CONTENTS

ix

Preface

1

Introduction: If This Goes On        GERRY CANAVAN

 

 

Part 1

Arcadias and New Jerusalems

25

1 Extinction, Extermination, and the Ecological Optimism of H. G. Wells        CHRISTINA ALT

40

2 Evolution and Apocalypse in the Golden Age        MICHAEL PAGE

56

3 Daoism, Ecology, and World Reduction in Le Guin’s Utopian Fictions        GIB PRETTYMAN

77

4 Biotic Invasions: Ecological Imperialism in New Wave Science Fiction        ROB LATHAM

 

 

Part 2

Brave New Worlds and Lands of the Flies

99

5 “The Real Problem of a Spaceship Is Its People”: Spaceship Earth as Ecological Science Fiction        SABINE HÖHLER

115

6 The Sea and Eternal Summer: An Australian Apocalypse        ANDREW MILNER

127

7 Care, Gender, and the Climate-Changed Future: Maggie Gee’s The Ice People        ADELINE JOHNS-PUTRA

143

8 Future Ecologies, Current Crisis: Ecological Concern in South African Speculative Fiction        ELZETTE STEENKAMP

158

9 Ordinary Catastrophes: Paradoxes and Problems in Some Recent Post-Apocalypse Fictions        CHRISTOPHER PALMER

Part 3

Quiet Earths, Junk Cities, and the Cultures of the Afternoon

179

10 “The Rain Feels New”: Ecotopian Strategies in the Short Fiction of Paolo Bacigalupi        ERIC C. OTTO

192

11 Life after People: Science Faction and Ecological Futures        BRENT BELLAMY AND IMRE SZEMAN

206

12 Pandora’s Box: Avatar, Ecology, Thought        TIMOTHY MORTON

226

Churning Up the Depths: Nonhuman Ecologies of Metaphor in Solaris and “Oceanic”        MELODY JUE

243

Afterword: Still, I’m Reluctant to Call This Pessimism        GERRY CANAVAN AND KIM STANLEY ROBINSON

 

 

261

Of Further Interest

281

About the Contributors

283

Index