Our current world—under the final shadow of climate calamity and environmental destruction—is steadily polarizing: politically, socially, and environmentally. Wealthy vs. poor. Privileged vs. indentured. Right vs. Left. Educated vs. illiterate. And so on.
This is the opposite of what we need—particularly to deal with the hyperobjects of climate change and environmental destruction; these require a united global intelligence and effort to address and overcome. Oddly enough, the hyper-destructive forces that we’ve unleashed are only intensifying our polarization as our capitalist paradigm encourages separation, segregation, and ‘othering.’ As more things go wrong, some look to lay blame. There is always the ‘Other.’
As there appears less to share, some greedily disparage ‘the other’ and take what they consider theirs in a version of Sonderweg—an elitist’s special and privileged path.
Polarization leads to lack of consensus, greater misunderstanding, violence and eventually to outrage. Polarization breeds fanaticism. Borne of deep frustration and fueled by relentless passion, fanaticism sparks violent change. We are seeing some of this today throughout the world: unhinged fanaticism, fed by growing polarization and exclusion. In Germany, the far-right fascist Reichsbürgers movement violently rejects the legitimacy of the modern German state. In the USA, far-right white supremacists and Christian fundamentalists incite domestic terrorist violence fueled by nativism, populism, anti-communism, and ultra-nationalism.
Eco-terrorism—from mild civil disobedience to destructive violence—is increasing in tandem. Eco-terrorism has increased by over 22% since 2017 as acts of radical environmental activism have steadily escalated into environmental warfare.
Amid all this violent foreplay between fanatics, the rest of us slide into a solipsistic brain coma as we stare mesmerized at our phones expecting godlike answers delivered uniquely to us by chatbots.
I recently read a commentary by Canadian author Cory Doctorow called “Hell is Other People” on Locus Magazine in which he characterized our AI-infatuated oligarchy:
A subset of humanity is committed to a world where everyone else takes orders from them. We have different names for these people. We call the majority of them “toddlers,” but we call the others “bosses” or “tyrants.” These latter two groups – who, unlike toddlers, are unlikely to outgrow their belief that everyone else should shut up and do as they’re told – are also among the people most excited about AI. What’s more, the more powerful these people are, the more credulous and enthusiastic they are about AI.
Among bosses, the most enthusiastic boosters are tech overlords. These billionaires will not shut up about AI, and, tellingly, the thing they’re most excited about is the fact that AI might let them fire programmers and replace them with chatbots.
While tech bosses look forward to AI replacing workers, social media bosses (like Mark Zuckerberg) look forward to AI replacing friends. How many of us are already relying on AI (which uses the first person narrative) to answer almost every question?
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According to Doctorow, “Zuckerberg hopes that bots will produce a social media service without socializing. If he can imprison you in a mirror-palace of chatbots, he can order them to say the things they calculate will make you keep scrolling, and he will owe them nothing.”
This, of course, aligns with the oligarch’s puppet regime, whose first directive is to remove opposition provided by independent-thinking people. Doctorow pithily describes it:
The broccoli-haired brownshirts from DOGE laid waste to the civil service, indiscriminately firing skilled workers who do things that America needs done. When asked to justify this vandalism, they said that those fired workers were superfluous to requirements, because “General AI” was just around the corner. The idea of creating and enslaving an artificial god is so attractive to them because it allows them to realize the fascist dream, in which every whim of their cult leader is instantaneously translated into action – without having to pass through the filter of skilled people who understand how things work.
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Ink cap mushrooms curling and deliquescing (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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Acorns line up beneath a red oak, Jackson Creek Park, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
I rock on the cedar swing on my veranda and hear the wind rustling through the gaunt forest. An abandoned nest, the forest sighs in low ponderous notes. It sighs of a gentler time. A time when birds filled it with song. A time when large and small creatures—unconcerned with the distant thrum and roar of diggers and logging trucks—roamed the thick second-growth forest. The discord was still too far away to bother the wildlife. But their killer lurked far closer in deadly silence. And it caught the birds in the bliss of ignorance. The human-made scourge came like a thief in the night and quietly strangled all the birds in the name of progress.—Robin’s Last Song
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My story Robin’s Last Song is an eco-fiction short story that follows Robin, a blind elder who uses sight-enhancing technology, as she navigates the aftermath of a sudden global extinction of birds that her digital app failed to predict. The story explores the conflict between nature and technology, as well as Robin’s journey to find hope in soundscape ecology. You can read the full story on MetaStellar Magazine or find it in the classic Apex Magazine Issue #128.
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Two magazines that published Robin’s Last Songand a previous version
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Soundscape ecology is a discipline in science that studies how all sounds in a landscape or ecosystem interact with living things over space and time. Considered an accurate reflection of biodiversity, it has emerged as a powerful tool to measure the health of an ecosystem. Soundscape ecology and acoustic ecology was first pioneered in Canada; in the 1960s, Canadian composer and educator R. Murray Schafer and colleagues at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver founded the World Soundscape Project to study the relationship of humans and their sonic environment. Later, scientists developed acoustic observation as a rigorous quantitative branch of landscape ecology.
In a recent interview I was asked how I came to write this particular story about birds and soundscape ecology; here’s my response:
Since I was a child, the burgeoning SF writer in me had dared to imagine a world without the sound of birds—I thought it utterly bleak and, recognizing an ever-polluting world, I feared for my feathered relatives. I didn’t follow through with a story until September 2019, when I was approached by Oliver Hockenhull, the guest editor of subTerrain Magazine, to write a piece on technology and the environment. The timing was interesting; I’d just read two impactful things that resonated with me.
The first was the October issue of Science Magazine that reported a staggering decline in North American birds. Kenneth V. Rosenberg and his team of researchers had estimated that three billion birds of various species had disappeared in Canada and the US since 1970. That’s a third of the entire bird population lost in five decades. To make it clear, we aren’t talking about rare birds going extinct; these declines are of common birds throughout the world. The wrens, sparrows, starlings, and, of course, the robins. I was devastated; I could not imagine a world without the comforting sound of birds. What would it be like if the birds all disappeared? This brought me back to my childhood fears.
The second article I ran across talked about an emerging bioacoustics tool, soundscape ecology, that measures biodiversity and the health of an ecosystem, mostly through bird sound which well represents ecosystem health. Bernie Krause, a soundscape ecologist who had been conducting long-term recordings for decades noted how the dawn chorus in many areas had greatly diminished if not vanished altogether.
I now had my premise and my connection with technology. The title of my original story for subTerrain was “Out of the Silence.” This story focused on the technical aspects of the premise and solution. When I was approached for a story in February 2021 by Francesco Verso, the guest editor of Apex Magazine Issue #128, I rewrote the story with a stronger focus on the protagonist’s personal journey and connection with the bird catastrophe, how she coped with Asperger’s syndrome and the failure of her tool to predict the disaster. Hence the change in the title to Robin’s Last Song.
