Challenging Anthropocentrism in Eco-Science Fiction Novels 1527567028, 9781527567023

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Challenging Anthropocentrism in Eco-Science Fiction Novels

Challenging Anthropocentrism in Eco-Science Fiction Novels By

Fatma Gamze Erkan

Challenging Anthropocentrism in Eco-Science Fiction Novels By Fatma Gamze Erkan This book first published 2024 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2024 by Fatma Gamze Erkan All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-6702-8 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-6702-3

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements .................................................................................. vii Introduction ............................................................................................. viii Chapter I ................................................................................................... 1 Environment and Literature From Ecology to Ecocriticism .............................................................. 2 Origins of British Ecocriticism ............................................................. 5 Pastoral Literature ................................................................................. 6 British Romanticism ........................................................................... 13 Major Literary Figures ........................................................................ 20 The Birth of Ecocriticism and its Definitions ..................................... 28 The Waves of Ecocriticism ................................................................. 34 Chapter II ................................................................................................ 43 Science Fiction and Ecological Awareness Definition of Science Fiction .............................................................. 44 Environmental Concerns and Eco-Science Fiction ............................. 48 Anthropocentrism ............................................................................... 54 Biocentric and Ecocentric Ethics, and Deep Ecology ......................... 62 Chapter III .............................................................................................. 70 Crop Failure and Mass Famine John Christopher ................................................................................. 70 The Death of Grass ............................................................................. 74 Chapter IV .............................................................................................. 89 Industrial Waste and Drought J. G. Ballard ........................................................................................ 89 The Drought ........................................................................................ 96 Chapter V .............................................................................................. 116 Overpopulation and its Social Impacts Brian Aldiss ...................................................................................... 116 Earthworks ........................................................................................ 122

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Contents

Chapter VI ............................................................................................ 145 Rampant Consumerism and Environmental Pollution John Brunner ..................................................................................... 145 The Sheep Look Up ........................................................................... 151 Conclusion .............................................................................................. 170 References .............................................................................................. 179

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am excited and proud of the publication of this book, which I have studied with serious effort and devotion. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the people who have supported and encouraged me throughout this process. First and foremost, I would like to express my deep and sincere gratitude to Prof. Dr. Dilek Direnç, who guided me in the best way possible, allowed me to choose the topic of this study and carry out the research without restriction, and let me show my proficiency in the field. I am immensely grateful to my mentor for her illuminating suggestions, guidance, patience, and encouragement throughout the writing process of this study. She never spared her support, understanding, and knowledge in the academic field. I am indebted to my dear friend and colleague, Asst. Prof. Dr. Yasemin Baysal, for her assistance, kindness, motivating words, and helpful suggestions and comments during the entire process. Over the past year, she has been a huge blessing to me, and I want to thank her for everything she has done, including being there for me day and night, being sincere, being my friend, and more. I am grateful to her for the lengthy phone calls, the pleasant coffee and chat hours, and her encouraging remarks during my hard times. Last but not least, I would like to express my endless gratitude to my family, who have always been by my side, supported my decisions and choices, and encouraged and motivated me, not only during this study process but throughout my life. I would like to thank my mother, Berrin Erkan; my father, ùenol Erkan; my sister, Gizem Erkan; and my brother, ùadi Erkan, for their unending love, generosity, and patience. I thank all of them for trying their best to not only understand me but also ease my burden on this difficult journey.

INTRODUCTION

The human species has always interacted with nature because of the need for entities outside itself to survive. Maintaining a harmonious relationship between humans and nature is possible by making the minimum use of natural resources in line with the needs of human beings and by not engaging in behaviour that would disrupt the unity of the Earth. In this context, in the beginning, nomadic human societies had a close relationship with nature and continued their existence in healthier ecosystems compared to today. However, when humans gave up the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and transitioned to sedentary life in the Neolithic Era, which started with the invention of agriculture, problems began to emerge in the relationship between humankind and nature. It is plausible to say that with the development of humanity’s great cultural worlds and civilizations, humans’ attitudes towards nature and other life forms on Earth have become oppressive and even destructive. Indeed, the industrial, commercial, and technological developments of the eighteenth century have strengthened the sedentary lifestyle that has been maintained for thousands of years, and as a result, environmental damage has increased even more. In today’s consumer society, where nature is seen as a commodity, the degree of destruction has reached such a level that it has become naturally irreparable. Environmental problems, which cause harm to both nature and humans themselves, have become global. Thomas Berry calls this “a deep cultural pathology” that originated in Western society and has now spread around the world.1 He states that, through industrial exploitation, the whole planet is being ravaged. The air, the water, and the land are all heavily contaminated with chemicals that were unheard of in earlier times. Numerous living species’ habitats suffer permanent harm. Nevertheless, the human being now discovers that the damage done to nature is coming back to threaten the human species itself as a result of this global disruption of the biosphere by human actions. It is obvious that environmental problems arise because humankind currently has such an extreme, even abnormal, obsession with its own comfort and convenience that it is inclined to deplete all of Earth’s resources 1

Thomas Berry, “The Viable Human,” in Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century, ed. George Sessions (Boston & London: Shambhala Publications, 1995), 9.

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in order to meet its own desires. However, it is ignored that the “viability of the human species” is inextricably linked to the “viability of the earth.”2 Human needs cannot be met when natural resources such as the earth, air, and water have been severely polluted. Environmental destruction, which is among the major problems of the modern period, is one of the most discussed and solution-oriented issues of today. In particular, the realisation that humans not only harm nature but also directly and indirectly harm themselves has prepared the ground for academicians from different disciplines to raise awareness by talking more and writing extensively on the subject. As a result of the increasing environmental problems, the authors have started to focus on nature in their literary works, dealing with human-nature relationships. In order to reveal the seriousness of the situation, terrifying scenarios awaiting humanity have been produced, and these have also been the subject of literary works. Many assumptions about the end of the world have been made, and various pieces of information have been provided to prevent a scary end. Moreover, the scale of the destruction and the disasters it may cause have been fictionally explained with statistical data. As a result, “ecocriticism” or “environmental criticism,” which is a literary approach that examines the relationship between literature and the physical world, has emerged. While ecocriticism, which has an interdisciplinary structure, investigates exactly what is meant by the word nature, it also investigates human perceptions of natural life and how this perception has changed throughout history. Ecocriticism also considers how today’s environmental issues are mirrored in popular culture and literature. Based on this, the aim of this study is to examine how British eco-science fiction novels, namely John Christopher’s The Death of Grass (1956), J.G. Ballard’s The Drought (1965), Brian Aldiss’s Earthworks (1965), and John Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up (1972), create a nature-centred narrative against destructive human actions shaped by the anthropocentric perspective and the negative effects of these actions, particularly environmental disasters, on nature, culture, and all living things, in the light of ecocritical theory. The first chapter of this study is devoted to defining ecocriticism as a theory that deals with the relationship between the environment and literature since its emergence. This chapter, beginning with the definition of the concept of ecology, covers the origins, history, development, and definitions of British ecocriticism, respectively. It also explores pastoral literature and British Romanticism, which paved the way for the formation of ecocriticism. Along with these two earlier literary traditions, some 2

Ibid.

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Introduction

important works by eminent scholars have contributed to the development of this discipline. In particular, the contributions of Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson to the advancement of the modern environmental movement and ecocriticism cannot be overlooked. Therefore, the two most significant examples of modern environmental writing, namely Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac (1949) and Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), are also examined in the first chapter. The last part of this chapter focuses on the waves of ecocriticism, which were first suggested by Lawrence Buell and later developed by Scott Slovic to establish a theoretical framework for ecocriticism. Following the introduction of the theoretical background, the second chapter elaborates on the science fiction genre and its contribution to environmental criticism. Ecological consciousness can be seen in a wide range of genres, and science fiction is one of them. Ursula K. Heise remarks that science fiction is one of the contemporary genres in which problems about ecology and environmental issues are most prevalent. It is one of the genres that has continuously and boldly addressed environmental problems and their challenge to humanity’s vision of the future.3 Therefore, science fiction, though underappreciated, is a very significant and valuable literary genre for ecocritical studies. After defining the broad and immensely complicated science fiction genre, this chapter briefly details the apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fiction and dystopian fiction narratives to which the selected novels belong. To put it briefly, apocalyptic and postapocalyptic fiction frequently focuses on a cataclysmic event that destroys the planet. If the disaster takes place throughout the narrative, it is defined as apocalyptic; if the catastrophe has already occurred, it is defined as postapocalyptic. Dystopian fiction, on the other hand, is set in a world where humans live in deplorable conditions as a result of oppression and suffering. However, it is important to emphasise that not all works of dystopian fiction include disasters, and not all disaster narratives depict a dystopian world. Classical dystopian fiction, such as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), depicts societies in which political, economic, and social structures ruin the lives of people and deprive them of all necessities and opportunities. Disaster fiction, on the other hand, deals with natural or human-made catastrophes that significantly change a society in every sense. Besides, while environmental disasters lay the foundation for a dystopian society, a dystopian regime further increases environmental degradation, creating a paradoxical vicious circle. 3 Ursula K. Heise, “Forum on Literatures of the Environment,” PMLA 114, no. 5 (1999): 1097.

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Following the explanation of the differences between these three narratives, what eco-science fiction is and why the selected four novels are categorised as such is clarified. Eco-science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction that focuses on ecology and human interaction with the environment. The focus of this fiction is on global ecological problems like climate change, pollution, famine, drought, and overpopulation, which pose a threat to all living beings on Earth, including humans. In this sense, eco-science fiction tries to raise awareness about the environmental crisis by extrapolating and presenting such disaster scenarios. Hence, it encourages humans to stop and think about their current situation as well as the environment they live in.4 In other words, one of the aims of eco-science fiction literature is to lay the groundwork for environmental consciousness, which is required to grasp not just how humankind is connected to the natural world but also what causes its alienation. Actually, scrutinising the interaction of humans with nature from the beginning of history to the present demonstrates that environmental problems are mostly caused by a human-centred mentality and approach. As William Rueckert indicates, in terms of ecology, humans’ tragic flaw is their anthropocentric worldview and their obsession with taming, domesticating, violating, and exploiting everything in nature.5 Therefore, in order to better understand this point of view and how it affects the relationship of humans with the environment, the second chapter focuses on the concept of anthropocentrism. The nature-centred ethical approaches proposed as a response to the anthropocentric worldview, notably biocentrism, ecocentrism, and deep ecology, are also explored in depth in this chapter in order to provide the essential framework for analysing the novels. In the subsequent chapters, Christopher’s The Death of Grass, Ballard’s The Drought, Aldiss’s Earthworks, and Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up, all of which have important places in the field of eco-science fiction, are examined in terms of the way they deal with the interaction of the environment and humans and the way they depict environmental catastrophes. However, before analysing the novels, brief biographical information about the lives and works of the authors is provided. This short background 4

Patrick D. Murphy, “The Non-Alibi of Alien Spaces: SF and Ecocriticism,” in Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism, ed. Karla Armbruster and Kathleen R. Wallace (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 2001), 263. 5 William Rueckert, “Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism,” in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1996), 113.

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Introduction

information is crucial in understanding the authors’ views and stances on environmental problems and ecological issues, both in real life and in their fictional works. The first novel examined in the third chapter is John Christopher’s The Death of Grass, which was published in 1956. Belonging to the postapocalyptic science fiction sub-genre, this novel is about a virus that first destroys rice plants in East Asia and then attacks all crops around the world, causing a massive famine. The narrative tells the story of two families who set out to take shelter on the farm of their acquaintances, wandering across England and experiencing some unpleasant events on the way. Throughout their journey, they encounter all forms of barbarism and violence. This chapter discusses how Christopher depicts the consequences of the anthropocentric approach to eradicating the virus and dealing with the disaster. The characters’ relationships with each other and their reactions to the catastrophe are also explored. Christopher warns against placing too much faith in science to handle ecological problems in his novel by highlighting the fragility of both the ecosystem and civilization. Hence, how Christopher positions humans in the face of an ecological disaster and how he represents the capabilities and limitations of science and “developed” Western countries to solve the virus problem are examined in this chapter. In the fourth chapter of this study, J. G. Ballard’s The Drought (aka The Burning World), published in 1965, is analysed. The novel tells the story of an Earth on the brink of extinction, where a worldwide drought caused by industrial waste has forced humankind to search for water in a life-or-death situation. The industrial toxic waste spilled into the ocean generates an oxygen-permeable block of saturated long-chain polymers that inhibits evaporation and breaks the rain cycle, resulting in a global drought. As a result of the drought, the world turns into a vast desert, forcing people to rush to the oceans to find water. The Earth begins to transform slowly; concrete cities become surrounded by hot seas of sand, and the seashore recedes, revealing new crystal-salt deserts. Fires turn forests and buildings into white ashes. All living things in the ecosystem gradually perish, and civilization collapses. Accordingly, this chapter examines how Ballard, in his remarkable novel, describes the dimensions and consequences of human-induced actions and how he embraces the philosophy of deep ecology, which permeates the novel. The impact of the depicted ecological disaster not only on nature but also on culture and civilization is also evaluated. Since this post-apocalyptic novel focuses on the drastic change of the ecosystem and the progress of the characters towards a new and completely altered relationship with the environment, how Ballard

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considers the effect of the changing physical world on the psychology of the characters is also investigated. In the fifth chapter, Brian Aldiss’s dystopian science fiction novel, Earthworks, published in 1965, is scrutinised. The novel focuses on an environmental disaster caused by overpopulation and envisions a world dominated by extreme socio-economic inequality. Most of the population in the depicted world lives in elevated cities, while the desolate countryside is ruled by a rich and privileged farmer class. As industrial agriculture has devastated lands, the worker population, punished for minor crimes, is compelled to work on farmlands poisoned with chemicals to raise food. In this context, this chapter focuses on how Aldiss deconstructs the anthropocentric perspective and portrays the effects of overpopulation on nature, culture, and humanity. The chapter also examines the author’s representation and assessment of political, economic, and technological opportunities for tackling overpopulation and related environmental problems. In the dystopian future portrayed in the novel, people are on the verge of losing their identity and humanity as a result of increased automation, the incredible exploitation of workers by farmers, and extremely poor working conditions on farmlands. In this sense, how the social implications of the environmental crisis caused by overpopulation are represented in the novel is one of the focal points of investigation in this chapter. The sixth and final chapter analyses John Brunner’s dystopian science fiction novel The Sheep Look Up, published in 1972, which depicts the fall of the United States in an environmental disaster resulting in widespread disease and death. The novel features multiple characters whose paths are intertwined as they struggle to cope with the drastic changes in their environment. The narrative takes place in a fictional future where most of the country is under permanent cloud cover and it is impossible to breathe without using air filter masks. Food and clean drinking water are extremely limited. Besides these, other problems addressed in the novel include an unending war, acid rain, antibiotic-resistant illnesses, epidemics, a fall in life expectancy, infertility, endangered bees, biodiversity loss, etc. The novel portrays a world in which only the wealthy can buy expensive “organic food,” while the poor eat chemically processed junk food. In this chapter of the study, Brunner’s depiction of these problems and his consideration of the approaches of large companies and the president of the country to environmental issues are examined, and how the novel, which focuses on Western consumption habits, reflects the impact of capitalism on the environment and people is extensively analysed.

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Introduction

As environmental pollution and its worldwide damage became more prevalent, so did studies focusing on environmental issues. One of the literary genres dealing with this topic is science fiction, which offers predictions about the future and warns against impending dangers. Ecoscience fiction narratives, in particular, effectively depict the harmful impacts of reckless human behaviour on the environment and all life forms. Although different factors cause the environmental disasters described in these fictional narratives, they all have one thing in common: they underline how serious and dangerous the consequences of environmental problems might be. In light of all this information, while discussing the interaction between the physical world and society, the role of anthropocentric actions in the environmental disasters described in the novels is questioned. In these novels, which fictionalise that the consequences of environmental problems can be diverse but equally serious, it is examined how even the smallest damage caused by human beings to the environment negatively affects them along with other living beings and the ecosystem they need in order to live and flourish. In conjunction with these, the reasons and conditions that push characters in the novels to ignore and harm the environment are also scrutinised. While examining how and why the environmental problems in the novels have arisen, it is evaluated whether the authors propose solutions to these problems and, if so, what they are.

CHAPTER I ENVIRONMENT AND LITERATURE

The human population has grown so much over the past few centuries that it has had an impact on almost every life form on the planet. Even though the flora and fauna are constantly evolving on Earth, the force exerted upon them by the human species has been tremendous. Throughout the world, countless species have vanished, and ecosystems have been transformed at unpredictable levels and paces in a very short time. Population growth, especially in the recent century, has given rise to ecological problems since it has become necessary for human beings to utilise more and more habitats in order to obtain the required resources. Moreover, ecological destruction has been worsened by imprudent technological applications and globalisation to meet the unhealthy consumption habits of humanity, which have been historically entrenched. Many ecologists emphasise that such human activities are the main reason behind numerous environmental problems such as global warming, air and water pollution, the extinction of species, and the loss of biodiversity. According to Cheryll Glotfelty, one of the pioneer ecocritics, humanity has entered an era of “environmental limits,” in which the effects of human behaviour are endangering the planet’s vital mechanisms for maintaining life. Change is required, or else humans risk a catastrophic global event that will wipe out innumerable species and damage much of the world’s natural beauty.1 Obviously, the activities of humans have an alarmingly awful impact on non-human life on Earth, and it will be even more terrible in the coming years if it continues like this. This ecological concern and its reflection in literature have paved the way for a new branch of literary theory: ecocriticism. Ecocriticism, in its

1

Cheryll Glotfelty, “Introduction: Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis,” in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1996), xx.

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Chapter I

general meaning, is “the study of literature as if the environment mattered.”2 It is a broad term used to mention nature-oriented research in literature. However, ecocriticism does not deal only with nature writing; it examines how literature depicts the relationship between humans and nature at specific times in history, what values are attributed to nature and why, and how views and attitudes about the natural world influence literary devices and genres.3 Thus, the main purpose of ecocriticism is to study texts that epitomise environmental issues and to analyse the different ways literature deals with nature. Ecocritics scrutinise the representation of nature and environmental concerns in the works of authors, poets, and playwrights from an interdisciplinary perspective. There is still an ongoing dispute among ecocritics about the aim, scope, and methodology of ecocriticism. Yet, some of them also try to find possible solutions for improving the present environmental problems. In order to clarify how nature has found a place for itself in literature, this chapter focuses on the origin, history, and development of ecocriticism and its definitions.

From Ecology to Ecocriticism To understand the emergence of ecocriticism and its relation to nature and literature, it is important to touch upon the concept of ecology. It comes from the Greek words oikos, meaning “house, dwelling place, habitation,” and logia, meaning “study of.”4 Thus, ecology can simply be described as “the study of organisms in relation to each other and to the surroundings in which they live.”5 Ernst Haeckel, a German zoologist, is credited with coining the term in 1866 (originally as Ökologie in German). The term Oecologia, which became “ecology” in the late nineteenth century, was initially introduced as a branch of biology that is mainly concerned with the relation of organisms to the physical environment. Thus, ecology examines the interconnectedness between the animate and inanimate and their environment from a scientific perspective. However, as awareness about environmental issues and human-nature relationships has increased since the mid-twentieth century, ecology as a scientific term has found a place in other fields and disciplines as well. 2

David Mazel, A Century of Early Ecocriticism (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 2001), 1. 3 Heise, “Forum on Literatures,” 1097. 4 “Ecology,” Online Etymology Dictionary, accessed April 26, 2020. https://www.etymonline.com/word/ecology. 5 Timothy Clark, The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Environment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 152.

