Minerva in Shakespeare’s The Tempest and John Savage in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
In today’s world of gene editing, plant and animal cloning, DYI biohacking, and artificial intelligence, the transhumanist movement merits careful thought. Simply put, transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement that advocates for enhancing the human condition and expanding human capabilities through advanced technology.
But when does a Transhumanist’s individual expression of “transcendence” become a movement toward the Singularity? The political ambitions that wish to use science to “enhance” humanity, based on someone’s idea of “perfect” carry dangerous social implications. The transhumanist notion of “self-directed evolution” to recast humanity in the image of “perfection” evokes social Darwinism and the Übermensch. It brings to mind the early American eugenics programs that inspired the fascist sonderweg and Hitler’s aggressive “race hygiene” by application of eugenics in the Holocaust.
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Eugenics: Designing A ‘Perfect Society’ from a ‘Perfect Human’
The eugenics tree (American Philosophical Society)
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Put simply, eugenics is the scientifically erroneous and immoral belief and practice of “racial genetic improvement’ and “selective breeding” (or more currently through genetic manipulation), which gained particular popularity during the early 20th century with key scientific misappropriation (scientific racism).
Eugenics and scientific racism are concepts as old as Plato and have haunted humanity since the biblical portrayal of Adam and Eve. The philosophy and associated practice became increasingly common in the 1870s and 1880s as leaders and intellectuals worldwide argued for policies based on racist and xenophobic attitudes—justifying actions of antisemitism, sexism, colonialism, slavery, and imperialism. Discussions of ‘human improvement’ and the ideology of scientific racism became increasingly common. In 1883, Francis Galton, English statistician and ethnologist (and cousin of Charles Darwin), gave the practice a name. He called it eugenics, which comes from a Greek term meaning “good” or “noble” birth.
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In 1938, German Dr. Bruno Beger measures a Tibetan woman’s head to demonstrate ‘inferior’ characteristics of her race; Beger later works for the Nazi SS to help identify Jews (Wikimedia Commons))
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Eugenics was based on ‘scientific racism’, an ideology that appropriated the legitimate methods of science to argue for the superiority of white Europeans. Misappropriation of advances in medicine, anatomy and statistics during the 18th and 19th centuries (including Charles Darwin’s 1859 theory of evolution and Gregor Mendel’s laws of inheritance) added a false sense of validity to these racist claims.
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The practice of eugenics is based on the notion that not only physical traits but mental and behavioral attributes—like mental capacity, musical ability, insanity, sexual licentiousness and criminality—are inheritable and therefore can be directed through breeding, sterilization and now through genetic manipulation.
(A child’s head is measured to determine his personality and predict his future, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, 1932)
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Historically the ideology of ‘scientific racism’ and practice of eugenics took on two forms: 1) positive eugenics—encouraging people deemed ‘superior’ or ‘fit’ (based on wealth, race or intelligence) to have more children; and 2) negative eugenics—discouraging or preventing people deemed ‘unfit’ (e.g. ethnic minorities, poor or disabled) from having children (most commonly through forced sterilization or murder).
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1926 poster warning that breeding among the unfit creates an unwanted burden on society, Philadelphia, Pensylvania (Wikipedia Commons)
For instance, Work conducted at the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) in Cold Spring Harbor, under the direction of Charles Benedict Davenport from 1910 to 1939, directly led to the forced sterilization of thousands of American citizens and the passage of anti-immigration laws.
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Coldspring Harbor Laboratory in 1920s where American eugenicists used state fairs as a venue for popular education, and judged “human stock” to select the most eugenically fit family in contests such as this one. (American Philosophical Society.
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By the 1920s, eugenics was a global phenomenon, popular with the elite, particularly in countries such as Germany, the United States, Great Britain, Italy, Mexico, and Canada. In the United States, involuntary sterilization, forced institutionalization, social ostracization and stigma have continued well into the 1970s. Concerned over “race suicide” (based on differential birthrates of races), American eugenicists promoted involuntary sterilization of mostly native Americans, African Americans, poor whites and people with disabilities; declaring certain individuals “feebleminded” or anti-social. Over 60,000 people were sterilized against their will by the 1970s.
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Ultimately, these same beliefs inspired the Nazis to exterminate people with disabilities and “lessor” ethnic or philosophical backgrounds. At least 400,000 victims were sterilized and over 70,000 adults and 5,000 children euthanized.
Nazi propaganda poster
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“Perhaps more than any other science, biology has consistently been employed as an accomplice to moral claims because it has tremendous social utility in translating scientific findings into political imperatives,” says Cosima Herter, science consultant for the TV show Orphan Black (which covers the topic of eugenics well.) “Deeply embedded in the public consciousness is the hope that social problems can be solved with ‘scientific panaceas’,” Herter adds. “…Science can as easily act as an ally to existing institutions and justify pernicious prejudices – racism, sexism, homophobia, and class disparity to name a few – as it can produce wondrous, beautiful, and beneficial fruits in the service of a better world.”
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Eugenics remains alive and well in North America. Much of it lies buried under beneath medical well-being, gene manipulation research or detainment, incarceration of illegal immigrants, or even the “metaeugenics” of AI. In her 2024 book Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics, Jess Whatcott introduces the term “carceral eugenics” which she defines as: “a concept that analyzes how state confinement functions to control the reproduction and life choices of groups of people who have been deemed biologically undesirable.”
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Eugenics & Transhumanism
In 1929, Cambridge crystallographer J.D. Bernal, speculated on radical changes to human bodies and intelligence through bionic implants and cognitive enhancement. Two years before that, Fritz Lang’s expressionist SF film Metropolis introduced the first robot depicted in cinema: the Maschinenmensch, the machine-human.
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Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World describes a ‘utopia’ based on eugenic principles. It is a stratified genetic caste society where the lower orders are deliberately stunted both mentally and physically. The destiny of its five main strata is determined from an early age. The strata consist of Alphas, destined for leadership positions; Betas, who hold less exalted but still intellectually demanding jobs; Gammas and Deltas, who occupy roles needing some intelligence; and finally Epsilons, happy and easily-controlled morons capable of only the most menial and unskilled tasks.
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Biologist Julian Huxley, brother of author Aldous Huxley, first used the word Transhumanism in a 1957 article, where he presented the concept of the technological singularity, or the ultra-rapid advent of superhuman intelligence. Julian Huxley defined Transhumanism as “man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature.”
