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Celebrating Canadian Eco-Fiction Authors & Their Works

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Eco-fiction is a burgeoning genre that is finally being recognized and appreciated by readers and literary organizations. As someone who has been writing it and reading it most of her life, I say: it’s about time!

These written works—novels, novelettes and short story collections and anthologies—are bringing our environment and our sense of holistic being closer to us in narrative form. Through intimate dramas, these stories relate how important our environment is, how it is changing—often at our hands—and how that is affecting each of us. As an ecologist and environmental activist, this pleases me greatly.

What I find surprising—but shouldn’t—is that a good number of notable eco-fiction authors are Canadian and live in Canada. Canada is, after all, a country in the north, where environment and land play a significant part of life.

Thomas Wharton, Canadian eco-fiction author of The Book of Rain, expressed in a recent CBC interview the reason why he came to write eco-fiction. It resonated with my own experience:

“I had this feeling that there was something missing [in literature]. I realized that it was everything else … In nature. [Nature] is usually just a backdrop in most fiction or it’s not there at all; fiction is mostly concerned with human society and issues. It became important for me to make [the environment] part of what I write. All the things we do to nature we do to ourselves, because they come right back to us. Everything is so connected, often in ways we don’t even realize. I wanted to acknowledge that and have a place for nonhuman creatures [in story].”—Thomas Wharton, CBC interview

The authors and works listed below feature eco-fiction written about Canada, by Canadians and/or published by Canadian publishers. These books span from the first peoples and settlers to the future in a post-capitalist, even post-Canada, environment: environments that encompass the mega cities of Canada’s south to its rugged coasts, vast prairies and northern boreal forests, muskegs and Arctic permafrost tundra. Important books that define Canadians through our environment, where we live and work.

I collated this list based on my own experience as an eco-fiction author (so, of course, I’ve included my own) and as a passionate eco-fiction reader. Each work has touched me, moved me and made me think more deeply about our current environmental situation, our part in it as Canadians, and what the future might bring to Canada.   

*****

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Margaret Atwood is a world-renowned Canadian author, poet, and environmental activist, best known for her dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Her Maddaddam Trilogy (McClelland & Stewart, 2003-2013) explores the premise of genetic experimentation and pharmaceutical engineering gone awry. On a larger scale the cautionary trilogy examines where the addiction to vanity, greed, and power may lead. Often sordid and disturbing, the trilogy explores a world where everything from sex to learning translates to power and ownership. Atwood begins the trilogy with Oryx and Crake in which Jimmy, aka Snowman (as in Abominable) lives a somnolent, disconsolate life in a post-apocalyptic world created by a viral pandemic that destroys human civilization. The two remaining books continue the saga with other survivors such as the religious sect God’s Gardeners in The Year of the Flood and the Crakers of Maddaddam.

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*****

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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist/limnologist who writes hard science fiction and eco-fiction, often exploring water scarcity and systematic environmental collapse. A Diary in the Age of Water (Inanna Publications, 2020) and its companion novel Thalweg (Inanna Publications, upcoming Spring 2027) explore the socio-political consequences of corruption in Canada, now owned by China and America as an indentured resource ‘reservoir’, when humanity is plagued by environmental diseases, rising infertility, and increased plasticity in the human genome.  

A Diary in the Age of Water (Inanna Publications, 2020) chronicles the lives of four generations of women and their relationship to water in a rapidly changing world of climate change and water scarcity and manipulation. In her work for a global giant that controls Earth’s water, the diarist witnesses and records alarming climate events, water scarcity, and the draconian grip of the national water utility, CanadaCorp in Toronto, Canada. The diarist hears rumours of virgin births and terrible experimentation. Her fear keeps her immobilized; but even that ‘inaction’ causes injury and death.

In Thalweg (Inanna Publications, upcoming 2027), under the veil of a deadly climate disease, four drifters—each gifted with an arcane power associated with water—converge at the largest reservoir in North America, where they plot to free water and evolved ‘water children’ from the shackles of corporate greed and experimentation. The story features Gwich’in scientist Bobby-Jo and her journey of redemptive self-discovery back to her homeland in the Northwest Territories and beyond.

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Gaia’s Revolution (Dragon Moon Press, 2026) is a biopunk, techno-thriller about family, power, and the terrible choices that decide who lives. The climate thriller weaves political intrigue as two warring brothers make divergent choices to save the planet: one unleashes a DNA-targeted plague; the other a sentient virus that fractures reality. It is Book 1 of a trilogy that explores humanity’s evolution with technology and a rapidly changing environment.

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*****

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Michael Christie is a Canadian author living in British Columbia. His novel Greenwood (McClelland & Stewart, 2019) is a multigenerational eco-apocalypse story structured like tree growth rings. Set in 2038, when most of the world has suffered from an environmental collapse, the story follows the life of Jake Greenwood who works as a tour guide on a remote island with 1,000 year-old trees. The book traces her history back four generations—unravelling deep family deceptions and inherited trauma passed down through acts of treachery and sacrifice.

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*****

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Thomas Wharton is a Canadian author from Edmonton, Alberta. He is best known for speculative and literary works dealing with environmental changes. The Book of Rain (Vinage Canada, 2024) is a science fiction novel set in the mining town of River Meadows in northern Alberta, where ghost ore, a new minable energy source much more lucrative than gold can disrupt time and space and slowly make an environment inhospitable. The novel unravels three intertwined stories that flow from the disaster of River Meadows and ultimately gives voice to nonhuman narrators in an “Epic of Gilgamesh” for our times. A profound novel of epic reach, woven through stunning multi-layers that haunt.

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*****

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Michelle Min Sterling is the British Columbia author of climate thriller Camp Zero (Atria Books, 2024). Set in the remote Canadian north, this feminist climate fiction explores a warming climate through the perilous journeys of several female characters, each relating to her environment in different ways. Each woman exerts agency in surprising ways that include love, bravery and shared community. The strength of female power carries through the pages like a braided river heading to a singular ocean. These very different women journey through the dark ruins of violent capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy—flowing past and through hubristic men pushing north with agendas and jingoistic visions—to triumph in an ocean of solidarity. Each woman finds her strength and learns to wield true heroism—one based on collaboration and humble honesty.

