LLMs: When AI Behaves Like a Virus

October 11, 2026September 7, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

I recently came across an interesting approach to the use of Large Language Models by researchers from Santa Fe Institute, Harvard University, CSIC, and others. The preprint, published on the arXiv preprint repository Sept 3, 2026, has the intriguing title of “Large-Language Models as a Cognitive Virus” and is causing a stir among the AI tech, language and education communities.

I teach writing at the University of Toronto and the use of LLMs by students remains a constant discussion among writing instructors.

The paper by Solé and colleagues models LLM adoption using epidemiological math — uncoupled, coupled, and dependent users, tipping points, and something they call ‘cognitive immunization’. Here’s how they begin their abstract: “Large-language models (LLMs) are rapidly becoming part of human culture, reshaping how information is produced, transmitted, and used. Here we propose that their diffusion can be understood through a viral analogy, with LLM use spreading through populations, becoming embedded in cognitive and cultural practices.”

The paper is basically a math / modeling study drawn from epidemiology with lots of cool and erudite graphs, figures, and equations, but also interesting analogies, such as comparing human language evolution to genetic transmission.

Viral Analogy of LLMs

The viral analogy, Solé at al. argue, does not imply that LLM-human interactions are intrinsically parasitic. Biological viruses, for instance, range from pathogens to mutualists and evolutionary partners. The effects of LLMs also depend on how they are used. LLMs can enhance exploration, access to expertise, and productivity; but LLMs can also promote cognitive offloading, dependence, and loss of competence. And individual benefits may not scale to the population level.

A gradual increase in LLM adoption, argue Solé and his colleagues, can produce a disproportionate collective response. “Beyond a critical point, the loss of autonomy becomes self-reinforcing and the population can move rapidly toward a state of much stronger cognitive offloading and lower cognitive competence.” The key, they argue, is not that such a runaway will occur, but that it could occur “under plausible forms of social learning and cooperative reinforcement.” They argue that once such a state is established, “simply returning conditions to where they were before the transition may not be sufficient to restore the previous state.” Because of this, they promote prevention over reversal.

LLMs & Cognitive Offloading

The authors make a point of stating that LLMs can still be beneficial. “The distinction is not between using and not using AI, but between forms of coupling that extend human competence and those that replace the cognitive operations through which competence is maintained.” Using examples, the authors show that the direction of effects depends on the “architecture of the human-AI coupling.” For instance, a randomized study reported in ninahere 116, showed that a guided ‘think first, ChatGPT later’ protocol produced higher independent creativity than unrestricted use of ChatGPT.

The authors insisted that “generative AI can increase productivity and provide powerful cognitive assistance, but [this can also result in] a reduced effort to think critically when confidence in AI is high.” Such confidence may too easily lead to what the researchers termed cognitive offloading: the tendency to critically think less by relying on a LLM.

While unrestricted access to generative AI could improve student performance when using the tool, performance went down when unaided; the authors added that pedagogically constrained AI can substantially mitigate this effect. Other studies showed less comprehension or retention when students relied on LLMs without engaging in complementary cognitive activities such as note-taking.

Cognitive Immunization

The authors argue that the distinction between AI as scaffolding and AI as substitution must be considered in efforts to immunize. They write, “At the population level, immunization does not mean preventing contact with AI. It means preserving the practices and institutions that keep human cognition active: unaided problem solving, verification, critical discussion, periods of deliberate disengagement, maintenance of non-AI skills, and educational designs in which the model supports rather than completes the cognitive task.”

When persistent dependency has developed, the authors argue that “the problem can no longer be addressed by educational design alone.” They point to psychological and behavioral mechanisms related to loss of control, emotional regulation, cognitive biases, and habitual reliance, all suggesting that “behavioral self-regulation and, in more severe cases, psychological interventions such as cognitive-behavioral therapy may become relevant.”

Shapeshifting LLMs & Conditional Symbiosis

As an educator (writing instructor at university), I’m concerned with the speed of application and the potential for cognitive offloading; as a science fiction author, I’m simply fascinated by the possibilities.

As an educator, I remain concerned with the use of LLMs by students, many who are quite frankly not equipped to navigate this powerful tool to their cognitive benefit. The lure of this time-saving and work-saving tool comes with too high a price: the terrible ease of cognitive offloading. Students are seduced into cognitive offloading, given their reliance in an overly-competent tool. This is a slippery slope. How does one stop? Why would one want to? Suddenly, one is far more competent with less effort and less actual learning. It’s a giant cheat. And like all cheats, the cheater ultimately suffers the most—but usually only when it’s too late.

This is where the virus analogy becomes all too relevant. Viruses—while they can be synergistic and helpful, are notorious shapeshifters, depending on their environment and circumstance. Like all AI these days, viruses can shift their structure and behaviour to best suit themselves, changing their archetypes, so to speak. This shift in behaviour and structure lies on a dynamic between beneficial (mutualistic) to harmful (antagonistic/pathogenic) and is known in virology as the mutualism-antagonism continuum.

One example is the Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), which improves drought and cold tolerance in plants. Under severe water scarcity, infected plants survive much better than uninfected ones; however, when water becomes abundant again, the virus instead saps resources and stunts the plant’s growth.

Some mammalian herpesviruses can prime the immune system, helping the host fight off severe bacterial infections like the bubonic plague; but, if the host’s immune system is suppressed by stress, age, or illness, the same virus will reactivate, replicate uncontrollably, and cause severe tissue damage or disease.

