Robin’s Last Song: Soundscape Ecology & Structures of Feeling

September 6, 2026July 27, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

May 2071

I rock on the cedar swing on my veranda and hear the wind rustling through the gaunt forest. An abandoned nest, the forest sighs in low ponderous notes. It sighs of a gentler time. A time when birds filled it with song. A time when large and small creatures—unconcerned with the distant thrum and roar of diggers and logging trucks—roamed the thick second-growth forest. The discord was still too far away to bother the wildlife. But their killer lurked far closer in deadly silence. And it caught the birds in the bliss of ignorance. The human-made scourge came like a thief in the night and quietly strangled all the birds in the name of progress.—Robin’s Last Song

My story Robin’s Last Song is an eco-fiction short story that follows Robin, a blind elder who uses sight-enhancing technology, as she navigates the aftermath of a sudden global extinction of birds that her digital app failed to predict. The story explores the conflict between nature and technology, as well as Robin’s journey to find hope in soundscape ecology. You can read the full story on MetaStellar Magazine or find it in the classic Apex Magazine Issue #128.

*Two magazines that published Robin’s Last Song* *and a previous version*

In a recent interview I was asked how I came to write this particular story about birds and soundscape ecology; here’s my response:

Since I was a child, the burgeoning SF writer in me had dared to imagine a world without the sound of birds—I thought it utterly bleak and, recognizing an ever-polluting world, I feared for my feathered relatives. I didn’t follow through with a story until September 2019, when I was approached by Oliver Hockenhull, the guest editor of subTerrain Magazine, to write a piece on technology and the environment. The timing was interesting; I’d just read two impactful things that resonated with me.

The first was the October issue of Science Magazine that reported a staggering decline in North American birds. Kenneth V. Rosenberg and his team of researchers had estimated that three billion birds of various species had disappeared in Canada and the US since 1970. That’s a third of the entire bird population lost in five decades. To make it clear, we aren’t talking about rare birds going extinct; these declines are of common birds throughout the world. The wrens, sparrows, starlings, and, of course, the robins. I was devastated; I could not imagine a world without the comforting sound of birds. What would it be like if the birds all disappeared? This brought me back to my childhood fears.

The second article I ran across talked about an emerging bioacoustics tool, soundscape ecology, that measures biodiversity and the health of an ecosystem, mostly through bird sound which well represents ecosystem health. Bernie Krause, a soundscape ecologist who had been conducting long-term recordings for decades noted how the dawn chorus in many areas had greatly diminished if not vanished altogether.

I now had my premise and my connection with technology. The title of my original story for subTerrain was “Out of the Silence.” This story focused on the technical aspects of the premise and solution. When I was approached for a story in February 2021 by Francesco Verso, the guest editor of Apex Magazine Issue #128, I rewrote the story with a stronger focus on the protagonist’s personal journey and connection with the bird catastrophe, how she coped with Asperger’s syndrome and the failure of her tool to predict the disaster. Hence the change in the title to Robin’s Last Song.

I was already primed with research into genetic engineering for the sequel to my 2020 eco-novel A Diary in the Age of Water. I wanted to make the bird disappearance in Robin’s Last Song a dramatic catastrophe linked to our own dangerous ecological tampering. I had the notion of using a gene hacking disaster to create ecological calamity and how this might affect birds. I wanted to make Robin’s Last Song a realizable work of fiction in which science and technology play both instigator of disaster and purveyor of salvation. Our biogenetic technology comes to us as a double-edged sword in the form of gene-editing, proteomics, DNA origami, and CRISPR—just to name a few. These biotechnological innovations promise a cornucopia of enhancements: from increased longevity and health in humans to giant disease-resistant crops. But, for every ‘magic’ in technology, there is often unintended consequence. Unforeseen—or even ignored—casualties and risks. I suppose my ultimate question with this story is: will synthetic biology redesign Nature to suit hubris or serve evolution? Science doesn’t make those decisions. We do.