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*****

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Christiane Vadnais is a Quebec-based author of speculative fiction. Her eco-horror novel Fauna (Coach House Books, 2018) examines ecological fragmentation and a world ravaged by climate change. Fauna is at once beautiful and terrifying. Vadnais’s liquid prose immerses in a flowing story about change in this Darwinian eco-horror ode to climate change. Biologist Laura navigates through a torrent of rising mists and coiling snakes and her own transforming body with the changing world around her.

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*****

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Colleen Murphy is a Canadian playwright and filmmaker and two-time recipient of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama. The Breathing Hole (Playwright Canada Press, 2020) begins in 1535, when the Inuk widow Hummiktuq risks her life to save a lost one-eared polar bear cub on an ice floe and adopts him. She names him Angu’ruaq. We soon learn that Angu’ruaq is timeless when we encounter him in scenes over the centuries from the Franklin Expedition in 1845 (who he helps by bringing them food) to 2031 when Angu’ruaq—old, hungry, his fur yellowing—returns to the breathing hole where long-dead Hummiktuq rescued him. By then the glaciers have receded and the ground is slush. Murphy’s spare and focused narrative achieves a timeless, dreamlike quality that plays strongly on the emotional connections of the reader; it elicits immense empathy for the Other in a deeply moving saga on the tragic dance of colonialism and climate change.

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*****

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Craig Russell is a Canadian author and playwright. His 2016 climate crisis novel Fragment (Thistledown Press, year) begins with a TV interview of glaciologist Kate Sexsmith in Scott Base Antarctica. The interview is interrupted by what turns out to be four runaway glaciers that have avalanched into the back of the Ross Ice Shelf and a fragment the size of Switzerland surges out into the open sea.  The novel explores humanity’s behaviour: from scientists who understand the global significance of this rogue fragment to those who minimize its effect such as the media and tourist industry who wish to exploit this anomaly and self-centred politicians obsessed with protecting their status. Russell’s chapters devoted to the POV of character Ring, a young blue whale also fragmented from his pod, are particularly touching and powerful.  

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*****

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Cherie Dimaline is a Metis author and storyteller from the Georgian Bay Metis Community in Ontario. The Marrow Thieves (Cormorant Books, 2017) depicts a futuristic world ravaged by global warming; people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America’s Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow, and dreams, means death for the unwilling donors. Driven to flight, a fifteen-year-old and his companions struggle for survival, attempt to reunite with loved ones and take refuge from the “recruiters” who seek them out to bring them to the marrow-stealing “factories.”

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*****

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Premee Mohamed is an Indo-Caribbean scientist and author of speculative fiction who lives in Edmonton. The Annual Migration of Clouds (ECW, 2021) is set in post-climate disaster Alberta, where a woman infected with a mysterious parasite, a mind-altering fungus, must choose whether to pursue a rare opportunity far from home or stay and help rebuild her community.

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*****

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David Huebert is a Halifax author who named his short story collection Chemical Valley (Biblioasis, 2017) after a region in Sarnia, Ont., of plants and refineries. A review reads: “Oil-soaked and swamp-born, the bruised optimism of Huebert’s stories offer sincere appreciation of the beauty of our wilted, wheezing world.” Many of Huebert’s characters make their living from the petrochemical industry, but also see the impacts of climate change. The short stories explore environmental racism, and toxic behaviours through personal dramas.

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*****

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Rebecca Campbell is a Canadian author of speculative, weird, and climate-fiction. Arboreality (Stelliform Press, 2022) is a climate change novella of interconnected short stories set on Vancouver Island that describe a community’s survival through a climate apocalypse, over several decades from 2050 to 2100. Various trees and their unique relationship with climate and change are featured.

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*****

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Claudia Casper is a Vancouver-based Canadian author. The Mercy Journals (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016) is an unsettling near-future novel set in the wake of a third world war. Runaway effects of climate change have triggered the collapse of nation/states and wiped out over a third of the global population. Mercy, a former soldier, suffers from PTSD and is haunted by guilt and lingering memories of his family. He meets a dancer named Ruby, who breathes new life into his carefully constructed existence. But when his long-lost brother Leo arrives with news that Mercy’s children have been spotted, the two brothers travel into the wilderness to look for them, challenging Mercy’s own moral code about the things that matter amid the wreckage of war and tragedy.

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*****

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Lynn Hutchinson Lee is a Toronto artist / writer. Her novella Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens (Stelliform Press, 2025) explores the tenuous reality of the Romany diaspora living in troubled times on troubled lands. Orchid Lovell is a young Romany woman who settles in a seemingly idyllic northern mining town that she soon understands as rife with unseen cruelty. In the nearby creek, dead girls take revenge on the men who murdered them, luring them into murky waters. After a devastating attack linked to the expansion of the mine, Orchid’s fate is entwined with the panni raklies’ ruthless justice.

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*****

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Waubgeshig Rice is an Anishinaabe author and journalist from the Wasauksing First Nation in Ontario. His apocalyptic thriller Moon of the Crusted Snow (ECW, 2018) and its sequel Moon of the Turning Leaves (ECW, 2023) explore environmental and seasonal collapse themes. Set in a rural Anishinaabe community in northern Canada, both books follow a group after they are cut off from the rest of the world amidst a societal collapse following climate collapse.

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*****

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Catherine Bush is a Toronto-based author and University of Guelph professor whose work explores contemporary climate anxiety and ecological disruption. Her novel Blaze Island (Goose Lane Editions, 2020) is a climate-themed story inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest; the story takes place as a Category Five hurricane sweeps up the eastern seaboard of North America. brushing over remote Blaze Island, occupied by a renegade scientist and his daughter Miranda; the storm stirs up secrets and anxieties of the past to reveal a “Brave New World.”

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*****

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Rachel Rosen is a Canadian speculative fiction author and activist. Her novels Cascade and Blight, the first and second books in The Sleep of Reason Trilogy, are eco-fantasy works of climate fiction that take place in a post-apocalyptic Canada.  