I was already primed with research into genetic engineering for the sequel to my 2020 eco-novel A Diary in the Age of Water. I wanted to make the bird disappearance in Robin’s Last Song a dramatic catastrophe linked to our own dangerous ecological tampering. I had the notion of using a gene hacking disaster to create ecological calamity and how this might affect birds. I wanted to make Robin’s Last Song a realizable work of fiction in which science and technology play both instigator of disaster and purveyor of salvation. Our biogenetic technology comes to us as a double-edged sword in the form of gene-editing, proteomics, DNA origami, and CRISPR—just to name a few. These biotechnological innovations promise a cornucopia of enhancements: from increased longevity and health in humans to giant disease-resistant crops. But, for every ‘magic’ in technology, there is often unintended consequence. Unforeseen—or even ignored—casualties and risks. I suppose my ultimate question with this story is: will synthetic biology redesign Nature to suit hubris or serve evolution? Science doesn’t make those decisions. We do.
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Rachel Carson & Silent Spring
Rachel Carson and her book Silent Spring
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Rachel Carson was nothing short of prophetic when she published Silent Spring in 1962 (in reference to the dawn chorus most noticeable in spring during breeding). Silent Spring cautioned burgeoning ag-biotech companies (like Monsanto—now Bayer—Sygenta, Dow, and DuPont) who were carelessly and flagrantly spraying fields with pesticides and herbicides—at the time DDT was the main culprit. This would soon become a GMO world where gene-hacked plants of monocultures can withstand the onslaught of killer pesticides like neonicotinoids (currently killing bees everywhere) and Roundup. Roundup is a carcinogenic glyphosate-based weed killer that has recently been shown to kill beneficial insects like bees) and has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease, ADHD, birth defects, autism, and several kinds of cancerin humans.
Despite Carson’s warnings in 1962 and despite some action eventually taken (e.g. the ban on use of DDT in 1972—the precursor to Roundup and other neonicotinoids currently in use), the use of chemicals in big ag-industry has increased over five-fold since the 1960s. And this is destroying our bee populations, other beneficial insects, beneficial weeds, small animal populations and—of course—our bird life. And it’s making us sick too. Alarming signals suggest that Rachel Carson’s 1962 warning is currently underway.
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Soundscape Ecology
Soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause
“Soundscape ecology is a quick and easy way to assess the health of a habitat. We know that the richness of the soundscape is linked to the diversity and abundance of life in an ecosystem—from the smallest insect to a roaming bear and rustling tree…”
Jack Gopnik in Robin’s Last Song
The new science of soundscape ecology can analyze the health of an ecosystem. Jack Gopnik in Robin’s Last Song explains:
“All sounds, from trickling streams to singing birds, combine in a unique soundscape that represents a ‘fingerprint’ of the ecosystem. Ecologists divide these acoustics into three categories. Geophony describes natural processes like crashing waterfalls, tides, lightning, and earthquakes. Biophony describes the sounds produced by all living things from plants to insects to larger wildlife. And then there’s anthropophony, the sounds produced by human activities such as planes, traffic, and construction …
“Acoustic communication is crucial for birds to reproduce, feed, defend territories, and avoid predators. Birds use sonic territories or channel bandwidths to ensure their voices can be heard unimpeded by others. But soundtracks are changing. Bernie Krause—the originator of Soundscape Ecology—documented how a forest can flatline. He called it dysphonia…”
Bernie Krause, a soundscape ecologist who has been conducting long-term recordings recently noted that in Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, not far from his home in Northern California, “the effect of global warming and resulting drought has created the first completely silent spring I’ve ever experienced.” Stuart Winter at Express reports that “many of the iconic birds whose mating calls ring out across woodlands and open fields during early May are vanishing at an alarming rate.”
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Structures of Feeling & Climate Change
Abstract of McCumber’s paper
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In his paper “Structures of feeling in climate fiction” published in The American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Andrew McCumber used Raymond William’s concept of “structures of feeling’ as a cultural framework to study climate change as it is actively experienced in the present.
“Williams used structures of feeling to describe the distinctive quality of experience that characterizes a period, and to challenge us to consider how the personal, affective realm of “feeling” is implicated in social processes that transcend us.” McCumber used computational methods and qualitative analysis and followed Williams’ assertion that structures of feeling are most visible in creative work, to analyze short stories in the literary subgenre of “climate fiction. McCumber found a temporal shift in the works he looked at; he observed that they transitioned “between imagining the acute destruction of climate chaos and the possibilities of post-apocalypse.” He took these shifts to indicate underlying patterns in the affective social experience of climate change.
McCumber argued that the development of a fully-fledged sociology of climate change is challenged by the ambiguous temporality of the climate crisis. “Discussions of climate change are almost always implicitly discussions of possible futures, which can make it difficult to frame the contemporary phenomena we study in terms of it.”
Another difficulty is one of scale, said McCumber. “Climate change is at once ubiquitous and abstract.” A hyperobject. It requires, he argues, a combination of effective science communication and informed critical thinking to connect the localized destruction with larger global effects.
McCumber brings the theoretical and analytical perspectives of cultural sociology to both expand and advance the sociology of climate change. With its focus on processes of shared meaning making, cultural sociology “promises a window into how climate change constitutes a ‘social drama’ and functions as a frame through which our everyday lived experience is filtered.”
He makes use of Raymond Williams’s concept of “structures of feeling” to explore “the ever-changing and increasingly palpable lived reality of climate change.” Given how climate change “announces its presence unevenly in fits and starts, it is both important and uniquely difficult to understand how it is experience along with how that experience shifts over time.”
McCumber looked at several short stories from five prominent science fiction magazines (Apex, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Reactor, and Uncanny) and identified a notable shift in the evolution of climate-focused science fiction over the period from 2011 to 2024 as well as a general increase in climate fiction over this period.
McCumber identified three periods over that time: Period I, in which the human experience of climate change cedes the spotlight to a more expansive imagination of life and its potential future; Period II, emphasizing the acute, lived reality of humanity during climate change; and Period III, which emphasizes themes of symbiosis and ecological resilience that transcend human experience.
My short story Robin’s Last Song fit into Period II: “In the stories that characterize the period that bookends the May 2021 low-point in climate sentiment, the devastation of climate chaos (or in some cases an imagined corollary to this destruction on a fictional world) is front and center. While these stories vary in how optimistic or pessimistic their final dispositions vis-a-vis climate change are, acute ecological crisis or climate destruction tends to be central to the worlds they imagine and the action that unfolds. Thus, the structure of feeling of this period is shaped by the sense of loss that climate change entails…These stories explore the affective experience of this loss and pain.”
