Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe

Changing the Climate explores nature and environment, power and society, narrative and image in meditations on ecology, ecocriticism, science and speculative fiction, film and contemporary art. With a chapter by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Published by Arena, 2011.
Edited by Andrew Milner, Simon Sellars and Verity Burgmann.
Order from Arena.

CONTRIBUTORS

Kim Stanley Robinson, Tom Moylan, Chris Palmer, Kate Rigby, Tamara Prosic, Rupert Read, John Clute, David Farnell, Anne Maxwell, Jennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor, Linda Williams, Gord Sellar, Lauren Bliss, Laura McLean, Andrew Milner, Simon Sellars, Verity Burgmann.

CONTENTS

‘Introduction: Changing the Climate’ Andrew Milner

Part I: Science in the Capital

  • ‘Remarks on Utopia in the Age of Climate Change’ Kym Stanley Robinson
  • ‘N-H-N: Kim Stanley Robinson’s Dialectics of Ecology’ Tom Moylan
  • ‘Free Exchange and Dark Secrecy in the Capital’ Chris Palmer

Part II: Imagining Catastrophe

  • ‘Imagining Catastrophe: Utopia and Dystopia in a Warming World’ Kate Rigby
  • ‘The Ecotopian Modelbuilding of Australian Climate Change Intellectuals’ Verity Burgmann
  • ‘Of Bodies and Souls: Ecology and Orthodox Christianity’ Tamara Prosic
  • ‘Care, Love and Our Responsibility to the Future’ Rupert Read

Part III: Writing Catastrophe

  • ‘Truth is Consequence’ John Clute
  • ‘Unlikely Utopians: Ecotopian Dreaming in H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow over Innsmouth” and Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood‘ David Farnell
  • ‘”Remember the Voices of the Trees”: The Turn from Technology in Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang‘ Anne Maxwell
  • ‘Doomed by Hope: Environmental Disaster and the “Structured Ignorance” of Risk in Margaret Atwood’s Speculative Fiction’ Jennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor

Part IV: Visualizing Catastrophe

  • ‘Shadows of the Holocene: Transfigurations of the Nonhuman World in Science Fiction Film’ Linda Williams
  • ‘Politics and Ecology on the Korean Left: AntiAmericanism and Environmental Dystopia in The Host’ Gord Sellar
  • ‘Figures of Extraterrestrials in Film: A Threat to Utopia’ Lauren Bliss
  • ‘Futurism Now: Structure and Process in Contemporary Art’ Laura McLean

‘Afterword: Changed by the Climate’ Simon Sellars

Notes on Contributors