Ian McEwan: 'We're almost ruthless in our urge to survive'

What We Can Know is set in 2119, in a world submerged by rising seas, and is described as science fiction, without the science. British novelist and screenwriter Ian McEwan told RNZ’s Saturday Morning that he admires the genre – up to a point.

“What is the future of our view of history, of our relationship to language, our view of the past that might have led the future into such dire straits? And what is the future of love itself?

“I don't see this reflected constantly in science fiction; it tends to be technology-related at its worst end, the end that doesn't interest me at all - intergalactic warfare or anti-gravity boots.

“But where it wants to speculate about technology and our societies, I'm always interested.”

The future world McEwan imagines has endured cataclysmic events, and yet somehow humanity has “scraped through”, he says.

He grew up in the shadow of World War II - a time when “at our backs, and estimates vary on this, somewhere between 70 to 90 million people died".

“We've all seen aerial photographs of Berlin, Dresden, sections of London, Tokyo, which had been burnt to the ground for the third time, Hiroshima, obviously.

“And yet jump 30 years, those will become bustling cities again. We're almost ruthless in our urge to survive.”

This human resilience offers some hope, McEwan says.

“We keep going, and unless we have a total nuclear exchange that renders the planet uninhabitable, we might well face all kinds of catastrophes and calamities, but somehow, we will scrape through. That's about the height and depth of my rather slender optimism.”

There's currently a “nastiness in the air,” he says.

“In 50 or 60 years of following politics, I don't remember it being quite so out of control.

“And yet I have some faith in us pulling through, however damaged, and I think this novel is a reflection of that belief.”

Described as 'one of the finest writers alive', McEwan is the author of seventeen books, including Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize.

Other works such as Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen.

His latest is about the gap between “what we can know and what we can't know”, he says.

“We ourselves, in our private relationships, are always in that situation of almost knowing people well, the person you love, you might have lived with for many years, you cannot fully ever know that person.

“And yet love flourishes in that gap. And that's where I derive my title.”

His recent experience of attending funerals demonstrates just how little we ever really know about the people closest to us, he says.

“We deal in shreds and bits and pieces of our own past. I've been to quite a few funerals lately, and listening to the orations of people I thought I knew rather well, I'm amazed how little I did know really about their past, their parents, their earliest childhood. They never told me, I never asked.”

As we age, the notion that the world is unravelling is seductive, he says.

“It's very tempting as you get older to think that since you're going to be out of it soon, so is civilisation. In other words, it's quite hard to tolerate the idea that you were born in the middle of things, and you will die in the middle of things.

“It's rather more satisfactory to think, after me the deluge, you know, as I age, and approach my end, so does everyone else. It's an illusion that one has to struggle against.”

Nevertheless, the world is in a parlous state, he says.

“It's climate change. Are we doing enough? And that's why I call it the derangement. I want to make the point that we're all involved in this. It's not just corporations or governments failing to do this.

“Those of us who are lucky to live in reasonably prosperous countries…we fly thousands of miles for a week's holiday, we consume vast amounts of plastic. We're used to levels of comfort that no medieval king could have contemplated. And we find it hard to let it go. We're all in it. We're all deranged.”

A central character in What We Can Know is Tom Metcalfe, a scholar looking back at the early 21st century – he describes the past as being “peopled by idiots.”

So how does McEwan think history will judge us?

“If we were to scrape through somehow, I think the future will say they could have done more, they could have done it quicker. The information was already in by the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. We're never going to appear perfect.

If we go down the road to perdition, I think they will curse us - if they're alive to do it.”