“Gaia’s Revolution”, Life after Capitalism: A Canadian Story…

February 22, 2026February 15, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

A fanatical deep-ecologist, Monica Schlange, harnesses two orphans in her bid to reshape humanity and its place in the natural world.

My upcoming book Gaia’s Revolution (Book 1 of The Icaria Trilogy by Dragon Moon Press) explores a collapsing capitalist society in Canada through ravages of climate change and a failing technology. The story is told through the lives of ambitious twin brothers Eric—a gifted engineer—and Damien Vogel—a brilliant scientist and deep ecologist*—and the woman who plays them like chess pieces in her gambit to ‘rule the world.’

The brothers meet at Treffpunkt, a café near Humboldt University in Berlin, nursing Kellerbiers over a late lunch of Einsbein mit Sauerkraut. They argue ideology and reform. Canada represents an ideal canvas for revolution, argues Eric. Damien is puzzled by this. To him Canada represents a quietly reposed nation of polite intellectuals who accept a healthy multicultural society and whose practical leaders are connected with their people. Not a restive rabble ripe for change.

As if reading his brother’s mind, Eric replies:

“Because it’s a huge nation with a lot of space and few people,” Eric argues. “Did you know that Canada holds on average only 4 people per square kilometer? Germany stuffs 240 people in the same area. And China, which is virtually the same size as Canada, holds 153 people per square kilometer.” He picks up Walden Two and waves it at Damien. “Canada is a perfect place to start these [Walden Two colonies called Icarias*]. And, with global warming, we could settle in the boreal.” He then slides the book back in his pocket and leans back, eyes sparkling with purpose. “But the real reason to start a revolution there is because, like you, Canadians are naïve. Even their leaders. And this is because, unlike the rest of the world, they are still asleep…

“Climate is not our enemy, Dame; it’s our friend. Climate is our fierce archangel of change. And let’s not forget that ‘crisis is opportunity…” … He grins, self-pleased, like a wolf in a hen house. Then he practically snarls out, “We must first destroy before we can create. We must be unruly like climate. We must be relentless like climate. We must ride that wave before we can become the wave, Bruder. And then by being that wave, we change the world.”

*Pine cedar forest in Ontario (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)*

The brothers escape the growing racial violence of Berlin, to ‘peaceful’ Canada in a rivalry to control the evolution of the human race. Years later, Eric Vogel, who has created a niche for himself in the technocratic government*, sits in the Canadian prime minister’s office and imagines what a post-capitalist world will look like and how his twin brother Damien—left behind in Germany—would disagree with his vision:

Damien too easily prescribes to the old leftist shibboleth of Nature being the answer to everything and Market being evil. His deep ecology utopia would spring from an atavistic rejection of modern life, a return to ‘the ancient farm.’ But how that fantasy could be achieved without a drastic population reduction is beyond his brother’s imagination. Damien fetishizes the natural world. Just like he does their mother. The naïve fool is a blind romantic, refusing to see reality right in front of him: that Nature is ultimately cruel, cold, and preoccupied with its own survival. Just like their mother.

*First snow in an Ontario marsh (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)*

Each brother plans to create a new humanity: one to control through gene manipulation and behaviour engineering; the other to empower through biotechnology and transhumanist AI. The warring brothers end up in Canada and set off a violent revolution that destroys the Canadian technocratic government and whose weapons ultimately risk the survival of humanity. Deep ecologist Monica Schlange snares the brothers in her gambit to reshape humanity and its place in the natural world. Three orphaned children, caught in the web of intrigue and violence, will ultimately determine the direction of humanity by introducing the first veemelds (people who can communicate with machines), a new environmental disease (Darwin), and a new set of rules neither brother envisioned.

You can pre-order the ebook of Gaia’s Revolution on Amazon. Release date is March 10, 2026. The print version will release soon after. Book 2 (Angel of Chaos) and Book 3 (Darwin’s Paradox) of The Icaria Trilogy are already available in both ebook and print form.

*Birch trees in a winter marsh, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)*

References:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 Naess in 1972, it promotes a holistic, ecocentric worldview—often termed “ecosophy”—that demands radical, structural changes to human society to prioritize nature’s flourishing.

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

*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.

My Short Story “The Polywater Equation” (Die Polywasser-Gleichung) in “Tales of Science II” Anthology

July 13, 2025June 5, 2025 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

*Author Nina Munteanu holding copy of Tales of Science II (photo by Jane Raptor)*

A few weeks ago, I looked into my mail box and found my contributor’s copy of “Tales of Science II” Anthology (edited by Marianne Labisch & Kiran Ramakrishnan) with my short story Die Polywasser-Gleichung (“The Polywater Equation”) inside. Beaming, I did a little dance because the anthology was marvelous looking! And it was all in German! (My mother is German, so I could actually read it; bonus!).