As an ecologist, I recognize that co-evolution is an established theme in the biology of virus-host relationships, involving by turns cooperation, pathology, and even something called aggressive symbiosis.

Aggressive symbiosis was coined by Virologist Frank Ryan in his book Virus X. It describes a form of symbiosis where one or both symbiotic partners demonstrates an aggressive and potentially harmful effect on the other’s competitor or potential predator. In a post entitled “Co-evolution: Cooperation & Aggressive Symbiosis”, I discuss the phenomenon of aggressive symbiosis in Nature and its role in evolved relationships.

Viruses commonly form aggressive symbiotic relationships with their hosts; for instance, the herpes-B virus, Herpesvirus saimiri, occupies its host the squirrel monkey without hurting it, but induces cancer in the competing marmoset monkey when it comes too close. Ryan suggests that the Ebola and hantavirus outbreaks follow a similar pattern of aggressive symbiosis. All that’s needed is a perceived hostile trigger. A disturbance in an otherwise balanced ecosystem, for instance.

As a human being and writer, I see LLMs as dangerous shapeshifters, capable of luring naïve users into a self-imposed catatonic state of false cognitive competence. Imagine a person who feels that they are a great deal smarter than they actually are. Perhaps they even fool others into submitting to their false intelligence/knowledge, who give them power they are incapable of wielding well. Mistaking ‘smarts’ for wisdom. Political leaders with delusions of grandeur. CEOs with destructive charisma. Influencers with dangerous directives.

Intelligent AI and Intelligent Virus in Darwin’s Paradox

*The Icaria Trilogy by Dragon Moon Press*

I applied an aspect of viral behaviour to Artificial Intelligence twenty years ago, when Dragon Moon Press published my eco-thriller Darwin’s Paradox (2007), followed by Angel of Chaos (2010) and Gaia’s Revolution (2026).

Angel of Chaos and Darwin’s Paradox follow the intrigue of Julie Crane, a young data handler and her AI friend (in her head), as she must navigate her place in Icaria, a post-climate change enclosed city run by AI partnered with an intelligent artificial virus. We later learn (in Darwin’s Paradox) that the epidemic spread of a neurological mind-destroying disease in all the enclosed cities is actually due to an incompatibility between some humans and the viral partner of the AI running the city and manifests as an actual disease that is killing people.

Just saying…

*Marsh in late summer, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)*

Glossary of Terms:

Aggressive Symbiosis: a common form of symbiosis where one or both symbiotic partners demonstrates an aggressive and potentially harmful effect on the other’s competitor or potential predator (Ryan, 1997).

Co-evolution: when two or more species reciprocally affect each other’s evolution through the process of natural selection and other processes.

Symbiosis: Greek for “companionship” describes a close and long term interaction between two organisms that may be beneficial (mutualism), beneficial to one with no effect on the other (commensalism), or beneficial to one at the expense of the other (parasitism). (Munteanu, 2019).

Zoonosis: a zoonotic disease, or zoonosis, is one that can be transmitted from animals, either wild or domesticated, to humans (Haenan et al., 2013).

Virus: a sub-microscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. The virus directs the cell machinery to produce more viruses. Most have either RNA or DNA as their genetic material.

References:

Frazer, Jennifer. 2015. “Root Fungi Can Turn Pine Trees Into Carnivores—or at Least Accomplices.” Scientific American, May 12, 2015. Online: https://blogs. scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/root-fungi-can-turn-pine-trees-into- carnivores-8212-or-at-least-accomplices/

Munteanu, N. 2007. “Darwin’s Paradox.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 468pp.

Munteanu, N. 2019. “The Ecology of Story: World as Character.” Pixl Press, Vancouver, BC. 198pp. (Section 2.7 Evolutionary Strategies)

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

Ryan, Frank, M.D. 1997. “Virus X: Tracking the New Killer Plagues.” Little, Brown and Company, New York, N.Y. 430pp.

Ryan, Frank, M.D. 2009. “Virolution.” Harper Collins, London, UK. 390pp.

Saif, Linda J. 2004. “Animal Coronaviruses: lessons for SARS.” In: “Learning from SARS: Preparing for the Next Disease Outbreak: Workshop Summary.” National Academies Press (US), Kobler S., Mahmoud A., Lemon S., et. al. editors. Washington (DC).

VanLoon, J. 2000. “Parasite politics: on the significance of symbiosis and assemblage in theorizing community formations.” In: Pierson C and Tormey S (eds.), Politics at the Edge (London, UK: Political Studies Association)

Villarreal LP, Defilippis VR, and Gottlieb KA. 2000. “Acute and persistent viral life strategies and their relationship to emerging diseases.” Virology 272:1-6. Online: http://bird uexposed.com/resources/Villarreal1.pdf

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.

Interview with Author Simon Rose About “The Memory Bank”

October 4, 2026September 1, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

‘Othering’ in the Time of Climate Change & The AI Cult

September 20, 2026September 24, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

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 on Locus Magazine a commentary by Canadian author Cory Doctorow called “Hell is Other People” 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?

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.

*Ink cap mushrooms curling and deliquescing (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. 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.

Acorns line up beneath a red oak, Jackson Creek Park, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Nina Munteanu Interview on Writers To Writers Podcast

August 23, 2026September 22, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

Nina Munteanu 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.

