'Haunts' I think is the right word, Alison; & I believe it haunts,
hangs behind, a lot of writing.
But there's also a lot of SF (which the writer seems to have missed)
that certainly reflects an awareness of the dire possibilities, even if
only as background (in his fine far future 'take' on Asimov's
Foundation series, Psychohistorical Crisis, Donald Kingsbury reminds
his characters, who have come to what is clearly old Earth, of the near
extinction of humanity & life on that planet in the first few hundred
years of the 3rd millennium (that's now).
And one of the books I think I mentioned, Derryl Murphy's Wasps at the
Speed of Sound (only available on-line, certainly through Amazon), most
of the stories concern ecological degradation, etc.
Doug
On 25-Sep-05, at 5:51 PM, Alison Croggon wrote:
> Interesting article on the (lack of) literary reaction to climate
> change,
> which makes me wonder if it is really the case. I know it's one of the
> things that really haunts my own poetry. But to be less egocentric,
> environmental degradation has always been a big part of Kinsella's
> work, or
> Peter Minter's, just to pick a couple of contemporary poets; and I
> think
> also of WG Sebald's image of human beings as a slow conflagration
> devouring
> the planet. Anyone else have any thoughts?
Douglas Barbour
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