This science-fiction anthology, for which I was invited to contribute, collected seventeen short stories, all based on sound science. Here’s how the book jacket blurb (translated from German) describes the anthology:

It’s all just fiction. Someone made it up; it has nothing to do with reality, right? Well, in this anthology, there’s at least a grain of truth in all the stories, because scientific sponsors collaborated with authors. Here, they looked into the future based on current research What does such an experiment look like? See for yourself what the authors and scientific sponsors have come up with: about finding a way to communicate with out descendants, finding the ideal partner, conveying human emotions to an AI, strange water phenomena [that’s my story], unexpected research findings, lonely bots, and much more. The occasion for this experiment is the 20^th anniversary of the microsystems technology cluster microTEC Südwest e. V.

(cover image and illustrations by Mario Franke and Uli Benkick)

In our initial correspondence, editor Marianne Labisch mentioned that they were “looking for short stories by scientists based on their research but ‘spun on’ to create a science fiction story;” she knew I was a limnologist and was hoping I would contribute something about water. I was glad to oblige her, having some ideas whirling in my head already. That is how “The Polywater Equation” (Die Polywasser-Gleichung) was born.

I’d been thinking of writing something that drew on my earlier research on patterns of colonization by periphyton (attached algae, mostly diatoms) in streams using concepts of fluid mechanics. Elements that worked themselves into the story and the main character, herself a limnologist, reflected some aspects of my own conflicts as a scientist interpreting algal and water data (you have to read the story to figure that out).

The *Diatom Forest, (illustration by Nina Munteanu used in Dutch journal H2O)*

My Work with Periphyton

As I mentioned, the short story drew on my scientific work, which you can read about in the scientific journal Hydrobiologia. I was studying the community structure of periphyton (attached algae) that settled on surfaces in freshwater streams. My study involved placing glass slides in various locations in my control and experimental streams and in various orientations (parallel or facing the current), exposing them to colonizing algae. What I didn’t expect to see was that the community colonized the slides in a non-random way. What resulted was a scientific paper entitled “the effect of current on the distribution of diatoms settling on submerged glass slides.”

A. Distribution of diatoms on a submerged glass slide parallel to the current; treated diatom frustules are white on a dark background. B. diagram of water movement around a submerged glass slide showing laminar flow on the inner face and turbulent flow on the edges (micrograph photo and illustration by Nina Munteanu)

For more details of my work with periphyton, you can go to my article called Championing Change. How all this connects to the concept of polywater is something you need to read in the story itself.

The Phenomenon of Polywater

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

*Soviet chemist Boris Deryagin peers through a microscope in his lab*

In the 1960s, Nikolai Fedyakin picked up on Lord Kelvin’s work at the Kostroma Technological Institute and through careful experimentation, concluded that the liquid at the bottom of the glass tube was denser than ordinary water and published his findings. Boris Deryagin, director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry in Moscow, was intrigued and his team confirmed that the substance at the bottom of the glass tube was denser and thicker than ordinary water and had additional anomalous properties. This phase of water had a thick, gel-like consistency; it also had a higher stability, like a polymer, over bulk water. It demonstrated a lower freezing point, a higher boiling point, and much higher density and viscosity than ordinary water. It expanded more than ordinary water when heated and bent light differently. Deryagin became convinced that this “modified water” was the most thermodynamically stable form of water and that any water that came into contact with it would become modified as well. In 1966, Deryagin shared his work in a paper entitled “Effects of Lyophile Surfaces on the Properties of Boundary Liquid Films.” British scientist Brian Pethica confirmed Deryagin’s findings with his own experiments—calling the odd liquid “anomalous water”—and published in Nature. In 1969, Ellis Lippincott and colleagues published their work using spectroscopic evidence of this anomalous water, showing that it was arranged in a honeycomb-shaped network, making a polymer of water—and dubbed it “polywater.” Scientists proposed that instead of the weak Van der Waals forces that normally draw water molecules together, the molecules of ‘polywater’ were locked in place by stronger bonds, catalyzed somehow by the nature of the surface they were adjacent to.

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

When one scientist discounted the phenomenon and blamed it on contamination by the experimenters’ own sweat, the significance of the results was abandoned in the Kuddelmuddel of scientific embarrassment. By 1973 ‘polywater’ was considered a joke and an example of ‘pathological science.’ This, despite earlier work by Henniker and Szent-Györgyi, which showed that water organized itself close to surfaces such as cell membranes. Forty years later Gerald Pollack at the University of Washington identified a fourth phase of water, an interfacial water zone that was more stable, more viscous and more ordered, and, according to biochemist Martin Chaplin of South Bank University, also hydrophobic, stiffer, more slippery and thermally more stable. How was this not polywater?

The Polywater Equation

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

The first known case of polywater occurred on June 19, 2044 in Newark, United States. Housewife Doris Buchanan charged into the local Water Department office on Broad Street with a complaint that her faucet had clogged up with some kind of pollutant. She claimed that the faucet just coughed up a blob of gel that dangled like clear snot out of the spout and refused to drop. Where was her water? she demanded. She’d paid her bill. But when she showed them her small gel sample, there was only plain liquid water in her sample jar. They sent her home and logged the incident as a prank. But then over fifty turbines of the combined Niagara power plants in New York and Ontario ground to a halt as everything went to gel; a third of the state and province went dark. That was soon followed by a near disaster at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station in Ajax, Ontario when the cooling water inside a reactor vessel gummed up, and the fuel rods—immersed in gel instead of cooling water—came dangerously close to overheating, with potentially catastrophic results. Luckily, the gel state didn’t last and all went back to normal again.