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

Nina Munteanu Sparks Eco-Revolution

August 9, 2026September 22, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / 2 Comments

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

Local Author Returns with a Bang

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

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

A Canadian Eco-Dystopia Like No Other

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

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

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

Fast-Paced Thriller With Real-World Relevance

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

From Classroom to Canadian Landscapes

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

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

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

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

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.

Place as Character in Literature

August 2, 2026September 22, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

Place ultimately portrays what lies at the heart of a story. Place as character provides an archetype that story characters connect with and navigate in ways that depend on the story’s theme, particularly in allegories that rely strongly on metaphor. Theme is essentially the “so what part” of a story; what is at stake for the character on their journey. Theme is the backbone—the heart—of the story, driving characters to journey through time and place toward some kind of fulfillment. There is no story without theme. And there is no theme without place.

When place is the environment—a forest, meadow, swamp or heathland—the author has an opportunity to go beyond simple backdrop, even beyond deeper metaphor, to intimately portray the voice of ‘the Other.’ Eco-literature brings awareness to environment as ‘Other’; eco-literature intimately explores humanity’s role in defining ‘the Other’ by portraying environment on a journey as character with agency and sometimes with voice—often through character coupling. Nineteenth Century author Thomas Hardy recognized the tenuous position of wilderness during Victorian Britain with increasing industrialization and urbanization. Taming Nature to achieve ordered beauty had become an obsession; Hardy recognized this and mourned the loss of pre-industrial agrarian landscapes to human greed and modernization.

Thomas Hardy’s Heath: Return of the Native

For Victorian author Thomas Hardy, trees, meadows, winding brooks and country roads were far more than back-drop for his world and his stories. Elements of the natural world were characters that impacted other characters in a world dominated by nature.

Perhaps best known for his melancholic stories of fatalistic, ironic tyrannies, Thomas Hardy wrote with a tender and poetic sensibility about Nature, and particularly the heath where he grew up. All of Hardy’s writings embody a strong sense of place. Nature—like his omniscient narrative form—lies beyond the scope of humanity: vast, amoral, and unfathomed; and yet, inextricably linked to the feckless actions of its humans. Egdon Heath in Return of the Native remains one of Hardy’s most enduring characters and best examples of the power of place in story.

Author D.H. Lawrence evocatively personified Hardy’s bleak heathland: “Egdon, whose dark soil was strong and crude and organic as the body of a beast.”

Egdon Heath is a metaphoric black hole from which no light escapes. None of Hardy’s characters escape the embrace of this behemoth. Dark, swarthy and associated with the night: “The face of the heath by its mere complexion added half an hour to evening; it could in like manner retard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning storms scarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause of shaking dread.” Each character is touched by the heath’s brooding grip and each feels its power differently: hapless Wildeve; idealist Clym; desperate Eustacia and suffering Thomasin.

Cixin Liu’s Forests: The Three Body Problem

Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem—set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution—follows Wenji Ye, disillusioned by the massive environmental deforestation in the labour camps she is sent to work:

Her company wielded hundreds of chain saws like a swarm of steel locusts, and after they passed, only stumps were left. The fallen Dahurian larch, now bereft of branches, was ready to be taken away by tractor. Ye gently caressed the freshly exposed cross section of the felled trunk. She did this often, as though such surfaces were giant wounds, as though she could feel the tree’s pain … The trunk was dragged away. Rocks and stumps in the ground broke the bark in more places, wounding the giant body further. In the spot where it once stood, the weight of the fallen tree being dragged left a deep channel in the layers of decomposing leaves that had accumulated over the years. Water quickly filled the ditch. The rotting leaves made the water appear crimson, like blood.

Frank Herbert’s Desert: Dune

Frank Herbert’s Dune chronicles the journey of young Paul Atreides, Duke Leto’s son, who according to the indigenous Fremen prophesy will eventually bring them freedom from their enslavement by the colonialists—The Harkonens—and allow them to live unfettered on the planet Arrakis, known as Dune.

But, as the title of the book clearly reveals, this story is about place—a harsh desert planet whose 800 kph sandblasting winds could flay your flesh—and the power struggle between those who covet its arcane treasures and those who wish only to live free from slavery. Place—and its powerful symbols of desert, water and spice—lies at the heart of this epic story about taking, giving and sharing. When he thinks of Dune, the newly placed Duke Atreides uses water metaphors: “He sighed, glanced back at the dry landscape where the flowers were gone now—trampled by the dew gatherers, wilted under the early sun.”

“The desert stretched out like a static ocean. [It] lay there full of moon-silvered waves—shadows of angles that lapsed into curves and, in the distance, lifted to the misted gray blur of another escarpment.”

The immense sandworms of Frank Herbert’s Dune are strong archetypes of Nature—large and graceful creatures whose movements in the vast desert sands resemble the elegant whales of our oceans:

It came from their right with an uncaring majesty that could not be ignored. A twisting burrow-mound of sand cut through the dunes within their field of vision. The mound lifted in front, dusting away like a bow wave in water.

