The Sound of Snow…

Heavy snowfall where I live in Ontario (photo by Nina Munteanu)

I currently live in Ontario, Canada, where the four seasons are still distinct and winter comes with signature cold temperature well below zero degrees Centigrade along with lots and lots of snow. I grew up in Quebec, where the snow often piled up higher than I stood tall. Temperatures often went into the minus zero teens and twenties with wind chills reaching minus thirty degrees. This called for the right equipment. Insulated coat or jacket, snow pants, wool toque and mittens and/or gloves that are also well insulated. And, of course, warm snow boots.

Nina on a walk during a snowstorm, ON (photo by Merridy Cox)
Country road in the Kawarthas, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Nina’s car on ‘walkabout’ through Kawartha country after a fresh snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Farm in the Kawarthas, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Cows on a farm in the Kawarthas, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Country field in Kawarthas, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
School kids heading to class after a fresh snow, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
The Rotary Trail after a fresh snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Heavy snow falls on a trail in the Kawarthas, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)

Since moving to the West Coast then back east to Ontario, I’ve come to realize that I love winters. I love how snow covers everything, how it quiets the landscape and changes it in subtle ways. I love the frigid wind, how it bites the face with invigorating energy, reminding me that I am so alive. I love the sounds of winter, of walking on snow, crunching and squeaking, of the howl of the wind and the creaking and groaning of the trees, or the cracking and booming of the ice forming and reforming on the river.

Bridge over creek in Trent Nature Sanctuary during heavy snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Jackson Creek after a fresh snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Woman and her dog walk through cedar swamp forest after a fresh snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Riparian forest clothed in fresh snow, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Riparian forest after a fresh snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)

I am currently finishing a fiction book that takes place throughout Canada, but predominantly in northern British Columbia and the arctic of the Northwest Territories. My main character, a Gwich’in scientist, explores the land during a time of climate change, and much of it involves the expansive vast snowfields of northern Canada in which she describes the look, smell, feel, and sounds of snow. She thinks with great fondness of home in the Arctic where snow prominently features and, bringing in all her senses, of course, includes sound:

There are many different kinds of snow, and any native of the north can recognize them. We can not only tell something of the quality of weather from it, but also its history. Without having experienced the day or history of the place, we will know simply from walking through it. For instance, on a minus twenty-degree Centigrade day, when the cold bites your face and your breath coils out of your mouth like steam, old snow shines under a raking sun like an ice sheet. As though clear plastic was stretched over it. Sometimes, a hoar frost will form on the glassy thin layer, adding more glitter. Walking through it creates a symphony of crunch, pop and skittle sounds as each step breaks through the thin brittle layer into soft snow underneath. The scattering flat shards tingle like glass across the glistening ice-snow sheet.

Fresh snow that has fallen on a frigid night of minus fifteen degrees in a drier climate is fluffy, individual snowflakes glinting like jewels in the sun, and emits a high-pitched squeak and crunch as your boots press down on it. The colder the temperature, the higher the squeak. I just made that up. I’m not sure if it’s true. But considering the relationship of harmonics with temperature, it’s plausible.

Squeaky snow is the snow of my home up north, where it arrives in a thick passion in October with the winter darkness, and where a constant minus 16°C to minus 30°C pervades until spring, six months later. The snow resembles powdered sugar, glittering like millions of tiny mica flakes under the moonlight of an arctic winter night. It covers everything, the ground, the trees and tiniest vegetation with a white blanket of snow. And when the wind teases the trees, they rain glitter-dust. In places where the north wind freely drifts across open landscape, sastrugi form; frozen wavelets, mini-barchans and dune chains that resemble the wave ripples of a sandy white beach. In some vast open areas, the wind will sculpt a frozen sea of irregular ridges and grooves up to a metre high. Mary’s friend Jem from Igloolik calls these snowdrifts qimugruk, whose distinctive shapes become permanent features of the snowscape, with tips always pointing west-northwest. Igloolik hunters use these uqalurait to set their bearings when travelling across the expansive tundra, particularly during poor visibility from storms or darkness.