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*****

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Susan Mayse is a Canadian author of fiction and nonfiction. Her 2023 science fiction novel Shadow Matter is a future recasting of the Orpheus and Eurydike myth that weaves together love, loyalty, and the restorative power of art.

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*****

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Terry Birdgenaw is a Canadian neuroscientist turned fiction author whose Metis heritage and ancestral history serve as the heartbeat of his writing. Cyborg Contact (Cyborg Insect Books, 2026) is a humorous first-contact cli-fi adventure and political satire that touches on issues of climate change and environmental collapse. The series Antunite Chronicles explores human destructiveness and climate issues through the perspectives of non-humans.

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*****

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Su J. Sokul’s novels, Invisible Line and its sequel,Five Points on an Invisible Line are hopepunk speculative stories set in future New York City about political refugees, authoritarianism and survival.

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*****

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Clara Hume is a writer and artist who resides in Nova Scotia.

Clara Hume’s novella Bird Song draws you into a dream-world whose chorus lures you—like the sirens themselves—into a seductive dance of paradox and choice. Taking its cue from Homer’s Odyssey, this contemporary allegorical tale follows the journey of young Thelsie—a schoolgirl in the rough poor district of east Chicago struggling with life-choices. One morning she wakes on a beach of a paradise-like magical island. Feeling safe for the first time, she meets two siren sisters who lure and crash sailing ships to save their world from corruption and despoilment by settlers wishing only to conquer Nature. When the island’s paradoxes force her to make difficult and risky choices, Thelsie finds her voice and her path in life. Bird Song teases apart the extreme voices of mono-cultural colonialism and uncompromising protectionism to find the connective tissue of compassion in the voice of mediation. A beautiful and seductive coming-of-age fairy tale of self-discovery.

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Her Wild Mountain Duology, consisting of Back to the Garden (Moon Willow Press, 2012) and The Stolen Child (Moon Willow Press, 2022) explore communities that must deal with global warming in the future. The series focuses on the journeys of several of “tipping point” survivors—a generation of mountain folk who have experienced the collapse of late-stage capitalism, along with widespread ecosystem degradation from climate change.

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*****

I was also involved in (as writer) and curated (as editor) several important anthologies of excellent eco-fiction short stories by mostly Canadian authors. The three below are worth mentioning. I also include my own collection of eco-fiction short stories:

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Canadian Tales of Climate Change (Exile Editions, 2017; edited by Bruce Meier): an anthology of seventeen culturally diverse Canadian writers who explore various environmental themes of climate change and the impact of a planet in crisis, from rising sea levels to mass migrations and water scarcity. Stories move past simple doomsday warnings to examine human indifference, adaptation, and responsibility.

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Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia (Exile Editions, 2024; edited by Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Nina Munteanu): This collection is an inspired and fascinating range of speculative storytelling that explores strange new terrains and startling social constructs, quiet morphing landscapes, dark and terrifying warnings, and lush newly-told folk and fairy tales. Each of the over thirty stories uniquely studies our relationship with our environment and climate change and threads a fine strand of optimism through every dark tapestry.

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Water (Reality Skimming Press, 2017; edited by Nina Munteanu): an optimistic speculative fiction anthology of exotic landscapes, at once eerie and beautiful. Each story uniquely explores water and our relationship with its profound and magical properties:  melting glaciers in Canada’s north; water’s computing properties and weather control; water as fury and the metaphoric deluge of flood; mining space ice from a nearby comet; water as shapeshifter and echoes of “polywater”. From climate fiction to literary speculative fiction; from the fantastic to the purest of science fiction and a hint of horror—these stories explore individual choices and the triumph of human imagination in the presence of adversity.

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Natural Selection (Pixl Press, 2013). This short story collection by SF author and ecologist Nina Munteanu explores humanity’s co-evolution with our environment and technology. A man uses cyber-eavesdropping to make love. A technocratic government uses gifted people as tools to recast humanity. The ruins of a city serve as battleground between pro-technologists and pro-naturalists. From time-space guardians to cybersex, GMO, and biotech implants, this short story collection is a journey of great scope, imagination and vision. “…a stunning example of good storytelling with an excellent setting and cast of characters.”—Tangent Online

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Elgin marsh on a foggy autumn morning, 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.

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Solving The Polywater Equation in German and English

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Some time ago, I was invited by the publisher of Nova to contribute to their upcoming German anthology, based on real science. In our initial correspondence, editor Marianne Labisch mentioned that they were “looking for short stories by scientists based on their research but ‘spun on’ to create a science fiction story;” she knew I was a limnologist and was hoping I would contribute something about water. That is how The Polywater Equation (Die Polywasser-Gleichung) was born.

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I drew on some early work of mine with colonizing patterns of periphyton (attached algae) in streams. Elements that worked themselves into the story and the main character, herself a limnologist, reflected some aspects of my own conflicts as a scientist interpreting algal and water data (you have to read the story to figure that out).

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The diatom forest (periphyton colonizing a substrate in a stream) (illustration by Nina Munteanu adapted for the van der Wal et al. paper in H2O)

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My study involved placing glass slides in various locations in my control and experimental streams and in various orientations (parallel or facing the current), exposing them to colonizing algae. What I didn’t expect to see was that the community colonized the slides in a non-random way. I published my findings in Hydrobiologia entitled “The effect of current on the distribution of diatoms settling on submerged glass slides.”

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Photo (left) and illustration (right) of diatoms colonizing glass slides parallel to the current (Nina Munteanu, Hydrobiologia)

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For more details of my work with periphyton, you can go to my article called Championing Change. How all this connects to the concept of polywater is something you need to read in the story itself. Up to recently, you would have had to read the story in German in the anthology “Tales of Science, Volume 2” (Marianne Labisch & Kiran Ramakrishnan); now, thanks to Metastellar Speculative Fiction and Beyond, the story is available in English for your reading pleasure.

