscape, readers are led to feel closer to the narrator with whom they share this stunning view. They start to trust him because they have learned about his appreciation of and attachment to the surrounding natural world. Trust is defined by Hogan as “a narration emotion by which the recipient feels that the narrator has goodwill and/or good judgement; trust motivates accepting a narrator’s account as reliable” (2017, 185). By describing a landscape filled with “spring greens,” “pollen color,” and a “drowning sun,” and by suggesting that the forest is a “living creature” that makes him happy just by looking at it, the narrator introduces himself as a lover of nature. Readers who share this passion are likely to attribute to the narrator the goodwill and good judgement that Hogan considers the basis of narrative trust.

60 This is very similar to Pacific Edge, except that those friends are digging up traffic lights (1990, 2). 61 The scenery described here is remarkably similar to the opening passage in Pacific Edge and seems to suggest that this world is at peace. 62 Robinson deliberately omits the fact that this narrative is set during a nuclear winter, misleading readers into thinking that the storyworld is set in a world that is flourishing.

However, even though this passage creates such a powerful and idyllic image of nature, it is in fact the first instance of the narrator’s unreliability: he misleads readers into thinking that his storyworld is a beautiful and peaceful place. Directly after proclaiming that he is happy, he admits that “I didn’t have the slightest inkling that my friends and I were starting a summer that would…change us” (5-6). He quickly explains he feels that way “[b]ecause of what it gave us a taste for” (6). Through this sudden change of tone, the narrator – later revealed to be named Henry Fletcher – thus establishes a narrative opening in which readers are curious to learn how this story may unfold. He continues by confessing that “I have the advantage of time passed” (6), emphasizing that he has already created some distance between himself and the events that readers will soon learn about. Interestingly, he stops himself from letting readers know more about what really happened when he realizes what he is doing and offers the metafictional comment “[b]ut I’m getting ahead of my story.” (6). This passage is also the point where readers might start to question Henry’s reliability. He clearly has information he does not want to share with his readers yet, but whether readers trust a narrator depends on whether the narrator is perceived as reliable or unreliable. Hogan explains that unreliable discourse most often displays one of three ‘faults’. It “may directly misrepresent the facts of the story” (2013 b, 152), “may leave out information that is crucial for valid inference” (152), or “may misdirect attention” (152). Although there is evidence for all three of these ‘faults’ in Henry’s case, readers may still trust him because he constructs his story in such a way that readers are eager to learn what changed Henry and his friends.63 By introducing a magnificent panoramic view of his surroundings, he misdirects readers’ attention and leads them to believe that they are in a calm peaceful environment, which is also a misrepresentation of the circumstances of the story itself. Eventually, Henry chooses to reveal more and more about the circumstances of his world. He recalls that “I’d never seen the results first hand, the destruction and waste” ([1984] 1994, 8), thus partially revealing the truth about the storyworld he inhabits. Later, a sudden noise fills the place and Henry describes it as “a howl, a singing screech that started low and got ever higher and louder. […], like the scream of the ghosts of every dead person ever buried in Orange County, or the final shrieks of all those killed by the bombs” (13). In this passage, the tone becomes significantly darker and exposes Henry’s real world – America sixty years after a nuclear attack. Although readers are only told about the sudden noise and how it recalls something in the past, they can use their own imaginations to fill in the gap. It is never made

63 Tom’s status as narrator, however, is different as he misleads both Henry and readers until almost the end of the narrative.