Tracks through a small path by the river, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Snow drift on a trail by the river, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)

One of the sensitivity readers for the book, anthropologist and Gwich’in scholar Ingrid Kritsch, related to me an interesting account during attempts to open up to oil and gas development the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge–a critical area where the Porcupine Caribou herd calve. “To many Americans, it was just a big, white, barren expanse of unused lands,” said Ingrid. “She recalled a Senator speaking for development on these lands. The Senator held up a blank sheet of white paper and claimed ‘this is what the area looks like!’

The vast snowfields look nothing like that…

Snow drifts in Ontario (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)

…Now, don’t forget to play in the snow…

Author’s son and friends play in fresh snow on Christmas in BC (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu reads a book with her cup of tea in +8 degree C, ON (photo by Merridy Cox)

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

Nina Munteanu on The Writing Process

Country road through Kawarthas, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)

Issue  #128 of Apex Magazine featured an interview that Rebecca E. Treasure did with me. We discussed the power of story, the use of dystopian narrative, and the blur between fiction and non-fiction to create meaningful eco-fiction. Below we talk about the writing process I use for my stories these days. For the complete interview go here:

AM: The language in your stories is richly thematic, using strong description to weave the subtext into the piece. For example, “killing two squirrels with one stone.” Is that something that comes about organically as you compose a piece, or a more intentional part of editing?

NM: I use both processes to achieve a final narrative that is multi-layered with metaphor, symbols, and deep meaning. The first process is through intuition derived through intimacy; the second process is more deliberate and generated through objectivity. Insights from intimacy come about organically, during moments of true inspiration, when my muse connects me to the deeper truth of a character’s voice and actions. Given that the inner story runs many layers (some of which I, as writer, may not even be overtly aware) and links in a fractal relationship with the outer story, those moments of inner inspiration happen as if of their own accord. That’s what writers mean when they admit that their characters “talk” to them and instruct them on what to write. When a writer achieves that level of intimacy and understanding, they can let the muse guide them.

Much of the description that is woven into story is generated through the editing process when I read the manuscript as a reader. The process involves letting the story sit for a while so when I return to it, I am reading more objectively. During this process, I apply my knowledge in storytelling craft to showcase combustible moments in plot, and work in foreshadowing, subtext, and compelling metaphor. A writer can’t add metaphor without context related to story theme (otherwise this may result in what the industry calls “purple prose”). Metaphor—given its roots in the deeper psyche of a culture—must arise organically from a deep, sometimes intuitive, understanding—where the personal meets the universal.  

For the entire interview, go to Apex Magazine, December 10, 2021.

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

When Water Speaks: quotes from A Diary in the Age of Water

“Water wants to flow. It doesn’t like to be restricted. If confined in a ravine, it speeds up and cuts a channel along the thalweg, eroding the hardest material and polishing a path that uniquely suits it. Water is selfish. It is always moving, even when it isn’t.”

Lynna Dresden

A Diary in the Age of Water is “An exceptional and thought-provoking dystopian fiction.”

LITERARY TITAN
Jackson Creek in winter, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)

Nina Munteanu on The Role of Stories in the Climate Action Movement

Jackson Creek after a fresh snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)

Issue  #128 of Apex Magazine featured an interview that Rebecca E. Treasure did with me. We discussed the power of story, the use of dystopian narrative, and the blur between fiction and non-fiction to create meaningful eco-fiction. Below we talk about the role of stories in the climate action movement. For the complete interview go here:

AM: Your work takes complex topics that are nonetheless critical to humanity’s future and pulls stories with compelling characters out of them, making the science accessible, the warnings personal to the reader. This has always been one of the callings of science fiction. What is the role of stories in the climate action movement?

NM: Our capacity and need to tell stories is as old as our ancient beginnings. From the Paleolithic cave paintings of Lascaux to our blogs on the internet, humanity has always shared story. Story is powerful in how it helps us define who we are, what’s important to us, and where we are going. Stories compel with intrigue, stir our emotions, connect with our souls through symbols, archetypes and metaphor. Stories inspire action. We live by the stories we tell.