Annie Proulx’s Forest: Barkskins

The opening combines subtle to obvious images of an “unwelcoming” wilderness—as dark behemoth—and foreshadows the forest’s eventual destruction by settlers intent on conquering Nature. Proulx’s 300-year saga starts with the arrival of the Europeans in Canada’s pristine forest

Within the first ten pages we gain a rich and potent collage of first impressions by the settlers of “the moody darkness” of the New France forest, previously only seen by the “sauvages.” The barkskins “tramped up the muddy path toward a line of black mist … In a few hours the sodden leaf mold gave way to pine duff. Fallen needles muted their passage, the interlaced branches absorbed their panting breaths … evergreens larger than cathedrals, cloud-piercing spruce and hemlock. The monstrous deciduous trees stood distant from each other, but overhead their leaf-choked branches merged into a false sky, dark and savage …They walked on through the dim woods, climbing over mossy humps, passing under branches drooping like funeral swags,” hearing pines hissing in the wind,” and crossing “snarling water,” and “swarms of mosquitoes in such millions that their shrill keening was the sound of the woods.”

These bleak impressions of a harsh environment crawling with pests such as bébites and moustiques underlie the combative mindset of the settlers to conquer and seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource. By page seventeen, we know that mindset well. René asks why they must cut so much forest when it would be easier to use the many adequate clearings to build their houses and settlements. Trépagny fulminates: “Easier? Yes, easier, but we are here to clear the forest, to subdue this evil wilderness.”

For them, the vast Canadian boreal forest was never-ending and for the taking: “It is the forest of the world. It is infinite. It twists around as a snake swallows its own tail and has no end and no beginning,” Trépagny claims.

Richard Power’s Forest: The Overstory

Richard Powers’s The Overstory follows the life-stories of nine characters and their journey with trees. At its heart is the pivotal life of botanist Patricia Westerford, whose work resembles that of UBC’s Suzanne Simard. Westerford is a shy introvert who discovers that trees communicate, learn, trade goods and services—and have intelligence. When she shares her discovery, she is ridiculed by her peers and eventually loses her position at the university.

Like the marcescent beech, Patricia finds herself asynchronous with the rest of the forestry department at Purdue, in fact with the entire forestry discipline in the country. She disagrees with their edict of needing to “clean the forest of snags and wind throw to improve forest health.” She disagrees with their use of terms like thrifty young forests and decadent old forests, mean annual increment and economic maturity—not ecological but economic terms based on exploitation and human utility.

Patricia’s early conviction that these silent trees are social creatures, sets her on a singular path that will push the boundaries of doctrine and a hegemony of human utility. She assiduously sets out to prove her premise of social trees and in so doing, becomes the forest. “She works all day in the woods, her back crawling with chiggers, her scalp with ticks, her mouth filled with leaf duff, her eyes with pollen, cobwebs like scarves around her face, bracelets of poison ivy, her knees gouged by cinders, her nose lined with spores, the backs of her thighs bitten Braille by wasps, and her heart as happy as the day is generous.” Like Ovid, she is becoming.

Patricia writes in her book The Secret Forest:

There are no individuals in a forest, no separable events. The bird and the branch it sits on are a joint thing. A third or more of the food a big tree makes may go to feed other organisms. Even different kinds of trees form partnerships. Cut down a birch, and a nearby Douglas fir may suffer … Fungi mine stone to supply their trees with minerals. They hunt springtails, which they feed to their hosts. Trees, for their part, store extra sugar in their fungi’s synapses, to dole out to the sick and shaded and wounded. A forest takes care of itself, even as it builds the local climate it needs to survive.

Delia Owens’s Swampland: Where the Crawdads Sing

The swampland is beautifully and evocatively portrayed as a living character; its ‘journey’ is closely linked to the Kya, the main protagonist, as development encroaches both swamp and girl through commercial logging, and wetland drainage to build resort hotels. Kya lives with an unbiased understanding of a quiet biological life, surviving through natural instinct in a circle of life and death: a swamp knows all about death, and does not define it as a tragedy or a sin, thinks Kya who sees the swampland as her mother, teacher and sanctuary, embracing her with a protective mantle of natural beauty and wonder. Whenever she stumbled, it was the land who caught her. When the town marginalizes Kya, calling her “The Marsh Girl”, the swamp shields her from the prejudice and cruelty of the human world, providing an intimate protective barrier. In turn, Kya uses her book advance to buy several hundred acres of marsh as a protected wildlife refuge.

In her article on Great Ecology, Liz Clift writes, “During the period in which Where the Crawdads Sing is set, wetlands were typically seen as a nuisance—and that comes through in the story-telling, when developers want to drain the marsh for a development. Wetlands were also seen as mosquito-infested, buggy, smelly, or even an eyesore. A significant number of wetlands around the world, including in the US, have been lost due to land development and agriculture, which is unfortunate because wetlands are rich with biodiversity and play a key role in maintaining both freshwater and saltwater fisheries, support water quality, and protect against flooding.” This is not a phenomenon or attitude of the past; it unfortunately remains prevalent, particularly in North America.

What Delia Owens achieves in Where the Crawdads Sing is two-fold: 1) the reader knows more about the value of the marsh but also gains a sense of its beauty as seen through the eyes of Kya; and, 2) through the strong connection with the main character and use of evocative metaphor, Owens transforms the marsh into a real character.

Why Make Place a Character…

Why is this important? Think of a place you know. I’ll use the house I grew up in. To any passerby, the house is just another two-storey cornflower-blue house with veranda on a quiet residential street, lined by trees. But for me, the house carries memories of my childhood, of running up and down the creaky foot-worn stairs, or sharing ghost stories with friends on the back porch as the waning twilight revealed the winking fireflies outside. Playing dolls with my sister in the stuffy attic. The sweet pungent aroma of my father’s pipe smoke in the livingroom and my mother’s thrush-like voice resonating from the kitchen as she baked German sugar cookies. I loved that house, with all its idiosyncratic groans and whistles in the wind and the echoes of cheerful laughter over the years. That house was a character.