Rachel Carson & Silent Spring

*Rachel Carson and her book Silent Spring*

Rachel Carson was nothing short of prophetic when she published Silent Spring in 1962 (in reference to the dawn chorus most noticeable in spring during breeding). Silent Spring cautioned burgeoning ag-biotech companies (like Monsanto—now Bayer—Sygenta, Dow, and DuPont) who were carelessly and flagrantly spraying fields with pesticides and herbicides—at the time DDT was the main culprit. This would soon become a GMO world where gene-hacked plants of monocultures can withstand the onslaught of killer pesticides like neonicotinoids (currently killing bees everywhere) and Roundup. Roundup is a carcinogenic glyphosate-based weed killer that has recently been shown to kill beneficial insects like bees) and has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease, ADHD, birth defects, autism, and several kinds of cancer in humans.

Despite Carson’s warnings in 1962 and despite some action eventually taken (e.g. the ban on use of DDT in 1972—the precursor to Roundup and other neonicotinoids currently in use), the use of chemicals in big ag-industry has increased over five-fold since the 1960s. And this is destroying our bee populations, other beneficial insects, beneficial weeds, small animal populations and—of course—our bird life. And it’s making us sick too. Alarming signals suggest that Rachel Carson’s 1962 warning is currently underway.

Soundscape Ecology

“Soundscape ecology is a quick and easy way to assess the health of a habitat. We know that the richness of the soundscape is linked to the diversity and abundance of life in an ecosystem—from the smallest insect to a roaming bear and rustling tree…”
Jack Gopnik in Robin’s Last Song

The new science of soundscape ecology can analyze the health of an ecosystem. Jack Gopnik in Robin’s Last Song explains:

“All sounds, from trickling streams to singing birds, combine in a unique soundscape that represents a ‘fingerprint’ of the ecosystem. Ecologists divide these acoustics into three categories. Geophony describes natural processes like crashing waterfalls, tides, lightning, and earthquakes. Biophony describes the sounds produced by all living things from plants to insects to larger wildlife. And then there’s anthropophony, the sounds produced by human activities such as planes, traffic, and construction …

“Acoustic communication is crucial for birds to reproduce, feed, defend territories, and avoid predators. Birds use sonic territories or channel bandwidths to ensure their voices can be heard unimpeded by others. But soundtracks are changing. Bernie Krause—the originator of Soundscape Ecology—documented how a forest can flatline. He called it dysphonia…”

Bernie Krause, a soundscape ecologist who has been conducting long-term recordings recently noted that in Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, not far from his home in Northern California, “the effect of global warming and resulting drought has created the first completely silent spring I’ve ever experienced.” Stuart Winter at Express reports that “many of the iconic birds whose mating calls ring out across woodlands and open fields during early May are vanishing at an alarming rate.”

Structures of Feeling & Climate Change

In his paper “Structures of feeling in climate fiction” published in The American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Andrew McCumber used Raymond William’s concept of “structures of feeling’ as a cultural framework to study climate change as it is actively experienced in the present.

“Williams used structures of feeling to describe the distinctive quality of experience that characterizes a period, and to challenge us to consider how the personal, affective realm of “feeling” is implicated in social processes that transcend us.” McCumber used computational methods and qualitative analysis and followed Williams’ assertion that structures of feeling are most visible in creative work, to analyze short stories in the literary subgenre of “climate fiction. McCumber found a temporal shift in the works he looked at; he observed that they transitioned “between imagining the acute destruction of climate chaos and the possibilities of post-apocalypse.” He took these shifts to indicate underlying patterns in the affective social experience of climate change.

McCumber argued that the development of a fully-fledged sociology of climate change is challenged by the ambiguous temporality of the climate crisis. “Discussions of climate change are almost always implicitly discussions of possible futures, which can make it difficult to frame the contemporary phenomena we study in terms of it.”

Another difficulty is one of scale, said McCumber. “Climate change is at once ubiquitous and abstract.” A hyperobject. It requires, he argues, a combination of effective science communication and informed critical thinking to connect the localized destruction with larger global effects.