For too long, our stories have promoted a dominant worldview of exploitation and capitalism. We’ve been telling the patriarchal story of “othering” for too long; we need a new voice and a new worldview to replace our old stories of conquering and taming a “savage land” and “savage people.” When Copernicus proclaimed in 1543 that the sun did not revolve around the Earth, it took a long time for the world to accept and let go of its Ptolemaic Earth-centered view. But the world did come around eventually to the point now that this is common knowledge and lies embedded in our daily lives and language.

Storytelling about how the Earth takes care of us and how we can take care of Earth is urgently needed.

This means shifting our stories from an exploitive capitalist narrative of separation toward an inclusive partnership narrative. This means embracing a more eco-centric worldview; a worldview in which humanity is not central, but lies embedded within greater planetary forces and phenomena. A worldview that sees humanity only as part of a greater entity, as participant in a greater existential celebration of life and the elements. A humanity that must learn to play along, not bully and take over. A humanity that must embrace compassion, respect and kindness; a humanity directed by humility—not hubris. It is my firm belief that until our worldview embraces humility in partnership with the natural world—until we cast off our self-serving, neo-liberal, capitalist ideologies—we will remain hampered in our journey forward. When we change our stories, we change our lives and we change the world along with it.

This is already happening with the emergence of a strong eco-voice by writers through the feminine voice, the gylanic voice, the voice of the marginalized, of ecology and the environment itself. Authors such as Barbara Kingsolver, Annie Proulx, Margaret Atwood, Richard Powers, Emmi Itäranta, Jeff Vandermeer, Cherie Demaline, Christiane Vadnais, Pitchaya Sudbanthad, Chen Qiufan, Paolo Bacigalupi, Grace Dillon, Andrew Krivak, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Coleen Murphy … These all give Nature a face and voice to care about. And caring is the first step.

For the entire interview, go to Apex Magazine, December 10, 2021.

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

Snow Covered Fields–an Ekphrastic Poem by Bev Gorbet

Snow covered farmer’s field at sunset, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)

Ice clad prisms, snow covered fields of glittering fire…
Winter days, the  wondrous glow: ultramarine lights and turning shades
The magic song: ice and gently underflow of meandering  streams 
Singing waters on the tortuous pathway below…
Clangor, bell sounds: the moving harmonies on icy slopes…

Jackson Creek in winter, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Ice ‘islands’ touched by sunset light in Jackson Creek, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Ice block in Jackson Creek, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Farmer’s field in Kawarthas, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)

A bronze feathered hawk sails high above 
Into the bright sunlit skies,
Hawk, swiftly carried in its flight above bended fir and aspen forests,
A wild, fierce, freewheeling majesty…

Icy bay and shed in the trees, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Small cabin in a meadow, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Trees by fence in farmer’s field, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Snow from a cedar tree showers down glitter-dust in a light breeze in Jackson Creek Park, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

The many pristine snow reflected lights, glittering fires
Above a snow clad world in a time of darkness:
Nature’s  magic universe everywhere extant:
We are overwhelmed, confounded by the wonder of it all.

Skier checks his path on a slope at sunset, BC (photo by Lindsay)
Snow glistening in the sunset on a very cold day, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Reflections in Thompson Creek outlet after a new snowfall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Otonabee River glittering in the sun, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)

Bev Gorbet is a Toronto poet. She has published several poems with the Retired Teachers Organization and most recently in “Literary Connection IV: Then and Now” (In Our Words Inc., 2019), edited by Cheryl Antao Xavier. 

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

When Water Speaks: quotes from A Diary in the Age of Water

“Mankind will continue to flounder when he underestimates Nature and sees himself separate from Her. Man is having his way with Her now. But eventually She will have her way with him. When they try to hang onto water, it will slip through their fingers. That’s what water does.”

Una Dresden

“In poetic prose with sober factual basis, Munteanu transmutes a harrowing dystopia into a transcendentalist origin myth. An original cautionary tale that combines a family drama with an environmental treatise.”

KIRKUS REVIEWS
Jackson Creek in early winter, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)

Nina Munteanu on The Bridge Between Fiction and NonFiction

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Issue  #128 of Apex Magazine featured an interview that Rebecca E. Treasure did with me. We discussed the power of story, the use of dystopian narrative, and the blur between fiction and non-fiction to create meaningful eco-fiction. Below we talk about the role of stories in the climate action movement. For the complete interview go here:

AM: Your also stories bridge fiction with nonfiction, using speculative fiction as a lens to bring your subject into focus for the reader. How does that work? Why do you approach story in this way?