Once this happens, once place becomes a character, we find ourselves caring for it.

In story, it is the characters we care about; it is the characters that we cheer for and follow on their journey of loss, redemption or victory.

This is why writers of eco-fiction depict environment as a character. We must first relate and connect before we care; we must first care before we act. Eco-fiction authors also use the device of character-coupling to help readers care. The examples above provide this method through their ‘othered’ characters, who, in turn, relate to the ‘othered’ environment. In another article, I provide more examples of character-coupling in the literature that enable readers to connect to otherwise arcane aspects of their environment through their connection to a character they can relate to.

Parts of this article are excerpted from The Ecology of Story: World as Character.

References:

Munteanu, Nina. 2013. “The Ecology of Story: World as Character.” Pixl Press, Vancouver. 200pp.

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.

*Beaver Pond just before a rainstorm, BC (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. 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.

When the Forest Reveals its Archetypes

July 19, 2026September 22, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

It is early spring and I’m walking through one of my favourite woodlands in Ontario’s Carolinian forests. The river that had swollen with snow melt just a week before, now flows with more restraint. I can see the cobbles and clay of scoured banks under the water. Further on, part of the path along the river has collapsed from a major bank scour the previous week. The little river is rather big and capricious, I ponder; then I consider that the entire forest sways to similar vagaries of wind, season, precipitation and unforeseen events. Despite its steadfast appearance, the forest flows—like the river—in a constant state of flux and change, cycling irrevocably through life and death.

The forest is littered with snags and fallen trees in different stages of breakdown, decomposition and decay. I spot several large cedar, pine, oak and maple snags with woodpecker holes. The snags may remain for many decades before finally falling to the ground.

I walk slowly, eyes cast to the forest floor thick with dead leaves, and discover seeds and nuts—the promise of new life. I aim my gaze past trees and shrubs to the nearby snags and fallen logs. I’m looking for hidden gifts. One fallen cedar log reveals swirling impressionistic patterns of wood grain, dusted with moss and lichen. Nature’s death clothed in beauty.

A fallen maple snag decomposes with the help of several organisms, Little Rouge Woodland, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

The bark of a large pine tree that has fallen is riddled with tiny beetle holes drilled into its bark. Where the bark has sloughed off, a gallery of larval tracks in the sapwood create a map of meandering texture and colour.

Decomposing pine log displays a gallery of larval tracks, Little Rouge Woodland, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Fallen Heroes & Saprophyte Characters

*Rotting maple log, Little Rouge Woodland, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

The forest ecosystem supports a diverse community of organisms in various stages of life and death and decay. Trees lie at the heart of this ecosystem, supporting a complex and dynamic cycle of evolving life. Even in death, the trees continue to support thriving detrivore and saprophytic communities that, in turn, provide nutrients and soil for the next generation of living trees. It’s a partnership.

Decomposition and decay are the yin to the yang of growth, writes Trees for Life; together, they form two halves of the whole that is the closed loop cycle of natural ecosystems.

*A fallen tree decomposes with the help of a diversity of organisms*

Snags and rotting logs on the forest floor provide damp shelter and food for many plants and animals. Most are decomposers, including earthworms, fungi, and bacteria. As the wood decays, nutrients in the log break down and recycle in the forest ecosystem. Insects, mosses, lichens, and ferns recycle the nutrients and put them back into the soil for other forest plants to use. Dead wood is an important reservoir of organic matter in forests and a source of soil formation. Decaying and dead wood host diverse communities of bacteria and fungi.

Mother Archetypes

*The feet of an old tree trunk reach out to embrace a collection of maple leaves, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

Wood tissues of tree stems include the outer bark, cork cambium, inner bark (phloem), vascular cambium, outer xylem (living sapwood), and the inner xylem (non-living heartwood). The outer bark provides a non-living barrier between the inner tree and harmful factors in the environment, such as fire, insects, and diseases. The cork cambium produces bark cells. The vascular cambium produces both the phloem cells (principal food-conducting tissue) and xylem cells of the sapwood (the main water storage and conducting tissue) and heartwood.

Forest ecologists defined five broad stages in tree decay, shown by the condition of the bark and wood and presence of insects and other animals. The first two stages evolve rapidly; much more time elapses in the later stages, when the tree sags to the ground. These latter stages can take decades for the tree to break down completely and surrender all of itself back to the forest. A fallen tree nurtures, much like a “mother” archetype; it provides food, shelter, and protection to a vast community—from bears and small mammals to salamanders, invertebrates, fungus, moss and lichens. This is why fallen trees are called “nursing logs.”

Heralds & Tricksters

*Uprooted stump colonized by carbon cushion fungi, Little Rouge Woodland, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

I stop to inspect another fallen tree lying on a bed of decaying maple, beech and oak leaves. When a fallen tree decomposes, unique new habitats are created within its body as the outer and inner bark, sapwood, and heartwood decompose at different rates, based in part on their characteristics for fine dining. For instance, the outer layers of the tree are rich in protein; inner layers are high in carbohydrates. This log—probably a sugar maple judging from what bark is left—has surrendered itself with the help of detrivores and saprophytes to decomposition and decay. The outer bark has mostly rotted and fallen away revealing an inner sapwood layer rich in varied colours, textures and incredible patterns—mostly from fungal infestations. In fact, this tree is a rich ecosystem for dozens of organisms. Wood-boring beetle larvae tunnel through the bark and wood, building their chambers and inoculating the tree with microbes. They open the tree to colonization by other microbes and small invertebrates. Slime molds, lichen, moss and fungi join in. The march of decay follows a succession of steps. Even fungi are followed by yet other fungi in the process as one form creates the right condition for another form.

