“Gaia’s Revolution”, Life After Capitalism: Will the Environment—And We Along With It—Survive?…

February 15, 2026February 12, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

“Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.”—Rosa Luxemburg, 1915

I wrote my first novel in 1969 when I was fifteen. Caged in World was a hundred-page speculative story about a world that had moved “inside” to escape the ravages of a post climate-change environment. It would later become Book 2 of The Icaria Trilogy. I was already disillusioned with my world. I saw how corporations and governments and society in general—individuals around me—‘othered’ the environment by either treating it with disrespect and apathy or outright ignoring it in a kind of torpor of obliviousness. As though it didn’t exist.

I remember being chastised by a school teacher for thinking globally about what was happening to the planet at our hands: worldwide deforestation (e.g., clearcutting the old-growth forests of Canada), infilling saltwater and freshwater marshes, massive use of pesticides and fertilizers, contamination of lakes, unregulated mining and toxic pollution, and ultimately climate change. Stick to local concerns, he advised me; recycling and such.

I remember wondering if I was just being weird. That my odd sensibility for the planet-entire was just a nina-thing. I prayed that I was not alone and it wasn’t just a nina-thing.

(Photo: Nina Munteanu, Salk Institute, California)

For a description of how the books of the trilogy came to be (for instance, they were published in backward order!) see my article entitled “Nina Munteanu Reflects on Her Eco-Fiction Journey at Orchard Park Secondary School”.

Throughout high school and university, I read scientific papers, news articles and books on revolution. I became a student of climate change long before the term entered the zeitgeist. I studied industrial capitalism and its roots in neoliberalism and colonialism. I noted how the post-war expansion of capitalism shifted from Fordist mass production to flexible automation, technology and AI. I saw the rise of multinational corporations, income inequality, and the commodification of everything—from water to human beings (Foucault’s homo economicus).

I pursued a university degree in ecology and limnology to study and help protect the environment and educate industry and their governments in the process. I became an expert on water. See my book Water Is…The Meaning of Water, which celebrates water from twelve perspectives (and got a shout out from Margaret Atwood!).

I soon concluded that a hegemony that follows the economic system of late capitalism inevitably commodifies and ‘others’ with ruthless purpose. Once something (or someone) is commodified, they are given a finite value and purpose outside their own existence. They become an object, a symbol to use and trade. They become a resource to manipulate, exchange, and dispose of with impunity. And through this surrender to utility, they become ‘othered.’ The consumer. The trees of the forest. Water. Homo sacer*. Each has a role to play in the late capitalist narrative of digital abundance and physical scarcity.

Capitalism hasn’t been kind to the environment. Economic pundits and sociologists insist that Capitalism is devolving. But what will replace it? Cloud capital? Technofeudalism? Something else?

Deep Ecology* & Gaia’s Revolution

*The Icaria Trilogy (Dragon Moon Press)*

My three Icaria novels—starting with Gaia’s Revolution, (the first of The Icaria Trilogy, releasing March 10, 2026, by Dragon Moon Press)—chronicle the collapse of a capitalist society in Canada as climate change, water shortages, habitat destruction, plague and a failing technology devastate the Canadian population.

Gaia’s Revolution (Book 1 of The Icaria Trilogy) explores a transition in Canada from semi-socialized capitalist system to a technocratic* meritocracy of technologists and scientists. Triggered by catastrophic environmental and sociological tipping points and following violent revolution, a dictatorship of deep ecologists* called Gaians seize power. By the end of the book, enclosed cities called Icarias* now populate North America. Separated from their environment, humans now live inside domes protecting them from a hostile and toxic environment.

In truth, the deep ecologists are keeping people “inside” not to protect humanity from a toxic wasteland but to protect the environment from a toxic humanity.

How realistic is this vision? Well, it is science fiction, after all, and though it takes liberties with its narrative, it is science-based and ultimately draws on precedent. As Margaret Atwood so astutely attested of her cautionary SF book The Handmaid’s Tale: “I didn’t put in anything that we haven’t already done, we’re not already doing, we’re seriously trying to do, coupled with trends that are already in progress.”

