Plastic Waste Flooding into Science Fiction: A Green Tea Chat with author Stanley Chen

Inspired by a 2011 trip to Guiyu—the heart of China’s e-waste processing, Stanley Chen’s science fiction novel Waste Tide captures the human toll of our disposable lifestyles. This book about class war and trash is part of a growing trend in science fiction literature that some call eco-fiction or solarpunk, where the story takes place in a near-future world that is part dystopia and part utopia. Chen has won more than a dozen awards for his work including several Galaxy and Nebula awards. His most recent book, Algorithms of Life, was partially written by an AI program trained by his own work.

Over the last year at CEF, plastic waste has been a major thread in our program. We are very excited to invite you to this delightful turn away from our usual environmental and energy policy discussions to have an intimate “Green Tea Chat” with Stanley Chen about how science fiction reflects reality and can inspire action to solve complex pollution and climate change problems. We will also delve into his work with AI. His upcoming book, co-written with Kai-Fu Lee, AI 2041 can be pre-ordered now. 

We will take questions from the audience. Please submit your questions before or anytime during the webinar to Twitter (@wilsonCEF) or via email to elijah.patton@wilsoncenter.org.

CEF Green Tea Chats are short conversations with leading experts from the business, NGO, societal, and research spheres about energy and environmental issues in China and Southeast Asia. This meeting was developed in partnership with the Institute for Developing Economies in Japan and made possible by support from the Japan Foundation’s Center for Global Partnership.