explicit in the novel how the attack happened, but it is strongly hinted at that America was attacked by the Soviets with nuclear bombs as a preventive measure. Katerberg notes that “the holocaust itself is as much rumor as history. […]. It was instigated by the Soviet Union, presumably. But no one knows for sure” (2008, 137). Ever since this attack, America has been quarantined from the rest of the world and due to the interference of higher forces, its development hindered. Direct testimony regarding the attack is found when Henry and his friend visit an eye- witness, Tom Barnard, who was alive when the attack took place. While Tom tells them stories of the past, Henry’s friend Leonard shouts out, “I don’t doubt that we would be the strongest nation on Earth again, by God” ([1984] 1994, 40).64 Tom, however, quickly counters this hopeful outburst by reminding him that “[t]here aren’t enough Americans left alive to add up to a nation at all, much less the strongest on Earth. And what good would it do if we had blown up the rest of the world into the same fix?” (40). A heated argument arises between Tom and Henry’s friends as Doc immediately replies that “[i]t would mean there wouldn’t be any God damned Chinese boating off the coast, watching us all the time and bombing every attempt we make to rebuild! […]. We’re in the bottom of the world now, Tom Barnard, we’re bears in the pit!” (40-41). What becomes very clear in this exchange is that every one of them has very strong feelings about the attack on America and still feels pain. Tom has seemingly made his peace with the past and accepts the misery his country is experiencing. In contrast, both Leon- ard and Doc feel strong anger that nobody is doing anything against their oppressors. Doc also seems afraid of the constant attacks and holds the Chinese responsible for American misery. The previously mentioned man-made atomic bomb, which had caused great destruction to the American environment, helps to classify this narrative as eco-apocalypse. According to Ramírez, “[e]co-apocalypse comes in many aesthetic and political varieties” (2016). In his proposed anatomy of this genre, Ramírez identifies several forms: The Wild Shore fits what he describes as the Jeremiad.65 Ramírez cites Rachel Carson’s fable in Silent Spring (1962) as one example of the Jeremiad form and explains how in these works “the apocalypse serves as dire warning, a call for the nation to reform before it is too late” (2016). Needless to say, this holds true for all dystopian writings as one core aim of these texts is to depict the potentially dreadful outcome if society does not change.

64 Interestingly, this passage directly links to the idea of Manifest Destiny and the belief in American Exceptionalism, especially through the mention of God. 65 “A tale of woe; a sustained complaint; a prolonged railing against the world, the times, the estate of man and God” (Cudden [1976] 1999, 435)

Another work that bears similarity to Robinson’s post-apocalyptic narrative in this context is George Stewart’s Earth Abides (1949). Stewart’s protagonist Isherwood “Ish” Williams reads in a newspaper that “[t]he United States from coast to coast was overwhelmed by the attack of some new and unknown disease of unparalleled rapidity of spread, and fatality” ([1949] 1988, 12-13). To some extent, this resembles Tom’s experience of the nuclear attack. Just as Tom fondly remembers the past and Leonard makes hopeful exclamations, Stewart’s Ish reminds his ‘tribe’ about the greatness of historical America. “When he spoke, […], he had a curious feeling of pride come over him, […]. It had been a great thing, in those Old Times, to be an American. You had been deeply conscious of being one of a great nation” ([1949] 1988, 214). While Ish is the only one in his community who wants to rebuild America the way it was before, everyone in Henry’s community wants to rebuild this ‘perfect’ place and desperately hangs on to every tale Tom tells them. The way the members of Henry’s community experience this nostalgic longing is described by Ladino as “alienation from the present” (2012, 5), with a typical feature of these narratives being their “tendency to romanticize the past through imagining an origin that is too simplistic” (6). Stewart’s Ish, eventually “no longer wishes to return to the American Century” (Ramírez 2016). Indeed, the final page of Earth Abides, Ish realizes that “[h]e would rest, and he would return to the hills. And they–in comparison at least with the passing of man’s generations–remained without changing. […] ‘Men go and come, but earth abides.’” ([1949] 1988, 312). Even though Ish desperately wanted to replicate his lost world, he admits that the world is always changing and that this may be for the better. With that he opens “himself up to the utopian dream of the post-apocalyptic world” (Ramírez 2016) because he realizes that his nostalgic longing will forever remain fruitless. Thus, after letting go of the nostalgic longing for a lost place, a utopian impulse can emerge. This suggests that nostalgia “can be a mechanism for social change, a model for ethical relationships, and a motivating force for social and environmental justice” (Ladino 2012, 8). Like Ish, Henry understands only late in the novel the importance of nostalgia, but for a long time seeks comfort in the tales told by the elderly Tom Barnard. These tales are a key to understanding one overarching theme of The Wild Shore, namely recreating collective memory. Tom’s stories are a means to preserve this collective identity that was lost through the bombings, significant to Henry and his friends as, like Ish, they want to rebuild their once great nation. Henry, however, does not believe that the solution to their problems is to cling to the past and to reclaim American greatness. In the history of the United States, this greatness has often been associated with technological progress and Burgess explains that The Wild Shore presents “us with a critique of an imagined future in which technological progress would save

