Greetings,
Having a solid formation in natural science, I can’t just sit there and looking at the mega billionaires destroying our cohesive society… and the planet.
So this blog entry is basically a big YAY to Nina Monteanu and several SF writer colleagues who offer many paths to climb out of the hole we dug for ourselves. I am endeavouring to contribute to this SF field, but I have mostly short-stories as my ecological SF contribution.
I was invited to contribute to the blog Reality Skimming, about sustainability and writing science fiction. Especially I like the sustainability before ambition headline. It is something I strive to achieve with my own publiching house. The Sustainability thread is a thematic series of articles, curated by Canadian SF author Nina Munteanu and sponsored by Reality Skimming Press.
Some questions were more challenging for me than others, because I had less time as before to consult the numerous online resources. But I loved to be able to expand on ways that my work as a publisher can be sustainable. All my Echofictions paper books are printed in Canada and a list at the end encourages readers to pass it on.
The article is about 9 minutes of reading, including an excerpt from a YA novel, there.
https://www.realityskimming.com/post/mich%C3%A8le-laframbroise-on-sustainability
A few Eco Sci-Fi books I read :
A Diary in the Age of Water by Nina Monteanu (Inanna Publications, 2020): a dystopia that show us “a future shaped by water scarcity, societal collapse, and ecological memory” (well said by Kyo Hwang Cho ). It was a bit hard for me to read because I get attached to the fallible characters, but Nina is an author who doesn’t pull her punches. She knows her stuff. I do endeavour to save and protect water in my everyday use, and after reading this book, you will, too!
Dandelion, dandelion, dandelion… what’s not to love in that gorgious cover?
A Half-Built Garden, by Ruthanna Emrys, explores a First contact situation with aliens who have a very maternal notion of family. The narrator lives in region divided in watersheds where the water and resources are managed toward healing the environmental disasters. But there are also libertarian pockets and old nation-states who would just looove to get their mitts on the alien tech… Aliens convinced that humanity should leave the wounded planet to survive! There is a nice concept of dandelion-style organization in that slow-burn and deeply reflective story.
Arboreality, by Rebecca Campbell, Stelliform Press 2022. A very advanced tree species spread everywhere. Set in Britisth Columbia over several decades, so you get to live in this changing landscape with the protagonists.
Rebuilding Tomorrow, Anthology ed. by Tsana Dolichva (Twelfth Planet Press). A collective by dis-abled writers with savvy protagonists living with a visible or invisible handicap. I must admit the cover art is to die for!
“An anthology of apocalypse fiction featuring disabled and chronically ill protagonists, proving it’s not always the “fittest” who survive, it’s the most tenacious, stubborn, enduring and innovative characters who have the best chance of adapting when everything is lost.” The stories show how people with different abilities can help each other, even after a catastrophic event. As a more “valid” reader, I had difficulties in one or two stories guessing what was ailing the protagonist… who, of course, were on the “autistic spectrum” (neurodiverse) with their own perceptions and ways of thinking.
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver. Not SF, but an eco-fiction novel about a wayward colony of Monarch butterflies choosing a hibernating site too much in the North, and the farming woman who discover them, also beset with her own worries. A novel about how climate changes affects migration, and also a social commentary.
I always tell people that The Great American Novel has been written: it’s Flight Behavior.
Speculative Shorts: Stories that fell out of my brain, by Cait Gordon, Dinsdale Press. The environment is not the main subject, but a collection of fifteen tales of queer life, disability, romance, power, defiance, and resilience cannot go around the destruction. And because I like the story, refreshing. Fun to read!
Ice Monarch, my own first clim-SF dystopia (2010, 2012, 2014, 2017). A 2010 Solaris Prize Winner short-story that got published in four magazines: in French (twice), in Russian and in English. A cyborg butterfly flies over the devastated Earth, in search of images to transmit to his masters living in palaces roaming the artificial ice of the poles. Soon, a dilemma presents itself to the cyborg, because helping survivors is not in the master’s agenda. Be warned, the mood is more poetical and somber.
Come here for the French edition: https://echofictions.com/products/monarque-des-glaces
And of course, I love Monarch butterflies!
More books on https://echofictions.com
Echoes of a Sunday artist 