Relevant and riveting anthology of "green" science fiction

Dreams Edge: Science Fiction Stories
Terry Carr
Sierra Club Books

"So here are twenty stories about energy depletion, endangered species, pollution, our vanishing wilderness, overpopulation, and alternative energy sources--problems of the immediate future. Science fiction still tells of wondrous futures far away and a long time from now...but these are stories of the boundaries that lie immediaely before us. We're coming to the edge of something---is it to be the death of our world, or an endless future? Before we think about next week, we need to know that there'll be a tomorrow." (p.4)

Indeed. While amazing stories of space colonization and alien invasion are still great fun, I currently find myself needing a science fiction that addresses my pressing "green" concerns. Science fiction has always been the literary form which demands that the writer and reader think through the unthinkable, and, as anthologist/contributor Terry Carr reminds the reader, previous impossiblities like space flight found their initial inspirations in the fancies of science fiction writers. Now that the unthinkable includes the prospect of the collapse of civlization, or even of life itself, we urgently need science fiction speculation to help us find our way. I, along with Carr, hope that this anthology will inspire its readers to "devote their working lives to solving environmental problems," so that science fiction may "make an even more important contribution to the world."

To this end, Terry Carr has collected twenty wide-ranging masterpieces to address these environmental concerns, and not one of the stories is disappointing. Some of my favorites include: "Occam's Scalpel," in which the old trope of extraterrestrial colonization of the Earth meets the new call for ecological awareness; "Young Love," a chilling love story set in a future where everyone abides in government-sanctioned idiocy; the metafictional "How Can We Sink When We Can Fly?"; John Shirley's chilling "Under the Generator," in which death itself is exploited as a source of energy; and Carr's own "Virra," a sad yet hopeful finish to the anthology. Each story is a gem; collected, they are a masterpiece.

(This review was originally written on March 2, 2007.)

Rich, challenging, literary anthology that demands re-reading

Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias
Kim Stanley Robinson
Tor Books, 1997


At first I was a bit disappointed in this collection, because the earliest stories didn't seem ecotopian, utopian, or even SF in character. After I discovered the editor's endnotes, though, the intention behind the collection and its total vision became apparent, and the inclusion of the early stories made perfect sense.

As Dr. Robinson himself notes, the stories don't tend toward standard utopian themes---namely the planned, perfect, permanent society---but they instead reflect the dirty, earthy, organic, fertile concerns of the ecotopian. The "stories reveal everywhere their writers' belief that the societies they depict are preferable to the boxed existences of modern, urban life" (p. 346) through embodied engagement with the world of physical nature and the re-infusion of meaning into everyday life. "What these stories ask us to reconsider is what is really important in life, and thus new definitions of utopia must be reconsidered as well" (ibid).
"It's not that [these stories] advocate a simple return to nature, or a rejection of technology, which given our current situation would be nothing than another kind of ecological impossibility." Instead, these stories, "reject ther inevitability of a machine future" (p. 11).

Not all of the stories are immediately accessible, and many, if not most, demand re-reading in order to get a full appreciation of both the ideas and the writing in which those ideas are expressed. Most of the stories in the anthology really impressed me, but my favorites (at least right now) would have to be "Hogfoot Right and Bird-hands," "House of Bones," "Chocco," and "Newton's Sleep," all of which explored essential themes about what it means to be human in communion with (or separation from) the world of biological nature.

All in all this is a superb science fiction anthology that belongs on the bookshelves of anyone interested in utopian and ecotopian fiction, about the current state of humanity, and about our possible futures.

(This review was originally written on January 27, 2007.)