“The structure of feeling [of Robin’s Last Song] is characterized by a preoccupation with the acute pain of climate shocks and the dread of their imminent intensification… The title character, a soundscape ecologist, loses her sense of purpose and becomes a recluse after spiraling ecological destruction causes a sudden mass extinction of birds. Munteanu’s story dramatizes a form [of] loss engendered by climate change (extinction and biodiversity loss) mostly experienced as a gradual process by depicting it as sudden and traumatic:
I stood by the kitchen window, concentrating on reading the recipe for Diana’s birthday cake when a loud thwap made me jump. A bird must have flown into the window. As I looked out, another bird sailed into the window with a violent thud, leaving behind a red smear.
I rushed out the kitchen door and saw two starlings lying on the patio. Both had obviously broken their necks. Something made me look up. What I saw made my heart cave in: a dark cloud of starlings was raining birds. They fell from the sky, thudding and pelting into cars, and plopping on the ground. Some flew like drunks into buildings, trees, windows, and even people. It was a deluge.
Diana ran outside and I seized her in a tight embrace, sheltering her eyes from it all. The neighborhood rang with shouts, cries, and wails. It felt like the end of the world.
Heartbroken, I stood still like granite, pressing my daughter against me in a crushing embrace. In that moment made eternity, I knew. Then I burst into tears of despair.
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“There are certainly glimmers of optimism to be found in these stories,” says McCumber; “Robin’s Last Song, for instance, ends on a hopeful note when a surviving population of birds is discovered and the protagonist has renewed purpose. But the substantive trend that seems to best explain the dip in climate sentiment during this period observed in the computational analysis is the way the narrative timelines of climate change and the short stories themselves overlap. The stories’ plots take place largely within the period of the immediate, felt effects of ecological crisis. As such, the emotional register that typifies these stories emphasizes loss and dread.”
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Robin fledgling rests on a lawn chair (photo by M. Cox)
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References:
McCumber, Andrew. “Structures of feeling in climate fiction.” American Journal of Cultural Sociology, February 2026.
Munteanu, Nina. 2021. “Robin’s Last Song.” Apex Magazine, Issue 128.
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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.
Metastellar Magazine is putting out its “Best of” anthology for this year and my good friend and writing colleague Craig H. Bowlsby has a story in it. It’s one of my favourite stories of his and it has a fetchy title: “The Girl Who Was Only Three Quarters Dead.”
Bowlsby’s story was original published in the April 2022 Issue of Mystery Magazine and won the Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence for Best Crime Short Story for 2023. It was then reprinted in Metastellar Magazine and now appears in their 2026 “Best of” anthology, coming out later this summer.
This noir/dystopian story, set in Vancouver, BC, finds Suki prematurely awoken from an induced suspension between being alive and dead. With her retinas deactivated and her Government persona suspended, it’s up to her long-time friend and private investigator, Gabe, to uncover why she was brought back early and the way forward to recover her identity. Through the gritty and flooded streets of East End Vancouver and the mega corporations who control their entire existence, Gabe and Suki scheme to claim what is rightfully Suki’s.
Crime Writers of Canada
The story is set in the near-future in a post climate change Vancouver when sea level rise has water lapping decrepit buildings north of The Oak Street Bridge on Oak and 77th, Amazon owns entire roadways, and people pay corporate credits as currency.
One of the aspects of this mystery story that I found particularly attractive and interesting was Bowlsby’s use of cross-genre (mystery with science fiction), for which he indicated he has an affinity in his interview with Erik D’Souza with Crime Writers of Canada. I was reminded of the eco-techno thriller style of Hayden Trenholm’s detective series The Steele Chronicles, also set in the near future in Alberta Canada where biotechnology strays into the hands of corporate moguls and fundamentalist cults.
Bowlsby manages to cram both rich and seamless world building in his story (a feat in any short story), addressing mundane aspects of life, including the nuances of language (e.g. swear words suited to the time and place). Deadland, for instance, is a slang word that describes a government program that allows people to temporarily commit suicide, allowing them to place their lives on hold to supposedly help them escape their problems and supposedly better cope later (Bowlsby tells us rather pithily that it doesn’t really work).
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image by Marie Ginga, Metastellar
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When I asked Bowlsby in an interview what inspired this story and its post-climate change Vancouver setting, he said, “the germ … of this story came from a discussion I had with a friend, twenty years ago, who felt that everything in our society should be available for sale. For him that represented a pure state that would fix all our problems … I disagreed, but I wondered what it would be like if we started on that path. So as a social background, the characters are acting within a stage created for such a system—a system just starting to find its own steady legs. I don’t say it’s bad or good—I just give it free rein. The story itself came from other elements, but the characters’ difficulties are complicated by the hyper-capitalism. As for the climate change problem, and the flooding, that came naturally with the near-future time period; I’m afraid it’s going to happen no matter what we do.”
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For the latest on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
In 1962, Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring, which warned of our declining bird and bee populations and impacts to human health from unregulated pesticide/herbicide use (such as carcinogens and hormone disruptors). Carson’s warning was simple but important: that the pesticide DDT didn’t stay where you sprayed it. It moved through insects and the birds that ate them, bioaccumulating up the food chain, concentrating in fat tissue; it thinned eggshells of raptors until entire breeding populations collapsed. Her question was simply not whether the technology works as intended (e.g., as a pesticide—which it did rather admirably) but whether we have thought through all of its implications—e.g. unintended consequences to the environment. She exhorted the use of caution and further study before proceeding. Essentially, she was promoting use of the precautionary principle: that when a technology has plausible potential for serious harm, the burden of proof should fall on demonstrating safety, not on waiting for proof of damage after the fact.
It comes down to two types of risk: which is deemed most valuable and how they are measured. In my previous work as a field scientist and environmental consultant representing a client, we often based our formal hypotheses in statistics, which considered two types of error: Type 1 and Type 2 errors.
Type 1 errors are false positives: a researcher states that a specific relationship exists when in fact it does not. This is akin to an alarm sounding when there’s no fire.
Type 2 errors are false negatives: the researcher states that no relationship occurs when in fact it does. This is akin to no alarm sounding during a fire.
Put simply, environmental risk management assesses two types of cost through statistical probability: one to environment and one to investment. Risk analyses are often used in cost-benefit analyses in which the risk posed by errors as a cost to the environment vs a cost to revenue are assessed and balanced. Type 1 errors create false positives (that a cost to environment exists when there is little or none). Type 2 errors create false negatives (that there is no cost to environment when there is). Industry and their consultants mostly focus on avoiding Type 1 errors (while often ignoring Type 2 errors) to protect their investments.
Aside from attacking her personally as a woman, Carson’s critics focused on the benefits of the pesticide DDT and other agricultural chemicals in helping to feed the world, while ignoring the dangers. The industry and government argued that caution meant falling behind.