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The Polywater Phenomenon of the 1960s

The polywater phenomenon started well before the 1960s, with a 19th century theory by Lord Kelvin (for a detailed account see The Rise and Fall of Polywater in Distillations Magazine). Kelvin had found that individual water droplets evaporated faster than water in a bowl. He also noticed that water in a glass tube evaporated even more slowly. This suggested to Kelvin that the curvature of the water’s surface affected how quickly it evaporated.

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Soviet chemist Boris Deryagin looks through a microscope at polywater

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In the 1960s, Soviet chemist and physicist Nikolai Fedyakin picked up on Lord Kelvin’s work and through careful experimentation, concluded that the liquid at the bottom of the glass tube was denser than ordinary water and published his findings. Boris Deryagin, director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry in Moscow, was intrigued and his team confirmed that the substance at the bottom of the glass tube was denser and thicker than ordinary water and had additional anomalous properties. This phase of water had a thick, gel-like consistency; it also had a higher stability, like a polymer, over bulk water. It demonstrated a lower freezing point, a higher boiling point, and much higher density and viscosity than ordinary water. It expanded more than ordinary water when heated and bent light differently.

Deryagin became convinced that this “modified water” was the most thermodynamically stable form of water and that any water that came into contact with it would become modified as well. In 1966, Deryagin shared his work in a paper entitled “Effects of Lyophile Surfaces on the Properties of Boundary Liquid Films.”

British scientist Brian Pethica confirmed Deryagin’s findings with his own experiments—calling the odd liquid “anomalous water”—and published in Nature. In 1969, Ellis Lippincott and colleagues published their work using spectroscopic evidence of this anomalous water, showing that it was arranged in a honeycomb-shaped network, making a polymer of water—and dubbed it “polywater.” Scientists proposed that instead of the weak Van der Waals forces that normally draw water molecules together, the molecules of ‘polywater’ were locked in place by stronger bonds, catalyzed somehow by the nature of the surface they were adjacent to.

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Proposed polywater structure

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This sparked both excitement and fear in the scientific community, press and the public. Industrialists soon came up with ways to exploit this strange state of water such as an industrial lubricant or a way to desalinate seawater. Scientists further argued for the natural existence of ‘polywater’ in small quantities by suggesting that this form of water was responsible for the ability of winter wheat seeds to survive in frozen ground and how animals can lower their body temperature below zero degrees Celsius without freezing.

In 1970, when American physicist Denis Rouseau blamed the phenomenon on contamination by the experimenters’ own sweat, the significance of the results was abandoned in the Kuddelmuddel of scientific embarrassment. By 1973, ‘polywater’ was considered a joke and an example of ‘pathological science.’

This, despite earlier work by Henniker and Szent-Györgyi, which showed that water organized itself close to surfaces such as cell membranes. Forty years later Gerald Pollack at the University of Washington identified a fourth phase of water, an interfacial water zone that was more stable, more viscous and more ordered, and, according to biochemist Martin Chaplin of South Bank University, also hydrophobic, stiffer, more slippery and thermally more stable. Pollack called it Exclusion Zone (EZ) water: a microscopic layer of water that near hydrophilic (water-loving) surfaces pushes away suspended particles (microspheres and solutes). These interfacial interactions may be driven more by ionic impurities and concentration gradients than actual molecular differences.

How was this not some form of polywater?

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The Polywater Equation—Die Polywasser-Gleichung

In my story, which takes place in Berlin, 2045, retired limnologist Professor Engel grapples with a new catastrophic water phenomenon that looks suspiciously like the original 1960s polywater incident:

The first known case of polywater occurred on June 19, 2044 in Newark, United States. Housewife Doris Buchanan charged into the local Water Department office on Broad Street with a complaint that her faucet had clogged up with some kind of pollutant. She claimed that the faucet just coughed up a blob of gel that dangled like clear snot out of the spout and refused to drop. Where was her water? she demanded. She’d paid her bill. But when she showed them her small gel sample, there was only plain liquid water in her sample jar. They sent her home and logged the incident as a prank.

But then over fifty turbines of the combined Niagara power plants in New York and Ontario ground to a halt as everything went to gel; a third of the state and province went dark. That was soon followed by a near disaster at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station in Ajax, Ontario when the cooling water inside a reactor vessel gummed up, and the fuel rods—immersed in gel instead of cooling water—came dangerously close to overheating, with potentially catastrophic results. Luckily, the gel state didn’t last and all went back to normal again.

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Tales of Science anthology selling at Dussmann bookstore in Berlin

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The German anthology made it to all the big bookstores, including Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus and Thalia  in Berlin. The English version is now available online on Metastellar magazine.

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Nina Munteanu holds a copy of “Tales of Science” anthology (photo by Jane Raptor)

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References:

Chaplin, Martin. 2015. “Interfacial water and water-gas interfaces.” Online: “Water Structure and Science”: http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/interfacial_water.html  

Chaplin, Martin. 2015. “Anomalous properties of water.” Online: “Water Structure and Science: http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/water_anomalies.html  

Henniker, J.C. 1949. “The depth of the surface zone of a liquid”. Rev. Mod. Phys. 21(2): 322–341.

Kelderman, Keene, et. al. 2022. “The Clean Water Act at 50: Promises Half Kept at the Half-Century Mark.” Environmental Integrity Project (EIP). March 17. 75pp.

Munteanu, N. & E. J. Maly, 1981. The effect of current on the distribution of diatoms settling on submerged glass slides. Hydrobiologia 78: 273–282.

Munteanu, Nina. 2016. “Water Is…The Meaning of Water.” Pixl Press, Delta, BC. 584 pp.

Pollack, Gerald. 2013. “The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid and Vapor.” Ebner & Sons Publishers, Seattle WA. 357 pp. 

Ramirez, Ainissa. 2020. “The Rise and Fall of Polywater.” Distillations Magazine, February 25, 2020.

Szent-Györgyi, A. 1960. “Introduction to a Supramolecular Biology.” Academic Press, New York. 135 pp. 

Roemer, Stephen C., Kyle D. Hoagland, and James R. Rosowski. 1984. “Development of a freshwater periphyton community as influenced by diatom mucilages.” Can. J. Bot. 62: 1799-1813.