If you read German, you can pick up a copy of the anthology in Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus or Thalia, both located in Berlin but also available through their online outlets. You’ll have to wait to read the English version; like polywater, it’s not out yet.

References:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Significant Science Fiction TV Series—Part 1, Shows that Touch on Justice and Science & Technology: #2 — ORPHAN BLACK

May 18, 2025March 8, 2025 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

I’ve selected ten TV series that have intrigued me, moved me, and stayed with me for various reasons that touch on: abuse of justice, including eco-justice and environmental abuse; technology use and abuse; and the effects and horrors of climate change.

Some are well known; others not so well known. All approach storytelling with a serious dedication to depth of character, important themes, realistic world building, and excellent portrayal by actors. The world-building is extremely well done—in some cases rivalling Ridley Scott’s best—with convincing portrayals of worlds that are at times uncanny in their realism. Worlds that reflect story from an expansive landscape to the mundane minutiae of daily life: like the cracked phone device of Detective Miller in The Expanse or the dirty fingernails of engineer Juliette Nichols in the Down Deep of Silo. Stories vary in their treatment of important themes from whimsical and often humorous ironies to dark and moody treatises on existential questions. In my opinion, these TV series rival the best movies out there, often reflecting large budgets (but not always) and a huge commitment by producers. The ten TV series I’ve selected here come from around the world: Brazil, Germany, France, Norway, Canada and the United States.

In Part 1, I look at five TV series that touch on ethical issues we are facing today; issues that reach far into existential questions of what it means to be human. These TV series explore synthetic biology, cloning and gene editing, and justice in space colonization and exploitation.

ORPHAN BLACK: Mingling Its Own Nature With It…

Shot in and around Toronto, Ontario, the series focuses on Sarah Manning, a fringe-dweller with questionable friends, who assumes the identity of her clone, cop Elizabeth (Beth) Childs, after witnessing her suicide and stealing her stuff. In Season 1 alone, seven clones are revealed. Those still alive include suburban housewife Alison Hendrix, university evolutionary biologist Cosima Niehaus, corporate mogul Rachel Duncan, and crazed sociopath Helena.

Toronto is filmed brilliantly in a vague every-city pastiche that combines the look of London’s eastside, NYC and northern Europe all in one. Like its characters, the show is both sparsely existentialist and baroque funk. Besides Sarah’s own diverse clones there is foster brother Felix and his various friends or cronies who add significant colour to this film-noir set. Unsavory antagonists not only add intrigue but provide significant texture from sophisticated and subtle to the banal and truly terrifying. And like biology itself—perhaps the true main character here—all the characters are shape-shifters, looking for balance in a shifting world where “normal” keeps chasing itself.

*Sarah Manning at the train station where she meets her first clone (image by Orphan Black)*

Orphan Black is a slick, sophisticated and edgy exploration of human evolution that raises issues about the moral and ethical implications of bio-engineering and genetic tampering—specifically human cloning (currently against the law), personal identity, and intellectual property. Manson and Fawcett enlist symbols and clever metaphor to enrich the story with layers of depth—no item is free of meaning: from the seemingly innocuous naming of a transit station (Huxley Station) in the show’s premiere, or Delphine’s passing reference to “a brave new world” to a terse discussion between a religious extremist and a restaurant proprietor over the merits of factory-farmed eggs: “They’re not normal,” the extremist complains. “They’ve been interfered with.” There is nothing normal about Orphan Black.

*Cosiima meets Dr. Aldous Leaky of Neolution, a transhumanist organization about self-directed evolution*

Episode titles in Season One quoted parts of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary text On The Origin of Species. Titles like “Natural Selection” (series premiere) and “Parts Developed in an Unusual Manner” elucidate concepts of evolution and survival of the fittest. Season 2 adopts the works of Sir Francis Bacon, reflecting the ethical and moral implications of scientific pursuit in a world of contrasting philosophies and values.

In Orphan Black, The Dyad Institute, a biotech corporation with arcane connections to invisible powers and eugenics, patented the clones as theirs to do with as they please—which might be anything. The ownership of the clones’ genomes by The Dyad Institute would be lawful if all the clones’ DNA was entirely synthetically made. The company would also have exclusive rights to study the clones’ genome, effectively placing the clone Cosima under copyright infringement if she decided to study and apply her research (on herself) outside of the Dyad Institute. If the clones were synthetic, like the DNA created by scientist Dr. Craig Venter, then the Dyad Institute would be in a unique situation with regards to ethics and newly emerging considerations of human rights yet to be determined. For instance, how much of the clones really belong to the company that made them? What even constitutes a person?

