The Affinity for Utopia: Erecting Walls and Building Bridges in Robert Charles Wilson’s The Affinities

Abstract

Robert Charles Wilson’s The Affinities (2015) is arguably his least “science-fictional” and most “grounded” novel, set in a largely contemporary Toronto. It nonetheless exploits a key novum that extrapolates technological advances and their impact on the sociopolitical present: the emergence of “Affinities,” social groups organized around genetic markers that provide their members with an almost-immediate intimacy and sense of connection with otherwise perfect (non-)strangers. Murphy’s essay examines both the utopian and dystopian potential of a social structure offered as an alternative to the contemporary nation-state, as well as Wilson’s transnational approach to his protagonist’s developing sense of identity within and without his “Affinity.” It contextualizes its arguments in the current US and Canadian political climates.