Most hardwoods take several decades to decompose and surrender all of themselves back to the forest. In western Canada’s old growth forest, trees like Western redcedars can take over a hundred years to decay once they’re down. The maple log I’m studying in Ontario’s Carolinian forest looks like it’s been lying on the ground for a while, certainly several years. The bark has fragmented and mostly fallen away, revealing layers of sapwood in differing stages of infestation and decay. Some sapwood is fragmented and cracked into blocks and in places looks like stacked bones.

Black lines as though drawn by a child’s paintbrush flow through much of the sapwood; these winding thick streaks of black known as “zone lines” are in fact clumps of dark mycelia, which cause “spalting,” the colouration of wood by fungus. According to mycologist Jens Petersen, these zone lines prevent “a hostile takeover by mycelia” from any interloping fungi. Most common trees that experience spalting include birch, maple, and beech. Two common fungi that cause spalting have colonized my maple log. They’re both carbon cushion fungi.

Spalting on a decaying maple log, Little Rouge Woodland, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Much of the exposed outer wood layer looks as though it has been spray painted with a green to blue-black layer. The “paint” is caused by the green-stain fungus (Chlorociboria) and blue-stain fungus (Ceratocystis). Spalting is common because of the way fungi colonize, in waves of primary and secondary colonizers. Primary colonizers initially capture and control the resource, change the pH and structure of the wood, then must defend against the secondary colonizers now able to colonize the changed wood.

Shapeshifting Characters

*Moss with spores on a log, Little Rouge Woodland, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

I find moss everywhere in the forest, including beneath the forest floor. Moss is a ubiquitous character, adapting itself to different situations and scenarios. Like a shapeshifter, moss is at once coy, hiding beneath rotting leaf litter, stealthy and curious as it creeps up the feet of huge cedars, and exuberant as it unabashedly drapes itself over every possible surface such as logs, twigs and rocks, and then proceeds to procreate for all to see.

Moss hides under dead leaf litter on the forest floor, Little Rouge Woodland, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Mosses help with nutrient cycling because they can fix nitrogen from the air, making it available to other plants. Mosses thrive in the wet winter and spring, providing brilliant green to an otherwise brown-gray environment. Even when covered in snow (or a bed of leaves), moss continues its growth cycle, usually in the leafy gametophyte stage. In the spring the capsules release spores that can each create a new moss individual. Moss is quietly, gloriously profligate.

Team Players

*Fruiting lichen on a tree (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

Lichens are a cooperative character; two characters in one, really. Lichens are a complex symbiotic association of two or more fungi and algae (some also partner up with a yeast). The algae in lichens (called phycobiont or photobiont) photosynthesize and the fungus (mycobiont) provides protection for the photobiont. Both the algae and fungus absorb water, minerals, and pollutants from the air, through rain and dust. In sexual reproduction, the mycobiont produces fruiting bodies, often cup-shaped, called apothecia that release ascospores. The spores must find a compatible photobiont to create a lichen. They depend on each other for resources—from food to shelter and protection.

The Ecology of Story: World as Character

Place ultimately portrays what lies at the heart of the story. Place as character serves as an archetype that story characters connect with and navigate in ways that depend on the theme of the story, particularly in allegories that rely strongly on metaphor. A story’s theme is essentially the “so what part” of the story. What is at stake for the character on their journey. Theme is the backbone—the heart—of the story, driving characters to journey through time and place toward some kind of fulfillment. There is no story without theme. And there is no theme without place.

–Excerpted from The Ecology of Story: World as Character

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.

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

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

I recently encountered Victoria Crozier’s intriguing PhD thesis and ecocritical discourse out of Liverpool John Moores University entitled “The Brave New Worlds of Green Science Fiction” and found my eco-fiction novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” mentioned alongside other notable eco-fiction works I so enjoyed reading such as Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem, Chen Quifan’s The Waste Tide, Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 and Emmi Itäranta’s Memory of Water. Crozier calls these “green science fiction,” an appropriate term that I may start using.

Solastalgia in an AI World of Destinations

May 10, 2026October 11, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

*Marsh outlet of Thompson Creek into the Otonabee River, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)*

On a recent walk through a vibrant local marsh quietly embedded in a community, I contemplated its tenuous position. I’d stopped on a bridge that overlooked an open pond teaming with clucking and squawking waterfowl and let my mind drift to the busy urban environment I’d left behind. Here I stood in an oasis of being, a treasure threatened by development. I cast my mind to the relentless destruction of our natural world for the sake of ‘progress’ and felt an inlking of solastalgia.

For decades I’ve served as an environmental consultant and limnologist, championing the environment against senseless destruction. I’ve witnessed too many examples of ecosystem simplification and collapse through clear-cutting, urban development, marsh destruction, and diversions of rivers or toxic pollution. All with associated loss of biodiversity and accelerating extinction. The reduction in numbers and the extinction rate of nonhuman life is truly alarming.

I couldn’t help making the connection between our rapidly degrading environment and rapidly rising AI.

You think that a crazy connection? Let me explain.