us” (2006, 278). Even sixty years after the attack, however, there has been barely any technological progress in America. The only significant advancement is the reinvention of trains, but they are destroyed by the Japanese every time people try to rebuild them. It is a world in which Americans want to reconnect with their achievements prior to the attack. In this context, Bur- gess claims that “The Wild Shore uses the longings of a group of people in post-apocalypse America to show that nostalgia for the technological ‘progress’ of the past, and the wish to rebuild that past, repeat dubious patterns of nationalism and manifest destiny” (278). Her observation shows that Robinson does not support everything done by Americans over the course of their nation’s history. Indeed, Burgess adds that this novel “attempts to make a distinction between irresponsible and responsible uses of nostalgia as a tool in the service of reconstruc- tion” (278). Such an attempt is common for nostalgic narratives, since their purpose is often “to justify the present, and to stabilize history” (Ladino 2012, 14-15). Remembrance of the past in The Wild Shore is then both blessing and curse as Henry and Tom have different purposes in mind when they try to reconstruct what is now gone. Robinson, however, does not use nostalgia for positive means only. Through Henry, he employs a critical perspective on this longing for a lost past. This move is what Ladino calls “counter-nostalgic literature” (15) because “nostalgia is the vehicle through which critique happens” (15). It is different from nostalgia because “counter-nostalgia revisits a dynamic past in a way that challenges dominant histories and reflects critically on the present” (16).66 Unlike the majority of the people inhabiting the storyworld of The Wild Shore, Henry eventually makes it his mission to reflect critically on both his past and present by questioning Tom’s stories and everyone’s attempts to return to the celebrated past without learning from it. Henry realizes that starting with a ‘clean slate’ would not produce positive change and that such an approach is, in any case, not possible. Instead, he opens himself to dream the utopian dream and starts working for a better future.

66 “Nostalgia”, Ladino explains, “encourages its adherents to return to a celebrated origin to find both comfort and justification for the present” (2012, 16).

5.2.2 Re-Constructing a Bygone World

The past of Orange County plays a significant role in The Wild Shore and its memory is kept alive through the stories told by Tom Barnard, a figure who appears in all three novels. Here, Tom’s role is similar to that of the Tom in Pacific Edge, functioning as a bridge and connection to a severed past. Katerberg stresses this desire for reconnection and writes that the “utopian impulse is powerfully shaped by the past, especially Edenic visions of a lost California” (2008, 133). This perception of the lost California is quite similar to the definition of the classical utopia since both “refer to a non-existent good place” (Sargent 2010, 2). By understanding this narrative as counter-nostalgic and its critical in its nature, readers may better understand how Henry is able to open “himself up to the utopian dream of the post-apocalyptic world” (Ramírez 2016). Tom’s role in The Wild Shore is essential for this process, because he uses nostalgia to remind everyone of America’s greatness. However, this Tom turns out not to be the person he makes everyone believe he is. In fact, he is a tricky and unreliable narrator who often lies about or conceals true events. For example, as Katerberg points out, he “claims to be a hundred years old and to have been a middle-aged lawyer before the nuclear attack that destroyed America in 1984. In truth, he was only eighteen” (2008, 137). In this section, I want to explore how and why Tom Barnard constructs these lies about this past and investigate what his eventual revelation does to Henry and his hopes and dreams. One of Tom’s main missions is to keep the memory of a better time alive. His acting in this way could be explained using Vincent Geoghegan’s conception of memory. Geoghegan argues that “my past memories will have a constitutive role in the forming of my present and future perceptions” (1990, 54), which is clearly the case with Tom. His stories and representations of an earlier California shape the understanding of Henry and his friends, thus suggesting that memory may even be a form of power.67 Among other things, Tom’s false memories are a means to deter the young generation. He uses his tales as a warning since the actions in the past have led to America’s devastation. But he also uses them for other, more personal, purposes as he tries to make peace with the past and accept the present. He has witnessed severe destruction and has started to rebuild a community, but is, understandably, still haunted by ghosts of the past. Constructing these false memories and images, then, is a means for him to come to terms with his situation.

67 Late in the novel, Tom admits to having made most of his stories up. This, in turn, means that it is not memories that are a form of power in his case, but rather fiction as a source of power because Tom was lying the whole time.

