My BA Thesis

Háskóli Íslands

Hugvísindadeild

Enskuskor

Future Simple

Eco-Feminist Post-Apocalyptic Fiction and the End of the World as We Know It

Ritgerð til B.A.-prófs

Samuel Ludger Levesque

Kt.: 240876-2059

Leiðbeinandi: Guðrún Guðsteinsdóttir

Apríl, 2006

This essay is gratefully dedicated to the late

Octavia Estelle Butler

(June 22, 1947---February 24, 2006).

She may not have “Shaped God”, but her books shaped me.

“We give our dead

To the orchards

And the groves.

We give our dead

To Life.”[1]

Summary

Eco-feminist post-apocalyptica is an exciting emergent genre that turns the more standard post-apocalypse story on it figurative head. These stories argue with highly subversive flair that the world as we know it is fundamentally flawed, so much so that its end is simply inevitable. Yet, they argue that this is not necessarily a pessimistic prospect, but rather that this inevitable end means the chance to a rebuild the world in a better mode. While the first defining characteristic of the genre is the manner in which the world ends, the others serve both to define the genre and to offer alternatives to the current mode of western civilization. The genre questions the entire ideal of ‘Progress’ in its meta-narrative sense, especially our reliance on technology and science to shape our world. The current and possible future state of gender relations are held up to a very harsh light, with radical proposals for change alongside terrifying prophetic visions of the future if change does not come. Religion as an organized entity is soundly condemned, while other, less authoritarian spiritual paths are laid out for the reader. This anti-authoritarian ethos segue ways over to questions of economics and politics, where the genre prescribes decentralization and anarchistic structures as the cures, or at least treatments, for current societal woes. Finally, the genre places a great deal of emphasis on questions of community and community building in direct opposition to the common western emphasis on individual heroes and individualism. The essay concludes with a brief exploration of the application of these points to the ‘real’ world, and what can be learned from the fictional worlds the various authors create.

Table of Contents

Foreword: The Beginning of the End 1

Introduction: Future Positive? 3

I. You Might be Eco-Feminist Post-Apocalyptic Fiction If… 5

II. “This is the way the world ends”: The Making of an Eco-Feminist Armageddon 8

III. Technophobes, Luddites, and Progress Towards What? 11

IV. Little Deaths and the End of Sex as We Know It 17

V. “The ceremonies of innocence”: Monotheism and the Eco-Feminist Ethic 23

VI. “And what rough beast”: Eco-Feminism and Post-Apocalyptic Anarchy 25

VII. Outside Looking Forward: The Quest for Community 28

VIII. Odds and Ends 29

IX. “Slouching towards Bethlehem”: Some Final Thoughts on the End of the World 31

Works Cited 36

Foreword: The Beginning of the End

The demands made on academic writing these days are many and contradictory, particularly in literary studies. On one side, the student hears that “there is nothing outside the text”[2] and that the author is dead. There is no point trying to puzzle out what the author ‘really’ means. The reader is a “co-author” after all. The other side holds us to the older idea of ‘objectivity’ and its injunctions against blending the personal with the academic. The student must be impartial, argue every side of the issue and not allow emotion to cloud his or her scholarship. Furthermore, the student is expected to engage in close reading and puzzle out the subconscious or even unconscious references the author includes in his or her text. Then, to heap obstacles on top of hindrances, ideas invade from outside the ivory towers of literature; theories that tell us that by observing an experiment or any phenomenon, we affect its outcome. Post-modernism tells us that there are no grand meta-narratives to expound- that everything is in the eye of the beholder- and most troublingly, that there is nothing new under the sun. One’s ideas, no matter how original to their creators are not in fact original, but drawn out of the well of history. In academia, one must pay homage to this well in the form of references and research, lest one commit the cardinal sin of plagiarism, even if unwittingly.

As if this clash of theories were not enough, one then has to deal with the authority of professors, instructors, and evaluators. These individuals, placed in power over the student, have the luxury of choosing which of the many contradictory threads of theory they will ally themselves to. In many instances this forces the student (already caught in a tangled web of competing theories and ideologies) to follow the path laid out by those who’s authority gives them the right to claim an illusionary clarity.

This situation, this fluid chaos of idea and theory and practice, accounts for the often-deplorable state of academic writing, at least in my in-no-way-humble opinion. The student, trapped in this web, seeks to please all sides resulting in a fundamental failure. If the purpose of non-fiction is to clearly and concisely explain and expound on an idea then most academic writing, overflowing with jargon and fetishized features, fails miserably.

So what is to be done? In my case, I have simply decided to take responsibility for myself. The following thesis is unabashedly personal, undeniably political, and unrepentantly free of most of the fetishized features of academia.

That being said, I believe my thesis to be topical and worth reading. I believe it has its place in the ivory towers of literate debate, if only outside the door screaming to be let in. In rejecting the form and authority of the standard thesis, I am keeping with the spirit of that which I write about, namely Chaos, Anarchy, and the End of the World as We Know It.

Not to mention Hope.

Introduction: Future Positive?

If the future, especially the fictional future, is the “undiscovered country”, then this is an attempt to map a small section of it, to mark its borders, shed light into its dark interior, and fill in the blanks where previous cartographers have scribbled “Here there be dragons.” But like any explorer setting out into the unknown, I have my worries. Oddly, they have little to do with the place I’m exploring, since I know it well and take both its dangers and its wonders in stride. Rather, I worry about how news of this strange new place I am attempting to map will be received. Will I blunder like Columbus, or fall prey to the insidious urge to claim the place as my own?

The undiscovered country I seek to explore has yet to be named, at least as far as I have searched. I want a great name, a thundering big poetic title, but I’ve had to settle for the academic jargonite of “Eco-feminist post-apocalyptic fiction”. It feels like calling a rose by a very different name. I first blundered into it in the form of two books, both read (or should I say devoured) the summer of my 14^th birthday; Ursula K. LeGuin’s Always Coming Home, and Octavia E. Butler’s The Parable of the Sower. Without any exaggeration I can claim that these books, tattered paperbacks clutched at whim from the Buckley branch of the Pierce County Library, changed me. Radically. Regarding politics, religion, economics, sexuality, and the whole spectrum of issues and beliefs that make up one’s world-view. For me, these books laid the groundwork.

They also gave me hope. I grew up, like a lot of my contemporaries, thoroughly convinced that I would most likely not live to see adulthood. Children of the 80’s, particularly in deeply religious areas and homes, like mine, tend to share this angst-ridden past. My original fascination with post-apocalyptic fiction, ranging from John Christopher’s post-nuclear fantasies to films like Road Warrior, was firmly rooted in the wish to banish my fears by facing them. If, as nearly every adult and most of the preachers around me said, the world would shortly end in nuclear fire followed by the tribulation of a nuclear winter, I wanted to be prepared.

The two books I read that summer differed from other post-apocalyptic texts I had read. There was little of the nihilistic anti-heroism so often found in after-the-bomb books, and little or none of the misogynistic stereotypes that often people the pages. There were in fact, no bombs, at least of the nuclear sort. The End in these books came about more slowly than that, “not with a bang but a whimper”[3]. The most astounding difference was that rather than ending on a note of savagery or despair, as many other such stories did, these books gave me a feeling of hope, liberation, and longing.