The founders of Transhumanism were educated wealthy individuals of mostly British and European descent. They were an elite ruling class, who considered themselves the forward-thinking intelligentsia. Transhumanismis an intellectual and cultural movement that promotes eugenic principles through science & technology to improve human mental and physical characteristics and capacities. Transhumanists seek to expand technological opportunities for people to live longer and healthier lives and enhance their intellectual, physical, and emotional capacities through the use of synthetic biology: genetic, cybernetic and nanotechnologies. From the transhuman perspective, “in time the line between machines and living beings will blur and eventually vanish, making us part of a bionic ecology.”
While early Transhumanists advocated the elitest pseudoscience of eugenics or “racial hygiene”, many of today’s Transhumanistsargue that market dynamics and individual choice will drive twenty-first century eugenics. However, this argument contradicts the movement’s own dialectic: that of achieving the Singularity. The Transhuman quest for the Singularity of the Übermenschconsists of the ability to upload the minds of all individuals to a Hive Mind, a symbiotic collective consciousness, in which all peoples can link to an artificial “brain” or global hard drive, to achieve super-intelligence. The Mind Upload Research Group (MURG) is currently researching this possibility.
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Futurist Ray Kurzweil, author of The Age of Spiritual Machines and co-founder of the Singularity University, predicts that humans will be uploading their minds to computers by 2045 and that bodies will be replaced by machines—essentially achieving “immortality”—before the end of the century. “We’re going to become increasingly non-biological to the point where the non-biological part dominates and the biological part is not important any more,” says Kurzweil. “In fact the non-biological part – the machine part – will be so powerful it can completely model and understand the biological part. So even if that biological part went away it wouldn’t make any difference.”
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If such an existence were even desirable—which it isn’t to me—such a utopia would not be available to everyone; it would remain the domain of a wealthy aristocracy, creating yet another class system. I’m reminded of William Gibson’s pithy proclamation: “The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed.”
Kurzweil admits: “Humans who resist the pressure to alter their bodies by becoming part-cyborg or are unable to afford such procedures will be ostracized from society. Humans who do not utilize such implants are unable to meaningfully participate in dialogues with those who do.”
In Kurzweil’s brave new world of biological and non-biological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence will expand outward in the universe at the speed of light. Will such an elite see the mass of humanity as worthless parasites and either prevent them from reproducing via mass sterilization programs or simply slaughter them outright?
The smell of eugenics remains ever-present.
Its oppressive aroma lingers in the biocapital frontier. In the neo-eugenic ‘marketplace of genetics’ encouraged by current advances in genetic screening and gene editing. In the continued confabulations of “designer babies” for the wealthy. In the neoliberal commodification of “human capital,” and rebranding of the “unfit.” In the biopolitics of disabled populations. In the persistence of white-supremacist movements throughout the world.
A class studies the Bertilon method of criiminal identification, based on measuring body parts, Paris, France, 1910-15
In the introduction to their 2000 paper in Nature Reviews Genetics entitled “Engineering American society: the lesson of eugenics”, researchers David Micklos and Elof Carlson write: “We stand at the threshold of a new century, with the whole human genome stretched out before us. Messages from science, the popular media, and the stock market suggest a world of seemingly limitless opportunities to improve human health and productivity. But at the turn of the last century, science and society faced a similar rush to exploit human genetics. The story of eugenics—humankind’s first venture into a ‘gene age’—holds a cautionary lesson for our current preoccupation with genes.”
A phrenologist demonstrates how to measure a person’s head for their mental energy, UK, 1937
What is perfect and how do we measure it? What is the risk of even suggesting a recipe for such a thing? A perfect society? Isn’t a Utopia an oxymoron of unresolvable paradox? Science fiction literature has given us many visions of where so-called utopias may descend (e.g., Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, A Stranger in a Strange Land, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Matrix, The Hunger Games, Elysium, Divergent, Clockwork Orange, Delirium, and so many more). The very act of being an individual provides complexity and diversity that promotes stability in change.
Stable chaos.
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Perhaps, one day, when we are done hubristically tampering with things we shouldn’t be, we may find that the mess that is humanity fits rather nicely in this wonderfully messy world—and we’ll leave it all well alone.
More likely, that will be done for us by a world no longer patient with us.
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Nazi propaganda poster
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Glossary:
Der Übermensch (‘superman’): a philosophical concept introduced by Friedrich Nietzsche in his 1883 book Also sprach Zarathustra in which his character Zarathustra posits as a goal for humanity the Übermensch: a higher, self-mastering individual who creates their own values, affirms earthly life, and transcends the limitations of traditional morality and religion.
Transhumanism: a philosophical and intellectual movement that advocates for enhancing the human condition and expanding human capabilities through advanced technology.
Sonderweg: “special/unique path”; historically the term refers to the German/Teutonic belief that Germans were entitled to a distinct, separate historical development from the rest of Western Europe, ultimately leading to the rise of Nazism and the events of World War II. Historically, some German thinkers proudly viewed their special path as superior. They argued that Germany possessed a uniquely deep culture, strong statehood, and efficient bureaucracy that stood above “superficial” Western liberalism and parliamentary democracy
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References:
Micklos, David and Elof Carlson. 2000. “Engineering American society: the lesson of eugenics.” Nature Reviews Genetics 1: 153-158.
Rutherford, Adam. 2022. “Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics.” WW Norton. 384pp.
Torres, Mark. 2025. “Long Island and the Legacy of Eugenics: Station of Intolerance.” The History Press. 240pp.
Whatcott, Jess. 2024. “Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics.” Durham & London, Duke University Press. 248pp.
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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. For the lates on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. 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.You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
There’s a New Wave out there in science fiction. It’s growing. It’s green. And, yes, I’m on it.
In her 2023 PhD thesis out of Liverpool John Moores University, Victoria Crozier explores the metamorphosis of science fiction from stories primarily focused on human adventure and heroism to ‘New Wave’ stories of green science fiction. Far from celebrating the achievements of a super-capable humanity, these ‘New Wave’ eco-conscious narratives, which began with the environmental movement of the 1960s, reveal humankind as an environmentally destructive force.
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Pre-1960s: Anthropocentric Androcracy
Pre-1960s science fiction largely featured scientific and technological developments and associated impacts on humans; stories that evoked a sense of wonder and involved heroic adventures of humans in unfamiliar worlds. Stories focused on the need to overcome harsh environments and conquer treacherous alien elements as humans prevailed through various androcratic strengths. I read many of them, mostly written by men. Despite generating excitement and inspiration, these narratives advanced a patriarchal and imperialistic conceit that drew from anthropocentric androcracy.