Thanks mostly to Carson’s warning, DDT was finally banned in 1972, ten years after her book was published; but pesticides with similar impacts (e.g. cancer-causing and endocrine disrupting to humans and fatal to some animals and insects such as pollinating bees) have continued to be used at an astronomical rate. The greater ecological lesson was ignored.
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Honey bee gorges on a thistle (photo by Nina Munteanu)
This same lack of an ecological systems approach is being applied to climate change. And to AI.
Natalie Shapiro, systems ecologist at Kings College London, warned: “Once AI agents are embedded in real-world infrastructures with communication channels, delegated authority, and persistent memory, new classes of failure emerge.”
The challenge we face in raising alarms about AI are that they are largely abstract and theoretical, through papers and computer models. This is very similar to the climate projections made for decades about the effects of climate change.
In February 2025, at the AI Action Summit in Paris, Canada, China, and most other countries signed a declaration committing to safe, secure, and trustworthy AI development. The United States did not, arguing that caution meant falling behind.
Vice President Vance announced, “I’m not here to talk about AI safety; I’m here to talk about AI opportunity.” Parroting what the chemical industry argued in 1962, Vance warned that regulation could kill a transformative industry. Indeed, every company developing AI is racing for that golden prize, hoping to be the first to reach the technological singularity: a system that can match or exceed human capability —without any consideration of what this might actually mean. Why this must be achieved remains inconceivable to me. To push technology to surpass us?
As Greta Thunberg so aptly said in her January 21, 2020 speech in Davos about climate change: “our house is still on fire and you’re fuelling the flames.”
This gold rush mindset—so iconic for Americans and so many who have gone to America to pursue the American dream (whatever that is)—will usher us into a world that is no longer ours. But then again, perhaps it never was …
Sun streams through mist on a forest path, Watershed Park, BC (photo by Nina Munteanu)
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For the latest on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.You can read her just released eco-fiction thriller Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press.
“Munteanu seamlessly blends real-life history and technology with tantalizing glimpses of the future’s drugs, diseases, and evolving concepts…Frighteningly plausible…”
My eco-fiction political thriller Gaia’s Revolution—released March 10 of this year—has already made quite an impact on readers and reviewers: from amazing accolades to outright pans.
I love the controversy!
The book that follows ambitious twin brothers and the woman who plays them has rightly caused a ruckus from its questionable and controversial main characters to a thrilling though notorious plot. Understandably, some readers hated the book, even as others thoroughly enjoyed it. Either way, the book can’t be accused of being mediocre or mundane (something I would detest in my writing).
Gaia’s Revolution “is a politically incendiary portrait of a civilization unraveling under climate collapse, historical trauma, and ideological extremism. Berlin, 2022. In a country destabilized by climate catastrophe and political extremism, activist Damien Vogel becomes the target of a violent state crackdown after protesting with Letzte Generation. As he uncovers long-buried truths about his family, he is drawn into conflict with his estranged twin Eric, whose ruthless plan for humanity’s survival threatens to sacrifice freedom itself.”
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Literary Titan adds that the story “widens into a future history of revolution, ideology, biotech, enclosed cities, and ecological control…The novel is Part 1 of The Icaria Trilogy, and it reads like both an origin story and a warning flare.”
The Prairies Book Review calls Gaia’s Revolution: “Dense, unsettling, and intellectually ambitious.” They describe the novel as “bleak, intelligent, and emotionally explosive.” They add that, “Munteanu crafts the novel as both climate thriller and philosophical inquiry, weaving ecological science, German history, and political paranoia into a narrative charged with dread and moral instability…Munteanu refuses simplistic moral binaries, presenting climate collapse as a force that destabilizes not only ecosystems, but democracy, ethics, and identity itself.”
Reader Neha Shukla writes on Goodreads that Gaia’s Revolution has a “strong message with emotional depth.” Shukla noted that “the emotional side of the story is very well handled.” Lily Thomass wrote on Goodreads that “what stood out to me was the emotional honesty of the story.”
Costi Gurgu, author of Recipearium and The Cursed writes: “Gaia’s Revolution may be the most extensively researched SF novel I’ve ever read…[the book is] so close to reality that it’s frightening.” Claudiu Murgan, author of Water Entanglement, enjoyed the “dynamic plot and interesting, well-defined characters.”
Steve Stanton, Canadian speculative fiction author of Freenet writes: “I love it when novelists tackle the big issues and take on big opponents, and in these perilous times there is no bigger issue than global climate change, and no bigger opponent than patriarchal capitalism. Gaia’s Revolution by Nina Munteanu begins in present-day Germany, where ecological activists are setting the stage even now. In Munteanu’s inspired vision, radical racism, anti-immigration activism, and ultra right-wing security forces will be a crucible fomenting world catastrophe.”
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Stanton adds, “The author uses some subtle stylistic variations for those readers who pay attention to details. The pace is varied, and the plot twists drive the narrative forward. I felt the beginning was a bit wordy with backstory and political philosophy, but Munteanu masterfully dovetails current political unrest and eco-activism into the worldwide dystopia of The Icaria Trilogy. As a prequel, this novel is an embellishment of sci-fi concepts developed very early in Munteanu’s career, but it is also the culmination of a body of work. For me, Gaia’s Revolution has been a delightful rediscovery of a talented Canadian voice.”
Reviews weren’t all positive; some oozed acid in their negative wrath. Why is Gaia’s Revolution eliciting this diversity of polarized reactions?
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Sophia Wasylinko of The British Columbia Review in part suggests why in her negative review: “The book hooked me at first with its look at a world hostile to environmentalists and deep ecological concepts. Unfortunately, once the brothers cross paths with deep ecologist Monica Schlange, things get messy. Both for them and for the book.”
Wasylinko particularly took exception to Monica’s character.
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Literary Titan describes Monica’s mercurial shapeshifting character as “a zealous deep ecologist, [who] becomes one of the book’s most dangerous engines: part savior, part tyrant, using damaged people…as instruments in her plan to remake humanity’s relationship with the natural world.” Wasylinko emphatically disliked Monica, which impeded her enjoyment of the book. The reviewer found that, “…as the story progressed, the more irritated I became with [Monica’s] sexual antics and ‘Tears for Fears’ references. While I probably wasn’t supposed to like her, I didn’t care for her at all.” Wasylinko ended with: “I won’t be continuing with the trilogy…I cannot cope with any more of Monica’s crooning Tears for Fears’ big hit of 1985, ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World.’”
Literary Titan provides another possible reason for the polarized reactions: “the book refuses to make climate politics tidy. It doesn’t give us a simple contest between virtuous activists and corrupt institutions; instead, it shows how righteousness can calcify into doctrine, how grief can become governance, and how ecological thinking can be twisted into a new authoritarian grammar.” The reviewer found that what unsettled them the most, “was the book’s interest in compromised people [who are not] arranged into neat moral bins. They are products of abuse, ideology, scientific ambition, terror, tenderness, cowardice, and survival.”
