In my historical fantasy The Last Summoner, Vivianne Schön, the Baroness Von Grunwald, travels through time from the 1400s to 1905 to meet Nikola Tesla and make a deal with the eccentric scientist in a bid to make the world a better place:
The Story (excerpt of The Last Summoner)
New York, 1905
VIVIANNE straightened when she glimpsed the elegantly dressed Serbian as he entered Bryant Park. From her bench in the shade of a sycamore tree, she watched him saunter to his favourite bench then sit down and cross his legs. He emitted a somber sigh, pulled out a small notebook from his jacket pocket and began to write. Vivianne studied his long face, straight nose and well groomed mustache. It was an intense face, though worn with reserve. He quelled the fire that burned inside him beneath a shell of enigmatic reflection. He brushed a hand over his thick hair, then set his mouth in a thin line of determined concentration as he hastily sketched something inside the notebook. He didn’t look terribly heartbroken for a man who had just lost his dream, she reflected. But she did recognize disappointment on his furrowed brow. He was used to that, she decided, reviewing his personal history, which had been plagued by rivalry and betrayal for nearly all his life. A visionary of his genius quality was easy fodder for bullying, whether it was schoolmates or the scientific community.
After adjusting her brimmed hat and flowing blue lace gown, Vivianne rose and approached the forty-eight year old Serbian visionary, musing how he would later be called the “Father of the 20th Century”.
She was barely a metre away from him before he looked up, ready to express annoyance at being interrupted. She took pleasure in seeing his expression change from a glower to a startled look of curiosity. She knew she was beautiful, but it was rather delightful to see that she could divert this intense scientist.
“Hello, Mister Tesla,” Vivianne greeted him with a curtsy. “I am the Comptesse d’Anjou at your service. May I join you and sit down?”
He frowned at first then nodded politely with not quite a smile. He was not known for his smiles, she recalled. Tesla rose to his feet and bowed to her but did not offer his hand. She did not press him, knowing of his particular compulsion for avoiding human contact. “Of course you may,” he said with a mild accent and nodded to her in invitation. They both sat down in unison and he added, “To what do I owe this pleasure, Comptesse? Do I know you?”
“No, Mister Tesla.” She smiled with irony. “We have never met—not in person, anyway. But I believe you may be interested in what I have to say.” She paused to take in his curiosity and continued, “Pardon me for what I am about to reveal of your affairs, but I represent the interests of La Banque Internationale du Monde in Geneva, Switzerland—perhaps you know of us—and the law offices of Frankl & Frankl. We are one of the five largest investment banks in the world, dating back to the late 1400s with offices in Amsterdam and Hamburg. We are a private bank who screen for altruistic and environmentally conscious investors. In short, we help finance only those projects that will help make the world a better world.” She paused.
Tesla studied her inquisitively but said nothing.
She smiled internally at his puzzled expression then continued, “We are very interested in your Wardenclyffe Tower in Shoreham, Long Island, and associated global wireless power transmission.”
Tesla slid his notebook back into his jacket pocket and now gave her his full attention. She knew that he’d been trying for years to gain backing for his enigmatic projects with little to no success.
She continued, “You theorized that electrical energy can be transmitted through the earth and the atmosphere…without power lines.”
“Yes, I can light lamps at moderate distances and can detect the transmitted energy at much greater distances. The Wardenclyffe Tower uses a rapidly alternating electrostatic field and was a proof-of-concept for global wireless power trans-mission.”
“Yes, I know.”
He frowned. “But my funding—“
“Yes, I know. Your backers don’t like the idea of unmetered power consumption.”
His face hardened with dark thoughts. “Free electricity isn’t profitable.”
“Least of all to greedy bankers with no vision or faith like J.P. Morgan or John Jacob Astor,” she added. “I know you’ve been in financial trouble with high construction costs since Morgan pulled out last year and encouraged other investors to do the same.”
Her last remark made him stiffen. She was hitting a painful nerve.
“I know about your expired patents and the resulting lack of royalty payments,” she continued. “Within another five to ten years your projects will all be defunk and you will be totally broke. And no one will listen to the ideas that come to you fully formed through visions and dreams.”
He straightened and looked her directly in the eyes. “What do you want of me, Comptesse? Who are you?”
“An ally,” she answered. “I am well aware of your humanitarian pursuits and altruistic nature. I know that you wish simply to make the world a better world. That is my wish also. Energy is and will continue to be one of the most important forces on this earth. Like water, it should be free and available to each and everyone of us. I think you can provide us with that gift and would be happy to as well. Mister Tesla, I want to offer you financial backing at zero percent interest.”
He let loose a humourless laugh. He had finally learned to be cynical about bankers, she thought.
“Make no mistake, Mister Tesla; I expect to become one of the wealthiest people on this planet because of you. But I will gain that wealth only as you gain yours, through a partnership, and not at the expense of others; rather, for the benefit of others. Your wireless technology will help in areas you have yet to imagine: instant global communications and the personal computer; clean energy for homes and industry; laser medicine; robotics; interstellar travel; instant matter transference; even time travel and so much more.”
He was staring at her now. “Who are you, really?”