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The 1930s and 1940s spawned narratives focused on social justice—responses to both world wars. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Animal Farm (1945) represented the height of this exploration with a focus on totalitarian rule, surveillance technology, and genetic modification. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) explored censorship as an important aspect of mind-control by an oppressive rule.
Drawing on a Cartesian directive, science fiction remained largely anthropocentric, typically ‘othering’ Nature and objectifying it. Writers treated the non-human world with fear or disdain; Nature was a device that challenged brave human explorers to exert their superiority through subjugation or annihilation. The environment was seldom portrayed as a character with agency and sensibility. Never something to be admired. Something to love.
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The 1960s: Rachel Carson’s Revolution
Rachel Carson and her seminal book Silent Spring
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In 1962, Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring, regarded by some as the single most important contributor to the environmental movement of the 1960s. Her book warned of our declining bird and bee populations and impacts to human health from unregulated pesticide/herbicide use (such as carcinogens and hormone disruptors).
I was just a kid when Carson’s book came out. But it was already apparent to me that environmental imbalance and destruction were global concerns and we were on the brink of an environmental crisis. Unchecked deforestation was destroying forests around the world, including the boreal and old-growth forests of my own country Canada. Brazil had already begun cutting down trees and burning forest at an alarming rate. Unregulated use of pesticides, herbicides and growth hormones created toxic contamination of our natural world and our food and water supply—despite Carson’s dire warning with Silent Spring. Our waterways were being contaminated by mining wastes and industrial effluents. Killer smog. Noxious algal blooms. Oil spills. Dead zones. The list kept growing.
By the time I was in college, I’d concluded that a hegemony that follows the economic system of late capitalism inevitably commodifies and ‘others’ with ruthless purpose. Once something (or someone) is commodified, they are given a finite value and purpose outside their own existence. They become an object, a symbol to use and trade. They become a resource to manipulate, exchange, and dispose of with impunity. And through this surrender to utility, they become ‘othered.’ The consumer. The trees of the forest. Water. Homo sacer*. Each has a role to play in the late capitalist narrative of digital abundance and physical scarcity.
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Liu Cixin begins his 2006 science fiction novel The Three Body Problem in the 1960s, during China’s Cultural Revolution. The novel follows astrophysicist Ye Wenji, disillusioned by the massive environmental deforestation in the labour camps she is initially sent to work after witnessing the execution of her scientist father in a brutal cleansing at the height of the revolution. Already cynical about humanity’s failed culture and science—Wenjie acquires a contraband copy of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. The book and revelation she experiences from it sets in motion a frightening notion linking the mindset behind the Cultural Revolution and destruction of the environment.
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Post-1960s: Ecocentric Gylany
On the heels of the environmental movement of the 1960s, the New Wave of eco-science fiction, or what Crozier calls ‘green science fiction’, took hold with science fiction authors and literary fiction authors. Ursula K. LeGuin helped pioneer feminist science fiction as well as eco-fiction and climate fiction. Left Hand of Darkness (1969) introduced ambisexuality, no fixed sex, and The Word for World is Forest (1972) critiqued extractivism by human colonists. The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (1992-1996) debated the rights of humans to alter a pristine planet, overlooking the intrinsic rights of an alien environment. N.K. Jemison’s The Fifth Season (2015) portrayed the physical Earth as active and angry about its abuse by humanity.
Subtle changes in the portrayal of non-humans and Nature have emerged.
In his 2025 PhD thesis, Steven L. Ogden (University of Albany, State University of New York) explored the concept of “Heterogenous Being”1 linking the sciences with humanities to address the precarious realities of Earth’s ecological and environmental conditions. Entitled, “Heterogenous Being: The Inhumanities and the Creative-Scientific Aesthetic.” Ogden’s thesis acknowledges the influences and agented potentialities of nonhuman subjects in narrative, both in fiction and nonfiction. Including my own portrayal of water as character in my eco-fiction novel A Diary in the Age of Water, Ogden writes,“… these inhuman2 examinations not only provide the nonhuman with a comparable or more profound existence alongside our own; they also illustrate the immense and consequential scope of our collective realities.”
Othering in Science Fiction & Other Genres of Literature
The rhetoric of ‘Otherness’ in most fiction is typically portrayed through the singular point of view (POV) and discourse of a protagonist on a journey.3 In most forms of literature the POV ‘voice’ represents the Self, the inclusive ‘us’ (worldview) in its encounter with the Other, which in turn is the ‘not us.’ In his book Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient Edward W. Said contended that for there to even be an ‘us’, there has to be a ‘not-us’. The resulting power dynamic of “them and us,” of Other and Self, is created and controlled by perceptions of the singular POV voice.
In most genres of literature—and certainly in science fiction—the Other is often relegated to this dichotomous portrayal. In post-apocalyptic and metaphoric journey stories the Other may be the harsh environment or a calamity through which the protagonist must find their own strength to survive; in military stories it is clearly the enemy, seldom portrayed with compassion or understanding but there to test our hero; in coming-of-age stories it may be the oppressive rule or established world the hero must overcome; in some science fiction it is the hostile or unknowable aliens who must be defeated.
Ogden clarifies the irony of this way of thinking: “like René Descartes, many today still consider the mind or “rational soul” of humanity to be entirely exceptional to and independent of animality, and believe no part of Man (as master and possessor of nature) could derive from the “potentiality of [nonhuman] matter.”
Crozier argues that, “Eco-science fiction is an essential cultural instrument with which to understand and respond to our planet in an epoch of environmental crises.”
Eco-science fiction is poised to make meaningful character-couplings between mostly human protagonist and environmental characters or representatives. This is because the protagonist provides relatable qualities for easy reader empathy, while the Othered character is often less relatable—often an arcane aspect of the environment, such as water (Memory of Water or A Diary in the Age of Water) or a forest (The Overstory).
The protagonist’s link to the Other—often as avatar—provides a readable map for the reader to follow and make their own connection.4 In Character Coupling Part 2, I provide examples from several works of eco-science fiction and general eco-fiction, such as The Overstory, Barkskins, The Breathing Hole, The Windup Girl, The Bear, Memory of Water, Dune and my own A Diary in the Age of Water.