Significant Science Fiction TV Series—Part 1, Shows that Touch on Justice and Science & Technology: #1 — BIOHACKERS

April 27, 2025March 8, 2025 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

Some are well known; others not so well known. All approach storytelling with a serious dedication to depth of character, important themes, realistic world building, and excellent portrayal by actors. The world-building is extremely well done—in some cases rivalling Ridley Scott’s best—with convincing portrayals of worlds that are at times uncanny in their realism. Worlds that reflect story from an expansive landscape to the mundane minutiae of daily life: like the cracked phone device of Detective Miller in The Expanse or the dirty fingernails of engineer Juliette Nichols in the Down Deep of Silo. Stories vary in their treatment of important themes from whimsical and often humorous ironies to dark and moody treatises on existential questions. In my opinion, these TV series rival the best movies out there, often reflecting large budgets (but not always) and a huge commitment by producers. The ten TV series I’ve selected here come from around the world: Brazil, Germany, France, Norway, Canada and the United States.

In Part 1, I look at five TV series that touch on ethical issues we are facing today; issues that reach far into existential questions of what it means to be human. These TV series explore synthetic biology, cloning and gene editing, political justice, and justice in space colonization and exploitation.

BIOHACKERS: When Synthetic Biology Meets Ethical Intrigue

This fast-paced techno-thriller created by Christian Ditter has at the very centre of its intrigue synthetic biology. In the journal Science Dov Greenbaum describes this German TV series as “a fictional tale centred around the sociotechnological movement known as do-it-yourself (DIY) biology, in which amateurs, professionals, anarchists, and civic-minded citizens push the boundaries of mainstream biology.” The show centres on Mia Akerlund (played by Luna Wedler) a secretive med-student prowling for answers to the death of her twin brother and her antagonist, the enterprising Machiavellian and narcissistic Professor Tanja Lorenz (Jessica Schwarz). But the real star of the show is biohacking: human enhancement or augmentation to improve health, performance, or well-being. Biohacking ranges from efforts to improve brain function to faster weight loss. Some are relatively safe to try at home; others may pose health risks. Among others, the show features glow-in-the-dark mice, gene-modded weed, underwater pills that extend your ability to hold your breath, and payment microchips in your hand.

The series lent a critical realism to the story by using accurate world building, real sets and equipment from genetics labs and university settings. Dov Grenbaum’s article in the journal Science entitled “Biology’s brave new world” celebrates the show for its accurate representation of complex laboratory equipment and procedures and how it accurately represents the intricacies, motivations and ethical issues of biohacking from sophisticated big-business gene therapies to DIY homespun biology.

Biohackers opens with a disturbing scene of bioterrorism on a train headed to Berlin. All passengers suddenly choke and fall unconscious—except for young med student Mia Akerlund, who tries to help and fails. From that explosive flash-forward scene, the show jumps back to two weeks prior, as college freshman Mia settles into Freiburg University’s prestigious medical school, and betrays a particular interest in synthetic biology, biohacking and genome editing. We soon learn that she is obsessed by celebrated professor and geneticist/entrepreneur Tanja Lorenz (who runs a biopharmaceutical company and has an entire building dedicated to her research with huge neon logo of her name). Both women are connected by a dark secret to do with Mia’s twin brother who mysteriously died when still a boy. Mia quickly gains a position working for Lorenz, which plunges her into the dangerous intrigue of illegal genetic experiences.

*Lorenz and her grad student Jasper discuss experiments in their sophisticated lab (image from Biochackers)*

An early, rather enlightening, scene of the first episode is of Mia’s first introductory biology class given by celebrated gene therapy tycoon Professor Lorenz. Not only does the scene introduce the controversial subject of synthetic biology; it reveals a disturbing sense of what’s at stake and the danger of scientific hubris. Tall, svelte and confident in a smart haircut and tailored suit, Lorenz struts like a self-proclaimed goddess in front of a student-crowded lecture hall and preaches the benefits of synthetic biology. When she asks the class “What is synthetic biology?” and a student replies “with the help of synthetic biology, we can alter existing life forms or create new ones,” Lorenz prickles beyond her already frosty demeanor and impatiently berates the students for their lack of vision. She challenges them to think bigger: “Synthetic biology transforms us from creatures into creators. It’s not just the future of medicine, but of humankind. We can cease entire infections before the outbreak … We eliminate genetic disorders. But if we don’t do our work exceedingly well, it could end our species. It is on us to find a way; this is your future. Your responsibility. You are the creators of tomorrow. We make God obsolete…”

Science, academia and intrigue are skillfully woven in an intelligent mystery-thriller that not only represents science accurately but delivers commentary on the ethical and moral questions of this highly dynamic and rapidly evolving field of science.

Biohackers touches on several ethical and moral questions, such as genetic modification of stem cells, access to advanced gene therapies, and privacy and consent surrounding genomic data. Synthetic biologist Elsa Sotiriadis warns that, “this topic will likely become an ethical minefield in the coming years. On the one hand, we need large and diverse datasets to train medical AI and develop therapies. But on the other, there’s nothing as personal as your literal blueprint. Unlike stolen credit cards, you can’t change your genomic data. I like that Biohackers brings this up.”