NM: Marcie McCauley with Temz Review observed that, “[Munteanu] does not appear to view fiction and non-fiction as separate territories; or, if she does, then this book [A Diary in the Age of Water] is a bridge between them.” In Herizons, Ursula Pflug called the book “a bit of a hybrid, and Munteanu a risk-taker.” Buried in Print wrote of the same book, “ultimately it exists in an in-between place, some mystical elements of the generational tale possibly alienating the dedicated science-y readers and the instructional elements possibly alienating fiction devotees. And, yet, I read on: strangely compelling.”

I find that I enjoy this in-between place that blurs fiction with nonfiction. It’s more edgy, gripping, and believable, albeit fantastical, even playfully challenging at times. For instance, I may subvert facts, creating semi-facts to tease the discerning reader (e.g. when the diarist in “A Diary in the Age of Water” observed that President Trump had gone blind from staring at the sun during an eclipse; while Trump did stare directly at the sun without eye protection during an eclipse in 2017, he did not go blind—yet). Readers have told me that the story was more impactful; they honestly didn’t know what was taken from fact and what was fictionalized. Such narrative reads like a true story and there is little more tantalizing than eavesdropping on another’s real experience and intrigue. The risk—that the blur will either confuse the reader or invalidate its truths and message—is hopefully addressed through compelling narrative that engages the reader. But this is also why I tend to include an extensive bibliography at the end of a novel or short story.

Readers have told me that my fiction/nonfiction storytelling trope, like “mundane science fiction,” grips my stories with a more keen sense of relevance. Given that I am writing mostly climate fiction and eco-fiction these days, that sense of relevance is exactly what I wish to achieve. 

For the entire interview, go to Apex Magazine, December 10, 2021.

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

When Water Speaks: quotes from A Diary in the Age of Water

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking the bully is your friend…You can play with the bully. But don’t make him your friend. Demand his respect. Or you will become the bully.”

Una Dresden

“Lyrical and dystopian, ‘A Diary in the Age of Water’ is as much an ode to water as it is a cautionary tale about the dire implications of climate change.”

FOREWORD CLARION 5-STAR REVIEW
Jackson Creek after a heavy snow in early winter, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)

When Writers Use the Present—or the Past—to inform The Future in Their Science Fiction Novel

The Darwin duology by Dragon Moon Press, depicting the late 21st Century, by Nina Munteanu

In my 2007 novel Darwin’s Paradox and its 2010 prequel Angel of Chaos—dystopian tales set in an unrecognizable post-climate change Canada at the end of the 21st Century—the father of the main character lectures his impressionable young daughter about how climate change helped create the heathland scrub that replaced the mixed woodlands of the old Carolinian and sub-Boreal environments:

“What’s over there?” She points to a far, dark hill. 

“Woodland. This was all forest before the cities got built and the climate changed.” 

“Climate changed?” 

“Yes, honey.” He focuses on the distance. “Caused the revolution thirty years ago. Since then the Ecologists have virtually eliminated our greenhouse gas emissions. Of course, the planet will be feeling the effects of global warming for decades to come. Perhaps centuries.” 

“They saved the planet, didn’t they?” 

His brows knit. “Perhaps they did, perhaps they didn’t,” he says enigmatically. 

I’d originally written the novel and its prequel in the seventies, before entering university. So, you might think that I was incredibly imaginative and prescient to come up with such climate devastation. But this simply isn’t so (well, not entirely, anyway). Just as with Margaret Atwood—who says: “When I wrote the Handmaid’s Tale, nothing went into it that had not happened in real-life somewhere at some time”—I was simply reading the signs.

Margaret Atwood demonstrating a fire-proof version of her book The Handmaid’s Tale

When it came to climate change, of course, I had some help. During my days at university, studying limnology, and in the 1980s and ‘90s when I worked as an environmental scientist and consultant, I encountered evidence of a changing environment and climate; people in the environmental sciences certainly knew the dangers of climate change long before it entered the common zeitgeist.