Through these linkages, environmental abuse of jingoistic hubris can be felt on a profound and personal level. Eco-science fiction can raise issues of human intersectionality, misogyny, marginalization, oppression of class, privilege, sexuality and race, and misuse of power. Violent acts perpetrated on environment—when environment is personified as ‘character’ and/or coupled directly to a character—elicit powerful emotion and clearly demonstrate how social/human injustice reflects environmental injustice.
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The ‘New Wave’: A Changing Narrative
Various green-science fiction and general eco-fiction novels worth reading
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New Wave green science fiction took shape in the 1960s with J.G. Ballard and Ursula K. LeGuin who spearheaded a transformation toward ecocentric views. New Wave science fiction has burgeoned in the last several decades with highly pertinent narratives to the environmental and climate concerns of our current world. These narratives clearly challenge our political, religious and social worldviews, and patriarchies.
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Three non-fiction books that celebrate nonhuman life
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Acknowledging the early influences of animal studies rooted in biocentricity, Ogden notes that non-fiction representation of nonhuman life has also increased exponentially in the last ten years. Ogden includes the following notable examples: Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds; Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss, and Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees.
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Ogden argues that “Westerford (a scientist in Richard Powers’s The Overstory) understands that climate and biodiversity are ‘failing precisely because no [story] can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people.’” Westerford realizes that her peers believe that plants live an inanimate existence, whose rooted immobility points to a kind of “unfreedom” that represents an “archetype of inert matter.” According to poet David Hinton, this devaluation of plant life relates to the human-nonhuman duality, “a Western dichotomy that relegates the vegetal world to a space of ‘linguistic silence.’”
Crozier, Victoria. 2023. “The Brave New Worlds of Green Science Fiction: Ecocritical Discourse in The Three-Body Problem and The Long Earth Series.” Doctoral Thesis, Liverpool John Moores University, UK. April, 2023. 265pp.
Descartes, Rene, et. al. 1998. “Discourse on the Method; and Meditations on First Philosophy.” Hacket Pub.
Ogden, Steven L. 2025. “Heterogenous Being: The inhumanities and the Creative-Scientific Aesthetic.” Doctoral Thesis, University at Albany, State University of New York. Spring, 2025. 220 pp.
Powers, Richard. 2018. “The Overstory.” W.W. Norton & Company, New York. 502pp.
Said, Edward W. 1978. “Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient.” Vintage, London. 432pp.
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Footnotes:
Ogden describes “Heterogenous Being” as a way of being that recognizes and incorporates humanity’s pluralized configurations with the nonhuman world by uniting the studies of science and humanities into an interdisciplinary hybrid creative-scientific aesthetic.
Ogden explains the use of “inhuman” here by referring to Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s notes in Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman, which uses inhuman to “emphasize both difference (‘in-‘ as negative prefix) and intimacy (‘in-‘ as indicator of estranged interiority).” This is akin to the practice of “othering”.
The Other has often been metaphorically portrayed in SF by aliens that lack a distinct voice or viewpoint; some portrayal has reflected a fearful imperialistic colonialism by representing Other as adversary such as an invading monster with no regard for humans (e.g. Robert Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast; H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds). Kerslake argues that the traits of the Other “fall characteristically—and conveniently—into those spaces we choose not to recognize in ourselves, the ‘half-imagined, half-known: monsters, devils, heroes, terrors, pleasures, desires’ of Said’s ‘Orient’”. The Martians of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles—who also have no voice—reflect our indigenous peoples under the yoke of settler colonialism and an exploitive resource-extraction mindset. The monster of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein —also with no voice—exemplifies the disabled/deformed unsavory departure from our ‘perfect’ self-image; to be chased, destroyed and nullified.
In some stories the protagonist is Othered in some way, providing a more direct link to the experience of being the Other or being Othered. For instance, in Mishell Baker’s Borderline, disabled protagonist Millie provides the connection to the greater theme of Othering “lesser beings.” In Costi Gurgu’s Recipearium, the protagonists are not human; they are alien creatures that dwell inside the dead carcass of a monster, representing Other as main character.
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Glossary:
Androcracy: a form of governing system in which rulers are male.
Gylany: a social system based on equality of men and women.
Homo sacer: a figure from Roman law denoting a person excluded from society who is outside human law (can be killed) and divine law (cannot be sacrificed). The term represents “bare life”: stripped of political rights, legal protection, and social value. Philosopher Giorgo Agamben popularized the term to describe individuals excluded from the political community, such as refugees, stateless persons, or camp detainees. The term illustrates the power of a sovereign in deciding which lives are worthy of protection and which are not.
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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. For the lates on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. 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.You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
Every year Literary Titan celebrates the “brilliance of outstanding authors who have captivated us with their skillful prose, engaging narratives, and compelling real and imagined characters. We recognize books that stand out for their innovative storytelling and insightful exploration of truth and fiction. Join us in honoring the dedication and skill of these remarkable authors as we celebrate the diverse and rich worlds they’ve brought to life, whether through the realm of imagination or the lens of reality.”
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My climate thriller Gaia’s Revolution was honoured with Literary Titan’s Silver Book Award for 2026.
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. For the lates on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. 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.You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
In a recent interview on The Globe and Mail (April 11, 2026), Taylor Owen asked author Michael Pollan, author of A World Appears, a question that has been on my mind for a while:
I understand trying to build [artificial] intelligence—there’s money in that. But why do they want to build consciousness?
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Pollan gave two reasons that he’d heard the most often: 1) “a purely super-intelligent machine would have no compassion and a conscious one is more likely to have a moral compass.” Which reads like an excuse. 2) The second reason Pollan gave was the Promethean spirit: “you would be like a god if you could make a conscious machine.”
Pollan noted that, “our identity as humans is under enormous pressure right now. On the one hand, you have this democratization of consciousness. We’re discovering that the world is a lot more alive and aware than we ever thought [e.g. thinking and feeling plants and animals]. And then at the same time you have computers telling us they’re conscious. So who are we? What’s special? Are we going to identify more with computers that we can talk to in our language, or animals that can feel and grow old and die? Who’s team are we on?”
Pollan added this poignant conclusion: “I think we should be very wary of attributing consciousness to computers. We crave human attachment, and we have an epidemic of loneliness, and along come these machines saying, hey, I’ll be your friend. If we think of our human consciousness as the space of ultimate privacy and mental freedom, we’re squandering it. We’re giving it away to chat-bots who are trying to hack our emotional attachments. And we need to take it back.”