An angel, she thought to herself. “I’m part of the future, Mister Tesla. A future of your making.” Then without thinking, she held out her hand. “You can call me Vivianne.”
To her delighted surprise, he smiled for the first time. He took her hand then lightly kissed it, as was the custom of most eastern Europeans. “And you can call me Nikola.”
The Man
Nikola Tesla intuited that energy waves in the earth and the atmosphere could be used to transmit power to any point on the globe. He understood that the surface of the Earth, the ionosphere and the atmosphere together form one gigantic electrical circuit—an electrified Gaia, so to speak—and this formed the basis for his work on wireless energy transmission. Tesla was able to transmit power and energy wirelessly over long distances (via transverse waves and longitudinal waves). He transmitted extremely low frequencies (ELF) through the ground and between the Earth’s surface and the Kennelly-Heaviside layer of the ionosphere. Tesla patented wireless transceivers that developed standing waves and it was he who discovered that the resonant frequency of the Earth was about 8 Hz and in the range of the Schumann Resonance or Cavity.
Modern technology appears to be threatening humanity’s connection with earth’s fundamental frequency and the natural vibrations of Schumann Resonance. Threats include artificial man-made EMF radiation, wireless technology, and high frequency heating microwaves pulsed at 2.45 GHz. Whether we co-evolved with Earth’s natural electromagnetic environment or were created with Divine Intelligence to live in harmony with it, many experts believe that artificial man-made EMF radiation masks the natural beneficial frequency of the Earth and may create an environment that is literally `out of tune’ with Nature itself.
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.
One of my favourite bookstores in Vancouver is Banyen Books & Sound on the southwest corner of W 4th Avenue and Dunbar. So, whenever I go back to my home town to visit family and friends, I stop there to linger amid the shelves of wonder and erudite adventure. Then I usually cross Dunbar to Aphrodite’s Organic Pie Shop for a delicious fresh pie—usually peach, if it is available. So good! Two things I love: books and pie!
During my recent visit this year to Vancouver, my friends and I had a fulfilling walk one morning through the big tree forest of Pacific Spirit Park near UBC. Margaret suggested we go to Aphrodite’s Organic Café for lunch, located across 4th Avenue from Banyen Books (the sister restaurant to the pie shop). After a delicious lunch, we wandered into Banyen, like desert nomads looking for water, and lost ourselves in a treasure of books, magazines, crystals, cards, singing bowls and other spiritual/healing items. Like a braided river, we dispersed according to our wayward interests.
Then friend Anne soon found me and pulled my sleeve. “Your book is here!” She led me to where my book Water Is… stood, face out, on the top shelf marked ‘Water: Life Force & Resource.’ In truth, I already knew through Pixl Press that the book was selling there. But here it was, showcased so nicely! It sat rather stately amid Emoto’s Secret Life of Water and Ryrie’s Healing Energies of Water.
One of the perks of Banyen Books are the comfortable seats for easy browsing. When I teasingly asked one of the clerks if they noticed people lingering for the day, they said, “yeah! They might leave for lunch then come back for the afternoon!” I can see why; Banyen is an entire world to discover. It is called Canada’s most comprehensive Body-Mind-Spirit bookstore, “offering a broad spectrum of resources from humanity’s spiritual, healing, and earth wisdom traditions…Our service is to offer life-giving nourishment for the body (resilient, vital), the mind (trained, open), and the soul (resonant, connected, in-formed). Think of us as your open source bookstore for the ‘University of Life’.”
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.
In my upcoming novel “Gaia’s Revolution,” one of the protagonists, Damien Vogel, contemplates in 2022 a key event from 2020 that only a few seem to take seriously:
In Siberia in June 2020, record heat of thirty degrees Centigrade, over the average of 11 degrees, collapsed permafrost and caused oil tanks in Norilsk to rupture. Over twenty thousand tonnes of diesel spilled into the Pyasina lake and river system. Damien remembers looking at the veins of red on satellite images from space. That disaster is just the beginning of what the ‘sleeping bear’ of methane hydrates promise to unleash when the permafrost reaches a critical thaw and those hydrates awaken. Melting permafrost is a quiet sleeper in the climate change procession, he considers. At a microscopic level, in the chemistry of the water and in the change in the atmosphere, a time bomb is ticking.
A decade later, Damien’s twin brother, Eric, notes that:
“Back in the ‘20s scientists started noticing major permafrost melt on the Siberian Shelf,” Eric goes on. “The melting released hydrates, which set the oil and gas companies frothing at the mouth with joy and the climate scientists spinning in a panic because of what they knew it meant for the planet. It was the harbinger of the largest methane ‘burp’ ever.”
Eric then adds:
“Permafrost thaw kicked us into this devastating global warming, Dame, and everyone—even the climate modellers—ignored it, because they didn’t have enough data. Gottverdammt! They’re all still asleep, Dame!”
In his book The Treeline, Ben Rawlence writes about the ongoing extinction of indigenous peoples in the north as the treeline migrates northward into tundra and the permafrost and sea ice change and go extinct themselves.