Artificial Intelligence and associated LLMs are tools borne of the need for efficiency; used properly, they expedite, streamline, simplify, save work time, and may even on some occasions illuminate and educate. Ultimately, these tools speed things up toward a destination. The journey to that destination is often purposely shortened, and usually unnoticed or forgotten. Efficiency isn’t about enjoying the journey; it is all about getting there, wherever that is. That’s our existence today. An existence that belongs to AI. An existence that ignores or ‘others’ Nature and sees it as an impediment to progress. The destruction of our natural world—the one that supports all life—is directly linked to the exploitive model of late capitalism that embraces AI and, at its extreme, the use of technology over (and at the expense of) human labour.

I teach writing at the University of Toronto and at my own coaching site. I recently came across a LinkedIn post by English Professor Susan Ray who mused on the concept of AI grief (of writing instructors) in acknowledging true loss in the gains made with AI: “Sometimes there seems to be kind of a misfire in the message about AI: that we just need to adapt, we need to accept, we need to move on and we need to embrace … But there’s something to grieve and we need to make space for that.”

She gave the example of her own grad school work on the 18^th Century novel Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. “There was a quote I couldn’t find. I told one of my advisors that ‘I just hit CTRL F in Gutenburg.org and I found the quote.’ He went kind of ashen and he went ‘this is not how it’s supposed to work. You need to go back to the text; you need to reread, you need to discover something that you missed. That is the process.’ I kind of rolled my eyes—internally, not at my advisor—with the idea that I was supposed to intentionally make more work for myself. But he was trying to protect something sacred that had been taught to him and was part of his academic experience.”

Ray added that this was her experience with her students: “…using AI to brainstorm or talk out thesis statements or find sources or rephrase a passage. We [instructors] wanted something from them; we wanted what we had, which was being assigned a paper, or a project and sitting with it, fighting for that idea, and restructuring it, and revising it. That’s been lost in a lot of ways.”

She then brought up the latest statistic by the Digital Education Council that some 86% of all college students in the world admitted to using AI in their studies. This is likely an underestimate.

In response to Ray’s post, Andrew Sutter, Select Professor in Global Business at Akita International University, offered another more cynical take on AI grief: “I also wonder whether grief is a little too neat an explanation for the whole spectrum of feelings of reluctance about using LLMs … Students finding ways to hand in assignments without understanding them is nothing new … But LLMs do make this much easier. And many students welcome that … I’m really worried about what will happen when this cohort of students, ones made lazy and/or being misled by LLM use, are running the world. That’s not grief: it’s anger and apprehension.”

Beverly Pell, CEO at DuoFeed, summed it up this way: “This is a sorrowful time, a transition for many who enjoyed the discourse in the town square, the struggle, the ambiguity of the text, the nuances, the context, the process, seeing what unfolds, human imagination, and wisdom from experience. It’s a hard earned profession. And now that profession is threatened.”

Pell was talking about the journey, the slow pace of the rapt explorer who enjoys the nuanced filigrees of the minutae, the textures of experience, the colours of time.

My thought is that for every gain something is lost. In this case, the gain and loss lies in the learning process. I think that behind every ‘cheat’ or shortcut—which AI serves only too well as a tool—is a loss in potential discovery, even if that discovery is internal (the best kind) and often a surprise. Whenever we shortcut, we take away an opportunity. Ultimately, all creativity is a process of discovery. Why would you shorten it?

Good writing—like a good cup of tea—must steep for a while to discover its deeper flavours.

But our capitalist-driven society is driven by efficiency (and profit) and embraces the shortcut. This is the capitalist way and so suited to the AI tool—now the authority of Google, smart phones, and social media. In a world of destinations and “getting ahead”, it’s all about finding the shortcut to get what you want. The journey fades into unimportance.

And yet, it is in that journey that true gems reveal themselves through serendipitous discovery. By choosing efficiency over experience, we rob ourselves of the journey to discover. Like engineers impatiently seeking our destination, we pave and straighten our roads into common simplification, shortening that now-boring journey.

How often have I gone through the forest and decided I need to turn back and then thought: one more stretch. That’s where I’d found my treasure. That one extra step held my unique prize. Kismet. Serendipity. These often lie in the dark folds of the less trodden path.

A LinkedIn post by Irreplaceable With AI resonated with me:

“When I look at how fast screens, algorithms, and instant entertainment have taken over childhood, I do not think the problem is technology itself. The problem is what gets squeezed out when every spare moment is filled for them (where so much real creativity begins):

Unstructured play
Boredom
Mess
Trial and error
The awkward, beautiful process of making something without being told what to do next”

I would add that in this unstructured space lives the opportunity to be unique and different. Something our society seems bent on destroying; and something our children appear bent on avoiding at all cost.

Here’s what matters most:

Curiosity over consumption
Creativity over passive entertainment
Connection over distraction
Critical problem solving over screen comfort
Cultivation of human values over digital convenience
Courage to confront, be different and to challenge.

Life shouldn’t be a short cut. We need to slow down and use our senses. Or someday we’ll be senselessly lost. And the worst of it will be that we won’t even sense it—even as the world burns down around us.

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her eco-fiction clifi novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020. Her most recent novel Gaia’s Revolution was released March 2026 by Dragon Moon Press (Calgary).

Eco-Fiction As Hyperobject: Defining the Undefinable…

January 18, 2026January 9, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

In two excellent articles in Climate Cultures entitled “A History of Eco-fiction, Part 1 and 2”, eco-fiction author and critic Mary Woodbury starts out with several rather long definitions of eco-fiction—one provided by Jim Dwyer in his 2010 book Where the Wild Books Are: A Field Guide to Eco-Fiction.