*Lorenz does a throat swab for DNA on a candidate in her experiment as Mia looks on (image from Biohackers)*

Ten Significant Science Fiction TV Series:

Biohackers (Germany)
Orphan Black (Canada)
Occupied (Norway)
Missions (France)
Expanse (USA)
Incorporated (USA)
3% (Brazil)
Snowpiercer (USA)
Silo (USA)
Extrapolations (USA)

Review of “A Diary in the Age of Water”: Women, Water, Numinosity, and the Transformation of the World

March 16, 2025March 6, 2025 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

“It is a novel to learn from, and it is a novel to take forward into life as inspirational guide. Each of us is called upon to examine, not only our relationship with water, but with all Earth gifts.”
Jane Buchan, author & educator

Vermont author Jane Buchan recently wrote a review of my 2020 eco-fiction novel A Diary in the Age of Water. Here is an excerpt:

As climate, social, and political crises escalate, one source of guidance becomes essential to our continued optimism and activism: a Numinous Story… A Diary in the Age of Water by Nina Munteanu, is, for many of us alive in these terrifying times, a numinous story. It meanders through our consciousness with the enlightening science of fresh-water lakes and rivers and streams, sometimes heavy with sediment and toxicity, sometimes fast flowing and cleansing, sometimes terrifying with truths smacking us down with the force of a tidal bore. Its characters are story tellers and story receivers, and despite their diverse natures, all the stories they tell reveal the many threats to our source of life on Earth – our water.

Nina Munteanu’s novel structure is perfect for the weaving of human scientific and mystical relationships with water. It’s initial and final sections create a frame for the inner story of bitterness, despair, self-serving behaviours, and corporate rapaciousness described by a professional scientist, a limnologist named Lynna. In the outer story we meet Kyo and Nam, Kyo’s mentor, as well as Ho, a librarian and keeper of a remnant of rare books. These characters exist on the other side of a mysterious cataclysm, the causes of which are the novel’s key themes.

Kyo, a small, four-armed blue being whose story begins and ends the novel, introduces us to the characters who form the larger diary section framed by the opening Library section and final Seed Ship section. Kyo makes glancing references to Una, mother of Lynna, and Lynna, mother of Hilde. Only Lynna is fully realized through her own perceptions and thoughts, these expressed in diary entries beginning in the spring of 2045 and ending in the late fall of 2066. Her diary, taking up 250 pages of this 303-page novel, provides the chronological spine connecting our past and present to a possible future that is not the one most humans want to think about, let alone welcome.

A Diary in the Age of Water is best sipped and savoured rather than gulped. Gulping will lead to choking for most non-scientist readers, and this book deserves to be experienced as it is written, in slow, undulating, revelatory waves… Like all complex stories, A Diary in the Age of Water requires patience, something our video-oriented age does not foster. The richest stories ask that we learn to hold many apparently divergent story threads at once. One of my fears as I read the diary was that the darkness of greed and short-sighted thinking and feeling would win out over that wondrous mystical relationship with the world that Una carried. While Una does her best to pass the experience of the sacred on to Lynna, Una’s spiritual influence is eclipsed by Lynna’s oppressive dependence on scientific knowledge to the exclusion of all else.

Through these characters, Nina Munteanu offers a warning for our times. Science is vitally important to our understanding of natural systems but science best serves us when it is balanced with an experience of the responsiveness of the natural world, a responsiveness that evokes our reverence and respect. Every culture honours the spiritual nature of the greater-than-human world, encoding its reverence in mythology, folktales, and wisdom traditions. – all keepers of numinous stories that transform our relationships with one another and the world. When we live honouring the sacred nature of all life, we become partners and co-creators. When we do not, we are highly dangerous parasites…

Lynna is called to hold the science of water firmly in her mind as her heart slowly opens to water’s responsiveness, water’s intelligence, water’s generosity, water’s love. It is a huge transformation for her, because science has been her safe place, her refuge. But knowing how something works is only the first part of the journey for those of us alive on this watery planet; we must all experience the why – the joy of unbreakable interconnections that make our lives meaningful… It is not Una’s daughter, Lynna, who carries this numinosity forward. It is Hilde, Una’s granddaughter, whose name means, significantly, Warrior Woman. How Kyo fits in to this lineage is one of the novel’s most unique speculations, one best discovered by reading the entire novel.

This novel is rich with information about water’s evolutionary journeys; it also describes the horrors of human greed that directly impact our relationships with water. It is not an easy book, but it is an important one, especially for people ready to engage, to advocate, to stand against the corporate insanity currently destroying Earth’s delicate balances. It is a novel to learn from, and it is a novel to take forward into life as inspirational guide. Each of us is called upon to examine, not only our relationship with water, but with all Earth gifts.

Go to Jane’s site Winterblooms to read the full review, worth reading in its entirety for its rich and poetic narrative.

Jane Buchan is a writer currently living in Vermont and originally from southwest Ontario. Her books include Under the Moon, Kinder Sadist and her latest, The Buttes. She is also an emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) coach, Master Trainer and educator.

*Jackson Creek flowing through ice formations (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)*

Through the Portal Anthology Bestseller in Edmonton

February 20, 2025February 24, 2025 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

*“Through the Portal” selling like hotcakes at Audrey’s Books in Edmonton (photo by Audrey’s Books)*

Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia recently made it to the number 2 position on the Edmonton Bestselling Books list ending February 2, 2025. The weekly list is compiled by Audreys Books and Magpie Books through the Book Publishers Association of Alberta.