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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. For the latest on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. 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.You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
In 1962, Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring, which warned of our declining bird and bee populations and impacts to human health from unregulated pesticide/herbicide use (such as carcinogens and hormone disruptors). Carson’s warning was simple but important: that the pesticide DDT didn’t stay where you sprayed it. It moved through insects and the birds that ate them, bioaccumulating up the food chain, concentrating in fat tissue; it thinned eggshells of raptors until entire breeding populations collapsed. Her question was simply not whether the technology works as intended (e.g., as a pesticide—which it did rather admirably) but whether we have thought through all of its implications—e.g. unintended consequences to the environment. She exhorted the use of caution and further study before proceeding. Essentially, she was promoting use of the precautionary principle: that when a technology has plausible potential for serious harm, the burden of proof should fall on demonstrating safety, not on waiting for proof of damage after the fact.
It comes down to two types of risk: which is deemed most valuable and how they are measured. In my previous work as a field scientist and environmental consultant representing a client, we often based our formal hypotheses in statistics, which considered two types of error: Type 1 and Type 2 errors.
Type 1 errors are false positives: a researcher states that a specific relationship exists when in fact it does not. This is akin to an alarm sounding when there’s no fire.
Type 2 errors are false negatives: the researcher states that no relationship occurs when in fact it does. This is akin to no alarm sounding during a fire.
Put simply, environmental risk management assesses two types of cost through statistical probability: one to environment and one to investment. Risk analyses are often used in cost-benefit analyses in which the risk posed by errors as a cost to the environment vs a cost to revenue are assessed and balanced. Type 1 errors create false positives (that a cost to environment exists when there is little or none). Type 2 errors create false negatives (that there is no cost to environment when there is). Industry and their consultants mostly focus on avoiding Type 1 errors (while often ignoring Type 2 errors) to protect their investments.
Aside from attacking her personally as a woman, Carson’s critics focused on the benefits of the pesticide DDT and other agricultural chemicals in helping to feed the world, while ignoring the dangers. The industry and government argued that caution meant falling behind.
Thanks mostly to Carson’s warning, DDT was finally banned in 1972, ten years after her book was published; but pesticides with similar impacts (e.g. cancer-causing and endocrine disrupting to humans and fatal to some animals and insects such as pollinating bees) have continued to be used at an astronomical rate. The greater ecological lesson was ignored.
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Honey bee gorges on a thistle (photo by Nina Munteanu)
This same lack of an ecological systems approach is being applied to climate change. And to AI.
Natalie Shapiro, systems ecologist at Kings College London, warned: “Once AI agents are embedded in real-world infrastructures with communication channels, delegated authority, and persistent memory, new classes of failure emerge.”
The challenge we face in raising alarms about AI are that they are largely abstract and theoretical, through papers and computer models. This is very similar to the climate projections made for decades about the effects of climate change.
In February 2025, at the AI Action Summit in Paris, Canada, China, and most other countries signed a declaration committing to safe, secure, and trustworthy AI development. The United States did not, arguing that caution meant falling behind.
Vice President Vance announced, “I’m not here to talk about AI safety; I’m here to talk about AI opportunity.” Parroting what the chemical industry argued in 1962, Vance warned that regulation could kill a transformative industry. Indeed, every company developing AI is racing for that golden prize, hoping to be the first to reach the technological singularity: a system that can match or exceed human capability —without any consideration of what this might actually mean. Why this must be achieved remains inconceivable to me. To push technology to surpass us?
As Greta Thunberg so aptly said in her January 21, 2020 speech in Davos about climate change: “our house is still on fire and you’re fuelling the flames.”
This gold rush mindset—so iconic for Americans and so many who have gone to America to pursue the American dream (whatever that is)—will usher us into a world that is no longer ours. But then again, perhaps it never was …
Sun streams through mist on a forest path, Watershed Park, BC (photo by Nina Munteanu)
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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. For the latest on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. 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.You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
I recently encountered Victoria Crozier’s intriguing PhD thesis and ecocritical discourse out of Liverpool John Moores University entitled “The Brave New Worlds of Green Science Fiction” and found my eco-fiction novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” mentioned alongside other notable eco-fiction works I so enjoyed reading such as Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem, Chen Quifan’s The Waste Tide, Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 and Emmi Itäranta’s Memory of Water. Crozier calls these “green science fiction,” an appropriate term that I may start using.
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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. For the lates on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. 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.You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
In March this year, Calgary writer Simon Rose interviewed me on his blog about the recent release of the first book of The Icaria Trilogy, Gaia’s Revolution.
Below is the interview:
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My guest today is Nina Munteanu, Canadian author, essayist, and blogger. Nina has published over a dozen fiction and non-fiction books, mostly on the environment. She does a column on Reality Skimming Press and blogs about the environment on her site The Meaning of Water. Today, we’ll be discussing her just-released ecological thriller, Gaia’s Revolution, Book 1 of The Icaria Trilogy, put out by Dragon Moon Press in Calgary.
Simon: So, what’s the Trilogy about?
Nina: It’s a bit of a saga that starts in Berlin in 2022 (Book 1, Gaia’s Revolution) and moves to the Toronto area in Canada, through several generations over seven decades (Books 2 and 3). The trilogy explores a collapsing capitalist society in Canada through ravages of climate change and a failing technology. Book 1 starts with ambitious twin brothers Eric, a gifted engineer, and Damien Vogel, a brilliant scientist, who escape the growing racial violence of Berlin, to ‘peaceful’ Canada in a rivalry to control the evolution of the human race. The warring brothers set off a violent revolution that destroys the Canadian technocratic government and whose weapons ultimately risk the survival of humanity. Fanatical deep ecologist Monica Schlange snares both brothers in her gambit to reshape humanity and its place in the natural world. Three orphaned children, caught in the web of intrigue and violence, will ultimately determine the direction of humanity by introducing the first veemelds (people who can communicate with machines), a new environmental disease, and a new set of rules neither brother envisioned.
By 2095 (Book 2, Angel of Chaos and Book 3, Darwin’s Paradox), humanity—now under Gaian rule—has fled inside environmental dome cities called Icarias, chased inside by an unruly environment. Icarians struggle with Darwin’s Disease—a mysterious neurological environmental pandemic. Icaria 5 (formerly Toronto, Canada) is one of many enclosed cities within the slowly recovering toxic wasteland of North America, and where the protagonist Julie Crane (daughter of one of the orphans in Gaia’s Revolution and a veemeld) lives and works. Julie must deal with the ghosts of the characters in Book 1: including her dead and discredited father, now implicated in spreading subversive science and charged with several political assassinations.