McCumber brings the theoretical and analytical perspectives of cultural sociology to both expand and advance the sociology of climate change. With its focus on processes of shared meaning making, cultural sociology “promises a window into how climate change constitutes a ‘social drama’ and functions as a frame through which our everyday lived experience is filtered.”

He makes use of Raymond Williams’s concept of “structures of feeling” to explore “the ever-changing and increasingly palpable lived reality of climate change.” Given how climate change “announces its presence unevenly in fits and starts, it is both important and uniquely difficult to understand how it is experience along with how that experience shifts over time.”

McCumber looked at several short stories from five prominent science fiction magazines (Apex, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Reactor, and Uncanny) and identified a notable shift in the evolution of climate-focused science fiction over the period from 2011 to 2024 as well as a general increase in climate fiction over this period.

McCumber identified three periods over that time: Period I, in which the human experience of climate change cedes the spotlight to a more expansive imagination of life and its potential future; Period II, emphasizing the acute, lived reality of humanity during climate change; and Period III, which emphasizes themes of symbiosis and ecological resilience that transcend human experience.

My short story Robin’s Last Song fit into Period II: “In the stories that characterize the period that bookends the May 2021 low-point in climate sentiment, the devastation of climate chaos (or in some cases an imagined corollary to this destruction on a fictional world) is front and center. While these stories vary in how optimistic or pessimistic their final dispositions vis-a-vis climate change are, acute ecological crisis or climate destruction tends to be central to the worlds they imagine and the action that unfolds. Thus, the structure of feeling of this period is shaped by the sense of loss that climate change entails…These stories explore the affective experience of this loss and pain.”

“The structure of feeling [of Robin’s Last Song] is characterized by a preoccupation with the acute pain of climate shocks and the dread of their imminent intensification… The title character, a soundscape ecologist, loses her sense of purpose and becomes a recluse after spiraling ecological destruction causes a sudden mass extinction of birds. Munteanu’s story dramatizes a form [of] loss engendered by climate change (extinction and biodiversity loss) mostly experienced as a gradual process by depicting it as sudden and traumatic:

I stood by the kitchen window, concentrating on reading the recipe for Diana’s birthday cake when a loud thwap made me jump. A bird must have flown into the window. As I looked out, another bird sailed into the window with a violent thud, leaving behind a red smear.

I rushed out the kitchen door and saw two starlings lying on the patio. Both had obviously broken their necks. Something made me look up. What I saw made my heart cave in: a dark cloud of starlings was raining birds. They fell from the sky, thudding and pelting into cars, and plopping on the ground. Some flew like drunks into buildings, trees, windows, and even people. It was a deluge.

Diana ran outside and I seized her in a tight embrace, sheltering her eyes from it all. The neighborhood rang with shouts, cries, and wails. It felt like the end of the world.

Heartbroken, I stood still like granite, pressing my daughter against me in a crushing embrace. In that moment made eternity, I knew. Then I burst into tears of despair.

“There are certainly glimmers of optimism to be found in these stories,” says McCumber; “Robin’s Last Song, for instance, ends on a hopeful note when a surviving population of birds is discovered and the protagonist has renewed purpose. But the substantive trend that seems to best explain the dip in climate sentiment during this period observed in the computational analysis is the way the narrative timelines of climate change and the short stories themselves overlap. The stories’ plots take place largely within the period of the immediate, felt effects of ecological crisis. As such, the emotional register that typifies these stories emphasizes loss and dread.”

*Robin fledgling rests on a lawn chair (photo by M. Cox)*

References:

McCumber, Andrew. “Structures of feeling in climate fiction.” American Journal of Cultural Sociology, February 2026.

Munteanu, Nina. 2021. “Robin’s Last Song.” Apex Magazine, Issue 128.

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.