Even though Tom so often tells stories about the past, he is not exactly happy when a group of people, led by Jennings and Lee, appear in San Onofre to rebuild train tracks in order to reconnect the now estranged communities. When asked what he thinks of their sudden appearance, Tom says, “I don’t know, John. I guess I’ll find out when I go down there. If what they say is true, they won’t be able to do very much up here, since we are watched by the Asians” ([1984] 1994, 63). “But…”, he immediately adds, “there’s something they aren’t telling us” (63). When he walks with Henry along a river, he struggles with the men’s sudden appearance which seems to trigger something in him. “‘Should’ve known […], impossible to change’” (65), he mumbles. While neither Henry nor readers can make sense of these words at this point in the narrative, it does seem that Tom knows something he does not want others to know, almost suggesting that he regrets certain things.68 Tom seems to be using his knowledge to lead Henry in a certain direction while he is careful not to tell too much. In these passages, readers also notice that Tom is the one who seems to be withholding information and cannot help but begin to mistrust the elderly man. By contrast, the people from San Diego think that Tom is special and that he holds power because he remembers ‘the glory days’. Once in San Diego, Henry and Tom are greeted by mayor Danforth, who asks Tom about the past. “His tone,” Henry notices, “seemed to say, are you one of those who used to live in Paradise” (88). Again here, there is a strong emphasis on nostalgia and how beautiful everything once was. Danforth urges Tom to cling to the past by telling him “[d]on’t lose your feel for America, old man. […] It’s the best part of you. It’s what kept you alive for so long, whether you know it or not. You’ve got to keep that feeling, or you’re doomed” (98). Danforth here reduces Tom to a repository of memories, to someone who is useful only because he has knowledge about the past. Tom, however, “pulled his hand away” (98), clearly offended by this. Back in San Onofre, Tom and Henry deliver to the rest of their community the news about Danforth’s plan to make America great again. Henry remembers that “[t]he way Tom told it, the San Diegans kept looking to be fools or wastrels, no better than scavengers. […]. Tom was against the southerners” (171). When confronted by Henry, Tom tells him harshly that “Amer- ica’s gone. It’s dead” (174). While everyone else wants to recreate the California of the past, Tom says openly that there is no point in doing so. This passage marks the first time Tom does not fabricate tales about the achievements of America or the country’s greatness, but openly

68 Later he reveals that previous wars waged by the United States have led other countries to attack them, and he feels that America deserved it.

states that this nostalgic longing is in vain. His changed perspective is also part of a development in his character, which Tom only explains later on. His confession also prompts the question why he nevertheless keeps on telling the stories of a perfect past before the attack, stories that always exclude himself. Eventually, Henry and his friends confront Tom about this, shouting “[g]ive us one about you in the old time” (197). Tom then tells them an odd tale about two versions of himself in which he tells his other self “[y]ou had me feeling like my whole life was a mistake” (203). Through this story, it becomes obvious that Tom is withholding something. Later, he has a conversation with Henry in which he urges Henry to write down what happened to him, stress- ing the importance of memory. “Everything comes back when you write it down. Press the memory” (265), he tells him. Tom continues opening up to Henry and reveals a secret: “What I mean is…is that I’ve been stretching my age a bit” (266). The reason he did that was “[t]o hold on to the part of our past that’s of value, maybe? To keep our spirits up. […]. An American around the world. We needed it even if it was a lie, understand?” (267). Finally, Henry learns that almost everything he thought he knew about the glorious old days may not be true and he is visibly hurt. Henry wants to tell the story the right way and does not want to mislead his readers the way Tom has done for almost his whole life. Even though Tom has turned out to be unreliable, he has taught Henry an important lesson, namely that people need something to believe in. He fabricated various tales to give the members of his community hope and something to strive for. This yearning for a lost California is not just about the past, but also about the possibility of a better future. By reminding his community that they were once great, Tom briefly takes their minds away from the present. This is similar to Tom Moylan’s explanation of the circumstances in which people can imagine utopia. “If humanity becomes too much taken with the present, we lose the possibility of imagining a radically other future. We lose the ability to hope” (1986, 21). Simultaneously, Tom was constantly warning them of the horrors of war and that no good would come from striking back. This is also why he is so against the San Diegans, simply because war to him is not an option. His world has already been destroyed and should not be rebuilt the way it was. He eventually admits to Henry that “America was great like a whale – it was giant and majestic, but it stank and was a killer. Lots of fish died to make it great” ([1984] 1994, 183). If they were to support the San Diegans, history would only repeat itself and Tom is deeply afraid of that