Schwenk, Theodor. 1996. “Sensitive Chaos.” Rudolf Steiner Press, London. 232 pp.

Szent-Györgyi, A. 1960. “Introduction to a Supramolecular Biology.” Academic Press, New York. 135 pp. 

Wilkens, Andreas, Michael Jacobi, Wolfram Schwenk. 2005. “Understanding Water”. Floris Books, Edinburgh. 107 pp.

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The Little Rouge River in winter, ON (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 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.

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Driving the Dempster Highway—Fort McPherson, Inuvik, Tuk … ’Thalweg’

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Dempster Highway, north of Fort McPherson, NWT (photo by NIna Munteanu)

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In my upcoming eco-fiction novel Thalweg, Gwich’in limnologist Bobby-Jo makes her way back home to Fort McPherson, NWT, after the sudden flood of the Peel River has all but destroyed her Arctic hometown. She starts in Dawson City and takes the challenging gravel Dempster Highway north.

The Dempster is renowned for its remote beauty and driving hazards. Drivers today are cautioned to take sufficient provisions, including a tire-fixing kit and spare tires. By the time Bobby-Jo is driving the Dempster in the 2050s, the permafrost is actively thawing. One of the characters describes it as: “a thin ribbon of shale and mud floating tenuously on an unstable sea of melting ice, slushy rock, and murky water.”  

The Dempster is a temperamental gravel and shale road originally built in 1978 when explorers found oil and gas in the deep bedrock of Eagle Plains. The highway roughly follows Jack Dempster’s original trail that he learned from the Gwich’in and old dogsled routes. They used two-metre thick berms of gravel and shale to prevent the road from sinking into the ground; other materials would cause the permafrost to thaw and buckle the road, creating small lakes. When the uunjit discovered that the deposits weren’t large enough to exploit, the Dempster turned into a ghost road. The road to riches turned into the road to nowhere, abandoned to the rugged wilderness of mountains and tundra and the wildlife that inhabit it. The Dempster was left to itself and its people.

Bobby-Jo, Thalweg

Below is a short excerpt of Bobby-Jo’s experience driving the Dempster north from Dawson City:

On a cloudy morning in late August, I drove the North Klondike Highway and turned north on the Dempster as it started to rain. After a few kilometres, the cracked pavement gave way to loose gravel. The car slid along the slick mud like a sled on snow.

The first stretch of the Dempster followed a wide valley of moraines fed by glaciers in the high granite peaks of the southern Ogilvie Mountains. In Tombstone Territorial Park I stopped the car and stepped out into the cold breeze to rest my eyes on the bald sheer towering rock that rose out of a broad sloping alpine valley with peaks sharp enough to cut the sky like a knife.

Gold, russet, gray-green, stunning yellow and purple carpeted the valley floor with impressionistic swirls of lichen, alpine shrubs, cotton grass and blazing fireweed. Dark flecks of stunted spruce trees and dwarf birch and willow added contrast. A fine mist flowed and pooled in the depressions of the lower slopes.

I breathed in the freshness of sub-arctic air and moist earth. It had stopped raining, but the moisture that clung to the air brought out an incredible richness of fragrances, an aria of sweet floral scents mixed with earth and tree pitch. It smelled like home. I inhaled slowly and deeply, filling my lungs with ancestral energy. It resonated deep inside me where this place lay embedded in my soul.

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Tombstone Territorial Park (photo by Yukon Travel)

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My Experience on The Dempster and The North

My good friend and story consultant Anne accompanied me on my research trip North. We first flew to Inuvik, whose stilted buildings all have utilidors (above ground piping) running among them to prevent the permafrost beneath from heating up. Already, some buildings were sinking and the new hospital developed a small pingo (ice pimple) beneath it; the ice was heaving and cracking the floors. Anne and I got to Inuvik just in time to witness a canoe race from Aklavik along the Mackenzie River, the first in many years. We ate whitefish tacos at Alestine’s, a funky bistro.

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Utilidors in Inuvik, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)

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Drummers bring in the canoes during the race from Aklavik, Inuvik, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Alestine’s Patio, Inuvik, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)

The Dakota truck on the Dempster Highway, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)

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We rented a Dakota truck and drove the Dempster south to Fort McPherson on the Peel River to meet with my new Gwich’in friends who helped keep Thalweg authentic and respectful: Sharon Snowshoe (head of the Gwich’in Council) and Arlyn Charlie (a gifted writer). The town—which was totally destroyed in my speculative novel—was a small dusty community with one main street, a school, a church, and a few shops.

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Left: Sharon Snowshoe and Arlyn Charlie with Nina Munteanu; Right: main street of Fort McPherson (photos by Anne Voute and Nina Munteanu)
Boats moored on the Peel River, Fort McPherson, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Black spruce forest and marsh in the morning mist off the Dempster Highway, north of Fort McPherson, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)

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Driving the iconic Dempster through spruce forest and tundra / marsh, felt invigorating and humbling at the same time. This remote road to the Arctic North felt steeped in history and many stories. As I write this (three years after our trip) Anne, who was the driver, reminds me that the Dempster was surprisingly smooth; probably the result of a recent resurfacing.

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Tanker truck speeds past us on the newly graded Dempster Highway, north of Fort McPherson, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Anne stands by the Dakota, taking in the view from the Tuk Highway, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)

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The new highway to Tuk, by contrast, was uneven and blemished with pot holes. The drive took us to the Beaufort Sea of the Arctic Ocean, which was surprisingly warm and fresh. I found no lingering marine smell or salt water tackiness to the touch. I then remembered that the Mackenzie River emptied into the Beafort Sea right next to the community. The best place to eat was Grandma’s Kitchen, where we enjoyed muktuk (whale blubber) and dried whitefish. Grandma Joanne served us out of her trailer and we ate overlooking the Arctic Ocean, kept company by ground squirrels looking for a handout.