Because methane is present in much smaller concentrations many scientists have mistakenly deemed it as important as carbon dioxide in the climate change equation; however, it is becoming obvious that methane poses a real and largely unacknowledged danger. Methane is twenty times more efficient in trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Permafrost—which is currently melting rapidly in the north—contains almost twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere. In the rapidly warming Arctic (warming twice as fast as the globe as a whole), the upper layers of this frozen soil are thawing, allowing deposited organic material to decompose and release methane.
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The clathrate gun hypothesis is the notion that sea temperature rises (and/or drops in sea levels) may trigger a catastrophic positive feedback on climate: warming would cause a sudden release of methane from methane clathrate (hydrate) compounds buried in seabeds, in the permafrost, and under ice sheets.
Something of this nature has already occurred in Siberia in 2020. In his book The Treeline Ben Rawlence reports the following warning by Dutch scientist Dr. Ko van Huissteden, a leading authority on permafrost:
“It is hard to measure methane release … [but] some studies have suggested that an unstable seabed could release a methane ‘burp’ of 500-5000 gigatonnes, equivalent to decades of greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to an abrupt jump in temperature that humans will be powerless to arrest.” (Wadhams, 2015)
Creation of gas hydrates requires high pressure; water; gas—mainly methane—and low temperatures. Three environments considered suitable for this process to occur include: sub-seabed along the world’s continental margins; permafrost areas on land and off shore; and a process for storing methane hydrates: ice sheets. As long as the climate is cold and the ice sheet stable, the gas hydrate zone remains stable. As the ice sheets melt, the pressure on the ground decreases; hydrates destabilize and release methane into rising seawater and finally into the atmosphere.
A recent study in Science revealed that hundreds of massive, kilometer-wide craters on the ocean floor in the Arctic were formed by substantial methane expulsions. Because methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, temperatures would rise exponentially. Once started, this runaway process could be as irreversible as the firing of a gun—and on a time scale less than a human lifetime.
The sudden release of large amounts of natural warming gas from methane clathrate deposits in runaway climate change could be a cause of past, future, and present climate changes.
Latest research on the Greenland ice sheet and elsewhere throughout the Arctic has revealed major methane discharges in Arctic lakes in areas of permafrost thaw. Scientists are exploring areas where methane is bubbling to the surface and releasing to the atmosphere.
If human emissions continue at their current rate, rapidly changing ocean currents and retreating ice sheets may uncork methane from under ice caps, ocean sediments and Arctic permafrost, causing a jump in radiative forcing. Even if rapid ice sheet disintegration were to scatter large amounts of ice into the oceans, the net cooling effect would be strongly countered and likely overwhelmed. The areas that did cool would likely trigger severe weather outbreaks.
As I write, we are pumping out CO2 into the atmosphere at a rate 10 times faster than at any point in the past 66 m years, with the resulting sea level rises, extreme weather events, heat waves, droughts, unseasonal storms, and stress on biodiversity around the globe. Research published in the journal Nature Geoscience demonstrates that “the world has entered ‘uncharted territory’ and that the consequences for life on land and in the oceans may be more severe than at any time since the extinction of the dinosaurs,” writes Damian Carrington of The Guardian.
In an interview with Guardian reporter John Abraham, Woods Hole expert Robert Max Holmes, exhorted:
It’s essential that policymakers begin to seriously consider the possibility of a substantial permafrost carbon feedback to global warming. If they don’t, I suspect that down the road we’ll all be looking at the 2°C threshold in our rear-view mirror.
Wadhams, Peter. 2015. “A Farewell to Ice.” Penguin.
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.
I am currently finishing my fiction book Thalweg, which takes place throughout Canada, but predominantly in northern British Columbia and the arctic of the Northwest Territories. My main character, a Gwich’in scientist, explores the land during a time of climate change, and much of it involves the expansive vast snowfields of northern Canada in which she describes the look, smell, feel, and sounds of snow. She thinks with great fondness of home in the Arctic where snow prominently features and, bringing in all her senses, of course, includes sound:
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.
But I was in the general area for another reason: to meet my son and his lady for a wonderful meal in the exquisite Italian restaurant Autostrada Osteria; a Christmas present he’d owed me since COVID hit. Located on the corner of Homer and Pender streets, Autostrada Osteria nestles comfortably in an eclectic mix of old and slightly dilapidated next to trendy and posh chic. Something Vancouver seems to do well.
I was a little early for our reservation at 7:15 pm, so I wandered down the street. Immediately east of the restaurant was a character bookstore selling new and used books, The Paper Hound Bookshop. It’s located in the Victoria Block, a 1908 addition to the old boutique Victorian Hotel.
I nodded to the young woman at the front desk who exuded friendly intelligence through kind but impish eyes. I ventured deeper, perusing the shelves, high and low. I noted that the books were arranged with lots of front covers on display in tiny category-labeled alcoves that literally covered the walls from floor to ceiling. Several sliding ladders were judiciously placed to provide reach. The categories were odd, bizarre, somewhat arcane, and peculiarly amusing. There was one that proclaimed “Rodent as Hero.” Another read “Indomitable Orphans,” (populated with several Harry Potter books, of course, as well as other lesser known orphans).