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happening.69 He wants Henry and the others to create a better future in which people are aware of all the mistakes that have been made in the past. Tom acknowledges that, because he has lied to the others almost the whole time and shown himself to be highly untrustworthy, he cannot be the one to begin this process of change. He needs Henry to be the one to do that. Remembering the past and the nostalgic longing for the past can be both helpful and destructive. Tom uses – partially false – memories to remind people how great the United States have once been, but he also stresses that this history has dark spots. He admits to Henry that recreating that society would only take people down the same path and they would eventually make the same mistakes again, which is why this attack might have been a blessing in disguise, the chance of a new beginning. Henry’s resulting epiphany leads him to discard the idea of society being able to start again with a clean slate and he starts writing his book.

69 Tom’s providing Henry with details about the true past finally allows Henry to see the bigger picture. Similarly, Katerberg points out that “[t]he future might be postapocalyptic, or a utopia not yet dreamed. In either case, we should remain open–open to the past, to retrieve its utopian potential, and open to futures that have not yet been written” (2008, 145).

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5.2.3 Utopia Rearising – A Happy Beginning?

Henry’s story is both a recollection of his past and a message to future generations. His “advantage of time passed” ([1984] 1994, 6) helps him in several ways, one of which is “of what didn’t happen, because of the ways in which we were deceived. Because it gave us a taste for” (6). Henry needs to remember vividly what happened so that he, like Tom, can use it as a warning. Both Henry’s and Tom’s experiences are already in the past and they use nostalgia as a “vehicle through which critique happens” (Ladino 2012, 15). At the same time, memory is here seen as a device that aids the call for a brighter future, that helps reclaim the utopian idea. This is in line with Geoghegan when he says that memory “opens the door for a utopianism which is grounded in the historically evolving groups of individuals. The future, in this conception, is not a return to the past but draws sustenance from this past. Memory is a means in the present to ground the future in the past” (Geoghegan 1990, 67). As for Henry, he will eventually use the knowledge he gains from these events to deliver the message that people should not recreate or rebuild but instead start anew with better perspectives while always remembering what happened. At first, Henry is rather naïve in his beliefs and does not understand why Tom is suspicious of the San Diegans. When Danforth tells them of his plan “[t]o make America great again” and that “[w]e’d be back to that already if we had retaliated against the Soviets” (96), Tom does not share that belief. Instead, he says, much to Henry’s disappointment, “well, I don’t know if we’ll want in or not” (97). Danforth, however, only replies “[y]ou go back up there and tell your valley that they join the resistance or they oppose it” (97). In this passage, it becomes clear that there is some danger emanating from Danforth, but Henry only understands this when he reflects in his writings on what happened. Danforth is ruthless; he has forced his beliefs onto his own citizens and now wants to dominate the San Onofre community as well.70 When Henry recalls this later, he recognizes that this was already a foreshadowing of the horrible events to come. Once back from San Diego, and after being captured by patrols at sea and nearly dying, Henry feels changed. “Before my trip south Onofre was just home, a natural place” (152), he says, hinting at the fact that his peaceful bubble has burst because he has seen the horrors outside his little idyllic village. Instead of being depressed by what he has learned, Henry tells himself that “[p]eople’s thinking made that path. […]. I tried to look at the bridge the old way,

70 As I will show later on, not everyone in San Diego shares Danforth’s vision, and a change will also occur in this city.