Science fiction is itself powerful metaphor; it is the fiction of political and social allegory or satire and makes astute social commentary about a world and civilization: how it has come to be, how it works—or doesn’t—and how it may evolve.

So, it is visionary and predictive? I prefer to think as Ray Bradbury:

“The function of science fiction is not only to predict the future, but to prevent it.”–Ray Bradbury

*Jackson Creek in winter, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)*

References:

Angus, Ian. 1012. “The Spectre of 21^st Century Barbarism.” Climate & Capitalism, August 20, 2012.

Atwood, Margaret. 2004. “The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake ‘In Context'”. PMLA. 119 (3): 513–517.

Atwood, Margaret. 2018. “Margaret Atwood on How She Came to Write The Handmaid’s Tale”. Literary Hub. April 25, 2018.

Bradbury, Ray. 1991. “Yestermorrow: Obvious Answers to Impossible Futures” and “Beyond 1984: The People Machines” by Ray Bradbury, dated 1982, Page 155, Joshua Odell Editions: Capra Press, Santa Barbara, California.

Foucault, Michel. 2010. “The Birth of Biopolitics (Naissance de la biopolitique): Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979.” Picador. 368pp.

Luxemburg, Rosa. 1915. “The Junius Pamphlet: The Crisis in the German Democracy”, Marxist.org.

Munteanu, Nina. 2026. “Gaia’s Revolution, Part 1 of Icaria Trilogy.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 369 pp.

Munteanu, Nina. 2010. “Angel of Chaos, Part 2 of Icaria Trilogy.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 518 pp.

Munteanu, Nina. 2007. “Darwin’s Paradox, Part 3 of Icaria Trilogy.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 294 pp.

Neuman, Sally. 2006. “‘Just a Backlash’: Margaret Atwood, Feminism, and The Handmaid’s Tale“. University of Toronto Quarterly. 75 (3): 857–868.

Sessions, George, Bill Devall. 2000. “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered.” Gibbs Smith. 267pp.

Skinner, B.F. 1948. “Walden Two” The Macmillan Company, New York. 301pp.

Streeck, Wolfgang. 2014. “How Will Capitalism End?” New Left Review 2 (87): 47p.

Terminology:

*Deep Ecology: An environmental philosophy and social movement advocating that all living beings have intrinsic value, independent of their utility to human needs. Coined by Arne Næss in 1972, it promotes a holistic, ecocentric worldview—often termed “ecosophy”—that demands radical, structural changes to human society to prioritize nature’s flourishing.

*Homo sacer: a figure from Roman law denoting a person excluded from society who is outside human law (can be killed) and divine law (cannot be sacrificed). The term represents “bare life”: stripped of political rights, legal protection, and social value. Philosopher Giorgo Agamben popularized the term to describe individuals excluded from the political community, such as refugees, stateless persons, or camp detainees. The term illustrates the power of a sovereign in deciding which lives are worthy of protection and which are not.

*Icaria: the name of Étienne Cabet’s utopia. Cabet was a French lawyer in Dijon, who published his novel Voyage en Icarie in 1839. The novel was a sort of manifesto-blueprint of utopian socialism, with elements of communism (abolished private property and individual enterprise), influenced by Fourierist and Owenite thinking. Key elements, such as the four-hour work day, are reflected in B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two. Cabet’s novel explores a society in which capitalist production is replaced by workers’ cooperatives with a focus on small communities.

*Letzte Generation: a prominent European climate activist group, founded in 2021, known for its acts of civil disobedience—such as roadblocks, defacing art, and vandalizing structures—to pressure governments on climate action. The term was chosen because they considered themselves to be the last generation before tipping points in the earth’s climate system would be reached. They are mostly active in Germany, Italy, Poland and Canada. In Germany, they have faced accusations of forming a criminal organization, leading to police raids.

*Technocracy: A form of government in which the decision-maker(s) are selected based on their expertise in a given area; any portion of a bureaucracy run by technologists. Technocracies control society or industry through an elite of technical experts. The term was initially used to signify the application of the scientific method to solving social problems.

