Narrative Practice of Ecological Utopia: The Long Summer’s Narrative Response to the Climate Crisis and Ecological Redemption

Abstract

In the context of the Anthropocene, the climate crisis has become a core challenge threatening human survival and the continuation of civilization. The dilemmas of traditional development models and the urgency of ecological governance have driven literature to respond to this epochal proposition through utopian narratives. Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Long Summer, grounded in rigorous climate science and rejecting illusory science fiction imagination, constructs an ecological utopian narrative that balances realism and idealism. It not only depicts the harsh reality of the climate crisis with unflinching prose but also explores feasible pathways for humanity to break ecological dilemmas and achieve ecological redemption through constructive narrative logic. Supported by ecological utopian theory and ecological narratology, this paper systematically analyzes how The Long Summer responds narratively to the climate crisis, examines the dimensions, practical paths and value orientations of the novel’s ecological utopian construction, and reveals its innovative significance and practical implications in climate narration. Research shows that Robinson forms a complete narrative chain of “realistic critique–ideal construction–redemptive practice” through diverse narrative perspectives, spatiotemporal structures and a narrative strategy integrating science and humanism. His ecological utopia is not a fantasy divorced from reality but a realistic utopia based on scientific rationality and humanistic concern. It provides important references for contemporary climate fiction and offers literary intellectual guidance for climate governance and ecological redemption in the Anthropocene.