Science fiction dystopias aren’t so much predictive as realistically projecting possibilities based on current or past social patterns (these past social patterns, as Santayana notes, have a way of returning to us when we don’t pay attention to them). This notion lies at the root of the term cautionary tale and what makes one truly harrowing or terrifying; we sense to our very core how likely these scenarios are.

My near-future climate dystopia released by Inanna Publications in 2020

Response to my 2020 cautionary tale A Diary in the Age of Water reflects this visceral reaction by readers who shared that this blur of fiction with non-fiction and sense of realism—a “this could happen” quality—totally unbalanced them and engrossed them. Comments included “unique and captivating,” “unsettling and yet deliciously readable,” “strangely compelling” “scary and comforting at the same time,” “made my heart clench,” “a book of genuine power.”

Scene from Michael Radford’s film “Nineteen Eighty-Four” released in 1984, based on George Orwell’s 1949 novel

Indeed, many successful predictions have been made in speculative fiction. In 1961, Stanislaw Lem’s novel Return From the Stars predicted the invention of the touch pad, iPhone, iPad and Kindle. The telescreens that monitored the citizens of George Orwell’s Oceania in his dystopian 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was reflected, twenty years later, in the first CCTV installed in the United Kingdom. Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report accurately predicted personalized ads, voice-controlled homes, facial and optical recognition, and gesture-based computing. Self-driving cars were showcased in many speculative books and films such as Bladerunner, and Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot.

Scene from the film Minority Report with Tom Cruise

But many speculations have also not been realized. No flying cars—OK, some companies such as Toyota, Hyundai and Tesla are working on prototypes. While NASA plans to construct a surface habitat called Artemis Base Camp so that astronauts can remain on the moon’s surface for days or perhaps even weeks, it is far from happening soon. Also, no rotating space stations and space elevator–yet.

Many envisioned totalitarian/dystopian states in speculative fiction have also not been realized (e.g. We, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, Handmaid’s Tale, Hunger Games, The Dispossessed, V for Vendetta )—though one could argue that aspects of each world envisioned by an author has occurred or is occurring in some form. One need only recall Edward Snowdon’s disclosures of NSA’s insidious surveillance to see parallels with Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. And as Margaret Atwood famously said in the quote above, nothing goes into her stories “that have not happened in real-life somewhere at some time.”

“The function of science fiction is not only to predict the future but to prevent it.”

Ray Bradbury

There are, in most cases, no technological impediments to the flying car, the jetpack, and moon-bases; only cultural ones. “These SF predictions ought to be viewed as visions of where we could be, as opposed to where we will be, or, keeping Bradbury in mind, visions of where we don’t want to go and, thankfully, have mostly managed to avoid to date,” says Steve Davidson of Grasping for the Wind. “Perhaps it’s all cultural,” he adds. Science fiction writer and futurist David Brin says that he is “more interested in exploring possibilities than likelihoods, because a great many more things might happen than do.”

In his book Four Futures: Life After Capitalism Peter Frase writes: “the importance of assessing possibility rather than likelihood is that it puts our collective action at the centre, while making confident predictions only encourages passivity.” In his 2010 essay, David Brin cites Orwell’s 1984 as a “self-preventing prophecy” that helped prevent the scenario (at least in its fullest).

George Orwell wrote his dystopian satire in 1949 about a mind-controlled society in response to the Cold War. The book was a metaphor “against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism,” said Orwell in his 1947 essay Why I Write, adding that, “Good prose is like a windowpane.” Was Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four a failed novel because the real 1984 didn’t turn out quite like his 1984? Hardly. Hugo Award-winning novelist Robert J. Sawyer argues that we consider it a success, “because it helped us avoid that future. So just be happy that the damn dirty apes haven’t taken over yet.”

References:

Brin, David. 2010. “The Self-Preventing Prophecy: Or How a Dose of Nightmare Can Help Tame Tomorrow’s Path.” in Abbott Gleason et al. eds., On Nineteen Eighty-Four: Orwell and Our Future. Princeton University Press, Princeton, p.222.

Frase, Peter. 2016. “Four Futures: Life After Capitalism.” Verso Press, London. 150pp.

Country road in the Kawarthas during a foggy morning, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.