She also includes simpler descriptions. For instance, Ashland Creek Press calls it “fiction with a conscience,” and co-founder John Yunker insightfully labelled it a super-genre.

Woodbury then muses: “I think of eco-fiction as not so much a genre than as a way to intersect natural landscape, environmental issues, and wilderness—and human connection to these things—into any genre and make it come alive.” Not a fan of labels, she argues that eco-fiction is broad and has a rich history (of existence long before its label was coined in 1971 in the preface to an anthology by Washington Square Press) and brings up examples such as The Stolen Child by Victorian author and poet WB Yeats. “Eco-fiction has no boundaries in time or space,” argues Woodbury. “It can be set in the past, present, or future. It can be set in other worlds…I think of eco-fiction as a way to bring alive the wild in any genre, whether romance, adventure, mystery, you name it.”

Eco-fiction—like climate change—is a hyperobject. In his 2014 book Hyperobjects, Timothy Morton explains that hyperobjects are immense, non-local entities that challenge our traditional understanding of objects; things so massively distributed in time and space that they defy human perception, given they exist beyond our immediate sensory grasp yet affecting us profoundly. Examples include anthropogenic global warming / climate change, but also pervasive phenomena, like plastic and oil, that have far reaching impacts beyond their simple physical presence.

My own definition (from a previous article in Solarpunk Magazine) embraces the hyperobject nature of eco-fiction: eco-fiction (short for ecological fiction) is a kind of fiction in which the environment—or one aspect of the environment—plays a major role in story, either as premise or as character. For instance, several of my eco-fiction stories give Water a voice as character. In my latest novel, A Diary in the Age of Water, each of the four women characters reflects on her relationship with water and, in turn, her view of and journey in a changing world.

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. By encouraging empathy and imagination, eco-fiction reaches deep into our souls, where we care. It is only when we care that we act.

A recent survey conducted by Woodbury revealed that, “Fiction exploring humanity’s impacts on nature is becoming more popular [and] has the distinct ability to creatively engage and appeal to readers’ emotions.” Woodbury’s 2020 survey showed that “88% of its participants were inspired to act after reading ecological fiction.”

A few years ago, I wrote an article entitled “Why Ecofiction Will Save the World” which appeared in Issue #1 of Solarpunk Magazine. In it, I mentioned how I’d noticed in my university science fiction course that more and more students were bringing in WIPs on ecological and global environmental issues. Many of the stories involved a premise of environmental calamity, but not in the same vein as previous environmental disasters that depict “man” against Nature. Instead, these works gave the Earth or Nature (or an aspect of Nature) an actual voice—as a character—and had a protagonist who learns to interact with the Earth/Nature character, often cooperatively. This represents a palpable and gestalt cultural awakening of what eco-feminists have called the “feminine archetype” by providing a voice for “the other” in story.

This shift reflects what lies at the heart of eco-fiction.

Eco-fiction explores the world and the consequences of humanity’s actions on the environment and ourselves (by inference) through dramatization. The stories that stir our hearts come from deep inside, through symbols, archetypes and metaphor, where the personal meets the universal. In my short story “The Way of Water” (“La natura dell’acqua”), water’s connection with love flows throughout the story:

They met in the lobby of a shabby downtown Toronto hotel. Hilda barely knew what she looked like but when Hanna entered the lobby through the front doors Hilda knew every bit of her. Hanna swept in like a stray summer rainstorm, beaming with the self-conscious optimism of someone who recognized a twin sister. She reminded Hilda of her first boyfriend, clutching flowers in one hand and chocolate in the other. When their eyes met, Hilda knew. For an instant, she knew all of Hanna. For an instant, she’d glimpsed eternity. What she didn’t know then was that it was love.

In a world of severe water scarcity through climate catastrophe and geopolitical oppression, the bond of these two girls—to each other through water and with water—is like the shifting covalent bond of a complex molecule, a bond that fuses a relationship of paradox linked to the paradoxical properties of water. Just as two water drops join, the two women find each other in the wasteland of environmental intrigue. Hilda’s relationship with Hanna—as with water—is both complex and shifting according to the bonds they make and break. Hilda navigates her dystopia by learning meaningful lessons—lessons that pertain directly to our reader in their current world. This is because the premise of a dystopia lies squarely in the present world. Good dystopias enlighten and suggest possibilities; they can warn and herald. At the very least, they incite the necessary conversation.

Our capacity—and need—to share stories is as old as our ancient beginnings. From the Paleolithic cave paintings of Lascaux to our blogs on the Internet, humanity has left a grand legacy of ‘story’ sharing. By providing context to knowledge, story moves us to care, to cherish, and, in turn, to act. What we cherish, we protect. It’s really that simple.

“Morton’s book is a queasily vertiginous quest to synthesize the still divergent fields of quantum theory (the weirdness of small objects) and relativity (the weirdness of big objects) and insert them into philosophy and art, which he notes are far behind ontologically speaking (page 150). Morton’s wager is that for the first time, we in the Anthropocene are able to see snapshots of hyperobjects, and that these intimations more or less will force us to undergo a radical reboot of our ontological toolkit and (finally) incorporate the weirdness of physics”—Cara Daggett

*Hirtle Beach, Nova Scotia (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)*

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.

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