Kirkus Reviews adds that: “Political ideals clash as the world falls into chaos … the ongoing political war is frighteningly plausible, and some readers may struggle with deciding who the villains are. The author serves up lively discourse in which the characters offer no easy answers; Munteanu seamlessly blends real-life history and technology with tantalizing glimpses of the future’s drugs, diseases, and evolving concepts.”
In describing the diametrically opposed trajectories of twin brothers Eric and Damien, Prairies Book Review adds that, “Eric’s eco-authoritarian worldview is chilling precisely because it emerges logically from the same environmental realities driving Damien’s activism.”
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The book follows six key characters and a handful of minor characters—all with associated archetypes—and their journeys during this catastrophic time are complex and messy; a function of the chaotic time itself. I make no apology to Wasylinko for the messiness. Revolution is messy. In a time of hard choices, innocence is the main casualty. This becomes evident for all the characters in the novel—particularly the children—as fiction reflects non-fiction. In the end, no one is innocent and all are changed.
Gaia’s Revolution is best described as an exploration of violent change and its associated impact and paradoxes. This is something we will face or already are facing with the growing unruliness of global warming, environmental destruction, and planetary change. Gaia’s Revolution ultimately explores the diverse impact of revolution in an unsustainable world; perhaps it is only apt that its reception by readers is equally diverse.
Paradox and irony drive Gaia’s Revolution. Says Wasylinko: “Gaia’s Revolution shows how quickly utopia becomes a dystopia. Nowhere is this more evident than the [revolutionary] Gaian Army adopting the Technocratic government’s weapons, including terrifying clones, and … book burning.”
According to Literary Titan,Gaia’s Revolution “has the grain of a manifesto smuggled inside a thriller, a story with roots sunk deep into Rachel Carson, chaos theory, surveillance states, and the bad old habit of deciding that humanity must be saved from itself.”
Kirkus Reviews described Gaia’s Revolution as: “a bleak but fascinating portrayal of a near-future dystopia.”
Literary Titan recommends Gaia’s Revolution “to readers of climate fiction, eco-dystopian fiction, biopunk, political fiction, and science fiction readers who like their futures thorny rather than sleek. Readers who enjoy Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam books or Kim Stanley Robinson’s climate-minded fiction may find familiar pleasures here, though Munteanu’s novel is darker, more doctrinal, and more intimate in its wounds.”
“We must first destroy before we can create. We must be unruly like climate. We must be relentless like climate. We must ride that wave before we can become the wave.”—Eric Vogel, Gaia’s Revolution
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For the lates on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.Her latest eco-fiction novel Gaia’s Revolution was released March 2026 by Dragon Moon Press.
Gaia’s Revolution is Book 1 of The Icaria Trilogy, an environmental thriller released March 10, 2026 by Dragon Moon Press. This book wrote itself quickly and furiously over a few months. I wrote it in the back yard of a good friend one summer under a kind sun as I contemplated what life after capitalism would look like in Canada. I’d read Peter Frase’s book and considered his four options for the future. What I read chilled me. In some ways Gaia’s Revolution is my response.
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The Icaria Trilogy—A Brief Description
The Icaria Trilogy by Dragon Moon Press
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Gaia’s Revolution, Book 1 of the saga, starts in Berlin in 2022 as ambitious twin brothers Eric, a gifted engineer, and Damien Vogel, a brilliant scientist, escape the growing racial violence of Berlin, to ‘peaceful’ Canada in a rivalry to control the evolution of the human race (Books 2 and 3).
The warring brothers trigger a violent revolution that destroys the Canadian technocratic government with an eventual migration of humanity into the enclosed worlds of Icaria. While Damien is an intellectual and scholar, believing in Naess & Sessions’s eight basic principles of deep ecology, Eric uses the principles to enact merciless ‘solutions’ through brutal acts of eco-terrorism—ultimately risking humanity’s very survival. Fanatical deep ecologist Monica Schlange insinuates herself into both brother’s plans to orchestrate her own unique vision of the world. Three orphaned children, caught in the web of intrigue and violence, will ultimately determine the direction of humanity by introducing the first veemelds (people who can communicate with machines), a new environmental disease, and a new set of rules neither brother envisioned.
By 2095, after a dictatorship of deep ecologists called Gaians seize power, humanity has escaped an unruly environment by fleeing inside enclosed cities called Icarias, where they struggle with Darwin’s Disease—a mysterious neurological environmental pandemic. In truth, the deep ecologists are keeping people “inside” not to protect humanity from a toxic wasteland but to protect the environment from a toxic humanity.
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Ontology of a Revolution To Survive
Drawing on the unruly global environmental disturbances and poor leadership response, The Icaria Trilogy explores a collapsing late-capitalist society in Canada through ravages of climate change and a failing technology. Capitalism hasn’t been kind to the environment. Economic pundits and sociologists insist that Capitalism is devolving. But what will replace it? Cloud capital? Technofeudalism? Something else? For The Icaria Trilogy, I came up with technocracy in Canada, a social-capitalist meritocracy of technologists and social scientists who claimed they could take humanity through the changes to come. That system was, in turn, violently replaced by a revolutionary movement of radical deep ecologists called the Gaians, empowered by the growing toxic environment that eventually forced populations inside.
A hegemony that follows the hierarchal 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 to manipulate. The trees of the forest to cut down. Water to squander and pollute. Homo sacer to hate and fear. Each has a role to play in the late capitalist narrative of digital abundance and physical scarcity.
This world of late capitalism intensifies bilateral polarization—politically, socially, and environmentally. Wealthy vs. poor. Privileged vs. indentured. Right vs. Left. Educated vs. illiterate. And so on. By its very nature, Capitalism invites separation, segregation, and ‘othering’. This is the opposite of what we need—particularly to deal with the hyperobjects of climate change and environmental sustainability, which require a united global effort to address and overcome. Polarization tears the fabric of society apart. Polarization leads to lack of consensus, greater misunderstanding, rage and violence. And fanaticism. Borne of deep frustration and fueled by relentless passion, fanaticism sparks violent change—not always good or effective, but definitely subversive. This is what we are seeing today throughout the world: unhinged fanaticism, fed by a growing polarization and exclusion. In Germany, the far-right fascist Reichsbürgers movement violently rejects the legitimacy of the modern German state. In the USA, far-right white supremacists and Christian fundamentalists enact domestic terrorist violence fed by nativism, populism, anti-communism, and ultranationalism.
In the near-future Canada of The Icaria Trilogy, radical Gaians (deep ecology fanatics) destroy the technocratic government, take autocratic control and enclose and segregate the human population from the sacred environment, permitting it to heal.
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Is Revolution Enough?