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.

Movie Review: Snowpiercer and the Machine of Life

December 29, 2024March 3, 2024 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

What’s left of humanity—after we broke the world—is crammed in a speeding train that circles a frozen Earth … forever.

Bong Joon-Ho’s 2013 motion picture Snowpiercer is a stylish post-climate change apocalypse allegory. A dark pastiche of surrealistic insanity, welded together with moments of poetic pondering and steam-punk slick in a frenzied frisson you can almost smell. Joon-Ho casts each scene in metallic grays and blues that make the living already look half-dead. The entire film plays like a twisted steampunkish baroque symphony. Violence personified in a garish ballet.

*One of the many excessive fight scenes*

The train’s self-contained closed ecosystem is maintained by an ordered social system, imposed by a stony militia. Those at the front enjoy privileges and luxurious living conditions, though most drown in a debauched drug stupor; those at the back live on next to nothing and must resort to savage means to survive. This film isn’t about climate change—that’s just a plot point to serve the premise of a study on how society functions—or rather copes—within a decadent capitalist system, based on an edict of productivity: serve the machine of “life”. Satisfy the sacred machine at all costs; complete with subterfuge, oppression and references to cannibalism. Beneath the film’s blatant statement on the emptiness of the pursuit of capital at any cost lies a deeper more subtle exploration on the nature of humanity. Die to live or live to die?

In a recent interview with io9, Joon-Ho said, “the science fiction genre lends itself perfectly to questions about class struggle, and different types of revolution.”

Revolution brews from the back, led by Curtis Everett (Chris Evans), who confesses to a forced recruit, along the way, “A thousand people in an iron box. No food, no water. After a month we ate the weak. You know what I hate about myself? I know what people tastes like….I know that babies taste best.”

Minister Mason (Tilda Swinton), an imperious yet simpering figure who serves the ruling class without quite being part of it, reminds the lower class that, “Eternal order flows from the sacred engine. We must occupy our preordained position. I belong to the front, you belong to the tail. Know your place!”

*Minister Mason dispenses the law to the tail*

It’s all about the engine for both front and tail. It saved humanity, after all. It is their future. Curtis tells his colleagues that they will move forward: “We take the engine and we control the world. It’s time we take the engine.”

“Reform and revolution are shibboleths that distinguish liberals from radicals,” explains Aaron Bady of The New Inquiry. “While liberals want to reform capitalism, without fundamentally transforming it, radicals want to tear it up from the roots (the root word of “radical” is root!) and replace capitalism with something that isn’t capitalism…If you’re the kind of leftist who thinks that the means of production just need to be in better hands—Obama, for example, instead of George W. Bush, or Elizabeth Warren instead of Obama, or Bernie Sanders instead of Elizabeth Warren, and so on—then this movie buries a poison pill inside its protein bar: soylent green is people.”

The train “eats” the children of the poor; using them to replace the sacred engine parts that have worn out in a kind of retro-transhumanist collaboration of human and machine and creating a perverse immortal cyborg entity. Only, the individual children die in the process and need to be constantly replaced to maintain the eternal whole. They have literally become cogs in a giant wheel of eternity.

Curtis’s revolution is doomed from the start; once he reaches the front, it is revealed to him that the entire conflict and resulting deaths were orchestrated all along to help maintain population balance. Wilford (Ed Harris), the genius who created the train with a perpetual motion engine, tells Curtis once they meet that, “this is the world…The engine lasts forever. The population must always be kept in balance.” Which begs the obvious question: why not just get rid of all of the lower class “scum” (as Mason calls them)? That would make room for the privileged. What purpose do these lower class serve? The answer is both obvious and simple: aside from providing their children as parts to the sacred engine, they are there to be hated, feared and despised by the elite. When the soul is empty and needs “filling” but can’t be filled, then it finds a substitute.