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Similarly, ecology has come to refer to human relationships with the earth in a variety of contexts, including economic, social, cultural, and philosophical. Numerous environmental approaches, such as deep ecology, social ecology, political ecology, ecofeminism, and the ethics of ecology, have begun to question human beings’ relationship to nature. Since literature is a part of human history, it is not surprising that it has become an important medium in the representation of nature-human relationships as well. Through literature, many writers and scholars have aimed to raise awareness about the significance of a peaceful relationship between human beings and other living things on Earth. Glen A. Love, one of those scholars, argues that literature’s most crucial role today is to shift humans’ attention to a thorough examination of their place in a world that is in danger.6 Therefore, literature plays a significant role in defining and shaping humankind’s relationship with nature. It is acknowledged that ecocriticism emerged as an idea in Joseph Meeker’s landmark work, The Comedy of Survival, published in 1974. Introducing the term “literary ecology,” Meeker defines it as the study of biological themes and connections found in literary works. He views it as an effort to learn more about the contributions that literature has made to the ecosystem of the human species.7 In this early ecocritical text, Meeker suggests that literature is imitative in its portrayal of human actions. Because the main motivations of any species, including humans, are survival and evolutionary adaptation to their surroundings, literature is a powerful medium that echoes this behaviour. His essential argument is that two opposing literary modes, tragedy and comedy, shape humans’ interactions with nature. Elaborating on centuries of literary texts from Sophocles to Shakespeare, he shows how comedy is universal in the attitudes of humans, and the comic mode encourages them to maintain a harmonious relationship with nature, while tragedy misleads humans to become the exploiters of the environment. Meeker further contends that the devastating characteristics of Western culture are established in a tragic mode. The tragic mode suggests that man is always in battle with forces larger than himself. These forces, such as “nature, the gods, moral law, passionate love, the greatness of ideas and knowledge all seem enormously above mankind and in some way determine

6 Glen A. Love, “Revaluing Nature: Toward an Ecological Criticism,” in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1996), 237. 7 Joseph W. Meeker, The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology (New York: Scribner, 1974), 9.

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Chapter I

his welfare or his suffering.”8 The aim of tragic literature is to show that man is either equivalent to or superior to his confrontation. Tragedy, as Meeker notes, is defined by a fight between humans and natural forces. In this regard, tragedy has an anthropocentric outlook since it puts humans above all things and isolates them from nature. Comedy, on the other hand, “is concerned with muddling through, not with progress or perfection.”9 It comprehends the principles of the ecosystem and urges humans to reconcile with them to the utmost. Comedy shows that despite being frail, foolish, and immoral, humans are strong. The comic hero, unlike the tragic one, does not suffer or die for his morals. So, comedy is indifferent to morality, goodness, truth, beauty, heroism, and all such abstract ideals that men claim to uphold. Its only goal is to praise life’s ability to continue against all morals and to support man’s capability for survival.10 As can be understood from what Meeker asserts, comedy encourages cooperation and union with ecological forces, while tragedy advocates a hierarchical relationship of supremacy. In their confrontation with these forces, the tragic hero dies, regardless of his morals; the comic hero, however, survives the incident. Tragedy causes cultural and natural catastrophes; comedy, on the other hand, deals with the character’s desire to survive and life’s longevity. Hence, comedy can be viewed as naturecentred in its concentration on adaptation, survival, and eventuality. In other words, Meeker tries to emphasise the view that a human being is a part of nature and is prone to inherent defects and weaknesses. Humankind’s main motivation is survival, and this can be enabled with comic mode since it teaches the virtues of modesty and endurance to humans. Comedy reveals that the human species’ existence relies on its capacity to adjust itself and its ability to embrace limitations. In this regard, it can be stated that literature has a significant effect on human relationships with nature. Emphasising that humans are the only literary beings in the world, Meeker suggests that literature should be thoroughly and sincerely examined to learn how it affects human behaviour and the environment. According to him, this will help humans understand what, if any, role literature plays in the welfare and survival of humankind, as well as what insights it provides into its interactions with other species and the natural world. He claims that by doing so, we can determine whether it is an activity 8

Joseph Meeker, “The Comic Mode,” in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1996), 157. 9 Ibid., 160. 10 Ibid., 159.

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that better adapts humans to the world or one that distances them from it, and whether it has a greater impact on humanity’s survival than their extinction. 11 Meeker’s remark reflects ecocriticism and environmental philosophy in suggesting that literature conditions humans’ actions and their approach to nature. It provides an invaluable insight into the interactions between humans, other living things, and the earth. Considering the impact of literature on environmental issues, it can be better understood why ecocriticism attempts to explore the portrayal of nature and the relationship of humankind with its surroundings through literary works. It is because ecocriticism seeks to illustrate the unrecognised and troublesome aspects of the connection between humankind and nature. In this way, they seek to raise awareness about the consequences of anthropocentrism on humans’ close and vital relationship with the earth.

Origins of British Ecocriticism Lawrence Buell remarks at the very beginning of The Future of Environmental Criticism that although environmental criticism is a newly emerged theory, it dates back to ancient times. He states, “In one form or another the ‘idea of nature’ has been a dominant or at least residual concern for literary scholars and intellectual historians ever since these fields came into being.”12 Even a quick survey of literature throughout the centuries confirms that environmental concern has been a very old theme in literary works. A considerable amount of literary text has specifically been concerned with nature, whether to show the aesthetic admiration of its beauty or to explore its relationship with humankind. Michael Branch, a prominent ecocritic, expresses this interest in nature with various examples, from ancient literary works to recent literature. As he contends, the idea that nature exists as a peaceful getaway from the artificial surroundings of the city was initially established through the writings of Hellenistic writers like Virgil and Horace. During the Middle Ages, writers ranging from Augustine to Aquinas supported the traditional Christian idea that nature was particularly significant as visible evidence of God’s creation. Renaissance and early seventeenth-century philosophers like Bacon and Descartes hastened the birth of the modern worldview by praising rationalism and humankind’s control over the natural world. In the 11

Meeker, The Comedy of Survival, 3-4. Lawrence Buell, The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 2. 12

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Chapter I

eighteenth century, nature was seen as a source of inspiration and was used as a means of reflecting the inner feelings of humans, and poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge emphasised the importance of being close to nature and tried to heal human suffering by writing poems about nature. In the nineteenth century, many writers of English and American romantic literature, from Goethe to Wordsworth to Emerson, pioneered the criticism of industrialization, which viewed nature as only a resource, a commodity. And throughout the twentieth century, writers like Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Edward Abbey, and John Muir have been among the most powerful advocates for an ecologically holistic view of nature.13 It is clear that writing about themes related to nature was quite popular, even in early examples of literature. While the majority of these pieces were only about nature, some of them even addressed social and environmental issues. A review of the literature shows that ecologically based literary texts have been around since the beginning of civilization, and they can be considered forerunners of modern ecocriticism. While formal ecocriticism practice is regarded as a relatively recent contribution to literary theory, the earliest examples of environmental writing can be observed in pastoral literature. Besides the authors and thinkers mentioned above, the actual precursors of the early UK version of ecocriticism can be traced back to British Romanticism as well. To comprehend the relationship between pastoral tradition, British Romanticism, and modern ecocritical theory, it is necessary to briefly discuss these literary traditions.

Pastoral Literature In his book Ecocriticism, Greg Garrard argues that since the poetic reactions of the Romantic Movement to the Industrial Revolution, pastoralism has significantly influenced the way humans think about nature.14 According to him, in its early stages, ecology as a scientific discipline may have been influenced by pastoral tradition, and the founding text of ecocriticism, Silent Spring, is rooted in this tradition. Even though pastoralism, which has its origins in the classical era, is inclined to be quickly influenced by various political ideologies, for ecocritics, this trope will continue to be a significant concern.15 Therefore, to better comprehend 13 Michael Branch, “Ecocriticism: The Nature of Nature in Literary Theory and Practice,” Weber Studies 11, no. 1 (Winter 1994). 14 Greg Garrard, Ecocriticism (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 33. 15 Ibid.

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the relationship between ecocriticism and pastoral literature, it is necessary to explore the pastoral tradition’s origins. Pastoral, as a term, originates from the Latin word pastor, which means shepherd. As the etymology of the word suggests, pastoral mainly focuses on the depiction of the countryside and the lives of herdsmen.16 Although pastoral basically refers to a lifestyle in relation to country life, it is also the name of a literary, artistic, and musical genre that portrays such a life in an idealised way. Taking into account its definition in the literary genre, M. H. Abrams identifies pastoral as “a deliberately conventional poem expressing an urban poet’s nostalgic image of the peace and simplicity of the life of shepherds and other rural folk in an idealized natural setting.”17 So, the pastoral depicts a natural environment to which city people escape in pursuit of solitude and serenity, where they can obtain a glimpse of simple living. Similarly, Lawrence Buell defines pastoral as “a stylized representation of rusticity in contrast to and often in satire of urbanism, focusing in the first instance on the life of shepherds.”18 Hence, the pastoral tradition specifically emphasises the dichotomy between urban and rural life. Considering that the pastoral holds a strong view of nature, authors such as Paul Alpers identifies it as a mode instead of a genre. According to him, there are several literary genres that fit this definition. It comprises not just the full spectrum of “formal eclogues—pastoral elegies, love complaints, singing-contests, and the like—but also pastoral romances, pastoral lyrics, pastoral comedies, and pastoral novels.”19 If they are all pastoral, he says, it is plausible to claim that pastoral is not a genre. Instead, it appears to be one of the literary genres, such as tragedy, comedy, novel, romance, satire, and elegy, which have names that sound general but are broader and more comprehensive than the genres themselves. It is attempted to be understood that pastoral is one of these literary genres when it is stated that it is not a genre but a mode.20 Therefore, viewed interchangeably as a mode, genre, or convention, the pastoral tradition, taking place in various forms of literature such as poetry, drama, and novels, alludes to literary works that glorify country life and landscapes.

16

“Pastoral,” Online Etymology Dictionary, accessed September 8, 2020. https://www.etymonline.com/word/pastoral. 17 A Glossary of Literary Terms, ed. M. H. Abrams, 7th ed. (United States: Heinle & Heinle, 1999), s.v. “pastoral.” 18 Buell, The Future, 144. 19 Paul Alpers, What Is Pastoral? (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 46. 20 Ibid.

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While the word pastoral has been commonly used to describe literature, art, music, and popular media in general, it emerged and evolved as a literary genre in the poetry of the Hellenistic period. Although Theocritus is credited with writing the first example of pastoral poetry that has been preserved, the interest that the Hellenistic people had in the countryside can also be seen in their culture. For instance, the philosophies of Epicureanism, with its purpose of tranquillity, and Cynicism, advocating an especially simple life that is in peace with nature, indicate the importance given to rural life. Present-day critics connect this inclination of Hellenistic society with the growing urbanisation of life and a desire for simplicity.21 The countryside was not uncovered all of a sudden in the Hellenistic period. Plato’s Phaedrus, in which the townsman Socrates particularly calls attention to nature’s beauty, is an especially significant source for Theocritus.22 Moreover, Works and Days, the didactic poem of the early Greek poet Hesiod (750–650 BC), who is a contemporary of Homer, is also a possible precursor of Theocritus’s Idylls. In his prominent poem, Works and Days, Hesiod focuses on country life, farming, and human labour. Despite the fact that there are other works and philosophies that are strikingly similar to the pastoral tradition prior to Theocritus, his Idylls are widely regarded as the first piece of pastoral poetry because its use of a rural setting and portrayal of shepherds as key characters living in peace with nature established the literary structure of the pastoral and provided its essential characteristics. So, the beginning of pastoral poetry, also known as “bucolic,” deriving its root from Greek boukolos, meaning “cowherd,” can be traced back to the third-century BC Greek poet Theocritus’s Idylls. Simply put, the term “idyll” means the “small picture” or “poetic vignette,” and “bucolic” is “one of the typical singers of the idyll.”23 For Theocritus, “bucolic” poetry meant the exchange of songs in singing competitions between the herders, whether of cows, sheep, goats, or oxen. In other words, the “vignettes” of country life, which concentrate on the song competitions, are the essential poems of pastoral tradition. Hence, focused on the customs of festival singing, Idylls is a fictional portrayal of Sicilian shepherds’ lives, in which the shepherds lived a blissful, idealised life of romance and singing.24 Although the aim of Theocritus’ bucolic poetry is still a point of discussion among scholars, most critics, such as 21 Anthony Verity, introduction to Theocritus: Idylls. Trans. Anthony Verity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), xiv. 22 Ibid., xv. 23 Garrard, Ecocriticism, 34. 24 Margaret Drabble, ed., The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 6th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 769.

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Terry Gifford, claim that the first pastoral text, the Idylls of Theocritus, introduced the term “idyllic” and created an idealised, nostalgic, and escapism-inspired tone in rural poetry intended for a court audience. Afterwards, all these characteristics began to be associated with pastoral definitions.25 In brief, pastoral literature is based on the work of Theocritus, who depicted visions of shepherds leading happy and fulfilling lives. The emphasis on idealised rural life, regardless of form or structure, is what distinguishes the pastoral tradition. Two centuries later, inspired by the Idylls of Theocritus, the Roman poet Virgil wrote a set of poems called Eclogues. It is a poem in the style of a conversation between two shepherds, in which Virgil depicts the harsh division between city and country life. The most important feature that distinguishes Eclogues in pastoral literature is that Virgil introduced the idea of Arcadia “as a literary construct of the location of pastoral retreat” to our cultural discourse.26 Thus, the pastoral tradition was carried on from Greece to Rome, where the setting was shifted from Sicily to Arcadia. Leo Marx, one of the most significant critics of American pastoral, argues that while Theocritus is considered the first pastoral poet, Virgil’s Eclogues are the real forefather of the pastoral tradition in modern literature since Virgil “discovered” Arcadia in these poems, in which he “created the symbolic landscape, a delicate blend of myth and reality.”27 In this “imaginary Arcadia,” the pastoral scenes that Virgil portrays are allegorical, in which Rome’s glory is praised, loyalty to the emperor is expressed, and a golden age is foretold. So, in Eclogues, Virgil “evokes a Golden Age of the past that is set against the instability and alienation of the present.”28 In other words, the pastoral tradition has been used by Virgil to address the environmental problems of the Roman period. As A. J. Boyle notes, Eclogues describe the destruction, breakdown, and misery brought upon rural areas by the city’s brutality in a simple and serious way. The devastation is massive, affecting the rural environment in all its forms, including plant, animal, and human, and its root is the city.29 In the poem, Virgil focuses on the reality of violence, displacement, and 25 Terry Gifford, “Pastoral, Anti-Pastoral, and Post-Pastoral,” in The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Environment, ed. Louise Westling (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 18. 26 Ibid., 19. 27 Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (1964; repr., New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 19. 28 Gifford, “Pastoral,” 19. 29 A. J. Boyle, The Chaonian Dove: Studies in the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid of Virgil (1986; repr., Leiden: Brill, 2018), 15.

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suffering. Eclogues, which were written during a time of social unrest and political upheaval, are a reflection on the modern individual’s intellectual, psychological, and spiritual fragmentation. While revealing the stark historical reality of the country’s destruction caused by Rome’s politicomilitary system, they also explore the emotional disorder and moral depravity that Virgil views as a result of city life and technological advancement.30 Considering all these explanations, it can be claimed that Arcadia stands as a perfect location for a utopia in which human worries have not yet emerged. By constructing the literary Arcadia, Virgil has aimed to create “an idealised future, a restoration of rural values that urbanisation, or industrialization, or technological alienation from the earth have lost.”31 In this sense, Virgil uses the pastoral or rural environment to reflect Rome’s misery and creates an image in which the defining characteristics of modern life are observed against a backdrop of abandoned goals and forgotten dreams.32 Eventually, as Marx emphasises, the poem’s entire focus is on the unity formed in the first few lines, in which Virgil refers to the significant benefits of a pastoral retreat, such as “peace, leisure, and economic sufficiency.”33 However, the key to all these blessings is the harmonious relationship between human beings and the natural world. The pastoral tradition, which had been ignored during the Middle Ages, flourished in the Renaissance period. However, as pastoralism gained popularity during the Renaissance, the genre’s classical boundaries were expanded and updated to include new elements. Rural landscapes and local villagers were portrayed in new styles and forms. Much like Virgil enhanced Theocritus’ pastoral frameworks, the Renaissance poets established a modern pastoral approach while imitating the classical one. As Edmund K. Chambers indicates, the Latin eclogue experienced a revival during the Renaissance. It perfectly captured the interest of humanists, who delighted in its “artificial ring” and the chances it provided for “covert satire” of church and state.34 In addition to the imitation of classical topics and styles, the pastoral was also extended to incorporate drama and romance. Both John Fletcher’s The Faithful Shepherdess and Ben Jonson’s The Sad Shepherd can be given as examples of English pastoral drama. Sidney’s Arcadia and Shakespeare’s As You Like It are examples of English Renaissance pastoral romances. During this period, pastoral literature became thoroughly “theatrical 30

Ibid. Gifford, “Pastoral,” 21. 32 Boyle, The Chaonian Dove, 16. 33 Marx, The Machine, 23. 34 Edmund K. Chambers, English Pastorals (London: Blackie & Son., 1895), xxiiixxiv. Internet Archive. 31

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and romantic.” It became a brand-new form in which the eclogue and natural description were incorporated into the fundamentally distinct realm of an idealised romantic love.35 The fundamental reason behind the revival of Renaissance pastoral literature was growing urbanisation. As Ken Hiltner emphasises, in Renaissance pastoralism, idealised landscapes frequently opposed the authority of the courts. However, the idealised and more realistic scenes of pastoral painting throughout the seventeenth century also opposed London’s unparalleled urbanisation.36 Although there are exceptions, the primary theme in English Renaissance pastoral literature was London. In fact, almost every significant contributor to the growth of pastoralism in England during this era resided in or near London at one time. Also, authors who lived on the outskirts of the kingdom, such as Edmund Spenser, visited London. As a result, London occupied a prominent place in Renaissance England’s pastoral literature.37 It is obvious that the unprecedented expansion of the city had serious cultural and ecological effects, which had a huge influence on Renaissance pastoralism. The dissatisfaction with rapidly growing cities pushed Renaissance people to seek happiness and prosperity in nature, which can be found in pastoral literature. The pastoral, on the other hand, did not remain a literary tradition that focused on the idealisation of nature but rather evolved into a political instrument during this century and in the centuries to come. Considering the definition and historical development of pastoral literature, in his book Pastoral, Terry Gifford clarifies three kinds of pastoral. The first is a historical form with a long tradition that originated in poetry, evolved into drama, and, in recent years, became recognisable in novels.38 Gifford describes this kind by referring to the classical poetry and drama that elevate rural life, originating in Greek and Roman poems and continuing in the Renaissance era. In this type of pastoral, one can therefore mention Renaissance pastoral dramas, including Shakespeare’s, or Augustan pastoral poetry like Pope’s. Alluding to these examples, it can be claimed that pastoral is a literary form, starting with Theocritus in the third century B.C., in which country life, and especially a shepherd’s life, is depicted. As Gifford suggests, up until around 1610, the word pastoral referred to poetry or dramas of a certain formal style in which fictional 35

Raymond Williams, The Country and The City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 20. 36 Ken Hiltner, What Else Is Pastoral?: Renaissance Literature and the Environment (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2011), 70. 37 Ibid., 71. 38 Terry Gifford, Pastoral (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 1.