In his book Four Futures: Life After Capitalism sociologist Peter Frase considers effects of climate change and automation in possible outcomes of a post-Trump election America. Frase envisions four scenarios based on abundance and scarcity and whether a society operates by equality and inclusion (e.g., communism under abundance / socialism under scarcity) or hierarchy and exclusion (rentism under abundance/exterminism under scarcity).
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Versions of all four of these systems are or have been either already in existence of are currently developing in the world. This evokes author William Gibson’s famous statement: the future is already here; it’s just unevenly distributed. An early example of rentism began during medieval times under early English capitalism when gentry enclosed land in what has been misidentified as “The Tragedy of the Commons.” The tragedy wasn’t in the commons, but in the loss of them as land reverted from being a common right of peasant farmers to private property under the restricting control of large landowners. It was the beginning of the concept of ownership and exclusion.
Given the currently growing scarcity of resources—lack of sufficient clean freshwater and rampant habitat destruction—the following scenarios are more likely to prevail: Socialism (if a society operates by equality) or Exterminism (if a society operates by hierarchy).
Socialism may arise within an egalitarian society if driven by altruistic notions of self-limitation. Ecologists describe such a self-limiting system as K-selected (see my discussion of K-selection and r-selection in my book Water Is…). A K-selected population operates at or near the carrying capacity of the environment and favours individuals that successfully and respectfully compete for resources and produce few young.
Exclusion within a hierarchical system lies at the heart of exterminism. The Western World’s current hierarchical model of elitist wealth inequality (driven by greed and resource scarcity) favours its elite oligarchs by ‘othering’ and repressing its labour/worker population. Within a late capitalist model, the hierarchy of capitalist/owner and labourer/worker is based on mutual dependence; however, as automation, various technologies and AI supplant human labor needs, the mutuality crumbles. In his Exterminism scenario of hierarchy and scarcity, Frase proposes that: “When mass labor has been rendered superfluous, a final solution lurks…”
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The Question of Survival …
Frase provides the final answer to my question in the title: “The real question,” writes Frase, “is not whether human civilization can survive ecological crises [such as climate change and habitat destruction] but whether all of us can survive it together, in some reasonably egalitarian way.”
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References:
Atwood, Margaret. 2004. “The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake ‘In Context'”. PMLA. 119 (3): 513–517.
Frase, Peter. 2016. “Four Futures: Life After Capitalism.” Verso Press, London. 150pp.
Gibson, William. 1999. “The Science of Science Fiction.” Talk of the Nation, Washington, D.C.: National Public Radio, November 30, 1999.
Munteanu, Nina. 2026. “Gaia’s Revolution, Part 1 of Icaria Trilogy.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 369 pp.
Munteanu, Nina. 2010. “Angel of Chaos, Part 2 of Icaria Trilogy.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 518 pp.
Munteanu, Nina. 2007. “Darwin’s Paradox, Part 3 of Icaria Trilogy.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 294 pp.
Sessions, George, Bill Devall. 2000. “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered.” Gibbs Smith. 267pp.
Thompson, E.P. 1980. “Notes on Exterminism: the Last Stage of Civilization, Exterminism, and the Cold War.” New Left Review 1(121).
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A small creek marsh reflects trees in a foggy spring morning, 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. 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.
A fanatical deep-ecologist, Monica Schlange, harnesses two orphans in her bid to reshape humanity and its place in the natural world.
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My novel Gaia’s Revolution, Book 1 of The Icaria Trilogy—which released March 10, 2026, by Dragon Moon Press—explores a collapsing capitalist society in Canada through ravages of climate change, water shortages, plague, and a failing technology.
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The story begins in Berlin in 2022, with maverick scholar Damien Vogel, a deep ecologist and environmentalist who joined the climate activist group Letzte Generation* to do acts of civil disobedience to bring public awareness to climate offenders. The novel progresses from acts of civil disobedience to genuine eco-terrorism as Damien follows his revolutionary anarchist twin brother Eric to Canada and forms the Gaians, a radical eco-activist group, recruiting fanatic Monica Schlange—herself a sly eco-terrorist. Monica is an unscrupulous deep ecologist, proficient in using sabotage and internet tampering to disrupt and hurt climate offenders. The twin brothers end up on opposite sides of a violent revolution as Monica—guided by her own agenda as an extremist planetary guardian—plays them both.
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The Icaria Trilogy by Dragon Moon Press
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By 2095 (Book 2Angel of Chaos and Book 3Darwin’s Paradox), humanity has fled inside environmental dome cities called Icarias*, chased inside by an unruly environment. Icarians struggle with Darwin’s Disease—a mysterious neurological environmental pandemic. Icaria 5 is one of many enclosed cities within the slowly recovering toxic wasteland of North America, and where the protagonist Julie Crane (daughter of one of the orphans in Gaia’s Revolution) lives and works. Icarias are run by The Circle, a governing body of deep ecologists who call themselves Gaians. The Gaians’ secret is that they are keeping humanity “inside” not to protect humanity from a toxic wasteland but to protect the environment from a toxic humanity.
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Ecology vs. Deep Ecology vs. Eco-Terrorism
Snow falls on a Scots Pine forest, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
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Ecology: Ecology is the science of relationships. Ecologists study ecosystems (aquatic and terrestrial), how they form, their structure and function, and how they relate to one another within the biosphere. Ecologists look at the relationship of all biota and non-biota, at individuals and communities, how all evolve (succession), at community richness, perturbations and recoveries, and natural enrichment. Ecologists model the flow of energy and cycling of matter over time and space.
Deep Ecology: Deep ecologists are usually ecologists themselves, who have adopted
An environmental philosophy and social movement advocating that all living beings have intrinsic value, independent of their utility to human needs. The philosophy promotes a holistic, ecocentric worldview—often termed “ecosophy”—that demands radical, structural changes to human society to prioritize nature’s flourishing. See the Eight Basic Principles of Deep Ecology.
Eco-Terrorism: Both ecologists and deep ecologists may grow cynical, seeing humanity as an existential threat, a virus that impacts the rest of life on Earth and exacerbates hyperobjects like climate change, loss of biodiversity and habitat destruction. This may lead to activism which some with a fanatical and destructive warrior spirit may move toward eco-terrorism such as criminal actions to halt development, and various acts of violence (e.g. arson, destruction of research facilities, threats against individuals).
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Ecologists, Deep Ecologists & Eco-Terrorists in The Icaria Trilogy
In Gaia’s Revolution deep ecologist / scholar Damien Vogel and his nihilist revolutionary twin brother Eric Vogel trigger a violent revolution and eventual migration of humanity into the enclosed worlds of Icaria. While Damien follows deep ecology as an intellectual and scholar, believing in the eight basic principles of deep ecology, Eric uses the principles to enact merciless ‘solutions’ through brutal acts of eco-terrorism. Deep ecologist / eco-terrorist Monica Schlange insinuates herself into both brother’s plans to orchestrate her own unique vision of the world. Monica differs from Eric in her sense of humanity; a consummate and ruthless eco-terrorist and subversive, she is bent on entirely destroying the capitalist-technocratic machinery of which Eric is a part—to save the planet at the expense of human domination.