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as part of things as they were, but it didn’t work. When you’ve changed you can’t go back. Nothing looks the same ever again” (152). Here, Henry starts to feel a strong surge of desire for change. He has seen the devastation in his beloved America, and like Danforth, he wants to fight the oppressors, even though Tom is against it. Eventually, Henry and his friend secretly decide to join the resistance, oblivious to the fact that they are being set up by Danforth, who will use them like pawns, not caring whether they survive or not. Henry’s fellow citizen Carmen voices her concerns about the San Diegans’ plans, pleading that “[k]illing visitors from Catalina doesn’t do a thing to make us free. I’m not against fighting if it would do some good, but this is just murder” (176). Carmen acts as a moral compass here, presenting the polar opposite of what Danforth had proposed earlier, as she believes that this fight would be meaningless. While reflecting on the past summer, Henry explains that back then he felt unable to tackle all these issues by himself, which is why he agreed to fight alongside the San Diegans, but knowing now that this was the wrong path. Later on, Tom tells him that all those years ago, “we were murdered” (269) because “America was evil” (270).71 Indeed, Americans had committed numerous crimes against the rest of the world and because others hated them, their country was bombed. To some extent, the Americans had it coming, and this was just a case of other countries striking back. After this attack, America could either choose to rebuild and start anew or to retaliate. As we saw earlier, the nation’s leader decided to rebuild and have the country pay for its sins. Tom, at this point, has already confided to Henry why he believes that this was the right choice. Still hurt by Tom’s previous lies, Henry does not listen to the old man’s words of wisdom. During the ambush, Henry’s friend Mando is killed and the teenagers bury him. Henry admits that one single bullet “could have killed me. It was the most frightening thought I ever had in my life – the terror filled me entirely” (299). Frozen by this fear, he “watched and watched; and it fills me with shame to write about it, but I became glad. I was glad it wasn’t me down there. I was so glad to be there alive and seeing it all, I though thank God it wasn’t me!” (299). Henry has finally experienced what the war means and sees that they cannot win. Keeping on fighting will simply result in more deaths and more devastation, but he also realizes how sacred life is. After this event, he is filled with regret and remorse because he could have chosen a different path. He starts blaming himself for everything that has happened but Tom simply responds that “it’s easy to be wise afterwards. Hindsight et cetera. You had no way of

71 In Parts One and Two, Tom tells only glorious tales about America’s past. In Part Three, he changes the tone of his narratives and confesses to Henry that, as seen in the passage above, Ameri- cans ‘deserved’ the attack.

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knowing what would happen” (316).72 It is after this talk with Tom that Henry finally starts writing his book, and in it are “all these things [that] had happened, they had changed us for life” (336). He wants his readers to understand how everything happened and why it is so important that people know about the past, but not let themselves be governed by it. They should not be prisoners of their own fears and the devastation still ongoing in the United States, but rather find hope in these dark times. Near the completion of his work, Henry even notices a change in his environment and employs a pastoral image.

I noticed something I had never seen before. On the flat blue sea were perfect reflec- tions of the tall clouds, clearly shaped so you could tell they were upside down. It looked like they were floating underwater, in a dark blue sky. ‘Will you look at that,’ I said aloud, and stood. Ever so slowly the clouds drifted onshore over the valley, and their upside-down twins disappeared under the beach. I stayed and watched that all day, feeling like oceans of clouds were filling me. Later the afternoon onshore breeze ruffled the mirror clouds, and the sun got too low and glared off the water. But I went home satisfied (337). What he describes here ties in with different themes mentioned earlier in this thesis. Readers are invited to witness the ‘end’ of his journey as Henry finally finds peace and accepts what has happened when he “stayed and watched that all day”. On reading picture of the natural world, readers may be able to vividly imagine the clouds and how they slowly move. In this peaceful scenery, Henry once more establishes himself as a nature lover when he feels “like oceans of clouds were filling me”. As he stands there, a few hours pass by as “the sun got too low,” allowing readers to imagine in their minds the sun gradually setting. Another noteworthy aspect is that this passage clearly shows Henry’s way of thinking. He has seen first-hand a close friend dying, the horrors of war, the devastation in the US, and also learned that Tom has been lying to him the whole time. It would be understandable if all that were to prove too much for him. However, he declares that “I went home satisfied,” acknowledging that this moment is not the end but rather the start of something new. Henry leaves the past behind, he literally takes a deep breath, and starts anew. Because Henry Fletcher has hit his lowest point, he is open to the greatest change and, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, he makes it his mission to create a future that is better than the past has been. His final words of wisdom are: “You rather be holding on to what can be made to last than out hunting the new” (342). For a final time, he acknowledges that the past will always be

72 Danforth was killed after the ambush and Lee, one of the men who had initially approached San Onofre, is now mayor of San Diego and his philosophy is the peaceful restoration of his city.

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a part of his society and they cannot start from scratch because there is already something there that cannot be ignored. Henry’s dream for the people in his America is to learn from the past and create a future that is bright, promising, and certainly not one that repeats the mistakes of the past. His desire is to move away from the apocalyptic destruction that has dominated Amer- ica for so many years and to take the first hopeful steps towards the utopian dream of a better place.