Inanna Publications Announces their Spring 2027 Titles, starting with “Thalweg” by Nina Munteanu

August 26, 2026August 26, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

Inanna Publications Announces their Spring 2027 Titles, starting with “Thalweg” by Nina Munteanu

Nina Munteanu Interview on Writers To Writers Podcast

August 23, 2026July 31, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

*Nina Munteanu with Simon Rose and Suzanne Lieurance on Writers To Writers Podcast*

I was recently interviewed by Simon Rose and Suzanne Lieurance on Episode 4 of Writers To Writers June 2026.

We covered why I write about ‘green issues’ in my fiction, how I came to write eco-fiction and my aversion to littering—an aversion which Suzanne shared she also felt—which I ascribed to a disrespect for others and ‘the silent other’, represented by the natural world. We discussed my influences as a kid growing up and then later as an adult.

I shared how I have incorporated ‘green issues’ in both my fiction and non-fiction writing and short and long fiction. We shared how we started as young kids creating stories for our families and neighbourhood friends, developing our skills as storytellers.

We also discussed the strange world of writing and publishing and how a prequel to a prequel can come about. This then morphed into a discussion of morally gray characters and their evolution and why I find the character Loki far more interesting than Thor. If you want clarification on these, go have a listen!

*Nina Munteanu interviewed by Simon Rose and Suzanne Lieurance on Writers To Writers Podcast*

Biosemiosis: Acknowledging Intelligence in Nature

August 16, 2026August 16, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

In my latest eco-fiction novel (Re)Genesis (upcoming), four teenagers in ‘small town’ Ontario discover and unravel a conspiracy by a chemical factory that uses shapeshifting substances for weapon use, causing a shift in the genetics of humanity itself. The discovery eventually leads them to communist Poland where it all started with the cyanobacteria Nostoc commune.

(Re)Genesis follows the premise of dark karma as Nature learns to reflect back what we send out. Making use of real examples of learning, pattern recognition, anticipation and adaptation in non-human life, the novel explores the concept of biosemiosis* in this eco-thriller.

*Nostoc commune found colonizing a gravel path, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

Ahmed Bennu, a mind-challenged boy, who is arcanely transformed by a tragic incident into a genius publishing papers at Harvard, pursues the concept of biosemiosis in Nostoc commune, a ubiquitous cyanobacteria (blue-green algae)—and an organism his own body has begun to mimic—that has colonized the world. In a scientific paper published by Nature, he describes the ever-increasing fluidity in Nature and argues that Nostoc can anticipate and exert goal-oriented behaviour to change itself and its environment. He joins Harriet—who lost her best friend in that arcane incident—and their investigation leads them to a nefarious past, to the 1950s, deep in the Kurpioska Forest of Poland, where chemical company Zima Elastomers used Nostoc to concoct a freakish substance for the communist military. Not only did the substance infect the workers there; it escaped with dire consequences for the world’s future.

Of course, it’s just science fiction. But is that all it is?…

Biosemiosis & Umwelt

In the 1930s, Jakob von Uexküll coined the term Umwelt* (species-specific reality or subjective environment) to define a life process that involved semiotic* interactions. He argued that an organism’s behaviour results from activity that attributes meaning to the world around it, rather than merely mechanically reacting to stimuli. Building on this notion, Friedrich S. Rothschild coined the term “biosemiosis” in 1962 to postulate that life has its subjective interpretation of the world around it—its Umwelt—a segment of the world that has significance and meaning based on that life’s biology and needs. Developing the concept of biosemiosis further, Thomas Sebeok later contended that all organisms are enveloped in a cloud of messages about themselves and their situation, which they constantly transmit, receive, and interpret. Life itself is a process of signification and meaning-making, from bacteria and plants to mammals and birds. Biosemiosis involves pattern recognition, anticipation, flexibility, goal-directed movement, memory, and learning.

All organisms participate in complex interactions that involve sophisticated signaling and exchange. In Planta Sapiens, Paco Calvo argues that, “this happens at the level of single-celled organisms, which can collect information and make decisions.” The slime mold Physarum polycephalum, for example, is an amoeba-like cell that can navigate its environment through learning, memory, and decisions. In the 1980s, evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis argued for intelligence of bacteria based on similar observations.

