Worldbuilding with equations, cosmology, climate change and social credits. Paper presented at The Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association (AULLA) and Australian Reception Network (ARN) 2019 Conference: Reception, Production, Exchange. University of Wollongong, 9-11 December, 2019.

Abstract

The novel “La inevitable resurrección de los cerebros de Boltzmann*” was published in Buenos Aires in December 2018. The novel is set in Australia (more precisely in the Popular Free-Market Republic of Ozeania) during the second half of the 21st century. It is currently being translated into English with an artsACT grant. The novel contains 411 formulas, tables, definitions and theorems from the exact sciences and other fields, such as climate change, the economic and social sciences as well as social chaos prediction models. It also includes Lacanian mathémes, Greimas squares, logical hexagons and the orgonic formulas of Wilhem Reich. In this exegetical response to my own creative practice, I presented the worldbuilding techniques used in the novel, to create a setting in which the catastrophes caused by climate change have far exceed the dire predictions made in this century: a perennial economic crisis in the world; recurrent thermal waves; millions of refugees caused by increased sea levels and the extinction of the most common animals. As all this is happening, the authorities of the digital dictatorship running Ozeania keep denying the effects of global warming. I discussed the use of equations as literary devices, transgressing the totemic role they traditionally have in the exact sciences. I also discussed the implications for literary theory and science fiction classifications of the work. *The unavoidable resurrection of Boltzmann brains, to be published in English as “Iridio Ennui vs the Boltzmann Brains”.