So I started to seek out more. I wanted books that fulfilled my need for a hopeful, exciting future while allowing me the guilty pleasure of witnessing the destruction (usually self-inflicted) of a society I was beginning to realize was far more flawed than school, family, and church had ever dared point out. Youth tends towards anarchism, and the collapse I once feared began to feel like a liberation to desire. So back to the library I went.

I soon discovered an almost entirely female cadre of authors who wrote the sort of books I was looking for. I never stopped to think what it was that made these books unique, what made some fit and others not. Until now that is. I have come to understand that there are certain features that in combination (give or take a pinch of this or that) define a book as Eco-feminist post-apocalyptic fiction, including the manner in which the world ends: An ambivalent and generally negative view of technology and science, emphasis on matters of sexual and reproductive power, an anti-authoritarian ethos both regarding religion and the State, and a focus on community. So, with these landmarks in view, I intend to go explore a new genre.

I. You might be Eco-feminist post-apocalyptic fiction if…

To start with, one needs a definition of the words used to define the genre itself. Neither of which is an easy thing to do. One term is a relatively obscure theory debated in academic circles, and the other is a broad and in some senses oxymoronic turn of phrase. After all, if the apocalypse is the End of the World, how can there be a ‘post’?

An offshoot of ecological or green theory, Wikipedia defines eco-feminism as, “a social and political movement which unites deep ecology[4] and feminism. Eco-feminists argue that a relationship exists between the oppression of women and the degradation of nature, and explore the intersectionality between sexism, the domination of nature, racism, speciesism, and other characteristics of social inequality.” Most of those writing in this genre tend to lean more to the ‘eco’ than to the ‘feminist,’ with the definite exception of Sheri S. Temper and the more qualified exception of Margaret Atwood. The emphasis is usually placed on the inherent destructive tendencies of consumerism, hierarchy, and patriarchy.

As for the ‘post-apocalyptic,’ it helps to think of it not as The End of the World but rather as The End of the World as We Know It. ‘Apocalypse’ therefore, becomes the event, the turning point, the sea change and paradigm shift. Everything that happens after it is therefore ‘post-apocalyptic.’ Yet this definition lacks teeth and specifics. Wikipedia defines post-apocalyptic science fiction (I generally skip the “science”, as there are examples from the fantasy genre as well) as:

[F]iction … set in a world or civilization after … a disaster. The time frame may be immediately after the catastrophe, focusing on the travails or psychology of survivors, or considerably later, often including the theme that the existence of pre-catastrophe civilization has been forgotten or mythologized. Post-apocalyptic stories often take place in an agrarian, non-technological future world, or a world where only scattered elements of technology remain.

James Berger, in After the End: Representations of Post-Apocalypse, spends an entire book discussing and exploring the idea of ‘post-apocalypse’, without ever quite managing a succinct definition. For Berger, ‘post-apocalyptic’ is an extremely broad term, taking into account prophecy, history, and social/psychological trauma (intro.).

I find the first definition far too vague and shallow and the latter needlessly complex. My own attempt at defining the apocalypse and whatever comes after it would be this: A critical, destructive event or chain of events that erases all or most of the previous societal structures, even to the point of blurring or erasing its collective myths. The End in these books bears the seeds of new beginnings. It is the freshly cleaned slate upon which we either write a new story, or try to remember the old ones, mixing up the details and misspelling the names.

The agent of the apocalypse is limited only by the imagination. It can be supernatural, i.e. biblical, as in the best-selling Left Behind series; or mythical, as in the “Borderland” anthologies, with Færy making a crashing reappearance into the ‘real’ world; technological, i.e. nuclear accident, killer robots; or a natural disaster such as a massive earthquake or volcanic eruption. Other common apocalyptic factors include alien invasion, pandemic plagues, or, as is most common in eco-feminist post-apocalyptica, societal entropy.

Most post-apocalyptic fiction can be divided into two over-arching genres, survivalist, and catastrophic. Survivalist literature generally deals with the aftermath of a major destructive event, and usually focuses on one individual protagonist, most often male, and his struggle to survive in ‘a world gone mad’. Almost always a loner, without a settled home, these post-apocalyptic wanderers are usually anti-heroic, or at the least very grudgingly so. They embody many nihilist traits, generally thinking of themselves first and not terribly worried about ethics or their own or anyone else’s humanity. This, the reader is led to believe, is the source and foundation of their ability to survive. More often than not, this nihilist nomad is enlisted by a group of settled people to protect them from other brigands, and is slowly and reluctantly dragged back into civilization, which he then sets out to re-establish, complete with the State, Science and Progress.

Catastrophic fiction often focuses more on the story of the catastrophe itself, with survivors as a vehicle to describe the destruction. One almost universal feature of this sort of story is the epiphanic moment when a character or group of characters is forced to break with their ‘civilized’ past, usually by committing a crime in order to survive. The lesson being that since civilization has collapsed, since the State, Science, and Progress are not there anymore, those who cling to civilized standards will be seen as weak and fall prey to more nihilistic elements.

Together, these two themes seem to come full circle. In one, survival rests on the rejection of a broken ‘civilization’, struggling to survive a Hobbesian “war of all against all”. In the other, those that reject civilization for short-term survival are brought back, kicking and screaming, into the fold. At its heart, the genre as a whole seems very conflicted in regard to just what civilization is, and whether or not it is a desirable thing. While these issues remain very much at play in the eco-feminist version, they are somewhat altered in regard to emphasis and viewpoint, and deeply differ in regard to the root causes, most adamantly in to the question of civilization (as we know it), which is roundly condemned throughout the genre.

II. “This is the way the world ends”: The Making of an Eco-Feminist Armageddon.[5]

The first defining aspect of eco-feminist post-apocalyptica is the manner in which the World ends. Unlike the stories of the 50’s and 60’s, the eco-feminist catastrophe is not the sudden terrible dawn of a cataclysmic nuclear war; in fact, it is rarely sudden at all. Rather, “things fall apart,” as Yeats so aptly put it.

Ecological factors, such as pollution, climate change, over-population, drought, famine, pollution-related diseases, along with more Science Fiction-esque problems like genetic mutation, nanotechnology gone amok, and terrible new drug epidemics usually play a prominent role in the End. Other factors like politics, religion, and economics also play key roles. This is in keeping with ecological theory, in particular Deep Ecology, which seeks to show the relationships between institutions and ideas generally thought of as separate.

Unlike the catastrophe story, even when placed at center stage, the apocalypse is seldom the star of the show. The world ends in spurts and spasms in these stories, an economic depression here, and an emergent disease there, a pinch of brushfire war, a dash of ecological disaster, and then, before the characters fully realize it, the World as We Know It has suddenly ended. Sometimes the particular mode of collapse is hardly mentioned or hardly worth mentioning. One has to read LeGuin’s Always Coming Home very closely to find any direct reference to the disaster, cataclysm, or series thereof that brought about the world her people inhabit. Elizabeth Hand’s Glimmering is more forthright with the End ushered in by greed and shortsightedness, in the form of ill-favored attempts to tap the last remaining hydrocarbon resources of the Earth. Yet even that is only a small footnote to the real story. Hand’s Winterlong takes place so far in the future that the actual causes of the initial cataclysm are not only vague, but also disguised by language purposely altered by the author to obscure its true history. The myths built up around it are far more important to the story than the ‘real’ events. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale hints at a devastating religious civil war in the former United States, complete with nuclear meltdowns and biological warfare, yet the real bones of the story lie in its exploration of a Christian fundamentalist society.