Whoever had created these categories—was it the woman at the front?—was either strange or had purposefully flouted the norm to draw attention to a more whimsical, curious way of seeing the world and the books that described it. No mundane alphabetizing within broad normative categories for these people!
As I wandered the labyrinthine rows of books, the place felt like a roadmap to another world. The narratives from the categories alone were worth studying from “Hot Adventure”, “Cold Adventure,” and “Wet Adventure” to “Books with Bears,” “Detection / Deduction,” and “Wanderlust.” Each category was a ‘book’ and each book ‘a chapter’ of a larger funky narrative that depicted one person’s intriguing interpretation of the world.
Keagan Perlette of Sad Mag describes the store this way: “The Paper Hound stocks both used and new books and features an impressive collection of poetry and philosophy. Space is limited, so there is an evident focus on literature, but there are surprises hidden in the shelves: an excellent selection of beautiful children’s books, art books, drawers full of zines and chapbooks, and even a section for unique vintage cookbooks. The store is full of little wonders.”
There is even a funky machine that dispenses poetry like cigarettes for two quarters at the front of the store. Even on its surface books were stacked. The owners had stacked books literally everywhere. On chairs, on tables, on each other. Little books on larger books, balanced wonderfully in a kind of fanciful ordered chaos.
The Paper Hound website accurately describes the bookstore as “a new, used and rare book store” that doesn’t specialize “in one particular kind of book, but we favour the classic, curious, odd, beautiful, visually arresting, scholarly, bizarre, and whimsical.” In addition to their collection of used books, the Paper Hound carries titles from local small publishers Anvil Press, Arsenal Pulp Press, Talon Books and New Star Books.
Owners Kim Koch and Rod Clarke are veterans of the bookstore world in Vancouver, having worked at several before opening Paper Hound. They set up The Paper Hound in the old boutique hotel in 2013 on what my book collector friend calls ‘book row.’ Located on Pender Street, between Richards and Hamilton, ‘book row’ is apparently expanding according to On the Grid. According to the Vancouver Sun: “in this digital age many people think bookstores are on the verge of extinction. People are buying fewer paper books, and websites like Amazon offer almost anything ever printed, often for cheap.” While the Internet and digital devices appear to be ravaging large chain bookstores (some like Borders closed and others like Indigo have added household goods to bring people into the store), small niche independent bookstores are flourishing.
“Setting up a bookstore in the post-online and big book retailer age is sort of liberating,” says Kim. “We know we can’t carry everything or nearly as many titles as they do, so that liberates us to instead focus on creating the experience we want the customer to have.” Kim describes the perfect bookstore as: “a place that offers people a space where they can explore, get guidance from the proprietors and, when they want to, be left alone amongst the shelves to daydream.”
That’s exactly what I did.
When I left the store at shortly after 7pm, Kim pulled in the book trolley from outside in preparation to close and I apologized if I’d held her up a few minutes. She then informed me that they usually close at six but she had kept the store open for goodness knows why. I smiled and said rather cheekily with sudden inspiration, “I know; because I needed to experience it.” She laughed and those impish eyes twinkled.
And before you ask, yes, I did walk away with something: “Water Babies” by Charles Kingsley, a moral fable that explores the closed-minded approaches of many scientists of the day in their response to Charles Darwin’s ideas on evolution.
After he is chased from the home of an upper-class young girl, chimney-sweep Tom falls asleep and tumbles into a river. There he is transformed into a ‘water-baby’ and his adventures truly begin. Beneath the surface, he enters a magical world full of strange and wonderful creatures, where he must prove his moral worth in order to earn what he truly desires.
Macmillan describes The Water Babies this way:
“One of the most unusual children’s books ever written, The Water-Babies, subtitled ‘A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby’, was originally intended as a satire in support of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, and explores the issues at the forefront of biologists’ minds at the time. First published as a complete novel in 1863 [originally illustrated by Linley Sambourne], Charles Kingsley’s classic tale also explores ideas about religion, the Victorian education system and the working conditions of children and the poor.”
The vintage version I picked up at The Paper Hound was illustrated by Harry G. Theaker and published in 1935 by Ward, Lock & Co. Ltd. with 24 colour plates.
For a great taste of Kim and Rod’s unique vision of the world of literature and their pithy humour and wit, go to their blog The Paper Hound. Here’s a taste:
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.
I was recently interviewed by Forrest Brown on his podcast Stories for Earth, a site in Georgia devoted to entertaining and informing its audience on matters to do with climate change and environment and how literature represents and influences our understanding and behaviour in the current and future issues of planet Earth. The site’s mission statement reads: “Stories for Earth seeks to foster hope and emotional resilience by discussing cultural narratives that contain parallels and takeaways to our current predicament. Cultural narratives provide stories for our past, present, and future, and Stories for Earthcritically engages with these narratives through all mediums.”
This is what Forrest says about how and why he started his podcast:
I founded Stories for Earth in the summer of 2019. As a writer and lifelong lover of stories, I never suspected my two biggest interests might have something to do with fighting climate change. That is, until one day when I came across an article about an interesting class at the University of Washington Bothell.