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shepherds conversed with one another about their labour or their loves while providing mainly idealised descriptions of their rural surroundings.39 In the second kind, beyond a particular literary form, pastoral is used to address a wider scope of context. Here, pastoral refers to the descriptive image of a peaceful, pleasant countryside that includes farmlands, lakes, and forests. In this sense, the second kind of pastoral focuses on the content of literary texts and is used to describe any literary work that contrasts the rural with the urban, either implicitly or explicitly. Any novel whose rural setting plays a significant part in its narrative might be considered pastoral. Because it focuses on nature, a poem about trees in town may also be called pastoral. That is, in identifying these texts as pastorals, a joyful attitude towards what they depict is assumed, no matter how bleak it appears on the surface.40 In Gifford’s third type of pastoral, the simple celebration of nature is brought into question since this type portrays rural life with pejorative definitions. For example, if a Greenpeace supporter ignores pollution or the damage that urban developers pose to city trees, they may use the term to criticise tree poetry. Here, the disparity between the natural world as depicted in literature and what actually exists will be deemed inappropriate based on ecological considerations.41 In this instance, pastoral is defined as pejorative in a critical and derogatory way since, as Gifford points out, there is a significant difference between the literary depiction of nature and material fact. Besides, the third type of pastoral serves as a literary critique of the oversimplification and idealisation of the countryside, and it tries to correct the inclination to ignore the difficulties and hard work that such places require. Similarly, Greg Garrard distinguishes the pastoral tradition into three types. The first one, corresponding to Gifford’s first kind, is “classical pastoral,” which considers nature as a place where humans find harmony and self-identification. The second type is “romantic pastoral,” which refers to the period after the Industrial Revolution and emphasises the value of rural freedom over urbanisation. The third is “American pastoral,” which describes agricultural land as a dividing line between the wilderness and the city. In this one, land is viewed as a resource that can be used for agriculture.42 So, many scholars, such as Gifford and Garrard, have tried to define pastoral in literature, which is incredibly useful for understanding ecocriticism as an approach.

39

Ibid. Ibid., 2. 41 Ibid. 42 Garrard, Ecocriticism, 34. 40

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To sum up, the origins of pastoralism reveal that it emerged during a time when there were numerous ecological issues that humans are now all too familiar with. It is obvious that pastoral literature did not emerge at a time when nature was viewed as flawless and remote from human intervention. The early pastoral works addressed war, violence, land invasions, and other calamities that went beyond the borders of cities and countries. As Garrard highlights, the birth of the bucolic idyll coincided strongly with widespread urbanisation during the Hellenic period. The pastoral tradition is characterised by two main contrasts from this era: “the spatial distinction of town (frenetic, corrupt, impersonal) and country (peaceful, abundant), and the temporal distinction of past (idyllic) and present (‘fallen’).”43 In this sense, one of the most outstanding characteristics of pastoral literature is that it is very nostalgic since it often recalls a golden age when humans were supposed to have had a stronger, or even ideal, relationship with the environment. Therefore, even in the ancient Greek period, during the presumed Golden Age of nature, pastoral literature was important for distinguishing country life from city life, which was jeopardised by the latter’s growth. All in all, as McKusick indicates, by portraying the simple life of shepherds as a desirable contrast to the stress and wasteful lifestyles of city inhabitants, the pastoral mode was to provide one of the most resilient and influential ways of representing environmental consciousness.44 The deterioration of city life in the following centuries and the resulting increase in environmental problems continued to be the subject of Renaissance pastoral literature. Finally, the pastoral in its original form disappeared with the emergence of Romanticism.

British Romanticism In Modern Environmentalism, David Pepper states that Romanticism was a philosophical and literary movement that was widely represented in literature, art, and theatre. It was a response to “material changes” in society that followed the emergence and growth of “industrial capitalism” in the eighteenth century. During this period of transformation, production became more intense in the city. The factory system and mass production were built on methods that both released and regulated natural forces. These practices, when combined with the pursuit of profit, apparently polluted and spoiled the environment. Cities expanded to unimaginable sizes, becoming the 43

Ibid., 35. James C. McKusick, Green Writing: Romanticism and Ecology (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 20.

44

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centres of misery and poverty. They came to symbolise “the failure of laissez-faire liberalism’s philosophy,” which argued that encouraging individuals to seek their own interests would result in an ideal society. The rational quest for economically viable production processes, such as division of tasks, time measurement, and automation, along with population migration, resulted in the alienation of people from both nature and one another. People and nature were objectified and degraded to commodity status.45 As is obvious, the most important influence on the emergence of Romanticism was the Industrial Revolution. Awful working and living conditions and environmental destruction were closely connected to Great Britain’s industrialization and urbanisation. The increased number of factories and the need for more manufacturing supplies resulted in the devastation of rural areas across the country. Although there were problems related to nature in previous ages, environmental issues became more visible and serious during the Romantic period, which saw a drastic increase in urban populations and an industrialised economy.46 So, the emergence of Romantic literature coincided with a time of wars and revolutions—a time of profound, terrifying, and exhilarating transformations as human civilization reorganised itself on every level.47 Even though it is difficult to define Romanticism, it is usually identified as an intellectual movement in the history of European culture that covers the time span from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. While there is no consensus on a more accurate date, according to many literary scholars, the publication of William Wordsworth’s and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads in 1798 indicates the advent of British Romanticism as a literary movement. Others refer to the publication of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence in 1789, which coincided with the outbreak of the French Revolution, as the turning point.48 Regarding the definition of Romanticism, René Wellek states that the basic features of Romantic literature include the celebration of emotions, subjectivity, and

45

David Pepper, Modern Environmentalism: An Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 189. 46 Kevin Hutchings, “Ecocriticism in British Romantic Studies,” Literature Compass 4, no. 1 (2007): 175. 47 Paul O’Flinn, How to Study Romantic Poetry (UK: Macmillan, 1988), 1. 48 Kate Rigby, “Romanticism and Ecocriticism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism, ed. Greg Garrard (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 60.

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individuality; the interest in the past; the emphasis on the imagination; the simplicity of language; and the appreciation of nature.49 According to the Romantics, knowledge could be obtained through feelings and senses rather than reason. So, they emphasised the importance of the free expression of an artist’s feelings. This view is best explained by Wordsworth in Lyrical Ballads, who defines poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”50 In other words, poetry is an outcome of the process of imagination. The poet reflects on a sensation of “in tranquillity,” after the initial feeling has faded. However, as s/he continues to think, the emotion comes back, and the poet starts to write the poem while still being affected by this fresh sense. Hence, in order to reflect these feelings, it was believed that the essence of art would have to come from the artist’s imagination, and the way to do it was by taking inspiration from nature. In this sense, the Romantics highlighted the admiration of nature in art and language, as well as the feeling of sublimity through the bond with nature. In particular, nature, with all its boundless beauty, played a significant role in Romantic literature. Romantic authors and poets provided close, in-depth depictions of nature in their works by focusing on its mysterious and dynamic aspects. As McKusick indicates, Lyrical Ballads, which marks the rise of Romanticism as a literary movement, is an example of a Romantic work that carries the aforementioned characteristics: “the revival of ballad stanza, reliance upon the language of everyday life, and extensive use of natural imagery drawn from direct personal observation.” 51 Besides, while writing Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth and Coleridge “shared a common perception of the natural world as a dynamic ecosystem and a passionate commitment to the preservation of wild creatures and scenic areas.”52 Based on this information, it can be claimed that Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s worldviews were founded on a peaceful coexistence with nature. These two Romantic poets had a very holistic approach to the Earth and proclaimed a symbiotic relationship between nature’s dynamics and humans’ actions. In particular, Wordsworth is frequently referred to as a model of “Romantic ecology” because of the way in which he redefines humankind as a component of nature and how he sees the relationships between all living beings.53 49

René Wellek, “The Concept of ‘Romanticism’ in Literary History II. The Unity of European Romanticism,” Comparative Literature 1, no. 2 (1949): 147. 50 William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads, ed. R. L. Brett and A. R. Jones (London and New York, Routledge, 2005), 307. 51 McKusick, Green Writing, 36. 52 Ibid. 53 Rigby, “Romanticism and Ecocriticism,” 65.

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Similarly, Jonathan Bate suggests that Wordsworth should be regarded as a role model in his representation of nature because he struggled to make it easier for his readers to love or survive. He firmly placed himself in the green tradition by teaching his readers “to look at and dwell in the natural world”54 and by encouraging them to show “respect for the earth” and to be sceptical about “economic growth and material production.”55 William Wordsworth is accepted as the father of English nature poetry as we know it today. Throughout his poems, Wordsworth stresses the significance of nature for a human’s intellectual and emotional growth. He believes that those who have a healthy connection with nature are better able to relate to both the social and divine realms. Individuals living in cities become greedy and dishonest by detaching themselves from nature. Wordsworth portrays this outlook in his poems, such as “The World Is Too Much with Us” (1807). This poem can be interpreted as a protest against England’s quick and drastic change following the launch of industrial machines in the late eighteenth century. It criticises the deterioration of humans’ relationship with nature, condemning industrialization for exchanging that bond for material interests. This short but efficient poem states that industrial growth has displaced humans from farmlands to factories, destroying their contact with the divine and natural worlds. In fact, besides Wordsworth, other Romantic poets were also dissatisfied with the way that industrialization turned once-beautiful areas into unrecognisable places and destroyed nature for profit. The dissatisfaction with industrialization and urbanisation was clearly reflected in the poems of the poets of this era, such as William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Apparently, the problems brought on by industrialization were well known to Romantic poets, who observed the huge difference between miserable city life and the beauty and harmony of nature. Therefore, they touched upon the environmental damage that resulted from rapid urbanisation in their works. The industrial town, as they portrayed it in their poems, in comparison to the healthy and unspoilt rural areas, was a troublesome and upsetting place. During the Romantic period, environmental degradation was so widespread that it was impossible for the Romantics to ignore it. McKusick points out that English Romantic poets such as Blake, Coleridge, and Keats lived at the beginning of the industrial age. For them, “the green world of field and forest was a remote, mysterious, and magical place that existed in sharp disjunction from the smoke, crowded streets, and noisy machinery of 54

Jonathan Bate, Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 4. 55 Ibid., 9.

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London.”56 Undoubtedly, there has been a great distinction between rural and urban life since the advent of civilization. However, after the Industrial Revolution, this duality acquired different levels of significance. So, the English Romantics were especially interested in social, political, and environmental problems caused by industrialization in their works. Opposing mechanisation, they glorified nature and basic, natural emotions. Timothy Morton emphasises this by stating that in the Romantic era and afterwards, nature becomes a means of mending the damage caused by modern society. Humans are now forlornly cut off from their surroundings as a result of the harm done, which has separated “subjects from objects.” The separation between subject and object can be repaired by interaction with nature and the aesthetic.57 As Morton indicates, for the Romantics, nature was a place of tranquillity and revival, unlike the corrupt city, which was destroying the souls of humans in search of jobs, money, and power. It was the wild, unspoiled nature that would provide peace, healing, and harmony to human beings; hence, it had to be protected. Nature, in contrast to a tense and noisy city, was simple, pure, and peaceful. Obviously, nature served as a source of inspiration for the poet’s emotions to be expressed in the poem. Yet it was also a vehicle used to reflect the detrimental consequences of technological advancement and urbanisation on nature. In this regard, English Romantic poets aimed to create “a new holistic way of perceiving the natural world.”58 A holistic paradigm would not claim human superiority over nature; instead, Romantic writers advocated a compromise between the two. This call for peace can be found in many Romantic poems. From that perspective, the Romantics were “merely ‘proto-ecological’ thinkers” who struggled to raise awareness about the environmental degradation caused by industrial change.59 It is indisputable that industrialization brought forth tremendous technological innovations that transformed and modernised countries. However, romantics viewed these developments as a kind of atrocity that damaged people’s individuality and had a detrimental impact on nature. All these new industrial inventions and their usage arose from eighteenthcentury rationalism and physical materialism, which proposed that humans could use reason and science to manipulate the earth in whatever manner they wanted. The Romantics opposed this ideology and argued that human beings are a part of nature that must be respected and preserved. In this 56

McKusick, Green Writing, 1. Timothy Morton, Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 22. 58 McKusick, Green Writing, 11–12. 59 Ibid., 19. 57

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sense, as Pepper suggests, “Romanticism was and is the antithesis of many things associated with classical science; for instance, logical behaviour, order, central control, and the subject-object/human-nature separation.”60 Many Romantic poets, including John Keats, William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, criticised the way that science set nature apart from humans in their works. They held the view that a subjective understanding of the world and unity with nature were superior to logic and reason, which measured everything relentlessly. The Romantics realised that a better understanding of humans’ ties to nature necessitated “a new kind of symmetry or mutuality between subject and object and an appropriate set of descriptions to evince that mutuality.”61 With this view, the Romantics encouraged a modern perspective that is in support of an ecological understanding of nature. The Romantics maintained that the only way to escape from the smog of the developing industrial cities was to return to nature, since nature was the place of renewal. Nevertheless, as O’Flinn underlines, Romantic literature must not be viewed as “escapist,” as the word “romantic” often implies. On the contrary, it must be accepted as one that eagerly attempts to make sense of the new world as it arises from a sequence of painful transitions. According to O’Flinn, the Romantic authors were the ones who “challenged dominant contemporary values and chose to use their pens not to doodle prettily in the margins of life but to probe and dissect at the heart of things.”62 Hence, for the Romantics, nature was not only fantastic scenery like forests, mountains, and rivers; it was something divine. Rather than an entity to be weighed, governed, and abused, romantic poets viewed nature as a source of wisdom that offered profound insights into human existence. In this respect, the Romantics were right to believe that living in harmony with nature was inextricably linked to the struggle to prevent “industrialization, technology, as well as its intellectually cutting-edge, mechanistic, behaviourist, and ‘economic’ philosophy” from engulfing the human world.63 Based on this statement, it is inevitable to acknowledge that Romantic poems are examples of pre-modern environmental consciousness, advocating the idea that nature and humans must coexist in peace. It is obvious that Romantic literature, which promoted and established romantic ideals in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, has clear and precise historical connections to contemporary ecocriticism, 60

Pepper, Modern Environmentalism, 190. Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman, “What We Owe the Romantics,” Environmental Values 16, no. 3 (2007): 334. 62 O’Flinn, How to Study, 4. 63 Hinchman and Hinchman, “What We Owe,” 350. 61

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mostly through the influence of specific literary figures. Coleridge, Wordsworth, Blake, John Clare, and Mary Shelley are only a few of the writers who made contributions to the underlying principles and ideals of the contemporary environmental movement.64 During a time when scientific, technological, and industrial developments seemed to improve the world, the main focus of the Romantics was to fearlessly address the deteriorating relationship between humankind and nature. They portrayed environmental destruction in their works by not staying silent about the annihilation of their natural surroundings. According to Jonathan Bate, the Romantics were the first ecologists.65 In conclusion, as many scholars claim, our modern ecological thinking can be traced back to British Romanticism. As Donald Worster remarks, what following generations would refer to as an ecological perspective lay at the very heart of the Romantic understanding of nature: that is, an effort to perceive things holistically or comprehensively, a focus on how things are interconnected and related to one another, and a strong desire to put humans back in close contact with the enormous organism that constitutes the earth.66 Similarly, James McKusick rightly maintains that a significant number of the Romantic poems emerge from a hopeless sense of separation from nature and a desperate yearning to rebuild a vital, sustainable connection between humanity and the planet on which they live.67 Correspondingly, Hutchings states that Romanticism created a highly fertile ground for ecocritical theory and practice by praising nature as a beneficial remedy to purchasing and spending and grieving its potential destruction by technological industrialism and capitalist consumerism.68 These remarks confirm the view that Romantic literature has an important place in the rise of environmental consciousness and practices. Therefore, even before environmental concerns were presented as a field of criticism, the Romantics were aware of certain risks and believed that the solution to the psychological harm caused by industrialization was nature. In this sense, Romanticism as a literary movement was undeniably the precursor of environmental consciousness, and the English Romantics were the distinctive wellspring of all of our modern ideas about ecology.69

64

McKusick, Green Writing, 11. Bate, Romantic Ecology, 57. 66 Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy: The Roots of Ecology (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1977), 82. 67 McKusick, Green Writing, 110. 68 Hutchings, “Ecocriticism,” 172–73. 69 McKusick, Green Writing, 19. 65

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Major Literary Figures Even though ecocriticism as an academic field started in the 1990s, its origins date back to the 1970s. In particular, some notable studies by prominent scholars since the early 1970s have paved the way for the field. One of them is Aldo Leopold, an environmentalist, scientist, ecologist, and conservationist who is called “the father of wilderness conservation” and whose best-known book is A Sand County Almanac, which was published in 1949.70 Even though it earned no critical success until the environmental movement of the 1970s, it is now considered one of the most essential texts on ecology, nature, and environmentalism. A Sand County Almanac reflects Leopold’s ideas and anecdotes about his interaction with the landscape and creating a social conscience on the right use of land. Divided into four sections, the first part of the book describes Leopold’s observations about the ecosystem around his farm in Wisconsin. Beginning in January and ending in December, this part gives detailed monthly remarks on the living and changing ecosystem. The second part, “Sketches Here and There,” is a portrayal of different landscapes that Leopold travelled through during his lifetime, such as Illinois, Arizona, Chihuahua, Oregon, and Manitoba. In this part, Leopold describes his experiences working as a conservationist. The first two parts touch upon the prodigies of nature, the interactions between the plants and animals of the area, and the impact of human actions on those interactions. In these parts, Leopold tries to show how all living forms and species on earth are interdependent and affect each other. Plants and animals in the ecosystem are interconnected based on food supply and other needs for survival. For instance, fallen and hollow trees become shelter and food for many wildlife animals, as described by Leopold in the November sketch of the first part.71 It is clear that the deceased trees offer a haven for many animals; nature and creatures become one in the cycle of the seasons. However, human action breaks this connection. Leopold argues that when humans cut down healthy trees or remove fallen, deceased trees, it harms the living animals in the region. The impact of human beings’ actions on the ecosystem is mentioned in the first part’s April sketch, “Bur Oak,” as Leopold records the numerous farming activities that caused the prairie fires to decline and, in turn, caused the oak trees to spread. It is obvious that humankind is responsible for long-lasting changes in the ecosystem. 70 Terry L. Anderson and Laura E. Huggins, Greener Than Thou: Are You Really An Environmentalist? (Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, 2008), 27. 71 Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949), 74–77.

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Therefore, as Leopold highlights, it is important for humans to improve their relationship with their surroundings to maintain the balance of the ecosystem on which their lives depend. Leopold also discusses how humans can transform their detrimental relationships with nature in a reasonable and considerate manner. In the third section of the book, “The Upshot,” he explores the idea of conservation and the land ethic. The essays in this part refer to issues such as the harmful effects of outdoor recreation on nature and the necessity of developing a social conscience to heal the land. Leopold claims that it is great that many individuals occupy themselves with outdoor recreation such as fishing, hunting, nature photography, and hiking to relax and appreciate the beauty of nature. However, it can turn into something awful since “all these things rest upon the idea of trophy,” which means that rather than enjoying the activity itself, people might seek to get something from it–some kind of “symbols or tokens of achievement such as heads, hides, photographs, and specimens.”72 In this respect, Leopold raises his concerns about the possible damage of various “trophies” to ecosystems. He also mentions his worries about how humans are inclined to alter nature to make outdoor recreation more comfortable and secure, as these also do considerable harm to the environment. Leopold criticises the government as well for pursuing economic profit and extending roads into the wildlands, which enable people to have easy access to such places. Leopold expresses his doubts about the rationality of destroying nature for the sake of economic progress and questions the possibility of finding a way to both make progress and protect nature. After referring to these concerns, he offers conservation aesthetics as a solution. Leopold suggests that, by means of conservation aesthetics, humans can enjoy outdoor recreation without causing harm to nature. Conservation signifies the reduction of disruptive activities and the preservation of the wellness of the land. It advocates a new way of interacting between humankind and the natural world. He proposes that since conservation is “a state of harmony between men and land,”73 humankind can destroy itself if no action is taken to protect the whole community. This description summarises Leopold’s perception of conservation. For him, conservation is a way of existence in which all components of the earth are at peace with each other. At this point, the issue of land ethic arises, where human beings are required to adapt themselves to protect, respect, and appreciate the land.