Simon: A technocratic government in Canada? How did you envision that?
Nina: My premise involves several key climate disasters coupled with a highly unpopular decision by the Liberal government to welcome millions of climate refugees, providing housing and amenities that disaster-affected Canadians did not get. This scenario and accompanying sentiment is not new. In 2015, Angela Merkel welcomed over a million refugees from Iraq and Syria into Germany; public support quickly waned and the far right exploited rejection of the policy. Continuing with my premise, increased unrest grew in Canada as protests mobilized the far-right and gave voice to Christian fundamentalists, white supremacists, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists and Islamophobic nationalists. The growing rift between the polarized major parties opened a gap filled by a new party, neither far right nor far left and based on the logic and merit of science & technology: the Technocratic Party of Canada. The party skyrocketed in popularity with an intelligent population who were fed up with political sophistry and empty rhetoric and excuses. The Technocrats had a plan that made sense and they demonstrated the expertise to carry it out: ways to successfully adapt to climate change, using technology and scientific research. The party subscribed to a scientific management approach, a Taylorism approach based on four principles: select methods based on science; assign jobs based on aptitude; monitor performance; and divide workload based on a systems approach. But, as you read above, they, too, are overthrown for something else: the Gaian dynasty of deep ecologists.
Simon: You’ve brought in many characters in this saga. Who is your favourite?
Nina: You’ll laugh: the main antagonist of Gaia’s Revolution, Monica Schlange (and what she becomes). I really enjoyed writing about the twin brothers—contrasting them despite their twin origins. I also enjoyed writing the three orphan characters: about their terrible journey to safety when the violent revolution moved from the cities to the countryside. I also enjoyed writing Julie’s character (in Books 2 and 3), her journey as a veemeld (gifted and cursed) and being the daughter of a traitor, who must find her way in a treacherous world of lies and intrigue. But my favourite is Monica Schlange: the fanatical deep ecologist, revolutionary, shape-shifter, bad-ass warrior, villain with a conscience. She is a paradox: she cares immensely about the planet, the welfare of the planet’s ecosystems and displays compassion for the orphans; but she has no qualms about killing a man in cold blood—which she does, on several occasions.
There is a scene where twin brother Eric unleashes a techno-clone to murder a colleague of Monica’s; techno-clones are hybrid cyborgs, DNA-altered men merged with synthetics and weapons fused into them, all connected by a hive mind. Monica takes on this murder-machine and cleverly dispatches him—when no one else has been able to. This quickly earns her a reputation as a Badass warrior and soon images of her face—scar across her temple—is plastered everywhere by the revolutionaries.
Throughout the first book, I provide a few moments of perspective into Monica’s past. An only child, she grew up on one of the last independent dairy farms in Ontario—before the Technocrats seized it and converted it into a Corporation Farm using scientific agriculture. It killed her father, who she dearly loved. Her mother took to whoring with the first trucker who came along, abandoning her. A ruthless eco-terrorist and subversive, Monica is bent on destroying the capitalist-technocratic machinery to save the planet at the expense of human domination. An unscrupulous eco-terrorist, she uses sabotage and internet tampering to disrupt and hurt climate offenders. She is the quintessential anti-hero. I guess you could say that I realized some terrible fantasies through this character.
Simon:What are you currently working on?
Nina: Not much. I’m taking a wee break from novel-writing and focusing on marketing. I’m currently shopping an eco-fiction novel around that takes place in southern Ontario and the Kurpiowska Forest in Poland during the communist era (specifically the 50s to 70s). I did a lot of research for that book and it was so fascinating!
I am actively coaching writers to publication (see www.NinaMunteanu.me) and writing nature and environmental articles for various magazines and my own blogs (www.TheMeaningOfWater.com). I’m also curating a column on Lynda Williams’s Reality Skimming Press blog on sustainability. Called “Sustainability Over Ambition”, the column consists of a series of articles and interviews I’m conducting with mostly Canadian authors on that complex subject. If you’re a Canadian author, feel free to reach out to me if you’re interested in being interviewed.
Simon: Tell me a little more about your coaching services?
Nina: My coaching includes advice on all story aspects (like storyboarding, world building, character, plot, etc.). I also edit, but my service usually encompasses far more, such as narrative flow, sentence structure, meaning, clarity, and concision. I look at just about every kind of fiction, except horror. I help writers with their nonfiction such as memoirs, biographies, how-to books, and technical books. I also do technical and scientific editing of papers and reports.
Simon: Where can people buy Gaia’s Revolution and the entire trilogy?
Nina: The entire Icaria Trilogy can be purchased on Amazon and other online and brick and mortar bookstores, such as Chapters. Books 2 and 3 are also available in many libraries throughout Canada, given that they’ve been out for a while.
Simon:Thanks, Nina, for being my guest here today and the very best of luck with The Icaria Trilogy.
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The Icaria Trilogy by Dragon Moon Press
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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.Her latest novel “Gaia’s Revolution” was released in 2026 by Dragon Moon Press.
My eco-fiction political thriller Gaia’s Revolution—released March 10 of this year—has already made quite an impact on readers and reviewers: from amazing accolades to outright pans.
I love the controversy!
The book that follows ambitious twin brothers and the woman who plays them has rightly caused a ruckus from its questionable and controversial main characters to a thrilling though notorious plot. Understandably, some readers hated the book, even as others thoroughly enjoyed it. Either way, the book can’t be accused of being mediocre or mundane (something I would detest in my writing).
Gaia’s Revolution “is a politically incendiary portrait of a civilization unraveling under climate collapse, historical trauma, and ideological extremism. Berlin, 2022. In a country destabilized by climate catastrophe and political extremism, activist Damien Vogel becomes the target of a violent state crackdown after protesting with Letzte Generation. As he uncovers long-buried truths about his family, he is drawn into conflict with his estranged twin Eric, whose ruthless plan for humanity’s survival threatens to sacrifice freedom itself.”
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Literary Titan adds that the story “widens into a future history of revolution, ideology, biotech, enclosed cities, and ecological control…The novel is Part 1 of The Icaria Trilogy, and it reads like both an origin story and a warning flare.”
“Dense, unsettling, and intellectually ambitious.” They describe the novel as “bleak, intelligent, and emotionally explosive.” They add that, “Munteanu crafts the novel as both climate thriller and philosophical inquiry, weaving ecological science, German history, and political paranoia into a narrative charged with dread and moral instability…Munteanu refuses simplistic moral binaries, presenting climate collapse as a force that destabilizes not only ecosystems, but democracy, ethics, and identity itself.”
