Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction
Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction, edited by Gerry Canavan, and Kim Stanley Robinson, Wesleyan University Press, 2014. ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298642309_Green_planets_Ecology_and_science_fiction
Abstract:
Contemporary visions of the future have been shaped by hopes and fears about the effects of human technology and global capitalism on the natural world. In an era of climate change, mass extinction, and oil shortage, such visions have become increasingly catastrophic, even apocalyptic. Exploring the close relationship between science fiction, ecology, and environmentalism, the essays in Green Planets consider how science fiction writers have been working through this crisis.
Be it evolution and apocalypse during the Golden Age of Science Fiction or the imperialism of New Wave Sci-Fi: Ecological themes in science fiction have always been present within the genre. This collection of essays touches on the connection between sci-fi works and the environmental changes we have been and are currently experiencing ourselves. By taking a look at stories of terraforming, exploration of extraterrestrial environments, or the rejection of modern technocracy, we can see the effects of climate change on how we envision the future and which views become important. Accordingly, this works gives insight into how a genre can represent how humanity is living through environmental crises.