72 73

Ibid., 168. Ibid., 207.

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That is, land ethics can be described as an ethical code for being in touch with and maintaining the welfare of the land. By “land,” Leopold means the “ecosystem,” which is a system formed by the ecological populations of living organisms and their environment. As he suggests, the land ethic “simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, animals, or collectively: the land.”74 Therefore, the ecological system functions only as a whole, and all parts of it have equal importance. This elevates the idea of a responsible, considerate relationship between humans and nature. The main argument here is that the human being is just one participant in a community that includes plants, animals, and landscapes, not the owner. Since humans are a part of this system, they are required to treat all other members in ethical terms. In this sense, as Leopold puts it, “a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the landcommunity to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.”75 Thus, the land ethic encourages human beings to improve their relationship with the earth. Leopold argues that the wicked practices of human beings must be replaced with a more ecological view. He notes that the relationship between society and the land relies on economic values. Nevertheless, he believes that ethics is an “ecological necessity” that can be considered “a mode of guidance” for future conduct and policies.76 Moreover, Leopold criticises humans’ flawed viewpoint that flora and fauna have no significance other than their economic value. He claims that plants and animals have “biotic rights” because they are living organisms.77 In this regard, he puts forward that considering land as “a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals” is crucial because it proves that land “is not merely soil.”78 According to him, this understanding can be achieved with education; when an individual is educated, s/he comprehends the ethical value of the land. Like “animal instincts” leading the individual in his or her actions, he discusses that ethics can develop “a kind of community instinct” as well.79 He acknowledges that even if the land ethic cannot prohibit the land from being abused or changed, it can encourage preserving it from devastation.

74

Ibid., 204. Ibid. 76 Ibid., 203. 77 Ibid., 211. 78 Ibid., 216. 79 Ibid., 203. 75

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In general, Leopold suggests that only after humans establish a more refined ecological perception can the soil and landscape be saved. He asserts that humans mistreat the land because they regard it as a personal possession. Humans might begin treating the land with love and respect when they perceive it as “a community” to which they belong. It is impossible for the land to withstand the effects of humankind in any other way, and it is also impossible for humans to obtain a breath-taking harvest that can enrich civilization.80 Leopold’s views on the environment have been a guide for environmentalist movements that sprung up after WWII and made a lot of impact in America in the 1960s. In A Sand County Almanac, he presented the concept of ethics regarding the natural surroundings. With the land ethic, he invited humankind to treat nature wisely and morally. In this context, the environmentalist understanding of Leopold was and is still inspirational in raising public awareness and urging humans to live in harmony with their surroundings. He acknowledged that caring for the environment is an ethical aspect, a concept still essential in today’s environmental movement. Rachel Carson is another significant ecologist of the twentieth century who initiated the modern environmental movement with her landmark work, Silent Spring. Published in 1962, the main focus of this book is on the harmful effects of chemical pesticides that contaminate groundwater and ruin biodiversity. Acclaimed as one of the essential works of modern environmental writing, Silent Spring addresses the dangers of pesticides, explaining their dreadful impacts on both the ecosystem and humans. Carson attempts to demonstrate the environmental consequences of the growing use of chemical pesticides in American agriculture, particularly after WWII. The opening chapter of the book, “A Fable for Tomorrow,” begins with a description of an imaginary American town “where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings.”81 (9). After a portrayal of each season’s beauty and countless varieties of wildlife, it is mentioned that an unusual blight befalls the area, and all living beings, including humans, are struck with sickness and death. “No witchcraft, no enemy action,” Carson emphasises, is the reason behind the silence of the town, but the people themselves are responsible for it. Although Carson admits at the end of the chapter that this town does not really exist, she states that each of these

80

Ibid., viii. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962; repr., Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1977), 9.

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catastrophes has truly occurred somewhere, and numerous actual communities have already endured a sizable number of them.82 Carson stresses that the actions of human beings have adversely affected the earth to a great extent. Addressing the interaction between all living beings and the environment, she highlights that the life that today inhabits the world evolved over hundreds of millions of years, and it took a very long time for that expanding and transforming life to achieve adaptation and harmony with its surroundings. Indeed, the environment has played a crucial role in the creation of various life forms, and flora and fauna have adapted to survive no matter what their surroundings are. Yet, the human species’ ability to control and shape nature has disrupted this delicate balance. Carson indicates that when time is given, life forms adapt to their environment, but in the present world, there is no such possibility since humankind destroys the environment at such a pace that it is much too quick for living beings to adapt to.83 According to Carson, humans have been responsible for the majority of these harmful changes in the twentieth century due to the use of chemicals. Here, Carson’s main argument is that since the mid-1940s, the creation of pesticides has increased at such an alarming rate and been used indiscriminately that it has caused unpredictable changes in the web of life. These chemicals carry so much danger, and there is little information about their effects. The biggest issue with pesticides is that they annihilate not only insects but the entire ecosystem. Carson claims that after these pesticides enter the earth, they not only kill pests but poison the water, soil, and air as well. Besides, chemicals like DDT carry the risk of damaging humans, even if there is no direct contact. Since everything is interrelated in the ecosystem, aiming solely at insects that humankind desires to eradicate is out of the question. The water system, in fact, is a clear illustration of how nature is interrelated. The book’s fourth chapter opens with the statement that water is the most precious natural resource. Yet, although there is plenty of water on Earth, only a small amount of it is drinkable. As soon as insecticides enter the water, whether added directly to waterways or indirectly via aerial spraying, the groundwater passes these chemicals to the whole system. This ensures that all water is at risk of contamination. Even though the drinking water is not intentionally polluted, it is impossible to apply pesticides to water anywhere without jeopardising its overall purity.84

82

Ibid., 10. Ibid., 11. 84 Ibid., 29. 83

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Besides, Carson points out that the contamination of this most essential resource endangers the whole food chain as well. The poison in water affects all living things that consume it. In this sense, the webs of life that are supported by water must also be considered, “from the small-as-dust green cells of the drifting plant plankton, through the minute water fleas to the fishes that strain plankton from the water and are in turn eaten by other fishes or by birds, mink, raccoons” in a never-ending cycle of substance transfer from life to life.85 This shows how nature’s interrelated systems can disperse the impact of a toxin that is intended to target only one type of insect to other parts of the ecosystem. Toxic chemicals become more concentrated as they move up the food chain, poisoning everything from plankton to birds, fish, larger mammals, and finally humans. In the following chapter, describing the contamination of another fundamental resource, soil, Carson criticises the use of insecticides to eradicate unwanted plants since it is not a useful method. The chapter begins with the argument that soil is a requirement for all living beings to exist. She discusses the importance of soil as a part of the ongoing cycles of nature since it has a vital role in supporting diverse microorganisms and plants. Unlike the general opinion that soil is inanimate, Carson claims that it is full of life because it contains bacteria, fungi, algae, insects, worms, and many other forms of life. According to her, this soil community is made up of a network of interconnected lives that are all somehow related to one another. The living things depend on the soil, but the soil is only an essential part of the earth as long as this community within it thrives. Highlighting the significance of soil as a crucial, dynamic part of the interlinked network of life, she questions what happens to these vast quantities and essential residents of the soil when toxic chemicals are introduced into their habitats.86 Similar to the previous chapter’s discussion of water, Carson explains how insecticides penetrate and remain in the soil. This raises the problem of plants absorbing insecticides from the soil into their tissues. Besides, studies show that different types of plants absorb these poisons in the soil at different rates. And even after the field has been replanted, the toxin remains in the soil and is absorbed by the plants. Insecticides can also destroy the prey-predator balance of nature and cause the increase or annihilation of various plant and animal species. As she remarks, “the earth’s vegetation is part of a web of life in which there are intimate and essential relations

85 86

Ibid., 31. Ibid., 36.

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between plants and the earth, between plants and other plants, between plants and animals.”87 In addition to being hazardous to the environment and humans, pesticides become unsuccessful in their mission since insects frequently recover on a mass scale after spraying, and many insects gain resistance to these poisons at an alarmingly accelerated rate. It is clear that using chemicals to control insects is ineffective and dangerous to every life form on Earth. Therefore, Carson argues, since “in nature nothing exists alone,” humans cannot escape the detrimental effect of the poison they have applied to the water, soil, and plants.88 After giving examples of how humankind’s use of pesticides directly kills fish, birds, mammals, and almost every other type of wildlife, Carson questions the agricultural activities carried out by scientists and the government. She asserts that city authorities fail to sufficiently notify or safeguard landowners. In fact, she does not demand that all pesticides be banned. She specifically opposes their arbitrary application, which she calls “biocides,” without the knowledge or consent of the people who would be harmed by the poisons. For her, people deserve to know the alarming dangers resulting from chemicals. In this sense, Carson criticises the reckless chemical industry, which continues to claim that pesticides pose no risk, as well as inept government officials who unquestioningly support this misinformation.89 Moreover, Carson states that “the age of poisons” has become established, where humans are not only endangered by chemicals sprayed from the sky or contaminating the water but also by substances available to any person for use in kitchens and gardens. Citizens who access pesticides and herbicides easily to get rid of insects in their homes and weeds on their lands are not sufficiently warned. Unlike what the authorities claim, the widespread use of chemical pesticides has dangerous impacts on human beings, such as cancer and birth defects.90 Carson implies that humankind has two options to choose from in its attempts to “tame nature.” The first alternative, which is simpler, is to use the chemicals randomly, which would lead to a catastrophe. The other option is to seek alternatives to chemicals, which is slower but much better for both humanity and the environment. Throughout the book, Carson advises “biological control” to eliminate unwanted vegetation. For instance, she recommends removing the elm wood where beetles breed to prevent 87

Ibid., 40. Ibid., 34. 89 Ibid., 51. 90 Ibid., 93. 88

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Dutch elm disease and growing a healthy lawn to prevent weeds. Other biological methods she suggests include predatory insects and parasites, insect sterilisation, and ultrasonic sound. All these alternatives imply respect for the ecosystem and its fragile balance. In this sense, Carson’s vision of a more environmentally sustainable way of handling insects is significant since it is a clear rejection of the arguments made by the chemical industries that contamination is the inevitable outcome of plentiful and profitable food supplies. At the very end of the book, Carson notes that “the control of nature” is an expression created in hubris, assuming that nature exists for human comfort.91 So, she questions how logical it is to dominate nature for humankind’s own, often short-term, purposes, ignoring the longterm effects on the ecosystem, the planet’s health, and the welfare of succeeding generations. As Arlene R. Quaratiello indicates, even though Silent Spring reached a receptive public after its release in 1962, it has been, as expected, defamed by the chemical industry that produces highly lucrative pesticides. The National Agricultural Chemicals Association, a trade organisation representing the pesticide industry, has invested millions of dollars in assaulting Carson in person and attempting to disprove her arguments. They also sought to discredit Carson’s reputation by putting emphasis on her gender and claiming she lacked professional knowledge. The criticism of Carson was not limited to the chemical industry; most political leaders condemned the book. In comparison to the overwhelming critical acclaim of her previous books, a number of magazine critics have responded negatively to Silent Spring. Some corporations have threatened to pull their advertisements from publications that offer positive reviews of Silent Spring.92 Despite the negative reactions of the industry and critics, Silent Spring has become a success story, and Carson has won many awards following the release of the book. Carson and her book are widely referred to as the stimulus that sparked the environmental movement, starting in the 1960s and accelerating after Carson’s death in 1964, particularly on the pesticide issue. Its greatest accomplishment has been the spread of information to people on critical environmental issues, which contributed to the formation of a federal agency. It has had a pretty fast and observable effect on the government of the United States. President John F. Kennedy, understanding the importance of Carson’s ideas, required the President’s Science Advisory Committee to study the use of pesticides by the federal government. In 91

Ibid., 153. Arlene R. Quaratiello, Rachel Carson: A Biography (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2004), 106–8.

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1964, the Federal Committee on Pest Control was formed, and a federal law passed by Congress called for pesticide producers to show the safety of their goods before putting them on the market. In 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created with the aim of establishing national policies that would protect the environment by controlling pesticides and other dangerous materials. Owing to its adverse effects both on human health and the environment, in 1972, the use of DDT was banned by the EPA.93 Obviously, Carson’s Silent Spring has played a major role in transforming environmentalism into a key element of public awareness. Carson’s views are still up to date with the current discussions on environmental problems and policies. As McKusick highlights, writing on the environment influenced public awareness and governmental policy in the twentieth century more than at any other time. The tireless and persuasive advocacy of writers like Carson and Leopold was a major factor in the adoption of important environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act (1966), the Clean Air Act (1970), and the Clean Water Act (1972).94 So, it can be claimed that the two most influential examples of modern environmental writing, Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac and Carson’s Silent Spring, along with lots of other influential works, have paved the way for the imminent ecocritical theory. Writers such as John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, John Burroughs, and Edward Abbey have succeeded in influencing human-environment interactions by bringing about significant cultural, social, and political developments in environmental criticism. They have been exemplary of the supposed role of literary figures in protecting the earth and all its inhabitants from ecological problems.

The Birth of Ecocriticism and Its Definitions Peter Barry indicates in the 2002 edition of his famous book Beginning Theory that ecocriticism emerged as a recognised literary critical discipline in the USA in the late 1980s and as “green studies” in the UK in the early 1990s. Ecocriticism in the United States advanced as a widely used critical theory by the early 1990s, with the establishment of ASLE (the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment) in 1992, accompanied by the introduction of the prominent journal ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment) in 1993, and eventually the publication of The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology in 1996. Thus, Cheryll 93 94

Ibid., 117–19. McKusick, Green Writing, 12.

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Glotfelty, the co-founder of ASLE and the co-editor of The Ecocriticism Reader, is accepted as the recognised founder of American ecocriticism. United States ecocriticism, as Barry notes, derives its literary roots from American transcendentalism95 of the 1840s. On the other hand, the United Kingdom version of ecocriticism, mostly known as “green studies,” takes its bearings from the British Romanticism of the 1790s. Jonathan Bate, author of Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition (1991), is accepted as the founder of British green studies.96 Regarding the origin of ecocriticism as a term, William Howarth remarks that the words “eco” and “critic” are both Greek in origin, deriving from “oikos” and “kritis.” “Oikos” means “nature,” which Edward Hoagland (an American author and travel writer, renowned especially for his essays about nature and wilderness) mentions as “our widest home,” and “the kritos is an arbiter of taste who wants the house kept in good order, no boots or dishes strewn about to ruin the original décor.”97 As a result, “ecocriticism” is frequently used as a general term for addressing ecological or environmental issues in literary works. Actually, finding an exact and proper name for this term has been a debated subject among the critics. Although many critics use other names, such as environmental literary criticism, ecopoetics, and green cultural studies, without requiring a particular name for it, others disagree, claiming that a name is significant. As Glotfelty indicates, Some scholars like the term ecocriticism because it is short and can easily be made into other forms like ecocritical and ecocritic. Additionally, they favour eco- over enviro- because, analogous to the science of ecology, 95 Taking its roots from Unitarianism, the prominent theological movement of the early nineteenth century, transcendentalism emerged as a reaction to the intellectualism of the time. Transcendentalists were supporters of idealism, emphasising the importance of nature while rejecting materialism. Thus, they place greater importance on the preservation of nature from deterioration. Transcendentalism’s idealism led to distrust of industrialization, rapid expansion, and capitalism. Many transcendentalists argued that society and its institutions corrupted the individual and that returning to nature was the way for the individual to discover his or her inner self. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller are key figures in the transcendentalist movement, which is crucial to the formation of an ecological attitude in the United States. For more information, see Tiffany K. Wayne, Encyclopedia of Transcendentalism (New York: Facts on File, 2006). 96 Peter Barry, Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, 2nd ed. (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2002), 248-50. 97 William Howarth, “Some Principles of Ecocriticism,” in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1996), 69.

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Chapter I ecocriticism studies relationships between things, in this case, between human culture and the physical world. Furthermore, in its connotations, enviro- is anthropocentric and dualistic, implying that we humans are at the center, surrounded by everything that is not us, the environment. Eco-, in contrast, implies interdependent communities, integrated systems, and strong connections among constituent parts.98

Scholars such as Stephanie Sarver and Lawrence Buell, however, express their dissatisfaction with the term ecocriticism. In his one-page position paper, “What is Ecocriticism?” Sarver claims that ecology and the environment are two different concepts. According to her, the term “ecocriticism” is ambiguous and even fallacious because, while ecology is a scientific field that examines the relations between living beings and their environment, environmentalism encompasses a variety of approaches that encourage the prosperity of the earth. She argues that although environmentalist issues may influence their work as literary academics, they ultimately examine texts rather than living things. Despite the fact that some would contend that their research takes on “a quasi-ecological character” when it reveals how authors draw links between living things and their environs, this work is more accurately defined “as a form of environmentalism than the practice of ecology.”99 Like Sarver, Lawrence Buell also prefers to use the term “environmental criticism” instead of “ecocriticism,” since he believes that it is a more appropriate term to reflect the interdisciplinary blend of literature and environmental studies. He explains why he uses the term “environmental criticism” under three items. First, he states that “eco” in ecocriticism has a narrow meaning that implies “natural” instead of the human-made or “constructed” environment, which proves to be an inappropriate term in today’s world. According to Buell, the second and most important reason is that “environmental” corresponds better to the hybridity of the topic in question than “eco.” That is, the intertwining of both “natural” formations and “built” elements constitutes the “environment.” As a last point, Buell argues that the term “environmental criticism” is more successful in reflecting the interdisciplinary studies of the environment and literature, as it refers not only to the natural sciences and wildlife but also to their relationship with humans.100 Even though the discussion on finding the 98

Glotfelty, “Introduction: Literary Studies,” xx. Stephanie Sarver, “What Is Ecocriticism?” in Defining Ecocritical Theory and Practice: Sixteen Position Papers from the 1994 Western Literature Association Meeting (Salt Lake City, Utah, October 6, 1994). https://www.asle.org/wp-content/ uploads/ASLE_Primer_DefiningEcocrit.pdf. 100 Buell, The Future, viii. 99

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appropriate name for the term continues, all the names attributed to it carry the same concern: bringing the interconnection between humans and nature into focus. “Ecocriticism” as a literary concept is acknowledged to have first been introduced in 1978 by William Rueckert in his essay entitled “Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism,” hence he is considered to be the coiner of the term. In the essay, Rueckert refers to ecocriticism as “the application of ecology and ecological concepts to the study of literature, because ecology (as a science, as a discipline, as the basis for a human vision) has the greatest relevance to the present and future of the world we all live in.”101 In this sense, the relationship between literature and the physical environment is explored through ecological terms and concepts. Ecocriticism, then, aims to find a way to bring humans and non-humans together since environmental issues are an essential part of human existence. Considering this coexistence, Rueckert argues that the damage done to nature by humans harms them indirectly as well, and he continues, “This is what ecologists like to call the self-destructive or suicidal motive that is inherent in our prevailing and paradoxical attitude toward nature.”102 He states that human beings play a significant role in environmental problems since their activities destroy the ecosystem of the planet. To preserve the biodiversity that enriches human life, it is necessary for humans to change their attitude towards nature. In this sense, Rueckert underlines the significance of literature in raising environmental awareness and providing a healthy relationship between humans and the biosphere. What Rueckert suggests in his essay, however, is not the prevailing meaning of the term. His definition of ecocriticism can be interpreted as restrictive since it is “concerned specifically with the science of ecology,”103 excluding all other probable correlations between nature and literature. Yet ecocritical studies do not solely focus on the representation of nature in literary works but also include other topics such as “the frontier, animals, cities, specific geographical regions, rivers, mountains, deserts, Indians, technology, garbage, and the body.”104 This view is further supported by Simon C. Estok, who claims that ecocriticism is more than just the study of nature or natural themes in literature. Indeed, it is any theory that seeks to bring about change by examining the function of the natural environment, or aspects of it, as represented in any kind of text, whether that function is 101

Rueckert, “Literature and Ecology,” 107. Ibid. 103 Glotfelty, “Introduction: Literary Studies,” xx. 104 Ibid., xxiii. 102

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“thematic, artistic, social, historical, ideological, theoretical, or otherwise.”105 Estok is right in his claim that ecocriticism does not only examine the portrayals of earthly surroundings in literary texts. It can incorporate any theory or approach into any text with the aim of redefining humanity’s relationship with the physical world. Since ecocriticism is a new field, the term has been defined by various scholars and critics in different ways. Glotfelty, providing convenience to the reader with her efficient work, gives a clear and simple definition of the concept. As she states, “ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment.”106 Ecocriticism enables the critics to explain human beings’ relationship to nature, their perception of the natural world, and how it has transformed over time. In other words, it is a mediator between humans and the earth. While other critical approaches mainly view the linguistic, social, or cultural background as a primary aspect, ecocriticism accepts nature as a prevailing component. It is because it considers that human advancement is, to a great extent, subject to the forces of the physical world. In this regard, the key assumption of ecocriticism is that human culture is closely linked to nature, “affecting it and affected by it.”107 Many other scholars have provided their own versions of the definition of this theory as well. Garrard points out that ecocriticism is “the study of the relationship of the human and the non-human, throughout human cultural history and entailing critical analysis of the term ‘human’ itself.”108 It is important to emphasise that, with this definition, Garrard extends the scope of ecocriticism beyond literature to include all forms of culture. Timothy Clark defines ecocriticism as “a study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment, usually considered from out of the current global environmental crisis and its revisionist challenge to given modes of thought and practice.”109 Lawrence Buell gives a very similar definition by writing that ecocriticism can be explained as the “study of the

105

Simon C. Estok, “Shakespeare and Ecocriticism: An Analysis of ‘Home’ and ‘Power’ in King Lear,” AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 103 (May 2005), 16-7, accessed May 3, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1179/000127905805260537. 106 Glotfelty, “Introduction: Literary Studies,” xviii. 107 Ibid., xix. 108 Garrard, Ecocriticism, 5. 109 Clark, The Cambridge Introduction, xiii.