Other authors keep more to the catastrophic style, having their characters live through an apocalypse of sorts, but, more often than not, this is just one in a long series of little Armageddons. Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents feature climate change, in the form of global warming and a longstanding drought, along with social and political features, including a new drug that makes pyromaniacs of its addicts, an economy in collapse, and the rise of a far-right fundamentalist government, complete with ‘company towns’ and a reinstitution of slavery. Yet even as these events unfold, they serve as a catalyst for Butler’s heroine to forge her new religion, Earthseed, a belief system that points out the flaws in the existing state of American society.

It is this slow collapse that serves as the first defining feature of eco-feminist post-apocalyptica. Unlike other post-apocalyptic fiction, there is no one event, no one catalyst, no quick fix or last minute reprieve. The comet on collision course that can be turned aside, the bombs that might or might not be launched; the plagues that can be cured at the last moment are all missing. Rather, eco-feminist post-apocalyptic fiction places the blame squarely on deep-seated socio-political factors like consumerism, centralization, capitalism, monotheism, and imbalances of power. The World, according to this genre, will end itself.

This is the rub, after all. While other post-apocalyptic fiction tends to focus on the need to re-establish civilization, to rebuild the State and everything that goes with it while mourning the world past, these books convey a much more subversive message. The world will end because it refuses to change in the right directions. Because the destructiveness of modern consumer culture is so deep-rooted that it will never reform itself until it’s too late. As Butler’s empathic prophetess/heroine, Lauren Olamina, puts it in one of her Earthseed poems from Parable of the Sower:

In order to rise

From its own ashes

A phoenix

First

Must

Burn. (137)

Sheri S. Tepper and Gwyneth Jones take this a step further, both creating groups who actively seek to end the world. In The Family Tree, Tepper creates a group of eco-centric cultists who release a virus in order to rid the world of its systematic evils, only to discover that the goddess of their cult has cured these problems herself, without their unnecessary meddling. Rather than portraying this group as villains, Tepper instead portrays them as simply misguided, entering into a kind of voluntary servitude to atone for their mistakes. In A Plague of Angels Tepper again introduces characters who purposely set out to end the world so that a new one can rise. They introduce diseases to cut excess population, dismantle the works of man, fences, roads, whole cities, and strive to reintroduce wilderness to the decaying ruins of the industrial age. These men and women, once again, are not the villains of the book, but neither are they the heroes. They are, with their tree-planting and fence-smashing, simply the agents of a new world. In Jones’ Bold as Love a mass movement made up of New Age travelers and Greens takes over Britain and sets about tearing down the previous society, slaughtering excess cattle,[6] dismantling power stations and centralized infrastructure, and generally striving to usher in a new world.

Hence, eco-feminist post-apocalyptica is defined by the systemic collapse of society. Even if, as in Tepper and Jones’ work, the end is brought about willfully, the idea is that the destruction of modern society is an inevitable result of the flawed nature of modern society itself.

III. Technophobes, Luddites, and Progress Towards What?

The second defining characteristic of the genre is its highly ambivalent attitude towards science, technology, and the idea of Progress. While it can and has been argued that the post-apocalyptic novel in general deals with our fears of technology bringing about our eventual destruction, few genres confront this issue as hard-headedly as Eco-feminists do.

Bold as Love offers an interesting glimpse of this ambivalence between the desire for more ‘green’ technologies on the one hand, and the fear that they might simply be a continuation of the destructive ‘march of progress’ on the other. While the Green movement in the book is fast outlawing and destroying certain types of technology (internal combustion engines, genetically engineered crops, television, and nearly any and every means of mass production) they are likewise hard at work producing or refining ‘green’ technologies, some of them quite fantastic. One of the lead characters infects herself with bio-engineered bacteria, which allow her to defecate sterile soil, while another uses nanites[7] in his mitochondria[8] to allow him to power electric devices with his own metabolism. Yet Jones constantly points out the failures in these new technologies as well. The heroine must spend hours a day doing special exercises to allow for the improved digestion, and eventually gives up on the process, whereas her friend/lover with the mitochondrial generators has to stuff himself just to run his lights. The book ends with a cliffhanger, wherein a society that has abandoned many of the non- green technologies (including the use of paper) in favor of computer communication is faced with a virus that will completely destroy any hope of continuing that particular technology.

Technology as both bane and balm is not a new theme, nor one restricted to Eco-feminist writing. However, the Eco-feminist approach to technology, particularly biotech, nanotech, and industrial technology is generally a very dim one. What separates this genre from most other science fiction is the baneful aspects of science are much more emphasized than the balms. In general, eco-feminist post-apocalyptica posits a future of voluntary simplicity, life without the gadgets and dubious advances afforded contemporary society through the constant pursuit of science and technological achievement, and often lays the blame for doomsday squarely at the feet of science unchecked by wisdom. There is, as a rule, never a last-minute technical fix, as is so common in the Star Trek series, to name only one. In keeping with ecological theory, technologies are judged by their appropriateness and sustainability,[9] which leads many of the genre’s future fictional societies to give up the vast majority of today’s ‘necessities’.

LeGuin’s Always Coming Home is a prime example of such a society. While her fictional society, the Kesh, have access to, and the necessary knowledge to create or recreate any technology, they steadfastly ignore this possibility. The Kesh willfully renounce most ‘modern’ technologies, especially those aimed at mass production, in order to have a simpler, more peaceful life. While they do make use of electricity and machinery, it is by and large on a very small and decentralized scale, in the form of such sustainable technologies as solar panels, micro-hydro power, and power looms (to mention the very few named in the book). This neo-Luddism is a common aspect of the genre, even in texts that implicitly call for a more high-tech element. For instance, despite the fact that Butler’s Parable heroine claims that the goal of her new religion, Earthseed, is for humankind to “take root among the stars”, the founding group spends most of the first two books of the series surviving via permaculture[10] with limited or no electricity, in housing they built themselves from local materials. Although later on in Parable of the Talents Earthseed has become powerful enough to begin building their interstellar ships, the reader is led to the conclusion that this is more of a fall from grace than a fulfillment of Lauren’s prophecy. A Plague of Angels puts the issue in very black and white terms, with the surviving ‘modern’ technology and those who use it forming the diabolical opposition to the more ‘natural’ heroes. However, it is Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and Elizabeth Hand’s Winterlong that most thoroughly expose the potential risks of Science unleashed. Both books show a future where the genetic genie has not so much been let out of its bottle, but rather smashed said bottle to shards. The landscape, the ecology of the planet itself, has been forever altered, and while nominally human characters continue to live on in Hand’s haunting novel, in Oryx and Crake, we are presented with a narrator who, if not the last surviving human, is at least the next to last. Atwood’s novel tells the story of a genetics genius who, in attempting to create an Edenic utopia, wipes out the population of the planet, leaving it to be inherited by his genetically engineered post-human ‘children,’ blue skinned and biologically incapable of making the same mistakes as Homo sapiens. Both fictional worlds are ravaged with biotech run amok, where strange hybrids and mutants abound. In fact it is biotechnology, with its awesome potential for misuse and abuse, that often serves as an unthinking villain. Butler’s prophetess Lauren was made empathic due to her mother’s abuse of a designer drug, and now faces the reality of passing this condition (which forces her to feel the pain and pleasure of anyone around her, regardless of whether or not it is real) on to her children.