Through the Portal anthology continues to garner attention and accolades by reviewers, booksellers, and readers throughout Canada. Released December 31, 2024 and launched in several locations in Canada, Portal is celebrated for its hopeful lens on an otherwise bleak future with thirty-five unique short stories, flash fiction, and poetry and an afterward.

There are many faces for hope; this anthology has thirty-six of them. Each story in the anthology features a unique hopeful lens that draws from a diversity of authors from around the world and throughout Canada. Stories that touch on nostalgia to respect, enlightenment to endurance. In these tales that range from compassion and healing to cautionary warnings of dark insight, hope may wear a human face or the face of a tree, black crow, or leaf.

Hopeful dystopias are so much more than an apparent oxymoron: they are in some fundamental way the spearhead of the future – and ironically often a celebration of human spirit by shining a light through the darkness of disaster. In Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia, award-winning authors of speculative fiction Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Nina Munteanu present a collection that explores strange new terrains and startling social constructs, quiet morphing landscapes, dark and terrifying warnings, lush newly-told folk and fairy tales.—Exile Editions

“A stunning collection of short stories and poetry that address our most existential concerns.”
Dragonfly.eco

“Will ingenuity, love, and respect for the earth help us work through whatever changes might lie ahead? Through the Portal offers hope that these qualities, if not enough in and of themselves, will help us find our way.”
The Seaboard Review

Through the Portal Anthology Gets Stellar Review

February 9, 2025January 18, 2025 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

The recently released Through the Portal ecofiction anthology that I co-edited with Lynn Hutchinson Lee and published by Exile Editions, received an in-depth review by author Lisa Timpf in The Seaboard Review. Here are some highlights of Timpf’s review of this anthology of hopeful dystopian short stories, flash fiction and poetry:

Mermaids, arborists, and pollinators are among the characters to be found in Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia. Edited by Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Nina Munteanu, this eco-fiction collection gathers over thirty stories that fall under the general umbrella of hopeful dystopias…

Through the Portal offers intriguing and imaginative glimpses into the future. As [one of its short stories] “A Fence Made of Names” suggests, we often don’t appreciate what we have until we lose it. By showing us what we stand to lose, these stories offer a reason to increase our actions to preserve the planet…

While many of the tales hint at dark times ahead, it was refreshing to find so many that offered a ray of hope despite that. Whether it’s finding the will to live another day, returning to a better relationship with the land and the Earth, or taking steps to improve the world in even a small way, these stories affirm humanity’s potential for resilience in challenging times.

Will ingenuity, love, and respect for the earth help us work through whatever changes might lie ahead? Through the Portal offers hope that these qualities, if not enough in and of themselves, will help us find our way.
Lisa Timpf, The Seaboard Review, Jan 13, 2025

Go to The Seaboard Review for the full review of Through the Portal. The review is worth reading in its entirety.

Movie Review: The Creator

January 12, 2025April 29, 2024 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

Nirmata: n.¹ [Nepalese for ‘the Creator’] The mysterious unknown architect of advanced AI; ² A being worshipped by Artificial Intelligence as their creator; savior; God.

I just re-watched The Creator, a visually stunning science fiction thriller by Gareth Edwards that explores our sense of humanity through our relationship with AI as ‘other.’

Shot in over sixty locations in Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, and Nepal, the film feels familiar and alien at the same time; it does this by seamlessly combining the gritty realism of a war-torn Vietnam documentary with the glossy pastiche of near-future constructs and vehicles—to the extent that one is convinced this was filmed in a world where all these things really exist together. The effect is stunning, evocative and surprising. I was reminded of the detailed set pieces and rich cinematography of Ridley Scott (The Duelists, Bladerunner, Alien).

At its core, The Creator is about a man who gives up everything to defend a child who is different (she is a simulant run by AI).

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not a new concept in science fiction*; however, The Creator elegantly tells a story with a unique—and subversive—perspective on this topic.

The film opens with 1950s-esque advertising footage for robot helpmates including conventional robots and AI humanoid simulants who look and act human. Then disaster hits: LA is nuked and the AI are blamed for it. Now fearing them, the Western world has banned all AI; however New Asia has continued to develop the technology, achieving sophisticated simulants—posthumans in effect—who are fully integrated with the human culture and spirituality and live in harmony with them. Americans, bent on exterminating all AI, use guerrilla warfare techniques to infiltrate New Asia and destroy any AI using ground teams deployed and helped by a giant airborne surveillance / defence station called U.S.S. NOMAD. News of a sophisticated new AI superweapon created by an unidentified genius called Nirmata to take down NOMAD sends them on a new mission, which brings Joshua (John David Washington) back from PTSD ‘retirement’ to help locate and destroy both Nirmata and the superweapon.

*Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles) pacifies an enemy robot (image from “The Creator”)*

Joshua finds the superweapon: a 6-year old child, Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), who is both innocent and quietly powerful. Although Joshua’s prime directive is to destroy the superweapon, he finds that he cannot kill this child whose human traits involuntarily tug at his heart’s compassion.

