The first study to look at the intersection of the discourse of the Anthropocene within the two highly influential storytelling modes of fantasy and myth, this book shows the need for stories that articulate visions of a biocentric, ecological civilization. Fantasy and myth have long been humanity’s most advanced technologies for collective dreaming. Today they are helping us adopt a biocentric lens, re-kin us with other forms of life, and assist us in the transition to an ecological civilization. Deliberately moving away from dystopian narratives toward anticipatory imaginations of sustainable futures, this volume blends chapters by top scholars in the fields of fantasy, myth, and Young Adult literature with personal reflections by award-winning authors and illustrators of books for young audiences, including Shaun Tan, Jane Yolen, Katherine Applegate and Joseph Bruchac.
Chapters cover the works of major fantasy authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Terry Prachett, J. K. Rowling, China Miéville, Barbara Henderson, Jeanette Winterson, John Crowley, Richard Powers, George R. R. Martin and Kim Stanley Robinson. They range through narratives set in the UK, USA, Nigeria, Ghana, Pacific Islands, New Zealand and Australia. Across the chapters, fantasy and myth are framed as spaces where visions of sustainable futures can be designed with most detail and nuance. Rather than merely criticizing the ecocidal status quo, the book asks how mythic narratives and fantastic stories can mobilize resistance around ideas necessary for the emergence of an ecological civilization.
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Academic Contributors
List of Artists
Introduction: The choice we have in the stories we tell Marek Oziewicz, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, USA
Part I. Trouble in the Air
Anthropos and the Air Brian Attebery, Idaho State University, USA
From the Third Age to the Fifth Season: confronting the Anthropocene through fantasy Brian Attebery
Who knows where the time goes? Nisi Shawl, author, editor and journalist
Playing with the trouble: children and the Anthropocene in Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch series Lindsay Burton,University of Cambridge, UK
Rewrite Katherine Applegate, author
Staying with the singularity: nonhuman narrators and more-than-human mythologies Alexander Popov, Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski", Bulgaria
The eye of the story Joseph Bruchac / Nokidahozid, author
Fantasy for the Anthropocene: on the ecocidal unconscious, planetarianism, and imagination of biocentric futures Marek Oziewicz
AstroNuts, the origin story Jon Scieszka, author
Part II. Dreaming the Earth
Anthropos and the Earth Brian Attebery
Embodying the permaculture story: Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching series Tereza Dedinová, Masaryk University, Czechia
Where is the place for seagrass and weevils in children’s literature? Eliot Schrefer, Fairleigh Dickinson University, USA
Arboreal magic and kinship in the Chthulucene: Margaret Mahy’s trees Melanie Duckworth
Just imagine Barbara Henderson, author
From portable landscapes to themed thrill rides: Rowling’s heterotopic hopescapes Stephanie Weaver, Savannah College of Art and Design, USA
Does fantasy literature have a place in the climate change crisis? Craig Russell, USA
“The earth is my home too, can’t I help protect it?”: Planetary thinking, queer identities and environmentalism in The Legend of Korra, She-Ra and Steven Universe Aneesh Barai, University of Sheffield, UK
Celebrations of resilience Elin Kelsey, author and scholar
Part III: Visions in the Water
Anthropos and the Ocean Brian Attebery
Kim Stanley Robinson’s case for hope in New York 2140 John Rieder, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, USA
Myth makes us see Adam Gidwitz, author
Sleeping with the fishmen: reimagining the Anthropocene through oceanic-chthonic kinships Prema Arasu, University of Western Australia, Australia and Drew Thornton, Curtin University, USA
Fish Girl’s dilemma Donna Jo Napoli, author
From culture hero to emissions zero: critiquing Maui’s extractivist mindset in Disney’s Moana Christopher D. Foley, University of Southern Mississippi, USA
Finding balance and hope in the Indigenous past David Bowles, author
Reimagining youth relations with Moananuiakea (The large, expansive ocean): contemporary Niuhi Mo‘olelo (man-eating shark stories) and environmental activism Caryn Kunz Lesuma, Brigham Young University, USA
The future that has yet to be imagined Shaun Tan, artist writer and film maker
Part IV: Playing with Fire
Anthropos and the Fire Brian Attebery
Convert or kill: disanthropocentric systems and religious myth in Jemisin’s Broken Earth Derek J. Thiess, University of North Georgia, USA
Reimaging the upright ape Jane Yolen, author
Myths of (un)creation: narrative strategies for confronting the Anthropocene Jacob Burg, Boston University, USA
The stepping stone, the Boulder, and the Star: a fable for the Anthropocene Grace L. Dillon, Portland State University, USA
On monsters and other matters of housekeeping:reading Jeff VanderMeer with Donna Haraway and Ursula K. Le Guin Kim Hendrickx, University of Leuven, Belgium
The seriousness of writing funny Molly B. Burnham, author
Literalizing hyperobjects: on (mis)representing global warming in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones Markus Laukkanen, Tampere University, Finland
Index
About the Author :
Marek Oziewicz is Professor of Literacy Education and Sidney and Marguerite Henry Professor of Children’s and Young Adult Literature at the College of Education and Human Development, Universty of Minnesota - Twin Cities, USA. He is the author of One Earth, One People (2008), which won the 2010 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies; Justice in Young Adult Speculative Fiction (2015); and 5 co-edited collections, and over 50 articles and book chapters.
Brian Attebery is Professor of English at Idaho State University, USA and Editor or the Journal of the Fantastic in Art. His publications include Stories about Stories: Fantasy and the Remaking of Myth (2019) and Ursula K. Le Guin: Always Coming Home (2019). In 2019 he was Leverhulme Visiting Professor of Fantasy at the University of Glasgow.
Tereza Dedinová is Assistant Professor in the Department of Czech Literature, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. She has published on theory of the fantastic from the cognitive perspective, on the representation of the actual world in fantasy, and on the Czech fantastika.
Review :
Mind opening.
The book’s profusion of subjects and clarity of language will make this book compelling reading for scholars of narrative genre while remaining accessible to undergraduate readers.
The urgings in Fantasy and Myth should be heeded. They may go far to help persuade people that we do not have to live in a dystopian world; that we cannot focus solely on end-of-the-world stories but on “how can we work together to change the world” stories
Generally speaking, so-called fantasy and mythic literature tend to be regarded as enjoyable and yet too unrealistic to enable us to grasp the causes of the real dangers threatening our complex civilized world. This assumption is misleading if not discouraging, for as the numerous essays by notable scholars and artists in Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene demonstrate, fantasy and myth play an important role in helping us deal with the doom and gloom of climate change. Moreover, they provide extraordinary counter narratives that can help us reshape the world. This collection of essays is a wonderful breath of fresh optimistic air and reveals how the anticipatory imagination in contemporary myths and fantasy can help us resist the current ecological dilemma in which we find ourselves.
[This] collection deserves to be read by anyone interested in how non-realist genres have risen to the challenge of imagining other worlds in the shadow cast by human industrial civilization.
Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene is an impressive and multifaceted book... [The] scholarly essays are engaging explorations of how fantasy texts provide potentially useful ways of rethinking our relationship with the planet as we go forward, each one soundly based on a good bit of research and critical thinking about relevant and well-known texts. The creative pieces add voices that are not usually seen in an academic anthology, but they balance the scholarly pieces well and add weight to the editors’ argument that fantasy writers and illustrators can and do play an essential role in how we view the Anthropocene.