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Damien and Christian Isabo meet to discuss recruiting her into their radical group:
Christian says, leaning forward, “She’s a bit of a wild card and possibly a genuine eco-terrorist. For instance, I discovered that she was behind the viral social media fiasco that embarrassed Prime Minister Robinson last year and almost cost him his seat. You know the one—those pictures of him fooling around with the German Chancellor, Magda Zimmermann, who’s married with two kids… Damien. I think that she’s extremely resourceful, stealthy, good at subterfuge and covers her tracks impeccably. Of course, there are definitely anger issues there. But, I also think we can count on her because her motives to help the environment lie on a deep visceral level, tied to her childhood experience and love of Nature.”
Damien studies her image on his phone with a thoughtful frown. He looks up at Christian. “What do we know about her?”
“Well, to begin with, she’s an only child and grew up on one of the last independent dairy farms in Ontario, near Guelph. Her father was strict and encouraged a strong work ethic and love for the natural world. He doted on her but died of a heart attack when she was only thirteen, the year their farm was seized by the Technocrats and converted into a Corporation Farm using scientific agriculture. In fact, their seizure may have precipitated the father’s heart attack. Her mother was assigned as a scullery maid in the farm kitchen; she took to drink then ran off with some truck driver travelling across Canada from Surrey, BC. He didn’t treat the girl well and she ran away before they reached Halifax. She ended up living with her aunt—her father’s sister—in the Beaches. The aunt worked as a librarian at York University and was a fervent member of Extinction Rebellion before it dissolved. She was a real bohemian, a deep ecologist herself, and encouraged the girl.”
While Monica shows the same level of dedication, she betrays a lack of integrity in her less than altruistic motivations and means, thinks Damien. The fact that she’s with Eric [his twin brother and nemesis] proves this. But even that—especially that—can work in their favour. It would seem that, without knowing it, she is already working as an undercover spy for their revolution. He can work with that, Damien thinks. Yes, he can certainly do that. And more. It’s my turn now, brother…
“OK. Set up a meeting,” Damien says. “Let’s get her into the fold.”
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Mist over swelling spring stream, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
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Leonard Crane—one of the three orphans impacted by the revolution and both rescued and tormented by Monica Schlange—studies ecology under new Gaian rule and is eventually inducted into the prestigious Department of Industrial Ecology (DIE) where he works on subversive ecological theories about Icaria’s inevitable demise and is eventually ostracised from the scientific community for his unpopular work. His legacy echoes throughout Books 2 and 3 of the trilogy.
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Books 2 and 3 follow Julie Crane (Leonard’s daughter), a self-taught ecologist. In Angel of Chaos and Darwin’s Paradox, her skills as an amateur ecologist (in a world where ecology is not taught) are tested by the ruthless deep ecologist Gaia, head of The Circle. Gaia denigrates Julie’s ecological pursuits as shallow and ineffectual. When a subordinate of hers asks her if Julie would make a good candidate for The Circle (the governing body of Icaria), Gaia scoffs:
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“You mistake a good scientific ecologist with someone who possesses a genuine empathy for deep ecology,” she said. Her eyes sparkled like sapphires. “No one enters our elite cadre without having impeccable qualifications and submitting to many more initiations than she is capable of passing. She may be an ecologist but she is not a deep ecologist. The science of ecology does not ask what kind of society would be the best suited to maintain a particular ecosystem. Our greater concern is with questions aimed at the level of organic wholeness and ‘Earth wisdom’. She knows nothing of these things.”—Gaia, Angel of Chaos
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Fog enshrouded marsh in early winter, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Munteanu, Nina. 2026. “Gaia’s Revolution, Part 1 of Icaria Trilogy.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 369 pp.
Munteanu, Nina. 2010. “Angel of Chaos, Part 2 of Icaria Trilogy.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 518 pp.
Munteanu, Nina. 2007. “Darwin’s Paradox, Part 3 of Icaria Trilogy.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 294 pp.
Sessions, George, Bill Devall. 2000. “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered.” Gibbs Smith. 267pp.
Skinner, B.F. 1948. “Walden Two” The Macmillan Company, New York. 301pp.
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Terminology:
*Deep Ecology: An environmental philosophy and social movement advocating that all living beings have intrinsic value, independent of their utility to human needs. Coined by Arne Næss in 1972, it promotes a holistic, ecocentric worldview—often termed “ecosophy”—that demands radical, structural changes to human society to prioritize nature’s flourishing.
*Icaria: the name of Étienne Cabet’s utopia. Cabet was a French lawyer in Dijon, who published his novel Voyage en Icarie in 1839. The novel was a sort of manifesto-blueprint of utopian socialism, with elements of communism (abolished private property and individual enterprise), influenced by Fourierist and Owenite thinking. Key elements, such as the four-hour work day, are reflected in B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two. Cabet’s novel explores a society in which capitalist production is replaced by workers’ cooperatives with a focus on small communities.
*Letzte Generation: a prominent European climate activist group, founded in 2021, known for its acts of civil disobedience—such as roadblocks, defacing art, and vandalizing structures—to pressure governments on climate action. The term was chosen because they considered themselves to be the last generation before tipping points in the earth’s climate system would be reached. They are mostly active in Germany, Italy, Poland and Canada. In Germany, they have faced accusations of forming a criminal organization, leading to police raids.
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Nina Munteanu is an award-winning novelist and short story writer of eco-fiction, science fiction and fantasy. She also has three writing guides out: The Fiction Writer; The Journal Writer; and The Ecology of Writing and teaches fiction writing and technical writing at university and online. Check the Publications page on this site for a summary of what she has out there. Nina teaches writing at the University of Toronto and has been coaching fiction and non-fiction authors for over 20 years. You can find Nina’s short podcasts on writing on YouTube. Check out this site for more author advice from how to write a synopsis to finding your muse and the art and science of writing.
Today my eco-fiction novel Gaia’s Revolution (Book 1 of The Icaria Trilogy) releases through Dragon Moon Press in paperback and ebook form on Amazon (and other book retailers).
