인류세, 기후소설과 유스토피아(USTOPIA) -김기창의 『기후변화 시대의 사랑』을 중심으로

Abstract

This paper defined climate fiction as a subgenre of anthropological fiction as a speculative fiction that expands human consciousness and thinking. The theme of climate fiction is all about the Earth, such as pollution, rising sea levels, and global warming, and is a novel that responds to what might be the biggest challenge for society, exploring the potential or extreme consequences of climate change. Kim Ki-chang's Love in the Age of Climate Change shows how climate change affects living things in various ways. The dystopia shown by Kim Ki-chang's climate novel demands critical reflection on humanity and drives utopian desires. Therefore, it allows us to explore sustainability through the concept of ‘ustopia’ a newly coined word that combines utopia and dystopia, used by Margaret Atwood. Three novels set in Dome City show human response to climate disasters as a spatial resistance called Dome City. However, the wall has become a fence that separates residents from deportees. If it's hell outside Dome City to hear the smell of burning flesh and the sound of skin ripening, inside Dome City is a prison of shame and sin. If the Dom City series had been completed in two, it would have been typical of dystopia. However, the artist puts purgatory between hell and prison to awaken the human beings to be able to change and the responsibility and love as a destined community beyond the dichotomy. In The Promised Land against the backdrop of the Arctic driven by the climate crisis, polar bears that have become difficult to hunt seals due to sea ice, the influx of new species due to habitat destruction, and the decrease in the population of sea life are solemnly depicted in the form of fables. The novel shows that there is no exception to the climate crisis by looking at the issue of global warming from the perspective of Arctic habitats, and that the Anthropocene is a symbiotic task of biodiversity. Only Boys Know shows the phenomenon that extreme aspects of climate change are projected onto the inside of humans against the backdrop of a small coast of Bali Island and then violently back-projected toward external nature. This work newly shows the effects of climate on humans by connecting climate crisis with human violence. Kim Ki-chang's novel strengthens his literary commitment to sustainability even in the midst of climate disasters through narratives across time, space, objects and species. Climate fiction requires adaptation in ways that we have never experienced before, and calls for community resilience and individual emotional resilience to overcome frustration through a shift in mindset.