Love this! And I'm (painfully slowly) working on it. But in the meantime...
I prefer 'ecological collapse' to 'climate change'. As a way to describe what's happening, rather than what I actually want to see happen, obvs. I've also heard people use polycrisis and omnicrisis, which sound like opposites, but both used to describe the clusterfuck of a situation we're in.
And I've heard 'thrutopia' used to describe a genre of fiction that imagines how we get from here to somewhere better/sustainable/utopic (seeing as we're making up words...).
The other made up word that kept echoing in my head while I was reading was 'econological', like, involving both economies and ecologies. Which, as you so eloquently describe, everything does.
I’ve been thinking a bit about the idea that uncanny stories in fiction might have been replaced by, well, whatever the opposite of an uncanny story is— if an uncanny story is about something which is both deeply repressed and present in the world, its opposite is something which is deeply needed and absent from it. So fantasy stories increasingly become worlds which are structured, familiar and understandable, and the absences in the non-fantasy ones become more obvious.
I wonder if for both present-day climate change and present-day AI there is actually no space in fiction as a result? The uncanny being very present in reality feels like something that’s resisted from both ends; not the sort of real that realist fiction exists in, not the sort of fantasy people would actually want. So maybe to get to it there needs to be some kind of safe liminal space readers pass through— the Heimlich needs to be there before the Unheimlich can be confronted? I expect this is why dystopian fiction fails, but am not quite sure.
Amitav Ghosh talks about the uncanny quite a lot - if I remember rightly he says that we're so conditioned into linearity and simple cause-and-effect in stories that we're completely intolerant of the uncanny or unexpected, so to have characters suddenly beset by freak weather events, for example, isn't a thing the publishing industry will tolerate and is something creative writing courses actively teach against doing, despite it being the thing we probably need at this point. So yes I think that's agreeing with what you said? The uncanny is resisted from all over.
Hard disagree about there being no room for fiction right now though! I think we need MOAR FICTION. It's just we're a bit lost as to where our stories are taking us .
A bit late to the party but thanks for this very thought-provoking essay. I kept thinking of the brilliant podcast The Outlaw Ocean that gets into the whole fishing industry, exploitation etc.
I wonder if the desire for one word for all this (which I share) isn’t a symptom of the dominant culture’s insistence on naming and measuring. What you describe is complex and multi-dimensional. How could one word possibly capture it?
That said, the frame that works best for me is that today’s world results from the story of separation we modern humans have been telling for generations. Think Adam and Eve versus Skywoman Falling - two creation stories with very different meanings and implications.
So the fiction I write is my attempt at imagining encounters with more of the Skywoman story - people in an animate world. I keep trying to go upstream from where we are now to that point where we veered off the path of interconnection and decided we could rule over it all.
I’m totally with you on dystopia. Stories create reality so I only want to write and read stories that imagine different ways of being in this marvelous world. Extrapolation of what we have now is just lazy.
Have you read The Dawn of Everything by Davids Graeber and Wengrow? That's got very interesting things about that point of interconnectedness (spoiler: we never really had it but were previously better at a more diverse politics and also the nation state wasn't around to fuck everything up).
I get what you're saying about the dominant culture and I'm not actually seeking to measure anything. I do think the naming of it is incredibly important though. I keep talking about climate change and people nod in a bored way and say "yes yes I do my recycling" and I'm like no wait I didn't mean the actual changing climate, I meant The One Big Problem. It's really important to have a way of communicating that!
Just found Dawn of Everything at my library and cued it up. I’m skeptical about the conclusion that we never really had interconnectedness since writers like Robin Wall Kimmerer, Amitov Ghosh and Tyson Yunkaporta say otherwise. But let’s see what these guys have to say.
I'm wildly precising of course. It's more railing against the idea that we once lived in some egalitarian wonderland where everything was peachy and wonderful and if only we could go back that it would be wonderful. It's a fascinating history of the political consciousness of humankind. Really an incredible work - absolutely transformed the way I see things.
Oh yes. Gotcha! I think there's a lot of places of resistance tbh. Some straight up censorship, some more subtle to do with what publishers say will sell, but also a lot is to do with the writers are dealing with on a personal level and how we, as artists and humans, are processing what's going on. Also a million other things too!
I actually think you hit on it by accident there: clusterfuck 🤣
Oh this was supposed to be a reply to @Rachel Swabey but the threading went weird. Anyway I updated the image in honour of the word
Love this! And I'm (painfully slowly) working on it. But in the meantime...
I prefer 'ecological collapse' to 'climate change'. As a way to describe what's happening, rather than what I actually want to see happen, obvs. I've also heard people use polycrisis and omnicrisis, which sound like opposites, but both used to describe the clusterfuck of a situation we're in.