Reader Neha Shukla writes on Goodreads that Gaia’s Revolution has a “strong message with emotional depth.” Shukla noted that “the emotional side of the story is very well handled.” Lily Thomass wrote on Goodreads that “what stood out to me was the emotional honesty of the story.”
Costi Gurgu, author of Recipearium and The Cursed writes: “Gaia’s Revolution may be the most extensively researched SF novel I’ve ever read…[the book is] so close to reality that it’s frightening.” Claudiu Murgan, author of Water Entanglement, enjoyed the “dynamic plot and interesting, well-defined characters.”
Steve Stanton, Canadian speculative fiction author of Freenet writes: “I love it when novelists tackle the big issues and take on big opponents, and in these perilous times there is no bigger issue than global climate change, and no bigger opponent than patriarchal capitalism. Gaia’s Revolution by Nina Munteanu begins in present-day Germany, where ecological activists are setting the stage even now. In Munteanu’s inspired vision, radical racism, anti-immigration activism, and ultra right-wing security forces will be a crucible fomenting world catastrophe.”
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Stanton adds, “The author uses some subtle stylistic variations for those readers who pay attention to details. The pace is varied, and the plot twists drive the narrative forward. I felt the beginning was a bit wordy with backstory and political philosophy, but Munteanu masterfully dovetails current political unrest and eco-activism into the worldwide dystopia of The Icaria Trilogy. As a prequel, this novel is an embellishment of sci-fi concepts developed very early in Munteanu’s career, but it is also the culmination of a body of work. For me, Gaia’s Revolution has been a delightful rediscovery of a talented Canadian voice.”
Reviews weren’t all positive; some oozed acid in their negative wrath. Why is Gaia’s Revolution eliciting this diversity of polarized reactions?
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Sophia Wasylinko of The British Columbia Review in part suggests why in her negative review: “The book hooked me at first with its look at a world hostile to environmentalists and deep ecological concepts. Unfortunately, once the brothers cross paths with deep ecologist Monica Schlange, things get messy. Both for them and for the book.” Wasylinko particularly took exception to Monica’s character.
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Literary Titan describes Monica’s mercurial shapeshifting character as “a zealous deep ecologist, [who] becomes one of the book’s most dangerous engines: part savior, part tyrant, using damaged people…as instruments in her plan to remake humanity’s relationship with the natural world.” Wasylinko emphatically disliked Monica, which impeded her enjoyment of the book. The reviewer found that, “…as the story progressed, the more irritated I became with [Monica’s] sexual antics and ‘Tears for Fears’ references. While I probably wasn’t supposed to like her, I didn’t care for her at all.” She ended with: “I won’t be continuing with the trilogy…I cannot cope with any more of Monica’s crooning Tears for Fears’ big hit of 1985, ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World.’”
Literary Titan provides another possible reason for the polarized reactions: “the book refuses to make climate politics tidy. It doesn’t give us a simple contest between virtuous activists and corrupt institutions; instead, it shows how righteousness can calcify into doctrine, how grief can become governance, and how ecological thinking can be twisted into a new authoritarian grammar.” The reviewer found that what unsettled them the most, “was the book’s interest in compromised people [who are not] arranged into neat moral bins. They are products of abuse, ideology, scientific ambition, terror, tenderness, cowardice, and survival.”
In describing the diametrically opposed trajectories of twin brothers Eric and Damien, Prairies Book Review adds that, “Eric’s eco-authoritarian worldview is chilling precisely because it emerges logically from the same environmental realities driving Damien’s activism.”
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The book follows six key characters and a handful of minor characters—all with associated archetypes—and their journeys during this catastrophic time are complex and messy; a function of the chaotic time itself. I make no apology to Wasylinko for the messiness. Revolution is messy. In a time of hard choices, innocence is the main casualty. This becomes evident for all the characters in the novel—particularly the children—as fiction reflects non-fiction. In the end, no one is innocent and all are changed.
Gaia’s Revolution is best described as an exploration of violent change and its associated impact and paradoxes. This is something we will face or already are facing with the growing unruliness of global warming, environmental destruction, and planetary change. Gaia’s Revolution ultimately explores the diverse impact of revolution in an unsustainable world; perhaps it is only apt that its reception by readers is equally diverse.
Paradox and irony drive Gaia’s Revolution. Says Wasylinko: “Gaia’s Revolution shows how quickly utopia becomes a dystopia. Nowhere is this more evident than the [revolutionary] Gaian Army adopting the Technocratic government’s weapons, including terrifying clones, and … book burning.”
According to Literary Titan,Gaia’s Revolution “has the grain of a manifesto smuggled inside a thriller, a story with roots sunk deep into Rachel Carson, chaos theory, surveillance states, and the bad old habit of deciding that humanity must be saved from itself.”
Literary Titan recommends Gaia’s Revolution “to readers of climate fiction, eco-dystopian fiction, biopunk, political fiction, and science fiction readers who like their futures thorny rather than sleek. Readers who enjoy Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam books or Kim Stanley Robinson’s climate-minded fiction may find familiar pleasures here, though Munteanu’s novel is darker, more doctrinal, and more intimate in its wounds.”
“We must first destroy before we can create. We must be unruly like climate. We must be relentless like climate. We must ride that wave before we can become the wave.”—Eric Vogel, Gaia’s Revolution
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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. For the lates on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. 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.Her latest eco-fiction novel Gaia’s Revolution was released March 2026 by Dragon Moon Press.
Various ‘characters’ ply through the dense crowds of Northern Fan Con (photos by Nina Munteanu)
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Last weekend I drove north to Prince George to join publisher/writer Lynda Williams and her team at Reality Skimming Press at the Northern Fan Convention. Held at the CN Centre, the con and trade show was very well attended, with booths that held anything from realistic light sabers to anime figurines and collectible cards–and so much more. The con also featured shows with media celebrities, cosplay, workshops, and–of course–the obligatory costume contest.
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‘Dante’ and ‘Hornet’ join an AT ST making rounds at Northern Fan Con(photos by Nina Munteanu)
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I helped man the publisher’s table where we were selling books in the Okal Rel series; I also sold out on my two latest novels A Diary in the Age of Water and Gaia’s Revolution.