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Left: muktuk and dried whitefish served by Right: Grandma Joanne, Grandma’s Kitchen, Tuk, NWT (photos by Nina Munteanu)
View of tundra and pingo from Tuk Highway, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)

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I felt an abiding sense of home as I brushed through the tundra, among Labrador Tea, cloudberries and bearberries, boots sinking into sphagnum and crowberry, with a stunning view of Ibyuk and Split Pingos in the distance. Tuktoyaktuk sits on the edge of the Arctic Sea; boats of all kinds line the shores. Normally a quiet town, we’d landed there during some festivities, which brought in locals from all around. Anne and I strolled along the main street, talking with friendly Inuvialuit.

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Shoreline of Arctic Ocean at Tuk, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Kieth Felix stands next to his rack of drying whitefish, Tuk, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Fireweed and marsh near Inuvik, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Iconic cotton grass found throughout the north along the Dempster and Tuk Highways, NWT (photos by Nina Munteanu)

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The North is a celebration of contrasts. A wilderness of rugged beauty, often misunderstood. A place, both harsh and desolate yet incredibly rich and beautiful. A wild place that promises infinite possibilities.

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Tuk Highway winds through tundra by the Eskimo Lakes, NWT (photo by Nina Munteanu)

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Climate change is changing all that; the permafrost is thawing.  along with the melting pingos, land is sinking and exposing dangerous sinkholes, ground slumping and landslides are increasing, coastlines are eroding to the sea, waterways are acidifying, and wildlife habits are changing:

Climate change and habitat destruction were silently destroying the Gwich’in’s way of life. Though, you’d never think it, looking at the pristine-like wilderness along the Dempster. That was the problem: much of the destruction was invisible. It isn’t seen; it’s felt I could hear Johnny say.

That was the North. More a mindset than a place. For most Canadians the North encompassed this collective myth of vast inaccessibility, and hostile grandeur. Early settlers’ portrayal of the North as hostile and isolated came from their inability to read the land and its rhythms, to know where the animals were and why they were there. The uunjit didn’t feel the land, Johnny kept saying. And because of that they would not know how to adapt to change.

—Bobby-Jo, Thalweg 

Thalweg releases with Inanna Publications in Spring 2027.

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The Dempster Highway

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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.

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Interview with Author Simon Rose About “The Memory Bank”

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The Memory Bank by Simon Rose

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My guest today is author Simon Rose, who has published twenty-one novels for children and young adults, eight guides for writers, more than a hundred nonfiction books, and many articles on a wide variety of topics. Today he’s here to tell us more about his two latest novels, The Memory Bank – All in the Mind and The Memory Bank – Prisoners of the Prism.

Nina: Welcome, Simon!

Simon: Thank you, it’s a pleasure to be here.

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Nina: Where did you get the idea from to create The Memory Bank novels?

Simon: For these books, I was first inspired by how people often have casts made of a beloved pet’s paw made when their faithful friend passes away. It’s certainly something I’ve done over the years. I then remembered how death masks have been created of notable people throughout history, well before the invention of photography, so that we know what some of these people actually looked like and in some cases the mask closely resembles the person’s face as portrayed in a painting. The ideas began to converge.

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Nina: There are some quite well known people of which death masks were made, aren’t there?

Simon: Yes, there are masks that were made of the faces of Martin Luther, Oliver Cromwell, Mary Queen of Scots, Marie Antoinette, Isaac Newton, Horatio Nelson, John Keats, Ludwig van Beethoven, and a number of others. Perhaps the most notable one for me is Napoleon Bonaparte. Some people dispute whether it’s really him, but the mask does bear an uncanny resemblance to his many portraits. There are links included in both books and here on my website in the Sources of Inspiration page if you’re interested in learning more about this topic.

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Nina: I know that you’ve always been fascinated with different historical eras. We can see that from many of your previous novels. Were the masks something that you’ve always been interested in?

Simon: Yes, I’ve always wondered about them, but I wasn’t sure how I’d ever be able to include them in a story. I was also aware of masks worn at carnivals in Venice, which seemed to be a natural fit as I was putting the story idea together for The Memory Bank.

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Nina: How did the pet souvenirs serve as inspiration for the story?

Simon: Without giving away too much of the story, for the two novels I speculated how in the modern era masks could be made of a person’s face. This would then preserve their memories, as seen through their eyes, for their family members to see on a screen after the person’s death. This would be just like viewing photographs or watching home movies.

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Nina: Sounds incredible. You certainly have a wonderful imagination. Tell me a little bit about your next project.

Simon: I currently have a couple of fantasy projects that I’m working on, so they’ll probably be taking up most of my creative time for the next little while. I’ll also be out there promoting The Memory Bank novels whenever I can. For regular updates, people can subscribe to my newsletter, which goes out on the first day of the month. They can do that on my website at www.simon-rose.com where they can also learn all about my other books.

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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.

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

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“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.

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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)

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Eugenic strategies flourished in the USA in the early 20th 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.

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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 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. 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.

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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 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.

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The Green New Wave of Science Fiction

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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.”

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.

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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.”

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Eco-Science Fiction: Animating & Empowering Nonhuman Subjects

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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.’”

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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.

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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.

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Footnotes:

  1. 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.
  2. 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”.
  3. 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.  
  4. 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 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.

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Nina Talks to CBC About Solarpunk (in Toronto and Elsewhere)

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Solarpunk city imagined (image by Imperial Boy)

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A short while ago, I was approached by a CBC reporter to discuss Solarpunk and the solarpunk movement in Toronto, specifically.

Given that my writing has significant solarpunk elements in it and I teach at the University of Toronto, in Toronto where I participated in several solarpunk initiatives, I was happy to discuss the subject with Louna Marchet.

The interview, which will air in French on CBC Radio, covered a wide range of a very interesting discussion on solarpunk generally and below, I’ve highlighted a few parts.

What is Solarpunk? Solarpunk is basically an optimistic, action-oriented subgenre of speculative fiction or art that has evolved into a social movement. The movement imagines a sustainable, post-capitalist future where humanity lives sustainably relying on renewable energy, DIY ethics, community resilience and a decentralized technology. It’s a radical hope alternative to dystopian narratives of gloom and doom.

