Pricing Catastrophe: The Operation and Critique of Financial Algorithms in Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140

Abstract

This paper examines the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in an economic model that profits from climate catastrophe, as depicted in Kim Stanley Robinson’s science fiction novel New York 2140. Through a textual analysis of the novel’s central financial algorithm, the “Intertidal Property Pricing Index” (IPPI), this study reveals how AI algorithms transform the physical realities of disaster into tradable financial products. The research finds that the IPPI primarily reshapes New York’s post-disaster economic order and exacerbates social inequality through three steps: the “datafication” of disaster consequences, the “marketization” of risk, and the “socialization” of profits and costs. This paper argues that Robinson, through his portrayal of this financial algorithm, critically exposes how technological tools can combine with specific economic motives, offering a literary reference for understanding the complex interplay between technology and economy in the real world.