*Wilford lectures Curtis on the train’s functional ecosystem*

Aaron Bady of The New Inquirer shares that, “Instead of giving Texans a health care system, for example, late capitalism gives them the illegal immigrant, to hate, to fear, and to dis-identify with. Prisons do more and more of the system-maintaining work that was once done by schools and hospitals: instead of giving us something to want, they give us something to fear, hate, and kill. And so, we eat ourselves.” We die to live.

Wilford grooms Curtis as the new engineer and reveals to him the true nature of the engine. “You’ve seen what people do without leadership,” says Wilford to Curtis. “They devour one another.” This is dark irony considering what the train is doing. And it is when Curtis discovers this awful truth that his reformist revolution comes to a dead halt and he makes a decision that takes him into the realm beyond the train.

Snowpiercer is about hard choices and transcendence. … Save humanity, but at the consequence of our souls? Or transcend a machine that has robbed us of our souls at the expense of our mortality? The film continually questions our definition of what life is and what makes life worth living.

*Snowpiercer crosses one of many treacherous bridges*

The film, whose script by Joon-Ho and Kelly Masterson is based loosely on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob, graphically portrays the fecklessness of a reformist/revolutionary movement to transcend the decadent capitalist machine (the train). It begins with the adoption of a failing system from a previously failed system. Perhaps it is a truism that most reformist movements fail to challenge the true hegemony of the system they intend to overtake, given their origin. What we get is little genuine change; just a shuffle in protocol.

Peter Frase of Jacobin Magazine shares that, “it’s all the more effective because the heart of that critique comes as a late surprise, from a character we might not expect.”

*Namgoong languishes in a drugged state on the train* after he is liberated from a drawer

Namgoong Minsoo (Song Kang-Ho) is a spaced-out drug addict that Curtis ‘liberates’ from a drawer to help them open the gates to the forward sections. Like everyone on the train, Nam is a little crazy. But he differs in one important way: he believes there is hope outside the train. Unlike his reformist brothers, he looked outside the construct and studied the realm beyond the train. Perhaps it is drug-induced fantasy. Perhaps he’s simply had enough of a lifetime of “non-life” onboard the train and would rather die outside to truly live, even if for a brief moment. When the chance for this moment materializes, we, like Nam and his daughter Yona (Ko Ah-sung), are more than ready to jump the train. In fact, we’re desperate to get off this shadow game of bread and circuses. Even if it means freezing to death in moments.

Only Yona and one of the rescued children from the engine, survive the ensuing train crash, thanks to Curtis’s truly revolutionary decision.

“Is it more revolutionary to want to take control of the society that’s oppressed you, or to try and escape from that system altogether?” asks Joon-Ho.

I felt a cathartic surge of relief when the train came to a violent crashing stop; even though it effectively meant the end of humanity. My visceral response was incredible relief. The scene following the train crash was —despite the inhospitable and cold environment—surrealistically fresh, invigorating and serene. Along with Yona and one of the children Curtis rescued, we’ve escaped the rushing perversity: the obsession to survive at any cost. We’ve chosen to live to die. That Curtis (had to) die with the train to ensure the safe escape of Yona and the child, made sense to me. Curtis remained trapped in the old paradigm; but he possessed enough vision to understand the need for change beyond his sight. His was a sacrifice for true change.

As Yona and the child crunch through the snow in the quiet depth of coldness, they glimpse a polar bear. There is life! Perhaps not humanity. But life on Earth.

And in that connection, we live. Even if just for a moment.

*Yona and the child face a bleak but hopeful future after escaping the Snowpiercer*

Postscript on the ending of the movie: In an interview with Vulture, Bong Jung-Ho shared his thoughts on Snowpiercer’s ending: “For me, it’s a very hopeful ending … The engine is itself on its way to extinction along with cigarettes, and other goods. Extinction is a repeated word throughout the film. But outside the train, life is actually returning. It’s nature that’s eternal, and not the train or the engine, as you see with the polar bear at the end.”

Ultimately, Bong Jung-Ho’s message with the ending of this baroque political allegory is the vindication of a choice against reform capitalism for something new, that there is indeed “Life after Capitalism”, not easy but worth living…

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.