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5.3 Conclusion

In this chapter, I aimed to show how even though the picture of the future drawn in The Wild Shore is the darkest in Robinson’s Three Californias, it also has the most potential for hope. America is torn apart and only ruins are left, but through the use of memory Henry and the people in San Onofre are able, in several senses, to find the light again. One prominent theme in this chapter has been nostalgic longing. Instead of nostalgia in its classical sense, this narrative should rather be understood as what Ladino calls “counter- nostalgic literature” (2012, 15). Throughout the novel, the characters try to return to the past and Mayor Danforth strongly believes that the key to “make America great again” ([1984] 1994, 96), is to simply to return America to the same state it was in before the nuclear attack and start with a clean slate. By contrast, Tom and eventually Henry are convinced that this would only result in history repeating itself. To them, the past should be seen critically, because Americans caused their own doom. Just starting again with a ‘clean slate’, a typical approach in post-apocalyptic narratives, would not help the country to move forward. Instead, Henry discards such beliefs and makes it his mission to work towards a ‘not yet existing good place’ where people have learned from the past. The use of memory is an essential aspect of this narrative. In the opening, Henry uses emotional memories through describing a flourishing lively landscape, calling on readers to relive similar experiences in their own minds. As a result of Henry introducing himself as a lover of nature, readers who share this passion are likely to attribute to Henry the goodwill and good judgement that Hogan considers the basis of narrative trust. Henry also establishes a narrative opening that makes readers curious to learn how the story will unfold. The reason why the question of reliability is important for this novel is that both Henry and readers alike are deceived by Tom Barnard. In the first half of the novel, Tom tells only glorious tales about America before the nuclear attack. In Part Three, he is revealed to have been lying all along about his age and his experiences, which leads both Henry and readers to distrust Tom. How- ever, through his lies, Tom teaches Henry that it is important not to forget the past. Tom’s depiction of a glorious past allows Henry to believe that change is possible because things have had changed before. Acknowledging that the present is not the end opens the door to utopian ideas, echoing Moylan’s claim that “[i]f humanity becomes too much taken with the present, we lose the possibility of imagining a radically other future. We lose the ability to hope” (1986, 21). Like Tom, San Diego’s former mayor, Danforth, also uses memory to lead people in a

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certain direction. Danforth constantly pushes “to make America great again” and wants everyone to fight even though they would not stand a chance. What Henry learns from them is that people have to accept the past, and that it is not possible to start again with a ‘clean slate’. What happened to America in this novel may have been truly disastrous but following Danforth’s path would eventually create more hatred in the world and only cause more harm as other nations would think that America has not learned its lesson. By following Tom’s advice, Henry accepts the scars from this violent and troubling summer and turns his wounds into something better. The America of future generations should know the whole truth with all its horrors, and this is what Henry writes down. By reflecting critically on both the past and the present, people in Henry’s society can open themselves up to the utopian dream, to create the ‘not yet existing good place’. Their world is not lost, it is on the path towards a new beginning. Nostalgia allows people to believe in their Edenic visions of an earlier California, but they also need to accept that they cannot return to this state. More importantly, this longing for a better place gives them hope, because their world has already once before been a flourishing and peaceful place. Their future will then not be a return to the past, but the realization of hope for a transformed future in which their society will rise again.