*Joshua (John David Washington) defends the child-weapon (image from “The Creator”)*

The story is in fact a simple one. Its genius lies in an immersive showing and telling at many levels. At the socio-political level, the film uses obvious metaphors of racism and imperialistic ableism to make commentary on America’s jingoistic air of entitlement. The film can easily be interpreted as an allegory for Western imperialism and America’s rationale for the invasion of Iraq (or Vietnam) with a conclusion of the futility of war. At the individual level, the question of identity and the reduction of some (e.g. immigrants or of another race) as “other” or “homo-sacer,” to gain power and wealth, are explored through the interactions, relationships, and prejudices of humans with the simulants and robots. It is at the individual story level that this film tugged my heartstrings as I followed the journey of Joshua and Alphie, how they as initial combatants having made a deal to survive, grow to care and love one another. Musanna Ahmed of The Upcoming shares that “this was expected from Edwards … [in achieving] beautiful character work and sense of intimacy against an epic backdrop.” When an idea-driven story of large dimensions is told at the intimate personal level, pathos and understanding emerges.

*A robot defends the escape boat (image from “The Creator”)*

Gareth Edwards shared that the film contained fairy tale aspects of the “Hero’s Journey” of two main characters, Joshua and Alphie, each on a journey: he to find redemption through love of the ‘other’; she to find her place in the world and to find freedom and peace for her kind and all others. She is the catalyst hero and he the main protagonist.

“A reluctant father figure must help a child through the metaphorical woods to find his wife [and her mother]. What he wants is love from his wife. But what he really needs is to love this child.” As for what Alphie both wants and needs, this is something she first shares in a humorous scene: when Kami asks her what she wants (from the kitchen), Alphie naively responds “for robots to be free.” She is stating the point of the movie: that everyone, no matter how different, is worthy of compassion.

Early on in the film, Joshua reassures a co-worker distressed by a robot’s desperate plea to save it from the crusher that “they’re not real…they don’t feel… it’s just programming.” When Joshua, who admits he’s bad, forces Alphie to help him find his wife, Alphie sums up both their scenarios with a child’s wisdom: “Then we’re the same; we can’t go to heaven because you’re not good and I’m not a person.”

*Americans attack a village in New Asia (image from “The Creator”)*

Several reviewers criticized how the film’s epic setting seemed to overshadow and compromise the heart of the story, the personal drama of man and child. While I would agree that many action thrillers do this, I did not feel this was the case with The Creator. This is because—as with Ridley Scott’s intricate immersive environment—The Creator integrates place with theme to create more than one-dimensional drama. In The Creator, place is also character, playing a key role in the telling of this very different story about AI as ‘other’ and how we treat the ‘other.’ This is also why film locations and scene choreography are so important. Each scene and place is diligently choreographed to further illuminate a story of multi-layered meaning, such as authentic scenes of village life where AI is seamlessly integrated with human existence.

Colonel *Howell (Alison Janney) gets captured by New Asia police (image from “The Creator”)*

Several critics have accused the film of being derivative, of copying previous tropes or actual scenes from several well-known movies. Indeed, when I first watched it, I recognized tropes that seemed lifted in their entirety from another previous movie.

The scene, shot in Tokyo where Joshua and Alphie go to the city in search of Joshua’s friend, sounds and looks and feels just like Bladerunner with its whining oriental soundscape and dark futuristic yet gritty cityscape. And yet, its appropriateness to The Creator seems less like stealing than re-appropriation; as if to say, “this fits better here than where you’ve initially used it.”

Christy Lemire of RogerEbert.com proclaimed that the movie “ends up feeling empty as it recycles images and ideas from many influential predecessors … lumbers along and never delivers the emotional wallop it seeks because the characters and their connections are so flimsily drawn.” Jackson Weaver of CBC called The Creator “a voguish used-future action-thriller…a dull, simplistic fable with all the moral complexity of a fourth grader’s anti-bullying Instagram post…a story that has been done to death…boring.”

I couldn’t disagree more. I found these reviewers’ comparisons shallow and limited. While I recognized several familiar tropes, I believe they were meant to subvert and make commentary—sometimes on the trope itself. There is a strong immersive role in world building and backdrop, which creates its own sensual and many-layered narrative; a narrative that speaks more powerfully than dialogue: from a mere glance by Harun to a brief storytelling moment in a village to a child mourning the death of its cherished robot companion. Ridley Scott would appreciate its value.

Harun (Ken Watanabe) on the escape boat, taking Alphie to safety (image from “The Creator”)

The Guardian’s Wendy Ide’s use of the word “original” for The Creator bares mentioning here; in declaring The Creator one of the finest original science-fiction films of recent years, Ide goes on to say: “It can be a little misleading, that word ‘original’, when it comes to science fiction. At its most basic, it just refers to any picture that isn’t part of an existing franchise or culled from a recognisable IP – be it a book, video game or television series. But very occasionally the word is fully earned, by a film so distinctive in its world-building, its aesthetic and its unexpected approach to well-worn themes that it becomes a definitive example of the genre. Films such as Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 (which shares an element of basic circuitry with this picture) or Alfonso Cuarón’s dystopian masterpiece Children of Men: both went on to become benchmarks by which subsequent science fiction was judged.”