This class, taught by senior lecturer Dr. Jennifer W. Atkinson, sought to help students struggling with the emotional effects of climate change, specifically with the feelings of hopelessness and despair associated with climate grief. Atkinson is a professor of environmental humanities and American literature, so naturally she chose to do this by examining climate change through what she knows best: literature.
After I read this, something clicked. Of course literature can help us face climate change, I thought. Literature and stories in general have helped humanity overcome countless struggles throughout the course of our history—why can’t they help us overcome climate change too?
Stories for Earth is my personal realization of that idea. I want to read books, watch movies, and engage with stories through any other medium out there that can better prepare me to fight climate change in my own way without losing my mind. This podcast is my way of sharing what I learn with you, the listener, and I hope you’ll follow along. If anything you hear sticks or helps you in some way, consider sharing it with a friend who might also benefit from it. We must take care of each other.
Nina Munteanu is a prolific and insightful Canadian science fiction writer who has published nine novels, including her most recent novel A Diary in the Age of Water. This novel imagines a Canada in the not-so-distant-future where water is becoming increasingly scarce, partially because water sources are drying up and partially because the US and China are buying up water from all the recently privatized Canadian utilities. As a limnologist–literally a fresh water scientist–it makes sense for Nina to be the one telling this story, and our conversation ranges from water shortages in the present day to Ray Bradbury to the need for a new paradigm for living.
We also discuss the connection between exploitive capitalism/colonialism and climate change, then move onto the new paradigm for living by looking at regenerative cultures, the gift economy used by many indigenous peoples, and the creation of an ecological civilization.
Tell me about yourself. How did you become a writer? Why do you think stories are important in the climate action movement?
I wasn’t much of a reader as a kid. While my older brother and sister devoured The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series, I hid myself in the back corner of Williams General store and read comics: Superman, Supergirl, Magnus Robot Fighter. I was obviously enamoured with the fantastic. When I earnestly started to read things other than comics, I came across the SF classics: Huxley, Orwell, LeGuin and Asimov to name a few. Ray Bradbury moved me and his “Martian Chronicles” made me cry. I wanted to write science fiction like him and move readers like he’d done with me. But I’d also discovered the sensual classics like Thomas Hardy. So, like most beginner writers, I started by imitating my favourites. Imagine the genre-confused chimeric stuff I was writing: Thomas Hardy crossed with Ray Bradbury? It wasn’t until I found my unique voice, which blended these with my passion for the environment, that my own voice emerged. The environment and how we treat it (and ourselves by extension) has always been something important to me since I was a kid when littering was a pet peeve—it still is… I think that the stories we tell help us define ourselves and our role on this planet. Climate fiction and eco-literature and solarpunk provide us with important narratives that both entertain and educate: from cautionary tales to constructive visualizations of a potential future.
Your new novel A Diary in the Age of Water is the story of a young girl in the future who discovers a diary from a Canadian woman who wrote about her experiences living in an increasingly water-scarce Canada in the 2040s. What inspired you to write this story?
It started with a short story I was invited to write in 2015 about water and politics in Canada. I had long been thinking of potential ironies in Canada’s water-rich heritage. The premise I wanted to explore was the irony of people in a water-rich nation experiencing water scarcity: living under a government-imposed daily water quota of 5 litres as water bottling and utility companies took it all. I named the story “The Way of Water.” It was about a young woman (Hilda) in near-future Toronto who has run out of water credits for the public wTap; by this time houses no longer have potable water and their water taps have been cemented shut; the only way to get water is through the public wTaps—at great cost. She’s standing two metres from water—in a line of people waiting to use the tap—and dying of thirst. The short story begged for more and that inspiration came when I attended a talk by Maude Barlow on her book Boiling Pointabout the water crisis in Canada. We were in a church and I noticed a young mother and her little six-year old daughter in the balcony; I wondered what kind of mother would bring her little girl to a political talk about water in Canada? The diarist character, Lynna, and her mother, Una, were born. It went from there with Lynna—the diarist—writing about not just water shortage but water related phenomena such as climate change, habitat destruction, hormone disruption and the alarming increased infertility in humans.
Coincidentally, I just interviewed another author, C.C. Berke, about his novel Man, Kind, in which people also become infertile in the future. I’ll be honest, this isn’t a problem I was really aware of until recently, but humans are indeed becoming less fertile with every new generation. Is this something you hoped to raise awareness about with your novel?
The short answer is yes! I hope it helps spark the much needed discussion. Rising infertility is an issue that seems to embarrass us … something we feel we must hide under the rug, so to speak. Like our misbehaving Uncle Zeek. But if we don’t talk about it, we can’t understand the underlying reasons for it, many of which are environmentally induced—things we should be addressing.
Politics and big business play huge roles in your novel, as they do in real life as well. Canada has privatized its water utilities after the Conservative Party comes into power, and a giant company called CanadaCorp removes municipal water connections from people’s homes and imposes strict water rations, all while selling off Canada’s precious water to US states like California that would otherwise be uninhabitable. Given that Canada is home to a huge portion of the world’s freshwater, what role do you see Canada playing in the coming years when many prominent people—including the Vice President of the United States—have predicted that wars will one day be fought over water?