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Conclusion

In this thesis, I have tried to contribute to the ongoing research in utopian studies using a cognitive approach. The existing scholarship has explored utopian and dystopian novels from various angles, but only a few have done so from a cognitive perspective. In addition, by focusing on a single author and novels from the same series, I have been able to investigate whether all three share a common ground in terms of their depiction of emotional experiences. Arguably, Robinson’s Three Californias series is somewhat different from other speculative fiction. In a chapter entitled “Kim Stanley Robinson’s Other California” (2000), Tom Moylan claims that The Gold Coast is less driven by extreme despair than other dystopias, but also more open to ambiguities. Similar claims can be made about the other two novels in the series, Pacific Edge and The Wild Shore. Kevin Claiborne in Pacific Edge struggles to preserve his utopian dream when it is threatened from the inside. In The Wild Shore, Robinson does not follow the typical post-apocalyptical approach which holds that people can easily start again from scratch after their country has been destroyed. Instead, they have to learn that they cannot erase the past, but rather have to work with the ruins of what once was. A cognitive approach to Robinson’s works has allowed me to show that even though fear emotions are dominant in all three novels, these storyworlds are ultimately shaped to a larger extent by hope emotions. For readers who are passionate about their environment, Kevin’s powerful descriptions of his surroundings will produce a strong imaginative echo, calling on the process of simulation. Experiencing empathy towards Kevin as he overcomes his fears and pursues his own utopian desires, readers find themselves to “literally feeling their interaction with the character’s environment, its pleasures, and its pain” (Weik von Mossner 2017, 25). Kevin’s narrative may not be one about a world awaiting its immediate end, but nevertheless vividly portrays Kevin’s inner states and the hardships he has to overcome. I have suggested that the darkness in this novel and the fears connected with it arise from inside this utopian society and that the dream for a better future can only survive if people work hard to bring it about. Reading this novel from a cognitive perspective allows readers to fully dive into this storyworld and feel with Kevin, both when he nearly succumbs to his fears and when he embraces his desire to keep on working for a better future. The Gold Coast also differs from most dystopian narratives in that it does not the depict horrific extremes. Instead, it focuses on Jim McPherson’s struggle to find a better way of living in a hostile environment. In this chapter, I have expanded on Sara Ahmed’s concept of ‘affect alien’ to claim that Jim, and many other dystopian protagonists can be classified as such. By

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doing so, I was able to develop the argument that because these anti-heroes are in a sense isolated from the rest of their communities, they are the ones able to believe that a change for the better is possible and eventually induce such change. The rest of society, by contrast, is caught both by fears of not being able to survive in the world and by not being able to come to terms with it. Offering a cognitive reading of this storyworld, I hope to have shown that the depiction of this dystopia evokes a strong urge towards hope in its readers. While it is one of the main tasks of such narratives to cue this desire in its readers, The Gold Coast does so on another level. Jim’s story allows readers to share in his attempts to make sense of his world, while his being an affect alien frees him from the feeling of resignation shared by the rest of his community. The majority of dystopias aim to leave readers with the feeling that, unless proper action is taken, their worlds could turn into those depicted. Robinson’s narrative, by contrast, shows them that even if this were to be the case, change would still be possible, as long as people believed in it. While the other two novels do so on a more subtle level, The Wild Shore puts the memory of the past squarely into the foreground. Robinson’s protagonist Henry has to learn that a yearning for the Edenic vision of a lost California does not help his society to rebuild their world after they have suffered from a devastating nuclear attack. In this narrative, readers are invited to take part in Henry’s journey when he draws powerfully pictures of his present, a bygone past, and his visions for a better future. Unlike most post-apocalyptic narratives, Rob- inson makes it clear that a society cannot start again with a ‘clean slate’ because too much has been done to ‘dirty’ their environment. Only after Henry has come to terms with this and accepts that the past is lost, does he open himself up to the idea of creating a world that is much better than the one memorialized in people’s minds. He accepts that these memories should not be destroyed or ignored, but rather cherished. It is these memories that give his society hope because they let people know that their world has once before been a flourishing and peaceful place. Applying a cognitive approach to this novel then has allowed me to highlight that these images of the past are not only a means to finding hope, they are also a painful reminder of the things people have done. Thinking about the possibility of history repeating itself if people do not abandon these Edenic visions frightens Henry deeply, something which readers can also feel when simulating this storyworld in their minds. This interplay of emotions and memory also draws on readers’ own emotional memories and has them experience all the emotions Henry feels during his quest.

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Through my engagement with these potential futures, I hope to have shown to what extent we can interact with imaginative worlds and how these fictional characters greatly influence our personal lives. By expanding on existing theories, I have aimed to add to the ongoing discussion of why it is important to understand how we engage with these stories. Al- lowing ourselves to immerse ourselves fully into these fictitious worlds helps us to understand better those worlds we may never experience ourselves. Being emotionally involved in these characters’ lives and journeys lets us feel with them as their experiences are mapped onto our own brains, enabling us to feel a shared sense of their adventures and understand what they are like. As these narratives stimulate at our own emotional systems as readers, they evoke a range of different memories in us, which further fosters our emotional understanding of these and our own worlds. Engaging with potential futures, certainly, is not the only way through which we can foster our understanding of different worlds, but the emotional powers of these possible futures offer new ways for readers to engage with their present. Establishing this dialogue between utopian studies and cognitive literary studies and making meaning of these storyworlds might eventually help us to better understand the world we live in as these bleak narratives show us that darkness always finds the light.

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