In listing the various science-fiction standards The Creator riffs on, Alison Willmore of Vulture singles out one of the most poignant aspects of the film:

“The films The Creator turns out to have the strongest relationship with are ones about the Vietnam War, something made unmistakable by the early shots of futuristic hovercraft gliding over rice plants and the scenes of U.S. troops threatening weeping villagers at gunpoint. No longer able to buy into the message that they’re just doing what’s necessary for the salvation of humankind, Joshua finds himself adrift, fleeing through a war zone on impulse with a child destroyer in tow. The Creator may be an effective interrogation of American imperiousness and imperialism, but it also has a tender, anguished heart.”

*NOMAD approaches a New Asia temple (image from “The Creator”)*

Other notable TV shows and movies about artificial intelligence and robots include: A.I.; Ex Machina; I, Robot; Bladerunner; Better than Us; The Matrix; I am Mother; The Terminator; Transcendence; and Automata.

Best of Metastellar Three and Virtually Yours

October 20, 2024October 3, 2024 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

The third of Metastellar Magazine’s ‘Best of’ anthologies The Best of Metastellar Year Three was recently released and is available at numerous booksellers. Available in print and ebook, the anthology hosts forty-six riveting short stories of science fiction, fantasy and horror. This anthology also features my dark speculative story “Virtually Yours.” Their second ‘Best of’ anthology contained my short story “The Way of Water.”

Virtually Yours in The Best of Metastellar Year Three: In a world of seamless surveillance where virtual and real coalesce in a teasing dance, love is the trickster…

The Way of Water in The Best of Metastellar Year Two: A woman stands two metres from a public water tap, dying of thirst in a water-scarce world rife with corporate/government corruption…

You can purchase the previous anthologies on Amazon here: The Best of Metastellar Year One and The Best of Metastellar Year Two.

*Nina tickled when her copy of “The Best of Metastellar Anthology Three” arrives* in the mail

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.

Ironic Tragedy of Forever Chemicals & Growing Infertility: Are We Solving Our Own Population Explosion Through Toxicity?

October 6, 2024February 27, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

In the passage below of my eco-fiction dystopian novel A Diary in the Age of Water, the year is 2065 and the diarist Lynna (a limnologist at the University of Toronto) reflects on the steeply growing infertility in humans and our tenuous future. Lynna draws on the factual study published close to fifty years earlier (in 2017) by Hagai Levine and others at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who found that sperm counts among western men had reduced close to 60% in four decades:

Back in ’49, Daniel and I had several discussions about the environmental triggers and epigenetic mechanisms of infertility in humans. Daniel went on about how it was all about the men. While women showed signs of increased infertility, men’s rate of infertility was more than double that of the women, he said. Taking an inappropriately gleeful tone, Daniel cited the classic 2017 paper by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the one that started it all. Their findings were startling: men’s sperm count in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand had diminished by sixty percent in forty years, between 1973 and 2011. The scientists predicted that by 2060, virtually all men in these parts of the world would have little to no reproductive capacity.

It’s 2065 and they’re right. Only it’s worse. Before the twenties, only the developed countries seemed to be affected, but then sperm counts started to plummet in South American countries, like Argentina and Brazil, where GMO, pesticides, and solvent manufacturing were exploding.

You get out what you put into the ground. India and Asia—where endocrine-disruptive chemicals are finding their way into the water—are reporting very low sperm counts in their men as well as higher incidents of intersex humans.

You get out what you put into the water. We are over two thirds water, after all. I find it a little ironic that we’ve inadvertently produced a non-discriminatory way to control the problem of humanity’s overpopulation. Infertility. And that infertility results from defiling the environment we live in.

But now climate change is shouldering its way in. Climate change is shutting us down.

Is this the first sign of our impending extinction?

–excerpt from “A Diary in the Age of Water”

.

That environmental perturbations impact our ability to reproduce has been proven. In their 2017 article, Levine et al. write that:

“Sperm count and other semen parameters have been plausibly associated with multiple environmental influences, including endocrine disrupting chemicals (Bloom et al., 2015; Gore et al., 2015), pesticides (Chiu et al., 2016), heat (Zhang et al., 2015) and lifestyle factors, including diet (Afeiche et al., 2013; Jensen et al., 2013), stress (Gollenberg et al., 2010; Nordkap et al., 2016), smoking (Sharma et al., 2016) and BMI (Sermondade et al., 2013; Eisenberg et al., 2014a). Therefore, sperm count may sensitively reflect the impacts of the modern environment on male health throughout the life course (Nordkap et al., 2012).”

*This rain falling on an Ontario marsh most certainly contains forever chemicals (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

Thanks to chemical companies such as DuPont and others, forever chemicals are currently in rain water globally, and in many places in unhealthy concentrations. These endocrine-disrupting and cancer-causing chemicals often end up in drinking water and include PCBs, phthalates, PFAS, BPAs (used in pesticides, children’s products, industrial solvents and lubricants, food storage, electronics, personal care products and cookware).

If you observe a terrible irony in this short list, also know that the chemical companies, such as DuPont, have known about the dangers posed by these products for decades and decided to keep it a secret.