She’s right. But this isn’t just in the future; water wars are occurring right now and have for some time. Perhaps not between our two countries. Certainly in the middle east and Asia. There are tensions between Egypt, and nine upstream countries for control of water in the Nile watershed; the Sudanese and Ethiopians are building dams and Egypt plans to pump water from Lake Nassar into the Sahara. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and China are in conflict over control of rivers such as the Indus, Ganges, and particularly the Brahmaputra. India’s River Link Plan impacts Bangladesh. Meantime Pakistan, Kashmir and India fight over more and more water, as the Indus dries up and no longer flows into the ocean.
But let’s move closer to home, to North America and the premise of water conflicts here… Considering what you mentioned about Canada’s huge water storage of freshwater, water conflicts are inevitable. Canada and America border some significant water bodies such as the Great Lakes and various rivers like the Columbia River in the west. We’ve formed joint commissions along with treaties to manage these trans-boundary water bodies. They’ve often been highly electrified politically. The book by Eileen Delhanty Pearkes—“A River Captured”—explores the controversial history of the Columbia River Treaty and the huge dams built on that system that impacted ecosystems, indigenous peoples and local cultures in the Pacific Northwest. That didn’t go very well for Canada and particularly not for some of its indigenous peoples. Another example that my book features is from the 1960s: the NAWAPA project, a plan by Ralph Parsons Company and the Army Corps of Engineers to make the entire Rocky Mountain Trench into a giant 800-km long reservoir to hydrate the US by inundating a fifth of British Columbia’s prime habitat, several towns and indigenous communities and literally destroy a fishery. But guess what? Congress was seriously looking at it and the plan keeps resurfacing among corporate entrepreneurs, engineers and politicians.
Going back to big business, do you think industry and sustainability are compatible? I know some cultural movements like solarpunk emphasize DIY and more small businesses over mass production and giant corporations. Do you have any thoughts on this? This is one of the defining questions of our time, but can we have both capitalism and a livable planet?
Some people—mostly economists—would say definitely yes; we just need to be conservationist in our approach to doing business. But the very basis of capitalism is exploitation, not conservation. The driving force behind capitalism is fear and uncertainty and its main process is exploitation. From an ecologist’s perspective, this makes sense for a community during its early succession and growth stage… when it first colonizes a new area. Ecologists call this approach r-selected (for rate), based on profligate and fast growth. But as we reach a climax community and our carrying capacity—where we are now—this r-selected approach no longer works. We need an economic model that better matches this new paradigm. NOT based on continued growth! A climax global economy, one based on cooperation not competition. Elisabet Sahtouris calls this ecological economy ecosophy. In his book “Designing Regenerative Cultures” Daniel Christian Wahl talks about changing our evolutionary narrative from one based on fear defined by a perception of scarcity, competition, and separation to one based on love defined by a perception of abundance, a sense of belonging, collaboration and inclusion.
And moving forward we can take a lesson from Robin Wall Kimmerer who talks about a gift economy—an economy of abundance—whose basis lies in recognizing the value of kindness, sharing, and gratitude in an impermanent world. This is what she says: “Climate change is a product of this extractive economy and is forcing us to confront the inevitable outcome of our consumptive lifestyle, genuine scarcity for which the market has no remedy. Indigenous story traditions are full of these cautionary teachings. When the gift is dishonored, the outcome is always material as well as spiritual. Disrespect the water and the springs dry up. Waste the corn and the garden grows barren. Regenerative economies which cherish and reciprocate the gift are the only path forward. To replenish the possibility of mutual flourishing, for birds and berries and people, we need an economy that shares the gifts of the Earth, following the lead of our oldest teachers, the plants.”
The diary entries in your novel make frequent reference to the post-truth era we seem to be living in. I feel like we’ve been heading in this direction for a while (it seems as though books like Manufacturing Consentby Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman and 1984by George Orwell have documented this), but I think many people feel as though we officially entered the post-truth era when Kellyanne Conway used the term “alternative facts” in a Meet The Pressinterview in 2017. Again, this is another huge question of our time, but how do those of us pushing for climate action make progress when entire political parties like the Republican Party in the US and the Conservative Party of Canada are in blatant denial of reality? (Actually, it seems worse than denial of reality—they use the fascist tactic of disregarding reality and replacing it with their own reality, even though they know what they’re doing.)
I have absolutely no answer for that! LAUGH! ARGH! But seriously, how do you convince someone about an evidence-based truth when they are living by a faith-based or agenda-based truth? As a scientist who has lived most of her life doing research and learning to accept the truth of evidence, I find this belief or stance incomprehensible. So you weren’t asking me a question, were you? Well, I’ve heard some great advice on this actually and that is to appeal to a person’s compassion, their kindness, their links to family and friends and find some common ground through their humanity in the phenomenon—say a local manifestation of climate change—then work from there. Keep it local and practical and nonthreatening. In other words, take the science out of it and the belief out of it and appeal on humane grounds. You can’t convince someone to change their belief, but you might be able to persuade them to accept an aspect of something if it doesn’t threaten their belief.