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relation between literature and environment conducted in a spirit of commitment to environmentalist praxis.”110 Richard Kerridge defines ecocriticism as “environmentalism’s overdue move” into the humanities from the realms of “science, geography and social science.” He claims that the goal of an ecocritic is to “track environmental ideas and representations” wherever they emerge in order to more clearly understand an argument that appears to be happening, frequently partially hidden, in a variety of cultural spaces. Ecocriticism primarily aims to assess the coherence and value of texts and concepts as solutions to environmental problems.111 Ecocritics, therefore, provide new perspectives on the fundamental reasons for environmental issues. Furthermore, by analysing works of environmental literature, they hope to define the roots of the change required to solve these problems. Simon Estok remarks that “ecocriticism has distinguished itself, debates notwithstanding, firstly by the ethical stand it takes, its commitment to the natural world as an important thing rather than simply as an object of thematic study, and secondly, by its commitment to making connections.”112 According to Scott Slovic, ecocriticism is “the study of explicit environmental texts from any scholarly approach or, conversely, the scrutiny of ecological implications and human-nature relationships in any literary text, even texts that seem, at first glance, oblivious of the nonhuman world.”113 Considering all these definitions, it can be stated that ecocriticism is an “increasingly heterogeneous movement” that adopts a totally earth-centred approach that is primarily concerned with environmental literature.114 Jean Arnold points out that “as ecocriticism takes on the task of reexamining a culture’s attitudes toward nature through its history, a variety of texts become useful: plays, films, poetry, scientific treatises, stories, journals, essays, and novels have their place in this type of curriculum.”115 In this sense, ecocriticism has an extensive scope, ranging from nature 110 Lawrence Buell, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995), 430. 111 Richard Kerridge, introduction to Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature, by Richard Kerridge and Neil Sammels (New York: Zed Books, 1998), 5. 112 Estok, “Shakespeare and Ecocriticism,” 16. 113 Scott Slovic, “Ecocriticism: Containing Multitudes, Practising Doctrine,” in The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism, ed. Laurence Coupe (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 160. 114 Buell, The Future, viii. 115 Jean Arnold, “Forum on Literatures of the Environment,” PMLA 114, no. 5 (1999): 1090.

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writing to romantic poetry to canonical literature. However, ecocriticism is not just a literary practice: “it has for a considerable time been a highly interdisciplinary field with research not only on written texts but also on different media, such as photography and the documentary film, and in other disciplines, such as history, art history, anthropology, and philosophy.”116 It is obvious that while analysing a text, ecocriticism can benefit from other disciplines. It uses the concepts developed by these approaches in literary theories, and, in turn, ecocriticism feeds these disciplines as well. To recognise and understand environmental problems, researchers in the humanities look for ways to incorporate environmental considerations into their specific fields of study by examining the mutual relationships between humans and nature and tracking the links among “environmental conditions, economic modes of production, and cultural ideas through time.”117 By this means, ecocriticism plays a significant role in understanding the relationship between humans and nature.

The Waves of Ecocriticism Like any other field, ecocriticism has gone through rapid development and significant changes since its emergence in the early 1990s, with the greatest shift taking place over the past few years. Ecocriticism, similar to feminism, is divided into three stages of development. Cheryll Glotfelty provides a comprehensive comparison between the phases of feminism proposed by Elaine Showalter and the stages of ecocriticism. She explains quite briefly that the first phase of feminist criticism deals with “images of women,” focusing on how women—female characters—are represented in literature. In ecocriticism, a similar aim is observed in the sense that the portrayal of nature (wilderness) in literature is the main study. In the second phase of feminist criticism, female writers and their place in literary history are examined, and literary texts written by them are rediscovered and reconsidered. Similarly, in ecocriticism, the “nature writing” genre is identified and described, and ecologically oriented fiction, drama, and poetry are studied. The third phase of feminist criticism is the theoretical phase, which addresses essential questions about the discursive and social construction of gender and sexuality. The same effort in ecocriticism

116 117

Heise, “Forum on Literatures,” 1097. Glotfelty, “Introduction: Literary Studies,” xxi.

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explores how the individual is shaped through ecological literary discourse and challenges nature-culture dualities.118 Even though Glotfelty refers to the stages of ecocriticism by comparing them to those of feminism, Lawrence Buell is the first to use a wave metaphor for the phases to explain the evolution of ecocriticism. After tracing the usage of “nature” in literature to the origins of ecocriticism, Buell states that environmental criticism has evolved in two waves. While he did not provide a thorough analysis of the definite focus of each wave, he divided ecocriticism into the first and second waves. He states that even though there is no clear-cut framework for environmental criticism in literary studies, “an evolution from a ‘first wave’ of ecocriticism to a ‘second’ or newer revisionist wave or waves” is still discernible today along a number of trend lines. However, it should not be assumed that this firstsecond distinction denotes a neat, orderly progression. The majority of early ecocriticism’s currents are still strong today, and the majority of secondwave revisionism involves both building upon and arguing against its forebears. In this context, “palimpsest” might serve as a more appropriate metaphor than “wave.”119 The introduction of the waves by Buell is very significant since it helps to clarify the developmental path of ecocriticism, beginning with its birth. Regarding the primary feature of the first wave of ecocriticism, it is suggested that “first-wave scholarship of the 1990s tended to equate environment with nature.”120 Thus, in the first wave of ecocriticism, environment basically meant “natural environment.” Taking its root in deep ecology, the first wave of ecocriticism viewed nature and humankind as contradictory to each other. Initially, the main purpose of ecocriticism was to consider preserving the natural surroundings from the destruction of civilization.121 Therefore, a first-wave ecocritic would examine “the effects of culture upon nature, with a view toward celebrating nature, berating its despoilers, and reversing their harm through political action.”122 So, the focus of the first wave of ecocriticism was on such genres as “nature poetry 118

Cheryll Glotfelty, “A Guided Tour of Ecocriticism, with Excursions to Catherland,” in Willa Cather’s Ecological Imagination, ed. Susan J. Rosowski (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 29. 119 Buell, The Future, 17. 120 Lawrence Buell, Ursula K. Heise, and Karen Thornber, “Literature and Environment,” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 36, no. 1 (2011): 419, accessed May 25, 2020, https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurevenviron-111109-144855. 121 Buell, The Future, 21. 122 Howarth, “Some Principles of Ecocriticism,” 69.

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and fiction about the wilderness experience.”123 Since the first wave emphasised “nature writing,” the first wave of ecocritical studies emphasised the personal experiences and works of writers such as William Wordsworth, Henry David Thoreau, John Clare, Robert Frost, and John Muir, who primarily glorified nature and depicted lands devoid of humans. Motivated by a desire to depict uninhabited landscapes, they largely avoided depicting urban and densely populated areas in their works. Although the first wave of ecocriticism has made efforts to reunite the reader with nature and make the environment much more important in literary debates, it has also had some shortcomings. Since it only prioritised nature and entirely ignored the human factor, it has proved inadequate in its scope and practice. Therefore, the second wave of ecocriticism developed with a relatively broader outlook. In contrast to the first wave, the subsequent one incorporated the human element into its studies. Besides, the identification of the artificially built environment, which is important in the field, is another feature of the second wave. Thus, in the second wave of ecocriticism, nature cannot be viewed as a separate entity from humans. Contrary to the first one, the second wave highlights the difference between the concepts of nature and environment because it admits that human beings indeed manipulate nature, whether directly or indirectly. Since human beings live in constructed environments surrounded by urbanisation, the second wave of ecocriticism emphasises the need for a detailed study of these areas to understand the human species’ relationship with other living beings and the earth. Concerning the characteristics of the second wave of ecocriticism, Buell states that the essential distinction between the first wave and the second wave is that the first wave of ecocriticism “privileged rural and wild spaces over urban ones.”124 On the contrary, the second wave of ecocriticism argues that this separation “is a historically produced artifact” that nature has been reshaped by human beings throughout history, and it suggests that the “metropolitan landscape and the built environment generally must be considered as at least equally fruitful ground for ecocritical work.”125 Therefore, while the first wave of ecocriticism, as Michael Bennett states, tended to put emphasis on “those environments at furthest remove from human habitation—the pastoral and the wild—as represented by a narrowly defined genre of nature writing,” the second wave of ecocriticism was “interested in the interconnections between urban and non-urban space, 123

Buell, The Environmental Imagination, 8. Lawrence Buell, “Ecocriticism: Some Emerging Trends,” Qui Parle 19, no. 2 (2011), 93, https://doi.org/10.5250/quiparle.19.2.0087. 125 Ibid. 124

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humans and nonhumans, traditional and experimental genres, as well as the impact of race, class, gender, and sexuality on how we use and abuse nature.” Instead of relying on deep ecology in their studies, the second wave of ecologists are more inspired by “social ecology, urban environmentalism, and the environmental justice movement.”126 Hence, another significant characteristic of the second wave of ecocriticism is its focus on environmental justice concerns. Environmental justice basically means equity. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), environmental justice is “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, colour, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”127 It proposes the view that achieving environmental justice should be a priority for all people and communities across the globe. Therefore, it points out that environmentalism is intimately associated with social issues as well. Lawrence Buell considers this feature quite important, and he indicates that the most defining active characteristic of second-wave ecocriticism is the priority of environmental justice issues: “the maldistribution of environmental benefits and hazards between white and nonwhite, rich and poor, just as preservationist ecocentrism was for the first wave.”128 The second wave of ecocriticism has attributed particular importance to disadvantaged minority groups and societies, as well as to texts that discuss such issues. Thus, in the second wave, the scope of ecocriticism has expanded from nature writing to a wide variety of literary genres and social studies. In this sense, the second wave is “sociocentric,” while the first wave is “ecocentric.”129 Furthermore, the second wave of ecocriticism aims to depict how multicultural literary texts provide a distinct interpretation of ecological relationships between nature and human beings in terms of presenting how humans manipulate nature to oppress marginalised communities. The second wave of ecocriticism’s interest in the writings of non-white writers and the struggles of ethnic minorities eventually contributed to a blend 126

Michael Bennett, review of Different Shades of Green, by Joni Adamson, Mei Mei Evans, Rachel Stein, David W. Gilcrest, and Steven Rosendale. College Literature 31, no. 3 (2004), 208, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25115215. 127 Kevin Michael DeLuca, “A Wilderness Environmentalism Manifesto: Contesting the Infinite Self-Absorption of Humans,” in Environmental Justice and Environmentalism: The Social Justice Challenge to the Environmental Movement, ed. Ronald Sandler and Phaedra C. Pezzullo (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2007), 29. 128 Buell, “Ecocriticism,” 96. 129 Ibid., 94.

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between ecocriticism and postcolonialism. So, environmental justice ecocriticism’s focus on marginalised populations links it with a second “emergent initiative: postcolonial environmentalism.”130 Both the second wave of ecocriticism and postcolonialism adopt a socio-centric approach to literary studies, and this is what reinforces the connection between them. Highlighting the second wave of ecocritics’ increasing study of non-white literature, Buell, Heise, and Thornber remark that there is “increased attention to non-Western literature’s engagement with both local ecological concerns and global environmental issues, including toxification, climate change, and environmental injustice.”131 It shows that environmental degradation and social problems are inseparably intertwined. Apart from postcolonial ecocriticism, ecofeminism is also a developing issue in the field of the second wave of ecocriticism. Greta Gaard, an ecofeminist scholar and activist, and Patrick D. Murphy, a literary scholar and ecocritic, define ecofeminism as “a value system, a social movement, and a practice” that “explores the links between androcentrism and environmental destruction. It is ‘an awareness’ that begins with the realisation that the exploitation of nature is intimately linked to Western Man’s attitude toward women.”132 So, ecofeminism suggests that the abuse of nature and women are closely connected. According to ecofeminists such as Mary Mellor, there are a variety of common characteristics between women and nature. Therefore, women and environmental issues are inextricably intertwined. One of their most fundamental similarities is that they both give life by sharing a common maternal role. Mellor states that women and nature are connected on two occasions: The first is a direct affinity, a physiological or psychic connection. Women ‘understand’ nature through their physiological functions (birthing, menstrual cycles) or some deep element of their personalities (lifeoriented, nourishing/caring values). . . . The second approach sees the connection between the oppression of women and the exploitation of the natural world as contingent. The juxtaposition of the subordination of women and nature has occurred at a particular historical juncture, western patriarchal

130

Buell, “Ecocriticism,” 98. Buell, Heise, and Thornber, 427. 132 Greta Gaard and Patrick D. Murphy, introduction to Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy, by Greta Gaard and Patrick D. Murphy (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 18. 131

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capitalism/industrialism. If women understand ‘nature’ it is because of their common experience of exploitation.133

As Mellor points out, women and nature have a physiological and contingent connection, and these shared characteristics unite them in their struggle against the dominance of patriarchal capitalism. Like what Mellor argues, Ariel Salleh, a sociologist who writes on ecofeminism, indicates that “the ‘material’ resourcing of women and of nature are structurally interconnected in the capitalist patriarchal system.”134 Ecofeminists explore these oppressive, gender-based relationships, in which nature is frequently associated with the feminine and viewed as a fruitful commodity and the property of man, by identifying similarities between nature exploitation and male dominance over women. In this context, ecofeminism combines environmental concerns with human issues and, therefore, with the social realm. Besides, ecofeminism is not only founded on the understanding of links between the exploitation of nature and the subjugation of women in patriarchal societies. It is also predicated on the understanding that these two kinds of supremacy are connected to “class exploitation, racism, colonialism, and neocolonialim.”135 As a result, ecofeminism maintains that the oppression of women, the poor, the nonwhite, and the environment are all interconnected and must be handled at the same time. In short, contrary to the first wave, the second wave of ecocriticism attempts to engage in environmental matters through the lens of various literary genres. In addition, in this wave, the scope of criticism has shifted from an American or British focus to encompass other cultures. The emphasis has moved from rural life or the wilderness in literature to urban landscapes, as well as to socio-centric topics such as multiculturalism, environmental justice, postcolonial ecocriticism, and ecofeminism. While the second wave corrects the first wave’s shortcomings and includes the human factor, it also appears to draw lines between humans coming from diverse social classes, dividing them rather than reinforcing their interconnectedness within the ecosystem. The fundamental principles of the first and second waves of ecocriticism have been formulated into more comprehensive characteristics and have been introduced as the third wave by Scott Slovic for the first time in his 133

Mary Mellor, “The Politics of Women and Nature: Affinity, Contingency or Material Relation?” Journal of Political Ideologies 1, no. 2 (1996), 148, accessed October 2, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1080/13569319608420734. 134 Ariel Salleh, foreword to Ecofeminism, ed. Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, 2nd ed. (London: Zed Books, 2014), xi. 135 Gaard and Murphy, 3.

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essay “The Third Wave of Ecocriticism: North American Reflections on the Current Phase of Discipline,” which was published in a special issue of MELUS (Multiethnic Literature of the United States). While the third wave of ecocriticism emerged shortly after 2000, it was not called the “third wave” until 2009. The third wave of ecocriticism, as Slovic states, is interested in “exploring ethnicity through the study of environmental literature”136 and aims at “a more comparative, trans-cultural approach to ecocritical studies.”137 In other words, this new wave focused on adopting features of the second wave of ecocriticism and integrating them into ethnic and environmental justice contexts.138 Applying environmental concerns to various works of literature across the globe and comparing literary works across all cultures and languages is the main inclination of the third wave of ecocriticism. With this tendency, it enables a deeper understanding of environmental issues and humans’ position in them while attempting to build bridges across cultures. Originating principally in the United States and in Britain as a literary movement, the third wave of ecocriticism explores multicultural literature to be able to understand the effect of the human species on the environment. Thus, the second and third waves of ecocriticism have widened the reach of ecocriticism by incorporating postcolonialism, ecofeminism, ethnicity, and environmental justice into ecocritical studies, leading it towards previously undiscovered literary works and genres. Patrick D. Murphy also acknowledges the significance of the comparative perception that the third wave of ecocriticism has started. He argues that if a narrow reliance on “nonfiction prose and the fiction of nonfictionality” has hampered ecocriticism, a particular emphasis on American and British literature has also placed restrictions on it. It is vital to re-evaluate the elevation of specific national literatures and ethnicities within those national literatures in order to broaden the comprehension of readers and critics. This re-evaluation will allow for a more global inclusion of literature from other cultures within the concept of nature-oriented literature. Additionally, it will make it possible for readers and critics who exclusively focus on American literature to compare and contextualise that literature on a global scale. Such 136

Scott Slovic, “The Third Wave of Ecocriticism: North American Reflections on the Current Phase of the Discipline,” Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment 1, no. 1 (2010), 4, accessed September 24, 2020, https://ecozona.eu/article/view/312/283. 137 Ibid., 6. 138 Slovic lists the basic features of the third wave of ecocriticism that make a difference but are still related to the features of the previous waves. For these features, see Slovic, “The Third Wave of Ecocriticism,” 7.