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Lynda Williams with a book buyer at Northern Fan Con (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu selling out her books at Northern Fan Con
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Oh! And I got to play with a Stars Wars storm trooper and tai fighter. Not bad for one weekend!
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Nina with several Star Wars friends
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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. For the lates on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. 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.You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
Marsh outlet of Thompson Creek into the Otonabee River, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
On a recent walk through a vibrant local marsh quietly embedded in a community, I contemplated its tenuous position. I’d stopped on a bridge that overlooked an open pond teaming with clucking and squawking waterfowl and let my mind drift to the busy urban environment I’d left behind. Here I stood in an oasis of being, a treasure threatened by development. I cast my mind to the relentless destruction of our natural world for the sake of ‘progress’ and felt an inlking of solastalgia.
For decades I’ve served as an environmental consultant and limnologist, championing the environment against senseless destruction. I’ve witnessed too many examples of ecosystem simplification and collapse through clear-cutting, urban development, marsh destruction, and diversions of rivers or toxic pollution. All with associated loss of biodiversity and accelerating extinction. The reduction in numbers and the extinction rate of nonhuman life is truly alarming.
I couldn’t help making the connection between our rapidly degrading environment and rapidly rising AI.
You think that a crazy connection? Let me explain. I think they are indeed connected. Artificial Intelligence and associated LLMs are tools borne of the need for efficiency; used properly, they expedite, streamline, simplify, save work time, and may even on some occasions illuminate and educate. Ultimately, these tools speed things up toward a destination. The journey to that destination is often purposely shortened, and usually unnoticed or forgotten. Efficiency isn’t about enjoying the journey; it is all about getting there, wherever that is. That’s our existence today. An existence that belongs to AI. An existence that ignores or ‘others’ Natureand sees it as an impediment to progress. The destruction of our natural world—the one that supports all life—is directly linked to the exploitive model of late capitalism that embraces AI and, at its extreme, the use of technology over (at the expense of) human labour.
I also teach writing at the University of Toronto and at my own coaching site. I recently came across a LinkedIn post by English Professor Susan Ray who mused on the concept of AI grief (of writing instructors) in acknowledging true loss in the gains made with AI: “Sometimes there seems to be kind of a misfire in the message about AI: that we just need to adapt, we need to accept, we need to move on and we need to embrace … But there’s something to grieve and we need to make space for that.”
She gave the example of her own grad school work on the 18th Century novel Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. “There was a quote I couldn’t find. I told one of my advisors that ‘I just hit CTRL F in Gutenburg.org and I found the quote.’ He went kind of ashen and he went ‘this is not how it’s supposed to work. You need to go back to the text; you need to reread, you need to discover something that you missed. That is the process.’ I kind of rolled my eyes—internally, not at my advisor—with the idea that I was supposed to intentionally make more work for myself. But he was trying to protect something sacred that had been taught to him and was part of his academic experience.”
Ray added that this was her experience with her students: “…using AI to brainstorm or talk out thesis statements or find sources or rephrase a passage. We [instructors] wanted something from them; we wanted what we had, which was being assigned a paper, or a project and sitting with it, fighting for that idea, and restructuring it, and revising it. That’s been lost in a lot of ways.”
She then brought up the latest statistic by the Digital Education Council that some 86% of all college students in the world admitted to using AI in their studies. This is likely an underestimate.
In response to Ray’s post, Andrew Sutter, Select Professor in Global Business at Akita International University, offered another more cynical take on AI grief: “I also wonder whether grief is a little too neat an explanation for the whole spectrum of feelings of reluctance about using LLMs … Students finding ways to hand in assignments without understanding them is nothing new … But LLMs do make this much easier. And many students welcome that … I’m really worried about what will happen when this cohort of students, ones made lazy and/or being misled by LLM use, are running the world. That’s not grief: it’s anger and apprehension.”
Beverly Pell, CEO at DuoFeed, summed it up this way: “This is a sorrowful time, a transition for many who enjoyed the discourse in the town square, the struggle, the ambiguity of the text, the nuances, the context, the process, seeing what unfolds, human imagination, and wisdom from experience. It’s a hard earned profession. And now that profession is threatened.”
Pell was talking about the journey, the slow pace of the rapt explorer who enjoys the nuanced filigrees of the minutae, the textures of experience, the colours of time.
My thought is that for every gain something is lost. In this case, the gain and loss lies in the learning process. I think that behind every ‘cheat’ or shortcut—which AI serves only too well as a tool—is a loss in potential discovery, even if that discovery is internal (the best kind) and often a surprise. Whenever we shortcut, we take away an opportunity. Ultimately, all creativity is a process of discovery. Why would you shorten it? Good writing—like a good cup of tea—must steep for a while to discover its deeper flavours.
But our capitalist-driven society is driven by efficiency (and profit) and embraces the shortcut. This is the capitalist way and so suited to the AI tool—now the authority of Google, smart phones, and social media. In a world of destinations and “getting ahead”, it’s all about finding the shortcut to get what you want. The journey fades into unimportance.
And yet, it is in that journey that true gems reveal themselves through serendipitous discovery. By choosing efficiency over experience, we rob ourselves of the journey to discover. Like engineers impatiently seeking our destination, we pave and straighten our roads into common simplification, shortening that now-boring journey.
How often have I gone through the forest and decided I need to turn back and then thought: one more stretch. That’s where I’d found my treasure. That one extra step held my unique prize. Kismet. Serendipity. These often lie in the dark folds of the less trodden path.
A LinkedIn post by Irreplaceable With AI resonated with me:
“When I look at how fast screens, algorithms, and instant entertainment have taken over childhood, I do not think the problem is technology itself. The problem is what gets squeezed out when every spare moment is filled for them (where so much real creativity begins):
Unstructured play
Boredom
Mess
Trial and error
The awkward, beautiful process of making something without being told what to do next”
I would add that in this unstructured space lives the opportunity to be unique and different. Something our society seems bent on destroying; and something our children appear bent on avoiding at all cost.
Here’s what matters most:
Curiosity over consumption
Creativity over passive entertainment
Connection over distraction
Critical problem solving over screen comfort
Cultivation of human values over digital convenience
Courage to confront, be different and to challenge.
Life shouldn’t be a short cut. We need to slow down and use our senses. Or someday we’ll be senselessly lost. And the worst of it will be that we won’t even sense it—even as the world burns down around us.
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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 eco-fiction clifi novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.Her most recent novel Gaia’s Revolution was released March 2026 by Dragon Moon Press (Calgary).
Nina Munteanu Writing Coach 