The other issue often faced in this genre is that of the power that technology affords. Later in this essay I will be examining the issue of power in greater depth, but when it comes to technology, the Eco-feminist outlook is much like that of the Green anarchist[11] or Eco-anarchist movement.[12] A constant theme throughout the genre is that if technological power can be abused, it will be.

This becomes interesting once one moves beyond the standard everyday definition of technology, and begins to think of ideas and concepts as technologies in their own right. In Always Coming Home, LeGuin’s Kesh, for instance, seem a prosperous and peaceful people, who have managed to combine small-scale industry with agriculture and gatherer-hunter practices. But there is a tension lurking beneath this seemingly happy arrangement. The Kesh, and through them LeGuin, seem to argue that even agriculture, long considered the cornerstone of civilization, is dangerously flawed. A poem within the book entitled “An Exhortation From the Second and Third Houses of the Earth” warns of this deep-seated flaw:

Listen, you people of the Adobes, you people of the Obsidian!

Listen, you gardeners and farmers, orcharders and vintners,

shepherds and drovers!

Your arts are admirable and generous, arts of plenty and

increase, and they are dangerous.

Among the tasseled corn the man says, this is my plowing

And sowing, this is my land

Among the grazing sheep the woman says, these are my

Breeding and caring, these are my sheep.

In the furrow the seed sprouts hunger.

In the fenced pasture the cow calves fear.

The granary is heaped full with poverty.

The foal of the bridled mare is anger.

The fruit of the olive is war.

Take care, you Adobe people, you Obsidian people, and come

Over to the wild side,

Don’t stay too long on the farming side; it’s dangerous to

live there.

Come among the unsown grasses bearing richly, the oaks

Heavy with acorns, the sweet roots in

Unplowed earth.

Come among the deer on the hill, the fish in the river, the

Quail in the meadows.

You can take them, you can eat them,

Like you they are food.

They are with you, not for you.

Who are their owners?

This is the puma’s range,

This hill the vixen’s,

This is the owl’s tree,

This is the mouse’s run,

This is the minnow’s pool:

It is all one place.

Come take your place.

No fences here, but sanctions.

No war here, but dying; there is dying here.

Come hunt, it is yourself you hunt.

Come gather yourself from the grass, the branch, the earth.

Walk here, sleep well, on the ground that is not yours, but is

yourself. (80-81)

The poem points to the dangers inherent in utilizing resources to their full potential, rather than simply to the extent necessary for material prosperity. In order to avoid the agrarian pit-fall warned of in the poem, the Kesh make it a point to practice hunter/gatherer economies as well, which allows them a life very unlike our own. As Marshal Salhins points out in his exploration of hunter/gatherer (or rather gatherer/hunter, as gathering usually played a greater part in subsistence cultures) societies in Stone Age Economics:

There is a conscious and consistent disregard for the notion of ‘maximum effort from the maximum number of people’.... Labor power is underused, technological means are not fully engaged, natural resources are left untapped ..., production is low relative to existing possibilities. The workday is short. The number of days off exceeds the number of workdays. Dancing, fishing, games, sleep, and ritual seem to occupy the greater part of one’s time (25).

Jean Hegland’s Into the Forest offers a clear-cut version of this same all-encompassing questioning of technology and modernity. One of the most realistic books in the genre, Into the Forest features a slow motion societal collapse, without any of the more sci-fi elements found in many of the other books. But the collapse, however slow and lacking in spectacle, is nonetheless so complete that the two main characters, sisters Eva and Nell, are left with no real alternative other than to abandon the slowly decaying remains of their Northern Californian town and disappear into the forests, rejecting even small-scale agriculture and a permanent shelter in order to avoid predatory male gangs and famine brought about by the collapse of modern agro-business.

IV. Little Deaths and the End of Sex as We Know It.

The predatory male gangs that roam the pages of Into the Forest, A Plague of Angels, Butler’s Parable series, and the chilling theocratic patriarchy of Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale are a common facet of the genre. Unlike the more mainstream post-apocalyptica, which tends to avoid and/or demonize sex, Eco-feminist post-apocalyptica puts issues of sex, gender, and sexual power at the forefront. In Berger’s discussion of the post-apocalyptic classic Road Warrior, he comments on the strangely conflicted sexuality of mainstream post-apocalyptica: “In Road Warrior, the human community appears rigorously chaste. There are men, women, and also children: all are clean and physically attractive. But something in their blondeness (even their clothes are blond) or in their relentless altruism seems to preclude sexuality”(10). In mainstream post-apocalyptica, women are all too often reduced to Amazonian warriors, wheedling whores, or simple plot devices, giving the nihilist hero something to unfreeze his heart and fight for.

As stated in the introduction, Eco-feminism draws parallels between the subjugation of women and patriarchal society’s relationship with the natural world. But more than this, the genre places a great deal of emphasis on sex, reproduction, sexual freedom and coercion.

There are two rather distinct sides to this sexual equation. On the one hand, there are the individuals and societies that the various authors hold up as exemplars of liberated and ‘natural’ sexuality. On the other, there is the darkness visible of sexual and reproductive subjugation, repression, and violence. More often than not, these two sides of the sexual coin are both present in the story, although some exceptions to the rule do exist.

A Handmaid’s Tale and Into the Forest are examples of the latter. The only sexual aspect in Into the Forest is a violent one. Eva, the sister of the protagonist Nell, is raped walking back to their isolated cabin. The protagonist tries to find a natural abortion drug to end her sister’s pregnancy, but fails. It is the fear of rape, and of the loss of reproductive options occasioned by the collapse of modern society, along with impending famine that finally pushes the sisters into the forest, cutting once and for all their ties to the world that was. Into The Forest is also an example of the more radical feminist ideology that occasionally makes an appearance in the genre in which all (or at least the majority) of males are prone to rape and violence. This is generally blamed on an inherent, fundamental aspect of masculinity. Tepper also has a tendency towards this essentialist aspect of eco-feminism, going so far as to purpose that, aside from sex/romance, the two genders should be held as separate as possible. In A Plague of Angels, Tepper introduces the reader to the land of Artemisia, where men and women live in separate housing, and sex has been largely removed from the reproductive equation. Only specially chosen members of both genders in their prime are allowed to reproduce. All visitors to the country must be neutered, either permanently or temporarily, lest they pollute the gene pool or introduce a sexually transmitted disease. By separating the sexes, in effect destroying the ‘nuclear family’, while simultaneously ensuring, through mandatory birth control, universal sexual freedom, the Artemisian’s attempt to rid their society of what they see as a destructive tendency in other societies.[13]

Generally though, the blame is not placed on any essentialist aspect of masculinity, but rather on societal structures and religious and political institutions. This is in keeping with the generally critical view of the current social, political, and religious conditions in society. The most common method of pointing out these and other problems is for the author to create an alternative society, in opposition to either the author’s vision of contemporary society or, as is more common, a society that exemplifies these aspects in exaggerated form.