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re-evaluation is one method humans might use to improve their awareness and broaden the scope of ecocriticism.139 Clearly, Murphy emphasises the importance of transcending the scope of the first and second waves of ecocriticism in order to reorient the national literature into transcultural and transnational studies. In conclusion, the first wave of ecocriticism was inclined to concentrate on nature writing, in which the major focus was on the portrayal of the wilderness or nonhuman nature in literature. This wave emphasised the importance of nature while maintaining the cultural difference between humans and nature. The second wave, on the other hand, has broken the boundaries between humans and nonhumans by bringing these definitions into question. Unlike the previous one, the second wave concerned social matters associated with the environment. This wave has expanded the reach of ecocriticism by incorporating race, ecofeminism, environmental justice, postcolonialism, and transnationalism into ecocritical studies, guiding it into previously unexplored literary genres and works. The second wave is especially interested in the supposed disparities among human beings, including ethnicity, wealth, colour, and gender. The third wave, like the second, has attempted to integrate environmental issues into the context of environmental justice by involving people of various ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. Different from the previous wave, though, the third wave emphasises the shared characteristics of ethnic diversities and national traditions. The third wave of ecocriticism investigates all dimensions of the human experience from an environmental perspective while acknowledging “ethnic and national particularities” and transcending “ethnic and national boundaries.”140 In other words, the third wave aims to transcend the cultural, ethnic, and national categories of the second wave. Slovic describes the third wave of ecocriticism as a “polymorphously activist” trend as academicians and scholars seek traditional and newer methods to relate their studies to societal changes. In this way, ecocriticism can combine numerous environmental perspectives within its framework and encourage productive discussions on how literature can lead to the reduction of environmental-related dangers around the world. Although ecocriticism’s initial focus was very narrow because it only incorporated nature writing, over time it gradually spread to encompass a range of approaches and topics as it gained popularity in the academic world. Implying that the field would continue to evolve, Scott Slovic announced the fourth wave of ecocriticism with these words: “It now seems 139

Patrick D. Murphy, Farther Afield in the Study of Nature-Oriented Literature (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000), 58. 140 Slovic, “The Third Wave,” 4.

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to me, as we near the end of 2012, that the material turn in ecocriticism is broadening to the extent that it may well represent a new ‘fourth wave of ecocriticism’.”141 According to him, the fourth wave of ecocriticism focuses on “the fundamental materiality (the physicality, the consequentiality) of environmental things, places, processes, forces, and experiences.”142 Slovic indicates that Stacy Alaimo’s concept of “trans-corporeality” in Material Feminisms has led to the establishment of a new direction in contemporary ecocriticism. Unlike previous waves, the fourth wave of ecocriticism takes its roots in the contemporary movement of new materialism, which emphasises the role and importance of materiality and material existence.

141

Scott Slovic, “Editor’s Note,” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 19, no. 4 (Autumn 2012), 619, accessed September 26, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/iss132. 142 Ibid.

CHAPTER II SCIENCE FICTION AND ECOLOGICAL AWARENESS

As explained in the previous chapter, ecocritical studies inspire people to consider alternative viewpoints on the natural surroundings and, most specifically, human-nature relationships. Ecocritical research aims to introduce different ways of thinking and recognising the effects of environmental devastation, humankind’s contribution to it, and potential alternatives to prevent environmental annihilation. Ecocritical texts, like any piece of literature, require individuals to comprehend the shortcomings of their fixed outlook on nature. Chris Baratta suggests that ecocritical research must accomplish two things to be successful in this effort: “disconnect the reader from the culturally and socially constructed systems of thought that are grounded in the man/nature binary and establish a connection between the reader and the natural world.”1 Obviously, this is a tough challenge, yet it is essential to grasp the risks of the ongoing environmental issues. Baratta also adds that for over a century, science fiction and fantasy literature have served these two purposes, and the rise of ecocriticism as a significant critical theory has once again emphasised the significance of science fiction and fantasy.2 Therefore, it can be claimed that science fiction literature has been one of the genres that has contributed to and benefited from the emergence of environmental criticism. However, before explaining the relationship between science fiction literature and environmental criticism, it will be useful to define it first.

1 Chris Baratta, introduction to Environmentalism in the Realm of Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, by Chris Baratta (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012), 3. 2 Ibid.

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Definition of Science Fiction James Gunn, a science fiction scholar and author, begins his essay, entitled “Toward a Definition of Science Fiction,” by stating that “the most important, and most divisive, issue in science fiction is definition.”3 In a similar way, Lester Del Rey, an American science fiction writer and editor, indicates that since the first science fiction magazine was published, people have attempted to describe it, especially to differentiate it from other types of speculative fiction such as fantasy and horror. However, a completely satisfactory definition has not yet been made because “there are no easily delineated limits to science fiction.”4 It is hard to describe science fiction in a simple way because it encompasses a broad variety of themes and concepts. Yet, to give an idea of what science fiction is, many authors and scholars have proposed their definitions. In a conversation that was made on October 20, 1976, Isaac Asimov, a prolific American writer of science fiction, stated that “SF is the branch of literature which deals with the response of human beings to changes in the level of science and technology.”5 Similarly, after referring to the difficulty of defining the term, Gunn also describes science fiction as “the branch of literature that deals with the effects of change on people in the real world as it can be projected into the past, the future, or to distant places.”6 Brian Baker provides a few possible definitions for science fiction, and one of them is this: “A genre concerned with ideas of technology and imagined visions of the future, set in an unknown or alien environment, and often serving an allegorical purpose, commenting upon the society in which it was created.”7 However, some scholars, such as David Seed, argue that it is problematic to refer to science fiction as a genre because it fails to acknowledge “the hybrid nature of many SF works.”8 For that reason, it is much better to consider it “as a mode or field where different genres and 3

James Gunn, “Toward a Definition of Science Fiction,” in Speculations on Speculation: Theories of Science Fiction, ed. James Gunn and Matthew Candelaria (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2005), 5. 4 Lester Del Rey, The World of Science Fiction: 1926-1976, The History of a Subculture (New York: Ballantine Books, 1979), 3. Internet Archive. 5 Earl G. Ingersoll, Isaac Asimov, Gregory Fitz Gerald, Jack Wolf, Joshua Duberman, and Robert Philmus, “A Conversation with Isaac Asimov,” Science Fiction Studies 14, no. 1 (1987), 68, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4239795. 6 Gunn, “Toward a Definition,” 6. 7 Brian Baker, Science Fiction: A reader’s guide to essential criticism (London and New York: Palgrave, 2014), 7. 8 David Seed, Science Fiction: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 1.

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subgenres intersect.”9 Similarly, Brian Stableford claims that if “genre” is defined as “a collection of texts sharing particular thematic or formal characteristics” or “a collection of texts assembled under a particular label for marketing purposes,” then science fiction is the genre that is the most difficult to functionally describe. Most commercial genres have standardised story formulas and may be easily distinguished by their themes—for example, detective novels are about detectives solving crimes, whereas westerns are about “taming” the western to win over potential life partners. Contrarily, scientific fiction lacks a clear central theme and a basic story structure; if it is “about science,” it is most definitely not about it in the same sense that criminal fiction is about crime or romance fiction is about love.10 Based on the definitions made, it can be concluded that whether it is called a genre, mode, or field, science fiction, often abbreviated as sci-fi or SF, is basically “a form of fiction that deals principally with the impact of actual or imagined science upon society or individuals.”11 Although it is fictional in content, science fiction is strongly based on scientific evidence, observations, and concepts that provide inspiration and guidance for its plotlines, characters, themes, and settings. This is the main difference between fantasy and science fiction. Since any technological advancement has an important impact on human culture, science and technology are widely explored in SF. However, while science fiction often links technology to the future, this does not mean that fiction will be set in the future. Futures depicted in science fiction exemplify its speculative aspect. Therefore, science fiction deals “with all time, from the remote past to the farthest future; it isn’t limited to any one locale, such as Earth, but roams freely across the galaxy and beyond.”12 Moreover, it introduces characters who may be “animal, vegetable, or mineral—human beings, sentient plants, or metal robots; it may even use a whole intelligent planet as its protagonist.”13 As can be understood, one of the most distinctive features of science fiction is that it presents unfamiliar and bizarre worlds and characters. Moreover, the building of a world different from what is known is a characteristic that unites all kinds of science fiction. This could be a 9

Ibid. Brian Stableford, introduction to Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Literature, by Brian Stableford (Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, 2004), xxix. 11 Bruce Sterling, “science fiction,” Encyclopædia Britannica, accessed November 8, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/art/science-fiction. 12 Del Rey, The World, 3-4. 13 Ibid., 4. 10

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different planet or even a different universe, or it could be a future Earth where existing situations have changed drastically. However, whatever new situations or events arise, the author must indicate the alterations, and the reader must be able to comprehend the meaning of these indications.14 In that context, science fiction is a “literature of cognitive estrangement,” a literature positioning the reader in an unfamiliar world.15 And it places them in ways that encourage readers to think about the essence of these disparities, leading them to observe their own world from a new perspective. Through peculiar objects, environments, interactions, cultures, and customs, readers are expected to think about the possible interpretations of the people, politics, and social circumstances of this fictional world. “The icons of SF” are symbols that mark science fiction as a literary form, alerting the reader to the fact that they are in a new universe, which makes the distinction.16 Icons or symbols such as rockets, spaceships, space habitats, virtual environments, robots, androids, cyborgs, aliens, genetically modified plants, animals, humans, artificial intelligence, and disastrous climate change—almost any crazy, creative plot device—are frequently incorporated into science fiction narratives.17 It is obvious that science fiction is a type of speculative fiction, mostly concerned with futuristic and imaginative ideas. In this sense, it is “‘What If Literature’,”18 which discusses the possible impacts of technological and scientific advancements. One disappointing aspect of science fiction, however, is that its worth as a literary form that reflects reality is underappreciated. The reality that encircles everyone serves as a source of inspiration for science fiction writers. Although science fiction can take people to new worlds, it never really departs from existing reality. SF narratives can be viewed “as an embodied thought experiment whereby aspects of our familiar reality are transformed or suspended.”19 Science fiction frequently transforms actual scientific hypotheses into possible narratives. Numerous stories use scientific statistics and realities to tell what could actually occur in the future. Science fiction, in short, is a fiction of likelihood, creativity, and 14

Gwyneth Jones, “The icons of science fiction,” in The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, ed. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 163. 15 Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 4. 16 Jones, “The icons,” 163. 17 Ibid., 173. 18 Joanna Russ, quoted in David Seed, Science Fiction: A Very Short Introduction, 2. 19 Seed, Science Fiction, 2.

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invention that has a strong connection with scientific and technological progress. The authors of science fiction use scientific fact to construct fictional narratives that explore the future of the human race and the cosmos in an original but believable way. The science fiction world is vast and extremely complicated. It contains many subgenres, each with its own distinctive characteristics and themes. A science fiction story can transcend the borders of many of the subgenres. It would therefore be impossible to map the entire universe of sci-fi subgenres, but the most well-known ones are hard science fiction, soft science fiction, space opera, space Western, steampunk, alternate history, cyberpunk, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, utopian fiction, dystopian fiction, gothic science fiction, biopunk, feminist science fiction, and so on and so forth. Since it would not be possible to explain so many subgenres one by one, I only touched on dystopian fiction and apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fiction, to which the novels I examined belong. In The Science Fiction Handbook, apocalyptic fiction is defined as “a type of science fiction narrative dealing with the approach and arrival of a cataclysmic event that causes widespread destruction, leading to a dramatic change in the nature of human civilization on Earth.”20 Unlike the Biblical apocalypse narratives, the science fiction apocalypse usually stems from “natural and scientifically explainable causes, such as environmental degradation, a cataclysmic cosmic event (such as the collision of the Earth with a large asteroid), a catastrophic plague, a devastating nuclear or biological war, or an alien invasion,” and post-apocalyptic science fiction “deals with the aftermath of such apocalyptic events.”21 So, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fictions are mostly based on a catastrophic event that devastates the planet. If the catastrophe happens within the timeframe of the plot, it is apocalyptic fiction; if the disaster has already occurred, it is described as post-apocalyptic. Dystopian fiction, on the other hand, is described as follows: “If a utopia is an imaginary ideal society that dreams of a world in which the social, political, and economic problems of the real present have been solved, then a dystopia is an imagined world in which the dream has become a nightmare.”22 Dystopias, often referred to as anti-utopias, are frequently created to examine the potential drawbacks of a particular utopian thought. However, dystopian fiction frequently has a strong satirical element that serves as a warning against the potential implications of certain trends in the 20 M. Keith Booker and Anne-Marie Thomas, The Science Fiction Handbook (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 321. 21 Ibid., 322. 22 Ibid., 65.

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present-day real world.23 Hence, dystopian fiction is about a world where the conditions of humans are extremely terrible due to deprivation and oppression. In this fictional world, the hierarchical social order and the illusion of a perfect society are maintained through oppressive government and authoritarian control. Human suffering, governmental and technological control, overpopulation, and environmental destruction are the characteristics of a dystopian society. The main purpose of dystopian fiction is to criticise a social norm or political structure. To sum it up, nearly all apocalyptic narratives involve worldwide catastrophes in which the characters try to survive and endure the dangers of a collapsing world. The struggle for survival is at the centre of the story, and it becomes less and less likely when most of the population dies. In a post-apocalyptic narrative, on the other hand, the main conflict for the characters is to cope with the new physical, cultural, and social changes resulting from a recent catastrophe. Many post-apocalyptic stories are set in a world without technology or in a world where only traces of civilization and technology are left behind. Therefore, the main conflict in these stories revolves around characters fighting for resources or seeking other survivors. Dystopian fiction, on the other hand, frequently portrays a significant social transformation, thereby making it post-apocalyptic. However, a fictional work is called dystopian when the conflict is focused on the tyranny of a government or political ideology rather than the immediate impacts of a global catastrophe. The main difference between post-apocalyptic fiction and dystopian fiction is that dystopian narratives mostly depict communities and civilizations that seem prosperous and peaceful, while post-apocalyptic societies are more unstable and chaotic. Dystopias take place in a world that is completely functional yet frightening. Despite the dire circumstances, there are certain institutions that can be acknowledged. In post-apocalyptic narratives, though, there is no order or culture; humanity has reverted to a more primitive and cruel way of existence.

Environmental Concerns and Eco-Science Fiction Although there are numerous themes in these three subgenres of science fiction, the multitude and importance of the works dealing with nature and environmental issues cannot be disregarded. Obviously, “SF is not nature writing, in the sense of that genre’s definition as being scientifically based,

23

Ibid.

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personal observation written in nonfiction prose.”24 It may, however, be viewed as nature-oriented literature in the sense that it is an aesthetic work. On the one hand, it draws attention to the natural surroundings and human relationships with other elements of nature in that world. On the other hand, it incorporates basic environmental concerns into the storylines of different works. In comparison to most nature writing, science fiction novels frequently include a wide variety of scientific fields that rely on understanding, observing, and analysing the universe. A variety of SF works “bring together geology, hydrology, archaeology, physics, biology, biochemistry, and mathematics along with natural history, pseudo-natural history, psychology, social and environmental history, and other social sciences.”25 Thus, in many science fiction narratives, ecological issues and environmental problems can be observed as common plot devices and settings. In fact, different terms, such as eco-fiction (short for ecological fiction), ecological science fiction, and environmental science fiction, are used by different scholars and critics to describe science fiction works that focus on environmental problems. For instance, Jim Dwyer states that “fiction that deals with environmental issues or the relation between humanity and the physical environment, that contrasts traditional and industrial cosmologies, or in which nature or the land has a prominent role is sometimes called ecofiction.”26 He indicates that the 1970s were a turning point for ecofiction in all genres, which could be called the “década de oro.”27 The term was proclaimed by John Stadler in the title of his seminal anthology EcoFiction (1971), which included both science fiction and mainstream stories written primarily from the 1940s to the 1960s. There is no agreement on its spelling. It is generally written as a single word but occasionally hyphenated as “eco-fiction” or split into two words as “eco fiction.” While the concepts “environmental fiction,” “green fiction,” and “nature-oriented fiction” are often used in place of “eco-fiction,” these terms are better considered as ecofiction categories.28 Similarly, Jonathan Levin suggests that ecofiction is a flexible term that can be applied to a wide range of fictional works that explore the interaction

24

Patrick D. Murphy, Ecocritical Explorations in Literary and Cultural Studies: Fences, Boundaries, and Fields (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009), 90. 25 Ibid. 26 Jim Dwyer, Where the Wild Books Are: A Field Guide to Ecofiction (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2010), 2. 27 Ibid., 28. 28 Ibid., 3.

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between natural environments and the human societies that dwell there.29 As he explains, eco-fiction arose in the 1960s and 1970s, shortly after ecology became a dominant scientific philosophy and a broad cultural mindset. And two major events contributed to igniting this new environmental consciousness. One is the debate about potential dams on the Colorado River, which ultimately led to the building of the Glen Canyon Dam (which was started in the middle of the 1950s and finished around ten years later). The other is the publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson in 1962, which exposed the harmful effects of hazardous pesticides like DDT and was a significant contributor to the development of ecocriticism.30 So, it is obvious that eco-fiction gained popularity in the 1970s, along with the aforementioned environmental movements, paving the way for a modern literary study that linked ecology and the humanities. Basically, the topics covered in eco-fiction include human influences on the environment. Eco-fiction, according to Dwyer, has “deep literary roots and a rich and growing canopy of branches.”31 One such root is science fiction, which has historically been about real or fictional science and its effects on nature and culture. While some of the origins of eco-fiction can be seen in science fiction, it also appears in a variety of other early literary texts and genres. In fact, the origins of eco-fiction are as old as pictograms, petroglyphs, and creation stories. Native American, Australian Aboriginal, Pagan, Celtic, Taoist, and many other cosmologies, as well as the related oral and written literature, place a strong emphasis on nature.32 Therefore, eco-fiction can be considered an umbrella term as it covers different literary genres. Ecological science fiction, or environmental science fiction, on the other hand, only deals with science fiction works that put emphasis on ecology and humankind’s interaction with their environment. In these narratives, the plot revolves around worldwide environmental changes such as global warming, famine, drought, and overpopulation, which constitute a threat to all living beings, including humans, on the planet. Drawing attention to the ecological problems related to overpopulation, Sabine Höhler notes that the “population problem” that was thought to exist in the late 1960s and early 1970s was not solely a science fiction or fantasy issue. Both ecological science and ecological fiction have developed theories about how too many people will eventually destroy what is left of planet Earth due to 29

Jonathan Levin, “Contemporary ecofiction,” in The Cambridge History of the American Novel, ed. Leonard Cassuto, Clare Virginia Eby, and Benjamin Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 1122. 30 Ibid. 31 Dwyer, Where the Wild, 3. 32 Ibid., 9.