Gaia’s Revolution explores a collapsing capitalist society in Canada through ravages of climate change and a failing technology. The story is told through the lives of ambitious twin brothers Eric and Damien Vogel, and the woman who plays them like chess pieces in her gambit to ‘rule the world.’ The novel starts out in Berlin—with a scuffle between police and climate activists of Letzte Generation-then moves to Toronto Canada, where an unlikely revolution is brewing…
This day is special for me in a number of ways. Today is also my dad’s birthday. He passed away a while ago, but I know he is here with me as this is happening. You see, when I was just 15, I’d written my first book, an early version of Angel of Chaos. My dad, who had met and befriended an editor at Doubleday, and proud of my accomplishment, arranged a meeting with me and the editor to look at my book. I put on my highest pumps—I could barely walk in them!—and best outfit and met with the gentleman. He did not take my book for publication but praised my work and gave me some wonderful advice. “Keep writing!” he said. I have carried that meeting and advice to this day and thank my dad for his belief in me as a writer—particularly given that he had been pushing for me to become a teacher or nurse. Four decades later, a more polished version of that same book was published in 2010 by Dragon Moon Press (as Angel of Chaos, the prequel to Darwin’s Paradox, which was published in 2007).
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Birch forest in Ontario (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
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The Icaria Trilogy by Dragon Moon Press
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Now, with newly written Gaia’s Revolution (the prequel to the prequel) released, Dragon Moon has reissued new covers for the entire trilogy. Here they are! Oh! And look who’s already reading Gaia’s Revolution!
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Aliens get to read everything before we do…
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Nina Munteanu is an award-winning novelist and short story writer of eco-fiction, science fiction and fantasy. She also has three writing guides out: The Fiction Writer; The Journal Writer; and The Ecology of Writing and teaches fiction writing and technical writing at university and online. Check the Publications page on this site for a summary of what she has out there. Nina teaches writing at the University of Toronto and has been coaching fiction and non-fiction authors for over 20 years. You can find Nina’s short podcasts on writing on YouTube. Check out this site for more author advice from how to write a synopsis to finding your muse and the art and science of writing.
Twin brothers—a brilliant scientist and a gifted engineer—escape the growing racial violence of Berlin, to ‘peaceful’ Canada in a rivalry to control the evolution of the human race.
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My novel Gaia’s Revolution, the first of The Icaria Trilogy—releasing March 10, 2026, by Dragon Moon Press—explores a collapsing capitalist society in Canada through ravages of climate change, water shortages, plague, and a failing technology. The story is told through the lives of ambitious twin brothers Eric and Damien Vogel, and the woman who plays them like chess pieces in her gambit to rule the world.
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The novel starts on December 13th, 2022, in Berlin, the day several members of the climate activist group Letzte Generation* to which Damien belongs, are raided by police who seize their computers and phones. Damien is a quiet scholar, an introvert and deep ecologist*, devoted to the teachings of Arne Næss and George Sessions, who promoted an environmental philosophy of eight basic principles of deep ecology. Næss and Sessions advocated that all living beings have intrinsic value, independent of their utility to human needs. Their philosophy has become a movement that promotes a holistic, eco-centric worldview demanding radical, structural changes to human society to prioritize nature’s flourishing.
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Road through a beech tree forest, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
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Damien later meets with his extrovert anarchist brother in Treffpunkt, near the university campus, and they argue ideology and revolution. Eric contends that the only way humanity will survive is to adapt to climate change by somehow overthrowing the bourgeois plutocrats through violent revolution: preventing the small ruling class carving out a comfortable life for itself while the rest of the world suffers terrible deprivation. Eric pulls out the worn copy of B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two from his jacket pocket, slaps it on the table and pushes it toward Damien. “That’s the answer, Dame.”
Each brother plans to create a new humanity: Eric’s plan is to control humanity through gene manipulation and behaviour engineering (aka Walden Two); Damien’s plan is to draw on deep ecology and use environmental triggers with biotechnologies to empower humanity with physical/chemical abilities to adapt to climate and its changing environment via transhumanist AI.
Neither addresses the elephant in the room: population. Only a much-reduced population will ensure success for either plan.
To this point, Eric, who is far more cynical and ruthless, thinks Damien naïve and feckless in his deep ecological view:
Damien too easily prescribes to the old leftist shibboleth of Nature being the answer to everything and Market being evil. His deep ecology utopia would spring from an atavistic rejection of modern life, a return to ‘the ancient farm.’ But how that fantasy could be achieved without a drastic population reduction is beyond his brother’s imagination. Damien fetishizes the natural world. Just like he does their mother. The naïve fool is a blind romantic, refusing to see reality right in front of him: that Nature is ultimately cruel, cold, and preoccupied with its own survival. Just like their mother.–Eric Vogel, Gaia’s Revolution
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Foggy morning on an Ontario marsh in winter (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman Life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes.
Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.
Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.
The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.
Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.
The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.
Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.
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Finn Slough old shed, BC (photo by Nina Munteanu)
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Eric plans to address the 5th Basic Principle of Deep Ecology—present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive and the situation is rapidly worsening— by using nefarious means to meet the 4th Basic Principle of Deep Ecology: the flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population and the flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease. With a reduced population, he plans to make the remaining principles (e.g. 6th and 7th) realizable through his behaviour engineering.
But Eric hasn’t accounted for fanatical deep ecologist / eco-terrorist Monica Schlange in his plan… (More on this shapeshifting character in Part 2).
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The Icaria Trilogy by Dragon Moon Press
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You can pre-order the ebook of Gaia’s Revolution by Dragon Moon Press on Amazon. Release date is March 10, 2026. The print version will release soon after. Book 2 (Angel of Chaos) and Book 3 (Darwin’s Paradox) of theThe Icaria Trilogy are already available in both ebook and print form.
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Oak leaves light up a dark pine forest in fall, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
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References:
Munteanu, Nina. 2026. “Gaia’s Revolution, Part 1 of Icaria Trilogy.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 369 pp.
Munteanu, Nina. 2010. “Angel of Chaos, Part 2 of Icaria Trilogy.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 518 pp.
Munteanu, Nina. 2007. “Darwin’s Paradox, Part 3 of Icaria Trilogy.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 294 pp.
Sessions, George, Bill Devall. 2000. “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered.” Gibbs Smith. 267pp.
Skinner, B.F. 1948. “Walden Two” The Macmillan Company, New York. 301pp.
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Terminology:
*Deep Ecology: An environmental philosophy and social movement advocating that all living beings have intrinsic value, independent of their utility to human needs. Coined by Arne Næss in 1972, it promotes a holistic, ecocentric worldview—often termed “ecosophy”—that demands radical, structural changes to human society to prioritize nature’s flourishing.
*Letzte Generation: a prominent European climate activist group, founded in 2021, known for its acts of civil disobedience—such as roadblocks, defacing art, and vandalizing structures—to pressure governments on climate action. The term was chosen because they considered themselves to be the last generation before tipping points in the earth’s climate system would be reached. They are mostly active in Germany, Italy, Poland and Canada. In Germany, they have faced accusations of forming a criminal organization, leading to police raids.
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Root-covered cedar-pine forest in early winter, 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 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.
