What does it mean for a book, a film or a game (or a piece of music, meme or painting) to be about food? Do people have to sit down to actually eat for a given text to be about food? Obviously, texts where this happens cannot help but say something about food, but food …
Becky Chamber’s started out like many other up-and-coming science fiction/climate fiction authors by self-publishing her fiction. Her debut novel The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet began in 2012 through a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. Shortly after its original publication, it was picked up by a big publishing house, and it was subsequently shortlisted for the …
According to conventional understanding, climate fiction (sometimes abbreviated as cli-fi) is a “new literary genre that focuses on the consequences of environmental issues” and that helps people “thinking about the Earth’s sustainability” as argued by J. K. Ullrich in The Atlantic. Thus, “climate fiction represents a vital supplement” to climate science because it provides “insights into how it might be to feel and understand” …
At the beginning of Blade Runner 2049, a “replicant” or android named “K”, an employee of the LAPD, arrives at a protein farm. This is run by another replicant named Sapper Morton, but Sapper is unregistered; a runaway that must be taken out of commission. In Sapper’s brown kitchen, among bowls of grubs, K and Sapper …
Marian Womack’s The Swimmers (2021) explores a future where climate change has become so severe that a large portion of humanity has escaped to an “Upper Settlement”, an enormous space station that revolves around the Earth. This is a common trope in speculative fiction where the space station is the ultimate gated community (see Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium (2013) …
In Andy Weir’s sci-fi novel Hail Mary (2021), a microscopic alien life form has begun to consume the sun’s energy. This is slowly bringing about a new ice age that will eventually kill all human life. Humanity’s only hope is a star 16 light years away. Unlike other stars in the vicinity, this is not deteriorating. Fortunately, …
George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) is about water, fossil fuels, sand and bonkers action. There is a lot that is problematic with this film, including the fact that while it clearly connects fossil fuel to hypermasculine, authoritarian patriarchy, it cannot help to also celebrate the awesome power of the roaring diesel engine as it motors …
Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars (2012) was well received by critics and shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2013 (alongside Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312). The novel plays out in a depleted future reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) and Marcel Theroux’s Far North (2009). Ecology is failing due to climate change, a …
Having Your Cake and Eating It: Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars Read More »