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overpopulation. Numerous popular scientific publications have addressed the concept of “ecocide,” which is the result of unsustainable population growth, environmental degradation, and resource depletion. Ecologists used ominous depictions of the rapid rise in industrial pollution, the resource consumption of a growing global economy, or the enormous number of people living on Earth within the recently discovered boundaries of a “small planet.”33 As can be inferred from Höhner’s remark, environmental disaster is a key theme in ecological science fiction, which tends to include conditions that lead to mass unrest, social collapse, widespread death, and the destruction of the planet. These texts frequently portray the environmental degradation that stems from the depletion of resources such as water, air, and soil; the destruction of habitats and ecosystems; the annihilation of biodiversity; and excessive pollution. Chris Baratta points out that science fiction writers have become conscious of the negative impact that human advancement is having on the natural environment as humanity continues to advance by building more, exploiting more resources, and consuming more.34 So it can be said that science fiction writers have covered a wide range of subjects related to humanity and environmental destruction. In particular, the intricacy of environmental relationships that influence humankind’s future has become a prominent theme in their stories. Due to the rapid rise in the human population and the rapid and wide destruction of the ecosystem in many densely populated regions, problems such as the management of food supply chains and the increase in the efficiency of ecological processes have become critical concerns both in reality and in fiction. The sci-fi authors aimed to warn that humans’ excessive use of natural resources would inevitably lead to their extinction. In this sense, ecological science fiction narratives serve as “a diagnosis, a warning, a call to understanding and action and—most important—a mapping of possible alternatives” regarding environmental issues.35 The majority of science fiction authors who use ecological themes appear to suggest that if the Earth is destroyed and poisoned, humans will also suffer as a result. In short, ecological science fiction is concerned with current environmental issues and promotes critical thinking about them. As Murphy maintains, the “encouragement of that type of critical thinking provides a linkage between 33 Sabine Höhler, “‘The Real Problem of a Spaceship Is Its People’: Spaceship Earth as Ecological Science Fiction,” in Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction, ed. Gerry Canavan and Kim Stanley Robinson (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2014), 101. 34 Baratta, introduction to Environmentalism, 4. 35 Suvin, Metamorphoses, 12.

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SF and nature-oriented literature.”36 Murphy also highlights the importance of science fiction’s “extrapolative” feature in considering environmental issues. Regarding the definition of this concept, David M. Higgins and Roby Duncan suggest that extrapolation can “refer to the projection of human experience into an unknown future.37 According to Robert Heinlein, an American SF author, extrapolation is fundamental to science fiction creativity. As he points out, in an effective science fiction story, “‘science and established facts are extrapolated to produce a new situation, a new framework for human action.’”38 As it is understood, the concept becomes a way of referring to science fiction narratives that start with known facts and then forecast alternate possible scenarios. In other words, since the context of the ecological science fiction narratives is always based on human beings’ relationship with ecology, the authors create a very realistic atmosphere and a well-formed setting. In this sense, ecologists and science fiction authors share similar concerns, such as the future of the planet and humans, and they both use common plot techniques, such as speculating current observations at different times and locations by means of scientific facts. So, the use of extrapolation in science fiction means that writing and reading SF encourages individuals to consider the world they live in. As Murphy remarks, “extrapolation emphasises that the present and the future are interconnected. What we do now will be reflected in the future, and, therefore, we have no alibi for avoiding addressing the results of our actions today.”39 Hence, ecological science fiction stories urge humans to reconsider their interaction with nature and the way they position themselves in the ecosystem. In her essay entitled “Destroying Imagination to Save Reality: Environmental Apocalypse in Science Fiction,” Keira Hambrick states that environmental science fiction enables readers to consider the potential results of global environmental problems. Her essay explores how these novels reflect current issues such as climate change, overpopulation, and food production. She suggests that environmental authors must seek ways to attract a reader’s attention, highlight the importance of the subject being explored, and then persuade the reader to take effective steps. To accomplish these objectives, these writers use a variety of metaphors about human interactions with the environment. “One particularly common and 36

Murphy, Ecocritical Explorations, 89. David M. Higgins and Roby Duncan, “Key Critical Concepts, Topics and Critics,” in The Science Fiction Handbook, ed. Nick Hubble and Aris Mousoutzanis (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 127. 38 Ibid. 39 Murphy, Ecocritical Explorations, 89. 37

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powerful metaphor in environmental writing,” she states, “is apocalypse.”40 Hambrick admits that although apocalyptic stories are pessimistic and hopeless, this metaphor is necessary to create eco-consciousness and to show that it is crucial to protect and save the Earth. Joan Slonczewski and Michael Levy also note that since the release of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and the emergence of the environmental movement, science fiction writers have addressed the problem of how human activity affects the biosphere. The most extreme examples have been seen in post-apocalyptic novels or works that foresee an approaching environmental catastrophe.41 Therefore, the success of science fiction in raising ecological consciousness stems not from being a type of fiction that uses fear to encourage an ecological movement but from deeper understandings of the universe and of humankind’s fundamental connection with the earth. In conclusion, ecological awareness can be found in a wide range of genres and literary works, and science fiction is one of them. Many science fiction works carry the urge to promote ecological awareness, which is crucial in today’s world. In particular, the subgenres of dystopian fiction and apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fiction frequently deal with environmental and ecological disasters. Although various names, such as eco-fiction, ecological science fiction, or environmental science fiction, are attributed to science fiction works dealing with issues related to nature and ecology, they all meet on a common ground: the depiction of ecological and environmental problems. Therefore, I prefer to use the term “eco-science fiction” from now on to avoid any further confusion. The main theme of eco-science fiction novels is global environmental catastrophes, which focus on where human civilization is headed. According to Baratta, if humans combine “a study of environmental writing and ecocritical texts with science fiction and fantasy literature,” they can discover the answers to some crucial ecocritical questions, such as “How is a text raising awareness on an issue? How is a text embracing a new consciousness? How is this new consciousness a paradigm shift in human thought?”42 Hence, eco-science fiction novels try to provide some answers to many of the issues that have arisen already.

40

Keira Hambrick, “Destroying Imagination to Save Reality: Environmental Apocalypse in Science Fiction,” in Environmentalism in the Realm of Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, ed. Chris Baratta (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012), 129. 41 Joan Slonczewski and Michael Levy, “Science fiction and the life sciences,” in The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, ed. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 183. 42 Baratta, introduction to Environmentalism, 3.

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Numerous solutions and probable alternatives to current ecological issues can be found in eco-science fiction literature.

Anthropocentrism In fact, many environmental problems that are encountered in both real life and fiction arise from the intervention of human species in ecology. When humans’ relationship with nature from the past to the present is examined, it reveals that environmental problems stem from an anthropocentric viewpoint. It has also been proposed that humankind has entered the Anthropocene, a recent geological epoch that acknowledges human influence on the planet’s habitats. Accordingly, to understand what anthropocentrism is and how it affects the planet, this sub-chapter will focus on this concept. Anthropocentrism can be defined as a “philosophical viewpoint arguing that human beings are the central or most significant entities in the world.”43 Anthropocentrism views humans as distinct from and superior to nature. It claims that human existence has significance and that all other beings are rightfully resources that can be used for the benefit of humanity. Anthropocentrism, or the belief that humans are superior to any other beings on the planet, “manifests itself through the exploitation of natural resources and general prioritisation of human self-interest over the environment.”44 Therefore, anthropocentrism ignores nature’s inherent worth and encourages the degradation and commodification of it by claiming that humans are the most superior species on Earth. Timothy Clark offers a similar definition of the term by suggesting that any position, perspective, or understanding that places the human as the centre or the norm is known as anthropocentrism. Thus, an anthropocentric perspective of the natural world sees it exclusively in terms of humans, for example, “as a resource for economic use, or as the expression of certain social or cultural values.” Therefore, even appreciating the aesthetics of a landscape might be anthropocentric. In environmental discourse, the term “anthropocentrism” refers to the idea that humans and their interests are the only things that matter and should always come first.45 It is obvious that anthropocentrism is a way of thinking that regards humans as the most 43 Sarah E. Boslaugh, “anthropocentrism,” Encyclopædia Britannica, accessed December 2, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/topic/anthropocentrism. 44 Savannah Kuper, “Thoreau, Leopold, & Carson: Challenging Capitalist Conceptions of the Natural Environment,” Consilience, no. 13 (2015), 267, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26427282. 45 Clark, The Cambridge Introduction, 3.

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advanced species on the planet. As a result of this way of thinking, an order is formed in which humankind is positioned above all other living beings. While there is no single historical basis for anthropocentrism, the concept can be found in a number of important earlier texts. Indeed, this is a fundamental concept that many Western philosophies and religions hold. In his book Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents, Gary Steiner discusses the role of anthropocentric interpretations of animals and their “moral status” in Western philosophical thought. He cites philosophers and thinkers such as St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, and Kant who state that humans are superior to nature and animals. He addresses how these scholars follow the Stoic principle that all creatures live for the benefit of humankind. According to Steiner, throughout the history of Western philosophy, anthropocentric arguments have had a significant impact on how people view animals. These justifications have their origins in Aristotle, especially in the Stoics, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, and Kant. The basic argument that unites these thinkers’ positions on animals is that only humans—and no other animals—are intelligent and endowed with language; hence, only humans are deserving of moral attention. Only such beings are moral beings in the fullest and most genuine sense, capable of true self-determination and moral accountability. Animals are entitled to less moral regard than humans since they lack reason, and in other cases, they are not entitled to any moral consideration at all.46 As Steiner points out, the anthropocentrism advocated by the Stoic doctrine in ancient times has reinforced the false view in Western philosophy that animals are inferior to humans. According to him, the biggest problem behind this prejudice is that humans anthropomorphize animals by ignoring their complex communicative abilities. Steiner states that the thinkers who have views on the moral status of animals focus on false abilities. He claims that these philosophers mischaracterize the capacities of animals by equating them too closely to humans. To overcome the anthropocentric perspective, Steiner suggests that humans must develop “a vocabulary that both dispenses with the anthropocentric language of linguistic intentionality and avoids the traditional tendency to reduce animals to unconscious machines.”47 Obviously, the language used to describe the Earth and other living beings on it significantly affects the interaction of humans with nature. Catherine M. Roach also argues that “pictorial representations of nature” 46

Gary Steiner, Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents: The Moral Status of Animals in the History of Western Philosophy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), 2. 47 Steiner, Anthropocentrism, 29.

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and “imagistic or metaphoric language about nature” shape attitudes about the worth of nature and humanity’s relationship with it.48 In particular, the imagery of “mother nature” is very problematic because “Mother Earth” or “Mother Nature” is used as metaphors in the sense that “nature attends to our needs and shares with us her riches.”49 These ties imply a view of nature and women as productive or fruitful for the benefit of humanity. Accepting nature as a “bountiful female,”50 which provides an infinite supply of energy and resources, causes environmental degradation. It is because images of nature as mother serve to “reinforce deeply ingrained presumptions that the environment exists to serve our needs and that we are not under an equal obligation to return this service. After all, it is children who need looking after, while mothers are supposed to look after themselves.”51 This connotation shows “how society constructs concepts of nature and how gender serves as a central category in Western constructions of natureculture relations.”52 The association of nature with maternity not only reveals an anthropocentric perspective but also shows how it affects women in patriarchal societies. Mother Nature imagery places both nature and women in a manipulative hierarchical order where they are under the control of patriarchy. As a result, language and imagery used for nature lay the groundwork for the environmental degradation problem, with the assumption that nature has endless resources and is always ready to be used for human benefit. In his essay, entitled “Nature and Silence,” Christopher Manes also claims that the reduction of nature to the position of means is due to human cultures’ defining humans as the centre of the universe while denying or devaluing the rest of the life forms on Earth. At the beginning of the essay, he states that “Nature is silent in our culture (and in literate societies generally) in the sense that the status of being a speaking subject is jealously guarded as an exclusively human prerogative.”53 Referring to Foucault and Lukács, Manes argues that the power held by the “speaking subject” is a part of the control structure that human beings use to achieve supremacy. He relates this to both “Renaissance and Enlightenment humanism,” in 48 Catherine M. Roach, Mother/Nature: Popular Culture and Environmental Ethics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 6. 49 Ibid., 29. 50 Ibid., 30. 51 Ibid., 68. 52 Ibid., 37. 53 Christopher Manes, “Nature and Silence,” in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1996), 15.

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which discourse puts a strong focus on individuals and their reasoning ability.54 According to Manes, by insisting that there is an ontological difference between humans and the remainder of the ecosystem, humanism has instilled a new meaning into old claims that humankind had the ability to speak but animals did not. Echoing Heidegger’s remark that “language both reveals and conceals,” he states that discourse, along with human faith in reason and intellect, has caused the silence of nature in anthropocentric societies.55 Aside from humanism, institutions such as the church and aristocracy, which controlled discourse during the mediaeval period, claimed humankind’s supremacy over other beings and species. Manes compares Christian theology’s perception of nature with the doctrine of animistic societies, claiming that nature has always been the source of inspiration in animistic cultures. As he acknowledges, for animistic cultures, those that see the natural world as inspirited, not just people, but also animals, plants, and even ‘inert’ entities such as stones and rivers are perceived as being articulate and at times intelligible subjects, able to communicate and interact with humans for good or ill. In addition to human language, there is also the language of birds, the wind, earthworms, wolves, and waterfalls –a world of autonomous speakers whose intents (especially for hunter-gatherer peoples) one ignores at one’s peril.56

He indicates that the animistic understanding of nature was diminished by exegesis, the mediaeval Christian method of interpreting texts. Exegesis identified God as a Supreme Being communicating through natural beings that had “a symbolic meaning, but no autonomous voice.”57 Hence, Christian exegesis developed the adoration of language and logic into a discourse that humans use even today by declaring that nature is merely a representation of God’s majesty. As Manes notes, one of the consequences of this anthropocentric view adopted by mediaeval Christianity is the “Scala Naturae,” also known as the “Great Chain of Being.” It can be defined as “the idea of the organic constitution of the universe as a series of links or gradations ordered in a hierarchy of creatures, from the lowest and most insignificant to the highest.”58 The chain progresses from the entities made up of matter at the 54

Ibid. Ibid., 17. 56 Ibid., 15. 57 Ibid., 20. 58 Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas, ed. Philip P. Wiener (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973), s.v. “Chain of Being.” 55

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bottom to the pure spirit beings at the top. In this hierarchical structure, a human being, made of both matter and spirit, is placed above plants and animals, beneath angels, and beneath God. Bunnin and Yu indicate that while this idea was presented in different forms throughout history, it can be traced back to “Plato’s division of the world into the Forms, which are full beings, and sensible things, which are imitations of the Forms and are both being and not being.”59 Aristotle, like Plato, accepted the idea of a perfect being and classified all creatures based on the degree of purity of their souls. The concept of the great chain of being was thoroughly formed in Neoplatonism and the Middle Ages.60 So, throughout the Middle Ages and into the late eighteenth century, many thinkers and scientists embraced the idea of the great chain of being. Because of this viewpoint, Western civilization has remained ignorant of and insensitive to nature, adopting an anthropocentric approach. Manes emphasises that mediaeval epistemology and Renaissance humanism muted nature by glorifying human distinction, logic, and superiority. He argues that logocentrism and humanism have a detrimental effect on human beings’ relationships with nature since these philosophical stances elevate humans above all other beings on earth. He summarises all these remarks as follows: The Great chain of Being, exegesis, literacy, and a complex skein of institutional and intellectual developments have, in effect, created a fictionalized, or more accurately put, fraudulent version of the species Homo sapiens: the character ‘Man,’ what Muir calls ‘Lord Man.’ And this ‘Man,’ has become the sole subject, speaker, and rational sovereign of the natural order in the story told by humanism since the Renaissance.61

Manes blames the anthropocentric mindset that humans consider themselves the only rational beings with the right to speak, putting nature in the role of a silent object as a commodity to be exploited or destroyed. This anthropocentric point of view is particularly common in monotheistic religions that advocate the notion that nature exists for human dominance and exploitation. The historian Lynn White Jr. argues that the ongoing environmental crisis is not solely the product of humankind’s technological ability to impact and destroy the environment. Instead, it is mostly the result of Western ideology and its inherent history of dominance and superiority. He asserts that the major reason behind the widespread 59 Nicholas Bunnin and Jiyuan Yu, The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 289. 60 Ibid. 61 Manes, “Nature and Silence,” 21.

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disruption of biodiversity by human species is a result of religious views about nature. White particularly blames the Judeo-Christian religion for its anthropocentric outlook and its domineering approach towards nature. He maintains that the triumph of Christianity over paganism was the most significant shift in human culture’s history because “Especially in its Western form, Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen.”62 He states that in Christianity, God created the first human, Adam, and he gave names to all the creatures, ensuring his supremacy over them. All of this was specifically designed for humans’ benefit; no entity had any other function other than serving humans. Even though the first human being was made of clay, he was not a part of nature; on the contrary, he was the master of it. Thus, in stark contrast to ancient paganism and Asian religions, Christianity not only formed a human-nature duality but also asserted that it is God’s testament for humankind to utilise nature for its own purposes. As White notes, In Antiquity every tree, every spring, every stream, every hill had its own genius loci, its guardian spirit. These spirits were accessible to men, but were very unlike men; centaurs, fauns, and mermaids show their ambivalence. Before one cut a tree, mined a mountain, or dammed a brook, it was important to placate the spirit in charge of that particular situation, and to keep it placated. By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects.63

As can be understood, when paganism emphasised the sacredness of the existing order, Christianity destroyed it and permitted the abuse of nature. While other animistic religions can maintain this vital bond between humans and nature, White claims that Christianity’s interpretation of the Earth’s creation makes this especially hard in Western European cultures. Furthermore, he cautions everyone by asserting that the ecological catastrophe will only get worse unless humans reject the Christian tenet that nature exists solely to serve humankind.64 And as a solution to this fundamental problem, he proposes returning to Franciscan doctrines, which argue that all living beings are equal. In addition to discourse, humanism, and monotheistic religions, scientific and technological developments that began in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries also contributed to the anthropocentric perspective in 62 Lynn White, Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1996), 9. 63 Ibid., 10. 64 Ibid., 14.

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which nature is seen as a commodity. Devall and Sessions highlight that since the seventeenth century, physics has served as a role model for what science ought to be, reducing science to a phenomenon that can be quantified and measured. René Descartes and Isaac Newton, as the founders of the Scientific Revolution, imagined the universe as a massive machine that could be explained by simplistic cause-and-effect principles. These scientists believed that the laws of physics could explain the biological universe. The prevalent Western metaphysics, from Democritus to Aristotle to the present day, has regarded the cosmos as a set of distinct beings or substances.65 This outlook dissociated human beings from the concept of a living universe that should be viewed as a unified whole. For Bacon, Descartes, and Leibniz, the role of science was mainly “the egoistic technological domination and mastery of Nature.”66 Thus, Western culture has grown up with pragmatic and exploitative ideals as a result of this background of science and technology, which considered the cosmos as a machine rather than a harmonious whole. The anthropocentric mindset caused by technology became more apparent when people began carelessly exploiting nature for their personal benefits after the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century. Following the Industrial Revolution, Western civilization’s dominance over nature accelerated to meet the demands of an increasingly growing human population. Industrial companies, which began to flourish thanks to the steam engine, started to exploit nature more due to the urgent need for natural resources to be used in their new-born factories’ engines. Besides, domestication of animals, uncontrolled cultivation of the land, and destruction of natural resources and forests have increased in line with the needs of the developing industrial society. As a result of all these industrial developments, the relationship between humans and nature has worsened. In his essay, entitled “From Transcendence to Obsolescence: A Route Map,” Harold Fromm argues how industrial advancements have influenced humankind’s perception of its connection to nature. He points out that technology has instilled the mistaken belief that humans can exploit nature as much as they want. However, a human being is entirely reliant on nature and other entities for survival. Industrialization has provided many benefits to the common individual, such as comfortable houses, medications, fast communication, and easy transportation, making life much easier; however,

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Bill Devall and George Sessions, “Deep Ecology,” in Environmental Ethics: Readings in Theory and Application, ed. Louis P. Pojman, Paul Pojman, and Katie McShane, 7th ed. (Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2016), 88. 66 Ibid., 238.

