Rural Historicity in Popular Speculative Futurities: Eco-anxiety as Settler Anxiety

This chapter explores the affective management performed by settler colonial genres of rurality, specifically those pertaining to the US West, in tending to contemporary forms of eco-anxiety. It does this through a close analysis of the SF film Interstellar (2014), exploring in particular the sense of historicity the western frontier rural – including the farmstead and the frontiersman – manages in relation to the film’s dealing with climate crisis and humanity’s envisioned future. Interstellar’s supposed concern with climate change is exposed as underpinned by a latent settler concern over the loss of property, hetero-reproductivity, and progress.