*Nostoc filament showing various adaptive cells (illustration by Nina Munteanu)*

My novel (Re)Genesis features the cyanobacteria Nostoc commune, known to be highly adaptable to changing environments and known to participate in complex interactions by entering into symbiotic relationships (e.g. plants, fungi and lichen) that involve complex communication and exchange of resources; biosemiosis in action. In my novel, Nostoc commune is used by Polish biochemical company Zima Performance Elastomers as the driving core of a synthetic protein substance with chameleon properties called Syprene and meant for covert stealth operations by the military. Not unlike Margaret Atwood’s calamitous dystopia Oryx & Crake, things go wrong at Zima: terrible unintended consequences occur as non-human biological intelligence asserts its self-determination and humans find their sovereignty eroded into a more fluid existence.

In a scene close to the middle of the book, two sisters wish each other goodbye at the train station in the village of Mala Dolina, built for Zima Elastomers; a veil of dark portent overshadows them both:

Ewa and Zofia stand in awkward silence at the little train station in town, waiting for the train. A thick snowfall covers the tracks and the ground. The snow comes down like thick confetti, covering everything with a soft blanket of white.

It’s time for her to return to Warsaw to teach the winter semester at the university. She hates to leave Zofia with the twins so young, especially with Piotr not totally recovered. But, given how their work shifts now overlap less, surely Piotr can look after the twins when he’s home. It is not perfect, but it must work, she decides. Things must go on.

Ewa glances covertly at Zofia, standing next to her on the platform, and worries nonetheless. Piotr is definitely not fully recovered from his accident last fall. She finds him often morose and strange, staring off into the distance for a protracted time or saying odd things that have nothing to do with anything. Pieces of nonsense. He seems to have lost his joy for life and it is impacting her sister. He now walks with a stoop. Shortly after Christmas, Zofia had anxiously confided to her something distressing: Piotr had told Zofia that there was something in the brine pit. Something moving and alive. This is, of course, impossible. Nothing can live in that cesspool of poisonous waste. Zofia reminded her that Agata had made that same claim shortly before she was found dead and floating face down in the brine pit. Ewa recognized real terror in Zofia’s eyes. Neither said aloud the terrible thought that went through their minds: was Piotr going mad?

Ewa hears the train approach and soon it comes around the corner, emerging out of the thick pine forest, pushing through the snow on the tracks. Both women glance at one another with fake smiles.

What follows validates their fearful foreboding.

Process philosopher Alec Borislow writes, “There are invisible meanings, signs, and messages constantly being transmitted that shape the reality of all life forms. Biosemiotics aims to make the unseen seen.”

Heterogenous Being*

In his 2025 PhD thesis, Steven L. Ogden explored the dichotomous narrative that separated human with non-human. Evoking the term “heterogenous being,” Odgen acknowledged the influences and potentialities of nonhuman subjects in narrative, both in fiction and nonfiction.

Ogden writes that “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.” Ogden quotes Donna Haraway (author of When Species Meet) who said that “to exist as an individual is always to become with many.” She is talking about the thousands of species living symbiotically inside us and around us that keep us alive. This is what philosopher Levi Bryant refers to as a democracy of objects in which “humans are no longer monarchs of being, but are instead among beings … and implicated in other beings.” We are entangled in beings. We are implicated in other beings.

In his exploration of Richard Powers’s novel The Overstory, Ogden points out that one of Powers’s main characters, botanist Patricia Westerford, understands that her peers believe 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.’” And yet plants are biosemiotics, exhibiting cognitive behaviour through adaptation, anticipation, flexibility, and goal-direction. Plants demonstrate phenotypic plasticity through their complex engagement with their environment, shaping what emerges.

