How can utopianism inform a response to the climate crisis? Examining utopianism in political theory and speculative fiction, Mathias Thaler demonstrates how utopianism already functions in both genres. Through sensitive analyses of Bruno Latour; N.K. Jemisin; eco-modernists like Steven Pinker and Kim Stanley Robinson; and eco-pessimists like the Dark Mountain Collective and Margaret Atwood, Thaler shows not just the variety of utopianism but also how utopianism motivates readers toward action, even in what feels like dystopian times.

Utopianism, for Thaler, educates one with a desire for life to be otherwise (3). Thaler's analysis proposes three forms of such education: an estranging pedagogy, which “strives to gain distance to reality in the right manner” (81); a galvanizing pedagogy, which “mobilize[s] an audience into resistant action” (84); and a cautioning pedagogy, which “communicates anxiety about the future in the right dosage [italics are Thaler’s]” (85). The vehicle of utopianism's pedagogy is “social dreaming,” a term Thaler borrows from Miguel Abensour to describe a combination of “daydreaming” (aimless, playful speculation) and “world building” (the social or political dimension of such dreaming). Utopianism thus offers both consolation in the dream that life cou