Few have explored this particular fictional strategy more than Ursula K. LeGuin, who has long been at the forefront of pushing the envelope of discussion regarding issues of gender and sex. Her Hugo-and-Nebula-award-winning The Left Hand of Darkness portrays a world in which no one, save the human narrator has a fixed gender of any kind. Going into a state of heat on a regular basis, the population of the planet reacts to its potential partners by spontaneously transforming into one or the other sex, spending the rest of their lives (when not pregnant, the book contains the line “The King was pregnant” (99)) as non-gendered beings. Keeping to the eco-feminist view, she then creates a society, or rather two, based on this single biological difference; thereby showing just how deeply rooted and influential gender is in society.

She continues this theme, in a less fantastic manner, in Always Coming Home, by presenting the reader with two contrasting cultures, that of the Kesh, and that of the Condor People. LeGuin’s Kesh are a matrilineal society with very fluid definitions of marriage, including women’s right to divorce by pronouncement (an ancient and surprisingly wide-spread custom before the rise of the modern State), same-sex marriage, and highly egalitarian gender roles. Their language more or less inverts the concepts of wealth and poverty. They have no concept of children ‘belonging’ to either parent; rather a child “chooses to live” with its parents when it comes into the world. Neither does their language allow for the concept of ‘possessing’ a spouse. Stone Telling, one of LeGuin’s many narrators, relates the scene when her father Abhao attempts to assert his ‘paternal and marital rights’ (a concept unknown to the Kesh):

At first he acted crazily, but they quietened him, and Ninepoint explained to him that a man may come and go as he likes, and a woman may take him back or not as she likes, but the house was hers, and if she shuts the door he may not open it. People had come to listen. ... Strength, a speaker of the Blood Lodge scoffed at him. When he said, “But she belongs to me-the child belongs to me,” she began to do the Blood Clown turkey gobble around him, shouting, “The hammer menstruates to me! They pleat the courage to her!” and a string of reversal words like that. (43)[14]

Also, amongst the Kesh, contraceptives are easily available and commonly used, and virginity is in no way prized, although self-control and good sense are.

In contrast, the Condor people are sexually restrictive, prizing virginity in their brides, not allowing their wives and daughters lives outside of their homes and defining anyone not of their particular warrior class as an animal, a thing to be owned and used at will. When Stone Telling travels from the valley of the Kesh to live with her father in the Condor’s capital, she is as unable to comprehend the world she is entering as her Condor friend, Shadow, is upon their return. When informed that she is to be married, an order not to be denied, Stone Telling is aghast, stating that she isn’t ready for marriage, as she is still a virgin. Amongst the Kesh, one is not considered mature enough for marriage until one has “come inland”, that is taken a sexual partner of one’s own choosing. The Condor women who populate her father’s house on the other hand, find this statement enough to question the purity of Stone as a Condor (after all, her mother was an “animal”), which places Stone in the unlucky dilemma of having to choose either forced marriage or forced labor and a life of rape and sexual violence.

Perhaps the most shockingly realistic vision of sexual subjugation and coercion in the genre is found in the pages of Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale, in which the theocratic fascist state making up most of the Eastern Seaboard of the former United States has criminalized vast swaths of sexual behavior, while forcing fertile women, at least those without a husband, into a life of sexual slavery. The culture of Atwood’s novel includes such draconian measures as death by stoning for women who commit adultery, hanging homosexual men (homosexual women, if still fertile, are forced into one or another form of sexual slavery), and beatings or stockading for masturbation. The protagonist is forced to serve as a “handmaid” in the home of a member of the governing elite. A handmaid’s duty is to provide her ‘master’ with a child if said man’s wife cannot. Never mind that in the world of the book it is often the men that are infertile, due to a weaponized version of mumps. The uber patriarchal chauvinism of the society cannot accept the possible ‘castration’ of so many of its men, so the blame is placed squarely on the women.

On the bright side, the genre also includes many celebrations of sex and sexual freedom. LeGuin’s Kesh have very few sexual taboos, mostly against incest and inter-generational relationships. They allow their children the freedom of sexual experimentation, up until they don undyed clothing, a ritual period of sexual abstinence during the early to mid teens. Lauren, the empathic protagonist of Butler’s Parables, embraces sex, her empathic nature making it doubly fulfilling, while at the same time making a point both personally and as leader of her small community to practice it safely and avoid unwanted or unwise pregnancies. Elizabeth Hand’s often subversively erotic prose shows sexuality in all its glory and horror, unflinchingly breaking taboos and questioning norms, while extolling the sacred nature of sexual union. An openly neo-pagan author, Hand looks upon the erotic as a sacred, quasi-religious space, in direct opposition to monotheistic concepts of sexual repression and sin.

Perhaps the most basic message in regard to sex and reproduction is that no authority beyond that of the individual, be it the State, cultural norms, religion, or gender-as-social-class, has no right to control the basic biological urge that is sex. As soon as an authority manages to legislate sexuality, a downward spiral begins, pulling other rights and freedoms down with it. Eco-feminism is often linked to Anarcho-feminism, which grounds itself in the belief that controlling sexuality is one of the most destructive and debasing abuses of authority. This anti-authoritarian ethos is visible throughout the genre, denouncing authoritarian control, not only over sexual issues, but, as we will see, in issues of religion and spirituality as well.

V. “The ceremonies of innocence”: Monotheism and the Eco-feminist Ethic

Questions of religion and spirituality abound in eco-feminist post apocalyptica. In fact, this genre has a tendency to attack monotheism at nearly every turn. The concept of sin, not to be confused with the concept of crime, is lacking throughout these books. At the same time, most books in the genre contain a strong element of spirituality, especially LeGuin’s, Hand’s and Butler’s.

Butler goes so far as to create a new religion, Earthseed, for her heroine to prophesize. The core concept of this belief system, which has taken on a life of its own outside of Butler’s work,[15] is the idea that as the only constant in the universe is change, “God is Change”. While quite simple at the outset, Butler expands this idea into a system of belief that is groundbreakingly subversive.

God is Power-

Infinite,

Irresistible,

Inexorable,

Indifferent.

And yet, God is Pliable-

Trickster,

Teacher,

Chaos,

Clay.

God exists to be shaped.

God is Change. (22)

Butler’s Earthseed is a religion without a sentient power, other than that of its believers. God exists to be shaped, and heaven consists of new planets (“New Earths” in Butler’s parlance) waiting to be colonized. Butler has her heroine call the collected Earthseed writings “The Book of the Living”, implying that existing religions are centered on death.

LeGuin spends a great many pages introducing the reader to the spiritual life of the Kesh, which is a challenging mix of Native American animism and ecological wisdom translated into spiritual form. Had she not decided to write the book as an “archeology of the future” complete with explanatory graphs and charts, the reader would surely be lost trying to understand the Kesh world-view. This is, to a certain extent, the whole point. In order to live in a world as peaceful and fulfilling as that of the Kesh, LeGuin seems to argue, we must learn to think in fundamentally new ways.