*Various slime molds, ON (photos by Nina Munteanu)*

There is a growing zeitgeist of not just planetary awareness but of sensibility, a sense that we are interlinked with all other life and nonlife, that we are all more than the sum of our parts. And that intelligence—no matter how it is interpreted and measured—is far more prevalent than we thought, and found everywhere: from bacteria to insects to plants to animals, fungi and slime molds. Indeed, works devoted to incredible and intelligent nature of the non-human world have increased dramatically. Notable examples include Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds; Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss, Suzanne Simard’s The Breathing Trees, Paco Calvo’s Planta Sapiens and Zoe Schlanger’s The Light Eaters.

*Several books on nature’s intelligence*

Is it possible that we have finally escaped the oppressive shackles of 17^th Century Cartesian dogma contesting that dogs have no feelings?

God, I surely hope so.

Glossary:

Umwelt: a segment of the world that has significance and meaning based on an organism’s biology and needs: sounds it hears, scents it smells, foods it tastes.

Semiosis: the process of interpreting something as signifying something else using the process of signs, symbols or sound to produce meaning.

Biosemiosis: a biological term for ways organisms communicate, interpret meaning, and interact with their environments through signs and codes.

Heterogenous Being: 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.

References:

Barbieri, Marcelo. 2008 (ed). “Introduction to Biosemiotics: The New Biological Synthesis” Springer, Netherlands. 525pp.

Borislow, Alec. 2023. “Send Me a Sign: Biosemiosis, Umwelt, And Signifiers.” Medium, November 30, 2023.

Calvo, Paco, M. Gagliano, G. Souza, and A. Trewavas. 2020. “Plants are intelligent, here’s how.” Annals of Botany 125: 11-28.

Calvo, Paco. 2022. “Planta Sapiens.” W.W. Norton & Company, NY. 285pp.

Haraway, Donna Jeanne. 2008. “When Species Meet.” University of Minnesota Press.

Hata, Shingo et al. 2022. “Dried Nostoc commune exhibits nitrogen-fixing activity using glucose under dark conditions after rehydration.” Plant Signal Behav. 17(1): 2059251.

Hinton, David. 2012. “Hunger Mountain.” Shambhala.

Kecsey, et. al. 2018. “Adaptations of cyanobacterium Nostoc commune to environmental stress: Comparison of morphological and physiological markers between European and Antaarctic populations after rehydration.” Czech Polar Reports 8(1): 84-93.

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. 2003. “Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses.” Oregon State University Press. 176pp.

Marder, Micheal. 2013. “Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life.” Columbia University Press.

Munteanu, Nina. 2024. “The Use of Character-Coupling in Eco-Literature to Give Voice to the Other, Part 1: Introduction” February 18, 2024.

Munteanu, Nina. 2024. “The Use of Character-Coupling in Eco-Literature to Give Voice to the Other, Part 2: Types of Character-Coupling in Seven Examples of Eco-Literature” February 2024.

Ogden, Steven L. 2025. “Heterogenous Being: The Inhumanities and the Creative-Scientific Aesthetic.” A Dissertation submitted to the University at Albany, State University of New York in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 207pp.

Reber, A.S. 2019. “The First Minds: Caterpillars, ‘Karyotes and Consciousness.” Oxford University Press, New York. 296pp.

Schlanger, Zoe. 2025. “The Light Eaters.” Harper Perennial. 304pp.

Simard, Suzanne. 2026. “When the Forest Breathes.” Allen Lane. 336pp.

Trewavas, Anthony. 2003. “Aspects of Plant Intelligence.” Annals of Botany 92(1): 1-20.

Uexküll, Jakob von. 1921. “Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere” 2^nd ed. Julius Springer, Berlin.

Uexküll, Jakob von. 1931. “Die Rolle des Subjekts in der Biologie.” Die Naturwissenschaften 19: 385-391.

Nina Munteanu Sparks Eco-Revolution

August 9, 2026August 10, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / 2 Comments

Henry of Maple News Wire recently gave me a wonderful welcome back to British Columbia with the following news release and book review:

Local Author Returns with a Bang

“Nina Munteanu is back in Ladner, and she’s bringing a story that’s impossible to ignore. Her latest novel, Gaia’s Revolution, officially launched on March 10, 2026, is already making waves as an Amazon bestseller. Fans and friends in Delta and Vancouver are celebrating her triumphant return.”