I’d like to talk about the persistence of colonialism and how it’s tied to the climate crisis. In your novel, enormous swaths of British Columbia have been turned into reservoirs to store water to sell to Americans. Doing this displaces lots of people, especially indigenous and First Nations people. But things like this are happening even now. In Minnesota, the Canadian energy company Enbridge has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars paying local police departments to stop Water Protectors from blocking construction of Line 3, which would desecrate indigenous land and transport tar sands oil to US refineries. Could you talk a little about the importance of protecting indigenous and First Nations people’s rights, especially in the climate action movement?
You cite a great example of capitalist exploitation in the fossil fuel industry, which is occurring everywhere on the globe. As I mentioned already, Local and Traditional Ecological Knowledge lies at the heart of preserving this planet’s health and balanced climate. And Indigenous people around the world are regaining control of their territorial environments to reinvigorate food security, governance, social relations and economies. To quote Steven Nitah of the Dene First Nation, “because of their attachment to, and dependence on the land, Indigenous Peoples have been establishing their own protected areas for millennia.”
Luckily, we’re getting on board with this on a grass roots level and even government level—where it needs to be. An example of this are the Indigenous-led conservation movements like the Indigenous Guardians and the IPCAs (the Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas) where indigenous governments have the primary role in protecting and conserving ecosystems through indigenous laws, governance and knowledge systems. This is linked to the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)—specifically Articles 29 and 32—to govern themselves and their territories and to conserve and protect them. British Columbia in Canada sees many examples of Indigenous-led conservation leadership such with the Tla-o-qui-aht and Haida.
An example I’m following is the Heiltsuk Nation on the Great Bear Sea who have enacted an Oceans Act to protect their ocean relatives and particularly the Pacific herring—a keystone species. The Heiltsuk-herring relationship have thrived over millennia through a system of traditional ecological knowledge, gwee-ee-las, and sustainable harvesting practices. Under current legislation overseen by DFO, commercial fisheries have pretty much destroyed the herring fishery through unsustainable practices. While the Heiltsuk’s stewardship and governance of this area was recently recognized by Canada’s provincial and federal governments, DFO continued to operate separately through settler law, opening herring seine fishery in violation of Heiltsuk constitutional rights. Then they finally collaborated. We’re working it out. It’s an ongoing conversation.
We live in a time where it is so hard to decipher what is true, what is propaganda, and what is conspiracy theory. Your novel deals with this theme a lot through the character Daniel and his obsession with a social media-like platform called Oracle. Could you talk about writing this character and what inspired his creation?
Daniel is a kind of twisted hipster version of an oracle. Young. Wise. Naïve all at the same time. I brought him in as a trickster archetype, and a kind of foil to Lynna, the main character in the diary part of the book. He’s her technician and work mate and ends up being her link to the world of gossip and dark truths repressed by the corporations via the traditional internet. He finds these gems in the quagmire of the net to share with her over coffee. He’s really a very bright and astute technologist, but he also seems naïve in some ways. For instance, he’s a researcher who dabbles in conspiracy theory. He’s all about health but he smokes. So, a man of contradictions. So, even though he is Lynna’s coffee companion and amuses her, he also unsettles her. In true trickster fashion, he finds out her secret and pays for it. His character allows me to explore the best and worst of the diarist character Lynna.
I hope I’m not giving too much away with this question (we can skip it if you don’t want spoilers), but I want to talk about one of the central themes of the book: is it possible to save the Earth while saving humanity? The author of the diary, Lynna, writes about her water activist daughter, Hilde, a little over halfway through the book: “Does Hilde realize that she’s an oxymoron? To fight for water and the environment is to fight against humanity. Because at the root of Daniel’s question—would you save the planet at the expense of humanity?—lies the deeper question: can humanity exist without destroying the environment? And has Hilde made her prognosis? I know Una still believed in her heart that we could. I always thought her optimism was naïve.” For a long time, it seems like a narrative of the environmental movement was that humans are a virus. But now, there’s a big pushback against this narrative, with activists pointing to the systemic players who bear the most responsibility for the climate crisis. What do you think? Are humans the root problem?
On the surface, I’d say yes. Of course we are. But that is a far too simple and easy answer. It’s the easy way out. It isn’t so much that we’re human that created the climate crisis. It is that we— most of us—live and subscribe to a worldview and belief system that came from a place of great uncertainty with a perception of scarcity and an existential model based on fear and separation. Ancient peoples and most indigenous people today do not hold themselves as separate from the land; they already live in ecological civilizations. An ecological civilization is both a new and ancient idea. Buddhist, Taoist, and other traditions base their spiritual wisdom on the deep interconnectedness of all things. According to Robin Wall Kimmerer “In indigenous ways of knowing, it is understood that each living being has a particular role to play. Every being is endowed with certain gifts, its own intelligence, its own spirit, its own story…The foundation of education is to discover that gift within us and learn to use it well.” I think we’re starting to do this. Partly through listening to the Traditional Ecological Knowledge of our indigenous peoples.
I do believe that human nature is basically empathic and cooperative over selfish and competitive; I think we are born the former and taught to be the latter. That is what needs to change. How we are taught.