Hand and Tepper lean more towards the neo-pagan side of things, or, as a good friend and student of pagan history once put it, “paganism-lite”. Although Hand avoids mentioning much of her neo-paganist beliefs in The Glimmering, Winterlong contains a wealth of pagan influences, including Dionysus in the form of the “boy in the tree”, and a revived cult of the Goddess in the form of a debased Virgin Mary. In both novels, Hand portrays monotheistic religions as intolerant and destructive. The straightedge Christians in Glimmering are bullying, dogmatic, and destructive, engaging in acts of terrorism and intimidation to force others into their rigid belief system. The Ascendant Aviator in Winterlong is also a creature of monotheism. He takes over the bombed out Washington Cathedral and is consumed by his obsession with death, which connects nicely to Hand and Butler’s view of Christianity as a death-centric belief system. Tepper invokes aspects of animism and fairy-tale in both The Family Tree and A Plague of Angels. While The Family Tree includes the awakening, or rather re-awakening of a Goddess, A Plague of Angels follows the path of a prevalent trend in New Age belief, including angels[16] in her potent mix of Jungian iconography and animist beliefs.

The genres’ emphasis on spirituality rather than on organized religion is just one facet of another defining characteristic; the decentralized and anti-authoritarian ethos that permeates the genre.

VI. “And what rough beast”: Eco-feminism and Post-Apocalyptic Anarchy.

If organized monotheism is the religious/spiritual antithesis of the post-apocalyptic eco-feminist genre, then the political and social antithesis is the State, in whatever form it may take.

The inherent capital “A” Anarchy of the genre is not surprising when one takes the aforementioned spiritual, technological, and apocalyptic sentiments into consideration. Just as the spirituality expounded upon is polytheistic, animist, or utterly free of coercive power (as in Butler’s “shaping God”), and the technology is decentralized, small-scale, sustainable, and accessible, so the social structures are open, free, and lacking in complex State machinery.

It is almost impossible to find a positive example of a government or state in eco-feminist post-apocalyptica. While to some extent due to the collapse of the State being intrinsically related to the eco-feminist version of the apocalypse, any State that raises its head either during or after the period of collapse is immediately treated as a foe.

The Parable of the Talents only mentions the State and its functions in negative terms. The police are portrayed as just another predatory gang, charging fees to answer calls and prone to ‘solving’ cases by arresting whoever happens to call them. Even the fire department is predatory, charging exorbitant fees to put out fires in the drought-ridden southern California of Butler’s future. In fact, the only peace her characters seem to find is at Acorn, their first settlement in rural northern California, and then only because they are so isolated that they fail to catch the immediate attention of the government. That is until Parable of the Talents the second installation in Butler’s proposed trilogy.[17] When Acorn is discovered, rather than a benevolent State offering aid to an impoverished community, the state sends its quasi-official inquisitors to ‘re-educate’ the Earthseed colony through forced religious instruction, institutionalized rape, torture, death, and forced labor.

These same genocidal tendencies are indulged to the fullest by Atwood’s theocratic fascist regime. When not forcing women into sexual slavery or shipping them in cattle cars to die a slow death in forced decontamination camps, Atwood’s State is busy shipping blacks and other racial minorities ‘home’ in a dubious program the reader is led to believe is nothing more than a version of Hitler’s final solution, under another name. While Butler’s regime wages a war against its own poor, new varieties of slavery, forced labor camps and reeducation, Atwood’s is caught up in an ongoing religious war against other Christian denominations.

War and oppression seem to be the universal pastimes of the various states in the genre. The Janissaries of the Ascension who rule over Hand’s eastern seaboard, with the exception of the City of Trees (an anarchistic collection of squatters occupying the former Washington D.C.), have been at war with their eastern enemies for so long that the actual start of the war has been lost to history. Forever hunting for weapons new or ancient, this authoritarian regime elevate, “Aviators”, men who carry out nuclear strikes, to the highest echelons of power, precisely because they have carried out these destructive acts.

In glaring opposition, LeGuin’s Kesh have no need for any form of organized government; their way of life makes it unnecessary. One can freely join any of the Lodges (the Kesh equivalent of guilds or trade syndicates) and just as freely leave them. Free association is the rule, rather than the exception. Even one’s name is subject to change at will. Stone Telling, the narrator of the story dealing with the Condor people, once called Owl, recounts just how strange the idea of hierarchy and command were to the Kesh when she recounts the story of her Condor father teaching her how to order his troops about.

Furthermore, as the Kesh practice a gift economy, where wealth is measured in how much one can give away for communal usage, material poverty and the chains it forges are largely absent. While the Kesh would seem poor by current bourgeoisie standards, they make up for it in a life rich in culture, festival, and relative ease. Contrary to popular belief, this was the rule rather than the exception amongst most gatherer/hunter societies.

Tepper avoids mention of government or the State as such almost entirely, having their various duties fall into the hands of various gangs within the few remaining cities in A Plague of Angels, which seems to imply the very Anarchist concept that the State is at heart nothing more than an oversized protection racket. The State in Tanith Lee’s seminal eco-feminist apocalyptic novel Eva Fairdeath is reduced to nothing more than two warlords, neither of whom plays a very meaningful role in the novel.

Taken as a genre, one of the fundamental themes is the dangers inherent in the formation of a State, no matter how well intentioned. Therefore one could conclude that the sixth defining characteristic of eco-feminist post-apocalyptic fiction is a tendency towards Anarchism, as opposed to “mere anarchy”.[18]

VII. Outside Looking Forward: The Quest for Community.

The final defining characteristic of the genre has to do with who acts as a protagonist. While “the outsider” is a common choice, particularly in post-apocalyptic fiction, it is the type of outsider, and the object of their quest that differentiates the genre.

The outsiders in these novels are, to begin with the obvious, female, either young girls or women, and are very often made special by some distinction in their identity. Lauren Olamina is set apart both by her religious awakening and by her “hyper-empathy syndrome”. Wendy Wanders, the heroine of Winterlong, is also an empath of sorts, an autistic child surgically and chemically altered to have no feelings of her own, which conversely (and perversely) allows her to experience the memories, emotions, and dreams of others, simply by ingesting a small portion of their blood. She is also the lost twin of Raphael, a prized courtesan of the City of Trees, and between them they are the incarnations of a powerful supernatural force destined to defeat the Aviator.

But no matter their gift, curse, or brand, they are almost always in search of a community. Not defined as a particular place (in fact Eva of Eva Fairdeath finds her community in wandering), nor as any specific group, but rather community as a group of like-minded people prepared to form, or having already formed, a home. Unlike other forms of post-apocalyptic fiction, the question of community, especially the conscious creation of community, is central. Though they are outsiders, the protagonists are usually also part of a group or community, a contradiction that proves the truth. Human beings are essentially social creatures, no matter the canonization of the lone survivor in western, and especially American, survivalist fiction.

Furthermore, the communities created in these stories are not continuations or imitations of previous societies. They are consciously and emphatically different from contemporary society, and thereby ‘outsiders’ as communities, as well as individuals.