On Eco-Fiction: I mentioned that I write mostly eco-fiction and hopeful dystopias (dystopias with solarpunk elements to them). Through its vision of our future, eco-fiction encourages conversations and an outward perspective. Eco-fiction can trigger a sense of wonder about the natural world; it may connect with our sense of loss or mourning—our solastalgia—for our changing home. Cautionary tales may nudge people to action and encourage alternative futures. Eco-fiction—whether told as dystopia, post-apocalypse, cautionary tale or hopeful solarpunk—can help us co-create a new narrative, one about how the Earth gifts us with life and how we can give in return. By encouraging empathy and imagination, eco-fiction reaches deep into our souls, where we care. It is only when we care that we act. I write more about this in my article “Why Writing and Reading Eco-Fiction Will Save the World—From Clifi to Solarpunk.”

On Changing the Narrative: I offered that we need to change our (North American society’s) current (capitalist) narrative of separation, “othering”, and exploitation toward one of participation, inclusion, and a nurturing spirit. Storytelling forms a key part of that overall narrative. That shift is happening in the emergence of a strong eco-voice by marginalized groups, those who would be most affected by things like habitat destruction and climate change. Centering the voice of the ecological other as a sympathetic character is a main feature of eco-fiction.

What we cherish, we protect. 

I write more about this in two articles that discuss character coupling to provide voice to the ‘other’, from excluded minority to the silent environment.

On the Emerging Solarpunk Movement in Toronto: When asked about whether there is a solarpunk movement in Toronto, I said absolutely! Solarpunk Toronto is an emerging movement focused on building a sustainable, equitable future through community action, green architecture, and renewable energy, specifically tailored for the city’s urban environment. It includes initiatives like sustainable fashion shows, community meetings, and innovative storytelling, aimed at merging environmental activism with optimistic technology. The mantra is to achieve a regenerative sustainable urban future.

I mentioned Lindsay Jane of the Solarpunk Scene (Youtube videos on Solarpunk projects in Toronto) and Ariel of Solarpunk Presents with podcast interviews on solarpunk efforts. People can find community on the Solarpunk Facegroup group. I also talked about the Toronto Solarpunk Meetup at the Centre for Social Innovation, where they practice “prefigurative life’: living as if the sustainable future already exists. Which it does, though not everywhere.

This reminds me of cyberpunk science fiction author William Gibson’s famous quote: The future is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed.

Examples of solarpunk initiatives practiced by individuals and small communities include the use of community gardens, setting up and looking after rooftop gardens or raingardens. Tenants can have a pollinator garden on their patio and set up a balcony solar panel (now very affordable). People are going electric; some are setting up solar rooftops or balconies. Groups and individuals are engaging in clothing swaps and sustainable fashion runways. Community-led trusts are involved in repairing items for reuse instead of adding to the throw-away culture. In my book A Diary in the Age of Water the diarist’s mother Una rides her bike all over the community, repairing all kinds of things for a community that has lost its ability to do so; something we’re losing in this digital age.

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On a Solarpunk Future: We discussed the feasibility of a city like Toronto becoming 100% solarpunk. My response was a wary yes. Of course it was possible. But, in my opinion, two things have to happen for this to succeed: 1) the willingness of individuals in a community to give up a consumer-led capitalist lifestyle and adopt a lighter gentler footprint; and 2) community and city leaders to be on board with it. The enthusiastic cooperation of leaders cannot be overstressed for a paradigm shift toward a solarpunk future to succeed.

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Artist’s concept of the marsh of the Jim Tovey Lakeview Conservation Area

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I gave two examples of small projects that succeeded because a community and its leaders cooperated to make it happen. One was the adoption of several climate solutions in Paul Hawken’s Drawdown by the Richmond Hill community, led by Liz Couture. The second example is Mississauga’s Morphology Project of 2017 to build a 26 hectare park and marsh creation (naturalization of shoreline and extensive marsh environment), inspired by Councilor Jim Tovey.

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Councillor Jim Tovey and Lieutenant Governor Elizabeth Dowdeswell (photo by John Stewart)

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A true visionary, Tovey ensured the project’s success and potential spread to other jurisdictions by documenting the stages of the marsh creation and changes to the waterfront. Aside from regular press releases and interviews, etc. he invited eleven professional photographers to photograph and exhibit how the marsh evolved over the years.

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Tovey invited me to contribute quotes from my book Water Is…The Meaning of Water and A Diary in the Age of Water to accompany the photos in each exhibit. The Jim Tovey Lakeview Conservation Area project was a huge success, largely because—apart from the obvious ecological benefit—it captured the imagination and interest of several communities and showed how the blending of environmental benefit and good-living can co-exist and flourish.

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Tovey invited me to contribute quotes from my book Water Is…The Meaning of Water and A Diary in the Age of Water to accompany the photos in each exhibit. The Jim Tovey Lakeview Conservation Area project was a huge success, largely because—apart from the obvious ecological benefit—it captured the imagination and interest of several communities and showed how the blending of environmental benefit and good-living can co-exist and flourish.

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Quote from “A Diary in the Age of Water” at the photography exhibit

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References:

Hawken, Paul. 2017. “Drawdown.” Penguin Books. 256pp.

Hawken, Paul. 2021. “Regeneration: Ending the climate crisis in one generation.” Penguin Books. 256pp.

Munteanu, Nina. 2016. “Water Is…The Meaning of Water.” Pixl Press, Delta. 584pp

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

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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 most recent novel “Gaia’s Revolution” was released in March 2026 by Dragon Moon Press (Calgary).

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A Diary in the Age of Water Featured in PhD Thesis on Heterogenous Being

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My eco-fiction novel A Diary in the Age of Water was recently discussed in a 2025 PhD thesis by Steven L. Ogden out of the University of Albany, State University of New York entitled: “Heterogenous Being: The Inhumanities and the Creative-Scientific Aesthetic.” I was fascinated by his stirring, well-researched dissertation that explored the dichotomous narrative separating human with non-human. A narrative that is changing—though very slowly.

Ogden’s PhD thesis advances a hybrid form of inquiry on “Heterogenous Being”1 that links the sciences with humanities to address the precarious realities of Earth’s ecological and environmental conditions; he does this by acknowledging the influences and agented potentialities of nonhuman subjects in narrative, both in fiction and nonfiction. “… 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,” writes Ogden.