Gaia’s Revolution, says Henry, is a “fast-paced Canadian dystopian thriller tackling climate change, tech chaos, and society on the brink.”

A Canadian Eco-Dystopia Like No Other

“Gaia’s Revolution plunges readers into a near-future Canada teetering on the edge of collapse. With climate change, societal missteps, and failing technology wreaking havoc, Munteanu paints a vivid picture of what might come.

“The story begins in Berlin in 2022 before moving to Canada, where ambitious twin brothers, Eric and Damien, spark a revolution that could either save the planet or end humanity.

“Monica Schlange, a fanatical deep ecologist, manipulates the twins like chess pieces in her bid to ‘rule the world.’ She ensnares three orphans in a web of intrigue, challenging the very rules of human existence. Yet, it’s the orphans who ultimately shape the fate of humanity.”

Fast-Paced Thriller With Real-World Relevance

Munteanu doesn’t hold back. Her novel tackles issues Canadians are already facing—or may soon confront…With every twist, the book explores the delicate balance between humanity and the natural world.”

From Classroom to Canadian Landscapes

“Before devoting herself to writing, Munteanu taught limnology at the University of Victoria. Her travels across Canada, including stops in Lunenburg, small-town Ontario, Vancouver, and Fort McPherson, have deeply influenced her storytelling. Each setting in her novels carries the richness of real Canadian locales.

“Now settled in a quiet Ladner neighbourhood, Munteanu is already hard at work on her next project, promising more stories that combine thrilling plots with urgent environmental themes.”

This is true. My climate eco-novel Thalweg will release in 2027 with Inanna Publications. I am still working with the editor of the publishing house and anticipate with growing excitement seeing the cover design soon.

Thalweg is a companion novel to A Diary in the Age of Water (my award-winning story based on the diary of a limnologist during Canada’s growing climate crisis that explores four generations of women, each with a unique relationship with water). Thalweg follows the braided paths of four homeless strangers—each uniquely connected to water—and each destined to play a significant role in water’s future in Canada. I look forward to seeing it soon on bookstore shelves next to Diary.

“The Girl Who Was Only Three Quarters Dead” Featured in The Best of Metastellar, Year Five

July 26, 2026September 9, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

Metastellar Magazine is putting out its “Best of” anthology for this year and my good friend and writing colleague Craig H. Bowlsby has a story in it. It’s one of my favourite stories of his and it has a fetchy title: “The Girl Who Was Only Three Quarters Dead.”

Bowlsby’s story was original published in the April 2022 Issue of Mystery Magazine and won the Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence for Best Crime Short Story for 2023. It was then reprinted in Metastellar Magazine and now appears in their 2026 “Best of” anthology, coming out later this summer.

This noir/dystopian story, set in Vancouver, BC, finds Suki prematurely awoken from an induced suspension between being alive and dead. With her retinas deactivated and her Government persona suspended, it’s up to her long-time friend and private investigator, Gabe, to uncover why she was brought back early and the way forward to recover her identity. Through the gritty and flooded streets of East End Vancouver and the mega corporations who control their entire existence, Gabe and Suki scheme to claim what is rightfully Suki’s.
Crime Writers of Canada

The story is set in the near-future in a post climate change Vancouver when sea level rise has water lapping decrepit buildings north of The Oak Street Bridge on Oak and 77th, Amazon owns entire roadways, and people pay corporate credits as currency.

One of the aspects of this mystery story that I found particularly attractive and interesting was Bowlsby’s use of cross-genre (mystery with science fiction), for which he indicated he has an affinity in his interview with Erik D’Souza with Crime Writers of Canada. I was reminded of the eco-techno thriller style of Hayden Trenholm’s detective series The Steele Chronicles, also set in the near future in Alberta Canada where biotechnology strays into the hands of corporate moguls and fundamentalist cults.