By making community a central aspect, the authors argue that individualism in its contemporary form (“greed is good”, “what's in it for me”) is another of the destructive aspects of modern society. Settlers who are fully prepared to become the wolf, should the situation warrant, it replace the lone wolf hero who saves the sheepish settlers. The lone survivor is cast out of the heroic role, and instead becomes a threat, or at least an annoyance.

VIII. Odds and Ends

Aside from these seven defining characteristics, there are a wealth of other recurrent themes and features that crop up throughout the genre. One of the most interesting is the tendency for these novels to be set in California, especially Northern California. But more than that, it is the East/West dichotomy that deserves more intense scrutiny.

While not widespread enough to count as a defining characteristic, there is a definite tendency to set the darker, more dystopian novels on the east coast, while novels of a more quasi-utopian, hopeful tone tend to be set on the west. One is tempted to speculate as to the cause of this. My personal opinion is that the East, with its aura of ‘old money’, and ties; both geographic and historical to the ‘old world’ tie the area to a set of social conditions that the authors see as bleak. The West- in American fiction has always represented the hopeful future- the progress of society away from the moribund shackles of history.[19]

Another common, but far from defining, aspect of the genre is its tendency to include elements of poetry and song in the story, or as in the case of Glimmering, basing the story on a poem.[20] LeGuin and Butler are both notable for their use of poetry to grant the reader a deeper insight into the story. In fact, Butler’s Parables Trilogy seems to be just that. The reader could be forgiven for concluding that the story was written to explain the poems that make up “The Book of the Living”.

Another tendency that both authors share, along with Hand, is towards quasi-to full-fledged postmodernism in their texts. Lauren Olamina references science fiction books in her journals, which make up the body of Parable of the Sower, and Hand’s Glimmering is a riot of references to, and plays upon, current trends and fashions. But few if any authors can claim a more postmodernist novel to their credit than LeGuin.

Always Coming Home is more than just the archetypal eco-feminist post-apocalyptic novel; it is also an amazing postmodernist intellectual exercise. LeGuin herself calls it an “archeology of the future”. Rather than a classic novel, the book is arranged for the most part like a complex and exceedingly well-researched ethnographic study. Collections of life-stories, songs, poetry and jokes, along with excerpts from plays and in-depth discussions of the religious and economic life of the Kesh make up the majority of the book. But a pseudonymous LeGuin even joins in the action herself, writing herself into the story in the form of Pandora, an ethnographer from the past, or perhaps from outside of time.

Another common, but by no means defining, characteristic of the genre is the importance, both symbolic and functional, of trees. The Family Tree is the most striking example, with semi-sentient mobile trees bringing mankind’s destructive ‘progress’ to a screeching halt. Arboriculture plays an important role in the societies, in both Butler’s Acorn settlement and in that of LeGuin’s Kesh, while Hand’s post-cataclysm Washington D.C. in Winterlong is renamed “The City of Trees” for its overgrown and even predatory feral forests. Nell and Eva of Into the Forest escape from their dieing society by literally running into the forest. It is as if trees represent both a feeling of the ‘natural’ and a feeling of permanence and slow, steady growth, which is very much in keeping with the tenets of ecological thought.

IX. “Slouching towards Bethlehem:” Some Final Thoughts on the End of the World.

Any time one writes or reads about the future, a prophetic dynamic is at play. It seems to be part of our nature to want to believe in prophecy, and once we start to believe, as Berger states, it is as if prophecy has become subjective truth (6). This particular dynamic applies to the entire post-apocalyptic genre and the dystopian/utopian genre as well, but is particularly strong in eco-feminist post-apocalyptica, in part because of ecological theory’s (especially Deep ecology’s) emphasis on the actual state of the world. Unlike postmodernism and deconstruction, which view the world as an intellectual construct, ecological theory emphatically states that there is a world outside of our intellect; that objective reality really and truly is which makes this form of prophecy hard to ignore. Rather than focusing on single events in time, the genre looks at society and its future as a whole, and consistently comes to the conclusion that the system is flawed beyond repair. One way or another, the World as We Know It will end, the only question is whether we will, as Butler says “with forethought and work / become a shaper of God” (27). Which is to say end it consciously in order that something better may rise up from the wreckage, or whether we will idle away our time as the run-away train careens towards its final fiery end.

If one comes to believe the prophecy, however, there is a further difficulty in store. Unlike the single-issue Armageddons of the survivalist and catastrophic genres, ecological Armageddons require a holistic fix. It is not simply a matter of nuclear disarmament (putting “simply” in front of “nuclear disarmament” shows the huge scope of ecological thought) or better protections against infectious disease, or the renunciation of one or two particular technologies. Rather, we are required to carefully observe and rework our society from the ground up, casting aside many ideas and concepts that are so rarely questioned that the vast majority of western minds consider them universal givens. Concepts like the definition of wealth, of economics, of education, of community, of interpersonal and inter-gender relationships all need to be addressed, lest we ride the train off the tracks of the future. While this is a daunting prospect in a ‘big picture’ way, the genre also provides a measure of hope.

The hope inherent in eco-feminist prophecy is that of a better, more peaceful, egalitarian, and sustainable world. Whether showing us how such a world might be achieved, as in Always Coming Home and The Parable of the Sower/Talents, or warning us of how not to go about it, as in A Handmaid’s Tale, Oryx and Crake, and Glimmering, the old liberal-humanist concept of literature as enriching and educational is strongly at play. Frankly, after wandering the wastelands of postmodern theory and structuralism, this is refreshing.

The primary prescriptions for changing the course of the coming Armageddon, or for surviving it, are actually quite straightforward. First, competition, that cornerstone of western culture, needs to be replaced with cooperation. LeGuin makes this point very clear; Kesh games revolve around completing a challenging set of tasks as a group, without teams of winners, or losers. Without the compulsion to compete, the great nemesis of both Deep Ecology and Marxism- Capitalism- will wither away.

Secondly, the decentralist approach to life, that of small self-governing and quasi-self-sufficient communities, is paramount. Even a cursory glance at the annals of history shows that such societies tended to survive longer, and with a higher standard of living, than massive empires. Even to this day, one easy way to predict the standard of living for a country is to look at the size of its population.

Small, semi-self-sufficient communities would require the third prescription, that is a distancing from or rejection of consumerism and many aspects of modernity, including automation, speculative economics, and mass production. E. F. Schumacher, in his brilliant criticism of the ‘science’ of economics, proposes “production by the masses rather than mass production” (57), and this maxim is echoed again and again in the writings of LeGuin, Butler, and Tepper.

If these books are meant to educate and enrich, then one is bound to find oneself in the unenviable position of running up against critics who see the proposed solutions as utopian impossibilities. It is important to note, however, that none of the authors mentioned refers to their future worlds as utopias, except to disparage the idea within the text itself. In the chapter entitled “Pandora Converses with the Archivist”, LeGuin-as-Pandora loses her patience with a denizen of the idealized world her text created. “I never did like smartass utopians. Always so much healthier and saner and sounder and fitter and kinder and tougher and wiser than me and my family and friends. People who have the answers are boring, niece. Boring, boring, boring”(335) After telling Pandora that hers in no utopian life, the Archivist responds, “This is a mere dream dreamed in a bad time, an Up Yours to the people who ride snowmobiles, make nuclear weapons, and run prison camps by a middle-aged housewife, a critique of civilization possible only to the civilized, an affirmation pretending to be a rejection, a glass of milk for the soul ulcered by acid rain a piece of pacifist jeanjacquerie, and a cannibal dance among the savages in the ungodly garden of the farthest West” (336). The idea, this seems to say, is to create a better world, not a perfect one. That is the utopian impossibility. The denial and rejection of positive change, on the other hand, is pure cynicism.