On a related note, the issue of overpopulation is a highly controversial topic in the environmental movement. This has led to some fear-mongering from Conservative politicians who tell their constituents that climate activists want to make a “one child” law like the draconian one-child policy in China that began in the late 70s as part of a government program to curb population growth. Yet, overpopulation is an enormous problem, with Project Drawdown saying, “Education lays a foundation for vibrant lives for girls and women, their families, and their communities. It also is one of the most powerful levers available for avoiding emissions by curbing population growth. Women with more years of education have fewer and healthier children, and actively manage their reproductive health.” Do you think overpopulation needs to be part of the conversation in the environmental movement? Do you think there are times when pointing to this issue as it relates to climate change is problematic?
It certainly can polarize and spark conflict. Reproduction and the right to reproduce is an innate impulse of all life: to make more of itself. So, we’re in conflict with ourselves already. I agree with Project Drawdown. But how to enter into a rationale and productive discussion on this issue relies on the players, their rationale, perspective, and their personal feelings on the matter. We kind of know there should be fewer of us but how to achieve that is another matter. It comes down to ecological footprints and living lightly on the earth and other philosophical considerations. You and I talked earlier about infertility. It seems a macabre kind of irony going on with habitat degradation caused partially by over-population sparking infertility in humans through endocrine disrupting chemicals in our drinking water…
Change is another big theme in your novel, reminding me of Octavia E. Butler’s masterpiece Parable of the Sower, in which she writes, “God is change.” In your novel, Lynna writes, “Trapped by our preordained notion of change, we no longer see what we’re not prepared to see. And that’s the change that kills us.” The problem with climate change is that everything is happening too fast for biological evolution to keep pace. There’s a lot of buzz about transhumanism right now—do you think we’re approaching a point where humans will have to take evolution into our own hands, so to speak, if we want to survive?
It isn’t our intelligence—our cleverness—that will save us; it is our kindness and compassion that will do that. We don’t need to invent some techy thing or reinvent ourselves or implant some intelligent virus into us. What we simply need to do is accept ourselves with humility, find and express joy. Give in to the beauty of our world and our own part in it. Become a participant. Embrace the feminine. Respect Nature and all that lies in it. Find something there to love, cherish it and protect it. The rest will follow.
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.
In 1969, I completed my first novel at the tender age of fifteen. Caged in World was a hundred-page speculative story about a world that had moved “inside” to escape the ravages of a harsh post climate-change environment.
1969 was the year that humans first stepped on the moon and the first Concorde test flight was conducted in France. But I was concerned by the environment and what was happening on our planet. It was seven years since Rachel Carson had published 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). It was just a year after Paul Erlich’s Population Bomb warned that attempts to stretch the Earth’s resources to support the ever-growing population would result in mass starvation, epidemics, and, ultimately, the breakdown of social order.
In the 1960s it was already apparent to me that environmental imbalance and destruction were global concerns and we were on the brink of an environmental crisis. Unchecked deforestation was destroying forests around the world, including the boreal and old-growth forests of my own country Canada. Brazil had already begun cutting down trees and burning forest at an alarming rate. Unregulated use of pesticides, herbicides and growth hormones created toxic contamination of our natural world and our food and water supply—despite Carson’s dire warning with Silent Spring. Our waterways were being contaminated by mining wastes and industrial effluents. Killer smog. Noxious algal blooms. Oil spills. Dead zones. The list was growing.
I joined S.T.O.P. (Society To Overcome Pollution) and marched in protests to call for responsible behaviour by governments and large corporations. I tried to raise awareness at my school about our deteriorating environment and likely consequences to human survival; my own teachers tried to silence me! I wrote my first dystopia, Caged in World. The eco-novel was about a subway train driver and a data analyst caught in the trap of a huge lie. The story later morphed into Escape from Utopia. Several drafts—and years later—the novel became the eco-medical thriller Angel of Chaos, set in 2095 as humanity struggles 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 works and lives. The city is run by technocrats, deep ecologists who call themselves Gaians, and consider themselves guardians of the planet. 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.
I spent several years shopping Angel of Chaos to agents and publishing houses. Although I received many bites, all finally let go. In the meantime, I did several things: 1) I started writing short stories, some of which were cannibalized from the book, and several of these were published; 2) I wrote Angel’s prequel, The Great Revolution (never published, The Great Revolution sits in a drawer hibernating) and Angel’s sequel Darwin’s Paradox, (which was published).
I thought of going into environmental law at university then decided that I didn’t have the temperament for it and instead pursued ecology and limnology. I taught limnology at the University of Victoria then found work as an environmental consultant. In 2007, Dragon Moon Press in Calgary made an offer to publish Darwin’s Paradox; the sequel became my debut novel. Dragon Moon Press later picked up Angel of Chaos and published it in 2010 as a prequel. I haven’t stopped publishing since (with a book pretty much every year).
My whole career-life has been dedicated to helping the environment, doing field studies as a limnologist and ecologist, publishing papers and reports, giving talks about water and the environment. I feel strongly that stories can go much farther in bringing not only awareness but direction for people to act on behalf of the environment and the planet. The narrative we give one another is the key.
What story do we tell of ourselves and each other?
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.