And I've heard 'thrutopia' used to describe a genre of fiction that imagines how we get from here to somewhere better/sustainable/utopic (seeing as we're making up words...).
The other made up word that kept echoing in my head while I was reading was 'econological', like, involving both economies and ecologies. Which, as you so eloquently describe, everything does.
I think this is the most interesting email I get from Substack. Going to read it properly when I’m not technically working. I have thoughts.
Oh thank you! Looking forward to your thoughts (and please do share this essay when you get the chance 🙂)
Okay then Team. What's the word we're going to start using?
I’ve been thinking a bit about the idea that uncanny stories in fiction might have been replaced by, well, whatever the opposite of an uncanny story is— if an uncanny story is about something which is both deeply repressed and present in the world, its opposite is something which is deeply needed and absent from it. So fantasy stories increasingly become worlds which are structured, familiar and understandable, and the absences in the non-fantasy ones become more obvious.
I wonder if for both present-day climate change and present-day AI there is actually no space in fiction as a result? The uncanny being very present in reality feels like something that’s resisted from both ends; not the sort of real that realist fiction exists in, not the sort of fantasy people would actually want. So maybe to get to it there needs to be some kind of safe liminal space readers pass through— the Heimlich needs to be there before the Unheimlich can be confronted? I expect this is why dystopian fiction fails, but am not quite sure.
Anyway, none of this is a word, exactly
Amitav Ghosh talks about the uncanny quite a lot - if I remember rightly he says that we're so conditioned into linearity and simple cause-and-effect in stories that we're completely intolerant of the uncanny or unexpected, so to have characters suddenly beset by freak weather events, for example, isn't a thing the publishing industry will tolerate and is something creative writing courses actively teach against doing, despite it being the thing we probably need at this point. So yes I think that's agreeing with what you said? The uncanny is resisted from all over.
Hard disagree about there being no room for fiction right now though! I think we need MOAR FICTION. It's just we're a bit lost as to where our stories are taking us .
A bit late to the party but thanks for this very thought-provoking essay. I kept thinking of the brilliant podcast The Outlaw Ocean that gets into the whole fishing industry, exploitation etc.
I wonder if the desire for one word for all this (which I share) isn’t a symptom of the dominant culture’s insistence on naming and measuring. What you describe is complex and multi-dimensional. How could one word possibly capture it?
That said, the frame that works best for me is that today’s world results from the story of separation we modern humans have been telling for generations. Think Adam and Eve versus Skywoman Falling - two creation stories with very different meanings and implications.
So the fiction I write is my attempt at imagining encounters with more of the Skywoman story - people in an animate world. I keep trying to go upstream from where we are now to that point where we veered off the path of interconnection and decided we could rule over it all.
I’m totally with you on dystopia. Stories create reality so I only want to write and read stories that imagine different ways of being in this marvelous world. Extrapolation of what we have now is just lazy.
Have you read The Dawn of Everything by Davids Graeber and Wengrow? That's got very interesting things about that point of interconnectedness (spoiler: we never really had it but were previously better at a more diverse politics and also the nation state wasn't around to fuck everything up).
I get what you're saying about the dominant culture and I'm not actually seeking to measure anything. I do think the naming of it is incredibly important though. I keep talking about climate change and people nod in a bored way and say "yes yes I do my recycling" and I'm like no wait I didn't mean the actual changing climate, I meant The One Big Problem. It's really important to have a way of communicating that!
Totally. Anthropocene seems like one attempt but it bugs me because it feels either too neutral or even positive, like, hey! Humans win! Unless you’re Kathryn Yusoff. I keep trying to get through her brilliant book. It’s so dense! https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Billion_Black_Anthropocenes_or_None.html?id=hAyGDwAAQBAJ
Thanks for the book recommendation. Haven’t heard of it and will definitely check it out.
I guess shit-hitting-fan doesn’t cut it either. Will keep thinking.
Just found Dawn of Everything at my library and cued it up. I’m skeptical about the conclusion that we never really had interconnectedness since writers like Robin Wall Kimmerer, Amitov Ghosh and Tyson Yunkaporta say otherwise. But let’s see what these guys have to say.
I'm wildly precising of course. It's more railing against the idea that we once lived in some egalitarian wonderland where everything was peachy and wonderful and if only we could go back that it would be wonderful. It's a fascinating history of the political consciousness of humankind. Really an incredible work - absolutely transformed the way I see things.
Oh, I agree we need more! I was mostly trying to work out where the resistance might be in the genres we have now
Oh yes. Gotcha! I think there's a lot of places of resistance tbh. Some straight up censorship, some more subtle to do with what publishers say will sell, but also a lot is to do with the writers are dealing with on a personal level and how we, as artists and humans, are processing what's going on. Also a million other things too!