If prophecy is true in the future, and therefore true in the present, then the changes either proposed or forewarned in these stories are an inevitability. And only a fool argues with the inevitable.

This genre, which I still wish I could grant a better name to, is an important addition to fiction and to society, calling on its readers to question their assumptions and look at the future through a glass- not dark- but certainly not rose-colored either. The lessons and insights offered are frightfully topical, even decades after their publication, and offer us a glimpse into the undiscovered country that each year, each month, each day, and each hour brings us ever closer to.

I cannot think of better words to end this brief expedition than one of Butler’s verses from “Earthseed: The Books of the Living”:

Your teachers

Are all around you,

All that you perceive,

All that you experience,

All that is given to you

Or taken from you,

All that you love or hate

Need or fear

Will teach you.

If you will learn.

God is your first

And your last teacher.

God is your harshest teacher:

subtle,

demanding.

Learn or die. (251)

Works Cited

“Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 26 April, 2006 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-apocalyptic>

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. New York: Fawcett Crest/Ballantine, 1985.

---. Oryx and Crake. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2003.

Barthes, Roland. The Death of the Author. “Anthenacieum Reading Room”. 26 April 2006 <http://evan-eperientalism.freespace.com/barthes06.htm>

Berger, James. After the End: Representations of Post-Apocalypse. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. New York: Warner, 1993.

---. Parable of the Talents. New York: Warner, 1998.

“Deep Ecology.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 17 April, 2006 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ecology>

“Eco-Anarchism.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 17 April, 2006

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-anarchism>

“Eco-Feminism.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 2 April, 2006 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-feminism>

Eliot, Thomas Stern. “The Wasteland.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors. Seventh Edition. Ed. M. H. Adams. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. (2614-27)

---. “The Hollow Men.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors. Seventh Edition. Ed. M. H. Adams New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. (2627-30)

“Green Anarchism.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 17 April, 2006 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_anarchism>

Hand, Elizabeth. Glimmering. New York: HarperPrism, 1997.

---. Winterlong. New York: HarperPrism, 1990.

Hegland, Jean. Into the Forest. New York: Bantam, 1997.

Jones, Gwyneth. Bold as Love. London: Orion, 2001.

Lee, Tanith. Eva Fairdeath. London: Headline, 1994.

LeGuin, Ursula K. Always Coming Home. New York: Bantam, 1985.

---. The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: Ace, 1969.

Mander, Jerry. In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1991.

“Permaculture.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 17 April, 2006 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture>

Sahlins, Marshall. Stone Age Economics. Chicago: Aldine, 1972.

Schumacher, E. F. Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered. London: Vintage, 1993.

Tepper, Sheri S. A Plague of Angels. New York: Bantam/Spectra, 1994.

---. The Family Tree. New York: Avon, 1997

Yeats, William Butler. “The Second Coming” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors. Seventh Edition. Ed. M. H. Adams. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. (2382)

---

[1] From Butler’s Parable of the Talents (4).

[2] Barthes, Roland. The Death of the Author

[3] T. S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”

[4] “Deep ecology is a recent philosophy or ecosophy based on a shift away from the anthropocentric bias of established environmental and green movements. The philosophy is marked by a new interpretation of “self” which de-emphasizes the rationalistic duality between the human organism and its environment, thus allowing emphasis to be placed on the intrinsic value of other species, systems, and processes in nature. This position leads to an ecocentric system of environmental ethics. Deep ecology describes itself as “deep” because it is concerned with fundamental philosophical questions about the role of human life as one part of the ecosphere, in distinction to ecology as a branch of biological science, and to merely utilitarian environmentalism based on the well-being of humans alone” (Wikipedia).

[5] T. S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”

[6] Deep ecologists tend to place a great deal of the blame for the current state of society on the idea of ‘domestication’, and Jones’ greens are anything if not deep. Hence, they set out to free those animals that might survive in a feral state, and slaughter the rest to prevent them from dieing of starvation and neglect.

[7] “Nanites” are a common feature in modern Sci-Fi, microscopic machines capable of manipulating matter at the molecular or even atomic level.

[8] Mitochondria are the cellular organs responsible for energy production.

[9] The actual definitions of ‘appropriateness’ and ‘sustainability’ are still hotly debated in ecological theory. E. F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered and Jerry Mander’s In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations both offer excellent insights to this debate.

[10] “[P]ermaculture can best be described as an ethical design system applicable to food production and land use, as well as community building. It seeks the creation of productive and sustainable ways of living by integrating ecology, landscape, organic gardening, architecture and agroforestry. The focus is not on these elements themselves, but rather on the relationships created among them by the way they are placed together; the whole becoming greater than the sum of its parts. Permaculture is also about careful and contemplative observation of nature and natural systems, and of recognizing universal patterns and principles, then learning to apply these ‘ecological truisms’ to one’s own circumstances” (Wikipedia).

[11] “The Green anarchist critique focuses on the institutions of domination that make up society, all grouped under he broad term ‘civilization’. Such institutions include for example, the state, capatialism, globalization, domestication, patriarchy, science, technology, or work. These institutions, according to Green anarchists, are inherently destructive and exploitive, therefore they cannot be reformed” (Wikipedia).

[12] Eco-anarchism argues that small eco-villages (of no more than a few hundred people) are a scale of human living preferable to civilization, and that infrastructure and political systems should be re-organized to ensure that these are created (Wikipedia).”

[13] Tepper takes this even further in her book The Gate to Women’s Country, in which men live outside settlements reserved solely for women, girls, and pre-pubescent boys.

[14] In an endnote to the chapter quoted above, LeGuin explains the “reversal words”, stating, “ In Clown impromptus language was deliberately dislocated for subversive effect (as in surrealist poetry and imagery). Abhao inadvertently made just such a dislocation by saying that his wife and child “belonged” to him. Kesh grammar makes no provision for a relation of ownership between living beings. A language in which the verb “to have” is an intransitive and in which “to be rich” is the same word as “to give” is likely to turn its foreign speaker, and translator, into a clown all too often (43).

[15] A recent Google search by the author turned up 55,700 results for “Earthseed”, many of which were sites devoted to the discussion and expansion of Butler’s Earthseed verses.

[16] Thrones, to be precise, one of the ranks of angels just below that of the Archangels.

[17] Sadly, the third book, The Parable of the Trickster died with the author earlier this year.

[18] A somewhat incorrect usage of Yeats’ “The Second Coming”, wherein ‘mere’ meant ‘pure’, but it gets the point across nicely.

[19] This is highly ironic in that European western expansion was the agent of an apocalyptic holocaust for Native Americans.

[20] T. S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland”, to be precise.