A common theme in speculative fiction concerns technological overreach. All manner of scenarios have been developed by science fiction authors and filmmakers, warning of the potential for subjugation, obliteration, or alienation as technologies grow in power and scale. Yet within environmental circles, even though the dangers inherent in technological development are well appreciated, environmental challenges are coming to be defined more and more as technical matters to be resolved via technological means. This article explores some of the meaning and limits of this contemporary environmental techno-optimism, through engagement with the “Culture” novels of Iain M. Banks. The Culture novels chronicle a space-faring, post-scarcity civilization, and stand as a kind of best-case extension, in environmental terms, of humanity’s present technological trajectory. The article wrestles with the potential for great benefit but also extraordinary risk that comes with treading down Banks’ path and outlines the kinds of questions that must be asked and answered in an increasingly technology-saturated world. The article distills lessons from comparing Banks’ novels to the “Biosphere 2” experiment. It also explores a few of the ways in which speculative fiction might be deployed in the classroom to better equip students and citizens to wrestle with existing and emerging technologies and their implications.

Sustainability transitions tend to be seen as technical, not social, affairs. Mainstream scholars and practitioners do not very often acknowledge environmental and social justice in their transitions work. They seldom recognize rights for racially marginalized people, or the possible existence of rights of Earth. Nor do they query whether they are exaggerating the reach of scientific and technological solutions. By contrast, some recent ecological science fiction writing has begun to place these issues at the center of transitions. In the Broken Earth series, N.K. Jemisin explores Earth through the lens of racial and ecological injustice. She interrogates four themes relevant to transitions. How should we live in a climate-changed world? What role does racial and social subordination play in destroying the environment? What are the dangers of hubris in seeking out a fundamental change through science and technology that cannot be readily controlled after all? How should we think about Earth itself? I conclude with some thoughts on how Earth could be made ‘unbroken’ again through integrating recognition, humility, renewal, and redistribution into transitions.

John Brunner’s 1972 novel, The Sheep Look Up , is the story of the year leading up to a global ecological and political catastrophe. Set primarily in the United States in an unspecified near future, The Sheep Look Up tells the story of “death by a thousand cuts”: problem upon problem, malfeasance upon malfeasance, which accumulate, reinforce each other and are met only by a failing political and economic system that ultimately collapses under its own weight. This article reflects on themes and topics of the novel that resonate for social science theorists and teachers in the environmental social sciences, including global environmental politics. First, it provides a type of counterfactual analysis. It opens a window into how the world might have been had certain actions not been taken. Second, it provides a warning: how the world might be if we do not act. Third, it provides a model of how a disastrous transition might unfold as social resilience has been worn down. Looking back on the almost fifty years since the novel was written demonstrates how its scenario was averted through concerted government and societal actions, but the article also points out how Brunner’s work has strong resonance with our present – and at different times in the recent past.