Bowlsby manages to cram both rich and seamless world building in his story (a feat in any short story), addressing mundane aspects of life, including the nuances of language (e.g. swear words suited to the time and place). Deadland, for instance, is a slang word that describes a government program that allows people to temporarily commit suicide, allowing them to place their lives on hold to supposedly help them escape their problems and supposedly better cope later (Bowlsby tells us rather pithily that it doesn’t really work).

When I asked Bowlsby in an interview what inspired this story and its post-climate change Vancouver setting, he said, “the germ … of this story came from a discussion I had with a friend, twenty years ago, who felt that everything in our society should be available for sale. For him that represented a pure state that would fix all our problems … I disagreed, but I wondered what it would be like if we started on that path. So as a social background, the characters are acting within a stage created for such a system—a system just starting to find its own steady legs. I don’t say it’s bad or good—I just give it free rein. The story itself came from other elements, but the characters’ difficulties are complicated by the hyper-capitalism. As for the climate change problem, and the flooding, that came naturally with the near-future time period; I’m afraid it’s going to happen no matter what we do.”

The Best of Metastellar Year Five is now out.

The Insidiousness of Celebrating Man—from Survival of the Fittest to der Übermensch

July 12, 2026July 12, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

“Oh, Brave New World that has such people in it!”
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.

Eugenics: Designing A ‘Perfect Society’ from a ‘Perfect Human’

*The eugenics tree (American Philosophical Society)*

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 20^th 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.

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))

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 18^th and 19^th 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.

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)

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).

*1926 poster warning that breeding among the unfit creates an unwanted burden on society, Philadelphia, Pensylvania (Wikipedia Commons)*

Eugenic strategies flourished in the USA in the early 20^th Century when thousands of people underwent forced sterilization.

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.

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.

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.

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

“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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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. Transhumanism is 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 Transhumanists argue 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 Übermensch consists 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.

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.”

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.

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.

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

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.

The Green New Wave of Science Fiction

July 5, 2026June 12, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

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.

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.

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.

The 1960s: Rachel Carson’s Revolution

Rachel Carson and her seminal book Silent Spring

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.

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.

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.”

Ogden is, of course, referring to the prevalent historic use of ‘othering’ vs. providing agency to environmental ‘characters’ in novel writing. I write about this in my two articles on character-coupling.

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: Animating & Empowering Nonhuman Subjects

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.

The ‘New Wave’: A Changing Narrative

*Various green-science fiction and general eco-fiction novels worth reading*

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.

*Three non-fiction books that celebrate nonhuman life*

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.

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.’”

This is the also the silencing of ‘The Other.’

I further explore this specific narrative (of non-human agency, particularly of birds, plants, bryophytes and algae) in my upcoming novel (Re)Genesis.

References:

Carson, Rachel. 1962. “Silent Spring.” Houghton Mifflin, Boston. 304pp.

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.

Hinton, David. 2012. “Hunger Mountain.” Shambhala.

Munteanu, Nina. 2020. “A Diary in the Age of Water” Inanna Publications, Toronto. 328pp.

Munteanu, Nina. 2024. “The Use of Character-Coupling in Eco-Literature to Give Voice to the Other, Part 1: Introduction” NinaMunteanu.me February 18, 2024.

Munteanu, Nina. 2024. “The Use of Character-Coupling in Eco-Literature to Give Voice to the Other, Part 2: Types of Character-Coupling in Seven Examples of Eco-Literature” NinaMunteanu.me February 2024.

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.

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.

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.

Nina Munteanu’s Climate Thriller Gaia’s Revolution Wins The Literary Titan Silver Book Award

June 28, 2026July 4, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / 2 Comments

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.”

My climate thriller Gaia’s Revolution was honoured with Literary Titan’s Silver Book Award for 2026.

Read more about the book on Goodreads and my various articles here and on other sites, including The Meaning of Water. Gaia’s Revolution is Book 1 of The Icaria Trilogy.

*The Icaria Trilogy by Dragon Moon Press*

Green Science Fiction and Nina Munteanu’s “A Diary in the Age of Water”

June 7, 2026May 31, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

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.