The Costs of Modernity : How a historical steampunk fantasy such as The Kingston Cycle can successfully portray the intersectional origins of the Capitalocene

Sammanfattning: There is a growing recognition of the interconnectedness of the crises of food, water, democracy and climate change as stemming from the capitalist hunt for modernity and progress. As climate change is thus not only so complex, but urgent, the question of a successful portrayal of it for an enhanced understanding and subsequent action becomes vital. The name of the Capitalocene functions to highlight the intersectional origins of climate change - as the Global North has done violence upon nature in the quest for monetary value, so has it also done violence upon people in the process. The Kingston Cycle is part of a fast-rising wave of speculative fiction with the potential to successfully communicate not only an encompassing picture of the acknowledgedly incomprehensive totality of the current crisis, but also the solution in the form of an egalitarian society founded on the value of community instead of capital. As writers are thus beginning to discover the suitability of speculative fiction to depict the Capitalocene, especially spatiotemporal combinations of genres such as historical steampunk fantasy, it is necessary for scholars to follow in order to breach the hitherto persisting view of speculative fiction as simply an escape from reality, and to investigate how it can be used to create not only an understanding of the current crisis, but an incentive to action.