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.

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Othering in 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, 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 science fiction it may be the hostile or unknowable aliens who must be defeated.

The irony of this way of thinking is made clear in Ogden’s introduction. 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.” He 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.

Through this new paradigm and approach, Ogden contends that “no longer can anthropogenic issues of climate change, trash vortices, deforestation, synthetic pollution, effluence, nuclear waste isolation, or species extinction be concealed from the majority of literary imaginings. Because as the trajectory of once passive, ancillary things and forces find an arena of greater articulation, the Anthropocene becomes an epoch whose hazards affect more than its namesake. Readers are afforded a larger moral and literary connectedness to a greater variety of relatable nonhuman subjects in the throes of this crisis, with that inhuman accordance likewise enlarging the terrains of their own ontological and epistemological perspectives as an ecomimetic strategy furthers the understanding of the nonhuman with each varied literary elaboration.” He adds that the “massive temporal and spatial persistence/distribution of anthropogenic nonhuman ‘hyperobjects’ like plastics, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or nuclear waste expands the probable aesthetic and political/ethical dimensions of the creative arts.”

Ogden concludes that in such a space of consideration (an allied creative-scientific aesthetic), an intermediacy is established between the literary arts and sciences in which “principal methods, qualities, and philosophies are openly exchanged, and a multimodal expression links the realms of simplified rationalism with pure allegory into a compounded composition of metaphor and description, myth and science, characterization and cause-and-effect, and poetic reveries and empirical rationalism.” This greater perspective expand dynamic probabilities for the inhuman world to experience agency and greater and more meaningful presence, what Ogden calls “a necessary heterogenous representation of both humans and nonhumans within the collective scientific and literary imagination…towards a more meaningful and affective realization.”

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How Eco-Fiction Empowers & Animates Nonhuman Subjects

While eco-literature overlaps with many genres, it appears to differ from SF and other genres portrayal of Other through its unique intention to give voice to otherwise voiceless characters, and it often does this through masterful use of character-coupling. Mary Woodbury defines eco-literature or eco-fiction as literature “made up of fictional tales that reflect important connections, dependencies, and interactions between people and their natural environments.” The environment—or an aspect of the environment—plays a major role in eco-literature, either as premise or as itself a character on a journey.

Eco-literature may go beyond raising awareness to link environmental abuse with concepts of jingoistic hubris; it may 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.

Eco-literature is particularly 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 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-fiction, such as The Overstory, Barkskins, The Breathing Hole, The Wiindup Girl, The Bear, Memory of Water, and Dune.

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A Changing Narrative

Acknowledging the early influences of animal studies rooted in biocentricity  (e.g. Carl Safina, Ogden notes that non-fiction representation of nonhuman life has 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.

In fiction, Ogden focuses primarily on the narrative of Overstory by Richard Powers but touches on other works such as Jeff VanderMeer’s writing. Says Ogden: “What moves The Overstory’s utilization of personification (of trees) … beyond some simple allegorical misconception of dendrological and botanical being is that the provided anecdote of a tree’s agency in the development of soil, weather, and atmosphere is entirely factual.”

Ogden notes that “Nina Munteanu’s A Diary in the Age of Water brings the seemingly mundane and inconsequential (what Emanuele Coccia refers to as “residual” objects) to the imaginary forefront within creative-scientific writing…In Munteanu’s limnological characterization of freshwater bodies…[this] creative-scientific work of literature enlarges and redevelops the hierarchy of the taxaonomic ranks originally set out by animal studies. [It] increases the principal tenet of the discipline’s genealogy to include the greater part of all biological (and even inorganic) life in its inhuman narrative.”

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Giving Voice to Plants ‘Othered’ to Silence

On looking more closely to the multiform agencies of plants, Ogden returns to Powers’ reference of a “gospel of new forestry”, and asserts that “whether it’s the writings of Suzanne Simard, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Emanuele Coccia, Michael Pollan, or Peter Wohlleben, the assumed contemporary bibliographic references in Powers’ novel alone illustrate the author’s appropriation of this gospel of new forestry. Ogden then adds: “These are creative-scientific hybrid forms and metamorphic figurations that have allowed the agency, narrative, and story of the plant world to become more meaningfully articulated, recognized, and appreciated in the modern moment. They are the informed meldings/hybridities (the issuances of comparative figurations, temporalities, and subjectivities of nonhuman agency) that stand as the antecedents of new and emergent metamorphic texts like The Overstory, and which “shift the terms of representation away from human subjectivity” by embedding new species into the storytelling process.”

Ogden argues that “Like Richard Powers and other creative-scientific writers, Westerford (Powers’s own character in The Overstory) understands 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.’” She realizes 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.’”

This is the silence 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. You’ll hear more about that book in later posts.

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Footnotes:

  1. 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.
  2. 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”.
  3. 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.  
  4. 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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References:

Descartes, Rene, et. al. 1998. “Discourse on the Method; and Meditations on First Philosophy.” Hacket Pub.

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

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

Latour, Bruno. 2017. “Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime.” Polity.

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

Morton, Timothy. 2013. “Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World.” University of Minnesota Press.

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” 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.

Powers, Richard. “The Overstory.” W.W. Norton & Company, New York. 2018. 502pp.

Said, Edward W. “Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient.” Vintage, London, 1978. 432pp.

Woodbury, Mary. “What is Eco-fiction?” Dragonfly.eco. 2016. https://dragonfly.eco/eco-fiction/ Accessed September 15, 2022.

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Mist over swelling spring stream, ON (photo and rendition 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 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.

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Recommended Books on Water

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Buried in Print recently posted their list of recommended books on their page: Read the Change (You Want to See in the World). My eco-fiction novel A Diary in the Age of Water was listed under Water.

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Recommended books on water (BIP)

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You can also read BIP’s earlier review of A Diary in the Age of Water here.

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Buried in Print book pile under “Earth Changes, Habit Changes” (BIP)

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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, an eco-fiction political thriller, was released in March 2026 by Dragon Moon Press.

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