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all these opportunities have changed the human perception of nature.67 Thanks to technological advancements, humankind has gained confidence in its dominance over nature. Considering this “mental assurance” (34), Fromm states that initially, humans had no control over nature and relied on their minds and the gods for comfort. In the meantime, their minds created a technology that made their bodies as powerful as the gods, rendering the gods unnecessary and imprisoning nature. Then, it would seem that there is no such thing as nature and that humans have created almost everything by their own creativity, all of which can be purchased in plastic at a supermarket or a discount store.68 In a similar way, White also states that humankind acquired great power over nature four centuries ago when “Western Europe and North America arranged a marriage between science and technology” and began to exploit nature dramatically.69 So, the selfcentred actions of humans, fuelled by the desire for power and money, have caused the earth to deteriorate. Therefore, particularly in the wake of scientific and technological developments, Western civilization has begun to adopt a capitalist ideology that is built more on the utilisation of nature than in the past. Savannah Kuper argues that capitalist thinkers such as Adam Smith and Ayn Rand fail to recognise the importance of the environment in society’s overall wellbeing. Adam Smith, a Scottish economist who is credited as the “father of capitalism,” for instance, advocates a model of capitalism in which profit maximisation takes priority over environmental issues. His economic vision of the earth echoes the anthropocentric view that “the soils, organisms, bodies of water, and plants are perceived as instruments to humankind.”70 In Smith’s view of capitalism, nature and its resources are considered products to be harvested, purchased, and sold. Almost two centuries after the death of Adam Smith, Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman promoted laissezfaire economics and individual rights in the twentieth century. They proposed that individuals should be encouraged to pursue their own financial goals. Rand, like Smith, views the world from an economic perspective and shows a strong indifference to the importance of preserving nature and its resources. In the capitalist system, economic factors come first, and, in this world, “trees become lumber, wilderness becomes privatized and converted to farms, animals and insects become pests, and 67 Harold Fromm, “From Transcendence to Obsolescence: A Route Map,” in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1996), 31. 68 Ibid., 35. 69 White, Jr., “The Historical Roots,” 4. 70 Kuper, “Thoreau, Leopold, & Carson,” 270.

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the land becomes something to conquer,”71 In this ideology, nature is mainly viewed as “a standing reserve or a resource pool” to support a wide range of technological and commercial endeavours. The mainstream anthropocentric worldview assumes that nature exists for human benefit; therefore, this form of instrumentalism, “a utility-based relation to nature, does not seem problematic.”72 Thus, the capitalist ideology reaffirms humanity’s dominance over nature and positions nature as a source of property available to human use. Consequently, anthropocentrism is the belief that humans are the centre of all values and that all other things and nature are only means to achieve these ends. Since ancient times, prevailing Western philosophies and ideologies have maintained that humans have absolute worth, legitimising their abuse of the natural environment. Western civilization has been increasingly preoccupied with the concept of dominance for thousands of years: with the dominance of humans over nonhuman nature, men over women, the wealthy and powerful over the poor, and the dominance of the West over non-Western cultures.73 However, this domination created by the anthropocentric view destroys the entire biosphere, including humans, and this situation needs to be changed urgently with the help of ecological consciousness. To prevent global catastrophe as a result of immense environmental degradation on the planet and to successfully launch the human effort to avoid this tragedy, the transition from human-centred values to eco-centred ones must be accomplished.

Biocentric and Ecocentric Ethics, and Deep Ecology As explained in the previous sub-chapter, Western cultural philosophies have historically been anthropocentric, meaning that only humans who exist now are important. Deeply concerned with the natural world, environmentalists argue that this moral stance should be extended to the ecological whole, including plants, animals, landscapes, wild habitats, and species. This shift in moral concern aims to prevent humans from further destroying the environment. Due to the anthropocentric point of view, it is clear that human beings harm the natural world without thinking. Environmentalists suggest that to preserve the ecosystem, humans must 71

Ibid., 271. Toni Ruuska, Pasi Heikkurinen, and Kristoffer Wilén, “Domination, Power, Supremacy: Confronting Anthropolitics with Ecological Realism,” Sustainability 12, no. 7 (2020): 3. 73 Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered (Salt Lake City: Gibbs M. Smith, Inc., 1985), 65-6. 72

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adopt a new perspective and give nature the moral value it deserves. In line with this view, they propose a nature-centred ethic called biocentrism and ecocentrism. Pippa Marland defines biocentrism as “a system of beliefs that holds that the interests of the biosphere as a whole take precedence over those of any individual species, including the human, and that all species have inherent value.”74 In a biocentric perspective, nature is respected for its own good, and human beings are positioned in a co-equal status with other living entities in the ecosystem. It is claimed that, irrespective of their utility to humanity, all living beings have the right to live for their own benefit. In other words, biocentrism is an “ethical perspective holding that all life deserves equal moral consideration or has equal moral standing.”75 According to biocentrism, humans are neither superior nor inferior to other species but simply equal to them. The biocentric view challenges the anthropocentric belief that affirms humans’ legitimate dominance over all living beings and supports the view that humans are only one of many species on Earth; they are a part of nature. Although it is difficult to determine the criteria for moral standing, biocentric ethics maintains that “the only nonarbitrary ground for assigning moral standing is life itself.”76 In other words, all living organisms are worthy of ethical value just because they are alive. This means that abilities such as consciousness or reasoning are not considered criteria of value. In biocentrism, “biological diversity values” are prioritised over “recreational and utilitarian values.”77 Even though the origins of biocentric ethics can be traced back to a variety of Eastern religions and cultures, Albert Schweitzer was the first leading Western theorist to promote biocentrism, coining the term “reverence for life,” which is the ethics of respecting life. Schweitzer defines this term by stating that “good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.”78 According to Schweitzer, everything that exists has a desire, or an inner drive, to live, and respect for one’s own will to live must be morally expanded to all. The principle of “reverence for life” advocates a non74

Pippa Marland, “Ecocriticism,” Literature Compass 10, no. 11 (2013): 860. Joseph R. DesJardins, “biocentrism,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed December 19, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/topic/biocentrism. 76 Ibid. 77 Dave Foreman, “The New Conservation Movement,” in Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century, ed. George Sessions (Boston & London: Shambhala Publications, 1995), 55. 78 Albert Schweitzer, preface to The Philosophy of Civilization: Civilization and Ethics, 3rd ed., vol. 2 (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1949), xviii. 75

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hierarchical view that all living things must be respected, regardless of their importance or value. Schweitzer notes that making distinctions between living beings is indeed unethical and indicates that a decent human being values all life forms. He believes that all living beings are holy, and this holiness arouses a sense of duty in human beings towards all life forms, which is the hallmark of a sincere moral stance. Paul W. Taylor, on the other hand, an American philosopher who specialised in environmental ethics, has provided a much more comprehensive explanation of biocentrism than Schweitzer did. His viewpoint is described as biocentric egalitarianism, which requires that all living things be treated with respect. Taylor, like Schweitzer, advocates a non-hierarchical stance. In his famous book, Respect for Nature, he draws attention to the distinction between anthropocentric (human-centred) ethics and biocentric (lifecentred) ethics. Criticising the anthropocentric view, Taylor states that nature and the living beings in it are not merely objects and resources for human use and consumption. On the contrary, all living organisms “have a kind of value that belongs to them inherently” and are worthy of moral respect.79 According to Taylor, it would be considered improper to ask, “What is a human being good for?” since it implies that a human being’s existence is only valuable if it can be used as a means for a purpose. Therefore, asking the same question for nature and its inhabitants is also unreasonable from a biocentric viewpoint. He indicates that it is wrong to treat animals and plants as though they only have “instrumental value” for human purposes. These beings have an “intrinsic value,” a value of their own by nature.80 In short, biocentrists reject the anthropocentric view, which positions humans in a higher position, and they see human beings as participants in the biosphere. Biocentrism acknowledges “the intrinsic value of all natural life” and disperses “the current preference of even the most trivial human demands over the needs of other species or integrity of place.”81 Biocentrists point out that all living beings in nature are interconnected; therefore, each participant relies on the other to survive. They argue that humans and other living organisms share the same basic life requirements; therefore, they all have equal inherent value.

79 Paul W. Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics, 25th anniversary ed. (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011), 12. 80 Taylor presents his views on biocentrism under the title “The Biocentric Outlook on Nature” and states that it has four main principles. For these principles, see Taylor, Respect for Nature, 99-100. 81 Clark, The Cambridge Introduction, 2.

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However, in biocentrism, moral subjects are accepted to be living entities, which means that “inanimate objects, (stones, grains of sand, puddles of water, snow, fire, ice, air) are not themselves moral subjects.”82 In other words, biocentrism highlights the moral importance of individual organic beings by focusing on the worth and rights of living entities. Therefore, it is viewed as a kind of “ethics of individualism.”83 Since biocentrism is a life-centred approach, non-living components of nature are not considered morally significant. Inanimate entities are accepted as ethically significant only if they are instrumentally beneficial to the needs of animate beings. In this sense, while there is a distinction between humans and the remaining nature in anthropocentrism, in biocentrism, this distinction is made between the organic and non-organic parts of nature. Ecocentrism, on the other hand, is the “view in environmental ethics that the interest of the ecosphere must override that of the interest of individual species.”84 Like biocentrism, ecocentrism is a life-centred approach; however, while biocentrism focuses only on animate beings, ecocentrism emphasises the importance of both animate and inanimate components in the ecosystem. Thus, ecocentrism is a holistic viewpoint as opposed to the individualism of biocentrism. Ecocentrists believe that “the world is an intrinsically dynamic, interconnected web of relations in which there are no absolutely discrete entities and no absolute dividing lines between the living and the nonliving, the animate and the inanimate, or the human and the nonhuman.”85 Therefore, ecocentrists argue that the land, ecosystems, and habitats are as important as individual organisms, and maintaining the wellness of ecosystems is a moral obligation. Actually, this outlook can be found in Eastern philosophies like Taoism and Buddhism, which highlight the interconnection of all things, as well as in the animist theologies of many Native Americans, which regard the inanimate world as inspirited and respect it. In the modern period, Aldo Leopold and Arne Naess are among the important figures who advocate an ecocentric point of view in their writings. Aldo Leopold was one of the ecologists who formed the basic description of ecocentrism with his philosophy of the land ethic. As I have explained in detail in the first chapter, Leopold criticises the perception of nature as a commodity to be 82

Taylor, Respect for Nature, 18. Mouchang Yu and Yi Lei, “Biocentric Ethical Theories,” in Environment and Development, ed. Teng Teng and Ding Yifan, vol. II (Oxford: Eolss Publishers, 2009), 253. 84 Buell, The Future, 137. 85 Robyn Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory: Toward an Ecocentric Approach (London: UCL Press, 1992), 49. 83

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used only for economic purposes and argues that an ethical value should be given to the land. According to Leopold, land is not merely a lifeless component but a living organism that forms the life source of the biotic community. Therefore, he suggests that humans must stop abusing the land and recognise its ethical as well as economic worth. Thus, Leopold’s idea of the land ethic emphasises the inherent worth of abiotic parts of nature and underlines the intricacy and interconnectedness of the ecosystem. In this sense, Leopold offers an ecocentric approach to the environment. Although he never used the term, his view of the moral significance of the land, or “the biotic community,” is cited as a form of ecocentrism. His book, A Sand County Almanac, is widely considered the major wellspring of current ecocentrism in Western philosophy. Eckersley points out that early environmentalists were mainly concerned with preserving wildlife as a spectacular landscape and were driven solely by aesthetic and spiritual concerns. Ecocentric environmentalists, on the other hand, are also worried about protecting endangered species, communities, territories, and ecosystems regardless of their usefulness to human beings. The efforts of the international environmental organisation Greenpeace exemplify this sort of concern. In this sense, ecocentrism embraces “a holistic rather than an atomistic perspective.”86 since it respects the whole ecosphere. Besides, it considers the interests of succeeding human and nonhuman generations; it acknowledges human interests in the nonhuman world. In light of this, the ecocentric worldview does neither diminish human dignity nor jeopardise an economic organisation’s sustainability. According to the ecocentric perspective, humans and organisations are also part of ecosystems. Nevertheless, “as members, or better, as citizens of ecosystems, human freedom and rights to self-determination remain intact so long as the actions deriving from these freedoms and rights do not destroy the life-support systems upon which such human autonomy depends.”87 In an ecocentric worldview, all organisations are subject to the same ethical obligation. Therefore, as Eckersley indicates, ecocentrism is based on an ecological paradigm of “internal relatedness” that extends not just to human-nonhuman relationships but also to social and cultural interactions. That is, “in a biological, psychological, and social sense we are all

86

Ibid., 46.

87 Ronald E. Purser, Changkil Park, and Alfonso Montuori, “Limits to Anthropocentrism:

Toward an Ecocentric Organization Paradigm?” The Academy of Management Review 20, no. 4 (1995): 1077, https://doi.org/10.2307/258965.

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constituted by our interrelationships between other humans, and our political, economic, and cultural institutions.”88 In short, ecocentrism views the ecosphere as a whole, which comprises ecosystems, water, atmosphere, and land, and aims to preserve it. The ecocentric worldview “decenters the privileged position of humans as the sole locus of value, requiring humans to transform their anthropocentric attitude toward ecosystems.”89 According to this worldview, the biotic and abiotic components of ecosystems have intrinsic value and are ethically significant in and of themselves, independent of humankind’s interests. In environmental philosophy, there are several variants of ecocentrism, and one of them is deep ecology. The term “deep ecology” was coined by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess in his 1973 essay “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecological Movement” and later expanded upon by Bill Devall and George Sessions. As Naess himself points out in a 1982 interview, deep ecology is defined by the continual posing of new questions regarding human existence, society, and nature. He states that “the adjective ‘deep’ stresses that we ask why and how, where others do not. For instance, ecology as a science does not ask what kind of a society would be the best for maintaining a particular ecosystem-that is considered a question for value theory, for politics, for ethics.”90 So, “deep ecology goes beyond the socalled factual scientific level to the level of self and Earth wisdom.”91 By asking deeper questions, deep ecology seeks to develop a holistic philosophical worldview that transcends a narrow-minded, superficial solution to environmental issues and raises humans’ environmental awareness. In fact, the concept of deep ecology emerges as a reaction to the anthropocentric viewpoint, which regards nature as valuable solely to the extent that it serves humanity’s purposes. Naess calls this understanding “shallow ecology,” and he makes a comparison between the shallow and deep ecology movements. “The shallow ecology movement,” according to Naess, is the “fight against pollution and resource depletion,” the main purpose of which is “the health and affluence of people in the developed

88

Eckersley, Environmentalism, 53. Purser, Park, and Montuori, 1073. 90 Stephan Bodian, “Simple in Means, Rich in Ends: An Interview with Arne Naess,” in Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century, ed. George Sessions (Boston & London: Shambhala Publications, 1995), 27. 91 Devall and Sessions, “Deep Ecology,” 232. 89

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countries.”92 “The deep ecology movement,” on the other hand, advocates “biospherical egalitarianism,” which holds that all life forms have value in and of themselves, regardless of their utility to others.93 Naess refers to this ecological consciousness, which recognises the inherent worth of nature, as “ecosophy.” “Sophy comes from the Greek term sophia, ‘wisdom,’ which relates to ethics, norms, rules, and practice. Ecosophy, or deep ecology, then, involves a shift from science to wisdom.”94 As can be inferred from what Naess states, deep ecology, also called “ecosophy” or “ecological wisdom,” is a movement that advocates for a more comprehensive set of solutions to our environmental problems. “Biospherical egalitarianism” and “self-realisation” are two major deep ecology ideals proposed by Naess. Biospherical egalitarianism (also referred to as biocentric equality, biocentric egalitarianism, and ecological egalitarianism) opposes discriminatory appraisal of species, acknowledging that all life forms have inherent worth. As Naess notes, “the equal right to live and blossom is an intuitively clear and obvious value axiom.”95 In the words of Devall and Sessions, “all organisms and entities in the ecosphere, as parts of the interrelated whole, are equal in intrinsic worth.”96 When addressing this equality, however, Naess inserts the word “in principle” right after “biospherical egalitarianism.” It is because “in the process of living, all species use each other as food, shelter, etc. Mutual predation is a biological fact of life.”97 As a result, deep ecologists believe that if humankind interacts with nature to meet their basic needs, such interference is acceptable. Self-realisation, or perceiving oneself as a part of the interconnected system, is another important aspect of deep ecology. According to the deep ecology understanding, each organism is interrelated with other parts of the ecosystem. In this sense, self-realisation is inextricably linked to biospherical egalitarianism. In other words, the damage that the human species inflicts on the ecosphere is actually the damage it inflicts on itself. Therefore, as Naess highlights, “multifaceted high-level Self-realisation is more easily reached through a lifestyle that is ‘simple in means but rich in ends’ rather 92 Arne Naess, “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecological Movement,” in Environmental Ethics: Readings in Theory and Application, ed. Louis P. Pojman, Paul Pojman, and Katie McShane, 7th ed. (Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2016), 218. 93 Ibid., 219. 94 Bodian, “Simple in Means,” 27. 95 Naess, “The Shallow,” 219. 96 Devall and Sessions, “Deep Ecology,” 233. 97 Ibid.

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than through the material standard of living of the average citizens of industrial states.”98 Thus, the motto “simple in means, rich in ends” reflects an anti-materialistic viewpoint, emphasising the need for humans to learn to live more modestly. It encourages humans to lead simpler lives by challenging some of society’s basic premises about consumerism and materialism. It is clear that deep ecology is egalitarian in the sense that everyone and everything has value as a component of the Earth. It maintains that humans, nonhumans, and the whole ecosphere are fundamentally interconnected with one another. In addition, symbiosis is a prerequisite for increasing diversity in the ecosystem. Deep ecology, with its eight core principles99 established from an ecocentric perspective, advocates for the promotion and conservation of biodiversity. Also, deep ecologists condemn the consumption habits and waste output of contemporary humans. They argue that because these activities pose such a great threat to the ecosphere, an urgent change is needed in the ideological and political frameworks that prioritise the ecosystems’ diversity and well-being and propose control of the human population. In conclusion, human activities are causing an increase in the loss of biodiversity and ecological balance throughout the planet. The Western anthropocentric worldview is the primary cause of this situation. Adopting an ecocentric worldview, on the other hand, opens up possibilities for resolving environmental issues. As Eckersley indicates, the transition from an anthropocentric to an ecocentric perspective is representative of a broader shift away from an economic and “instrumental environmental ethic” and towards “a comprehensive and holistic environmental ethic” that can meet human needs for survival and welfare (such as “a sustainable ‘natural resource base,’ a safe environment, or ‘urban amenity’”) while also respecting the integrity of other life forms.100 In this respect, ecocentrism is an approach that can provide equality and welfare in social, economic, and environmental fields by giving priority to the Earth.

98 Arne Naess, “The Deep Ecological Movement: Some Philosophical Aspects,” in Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century, ed. George Sessions (Boston & London: Shambhala Publications, 1995), 82. 99 For eight principles of deep ecology, see Arne Naess, “The Deep Ecological Movement: Some Philosophical Aspects,” 68. 100 Eckersley, Environmentalism, 34.

CHAPTER III CROP FAILURE AND MASS FAMINE

John Christopher Sam Youd (1922–2012), professionally known as Christopher Samuel Youd, was a renowned British science fiction author who wrote over seventy books under many pen names (better known by his pseudonym John Christopher). He was born on April 16, 1922, in Huyton, Lancashire, and attended Peter Symonds School in Winchester after his family moved to Hampshire; the region was frequently portrayed in his writings. The Second World War broke out nearly as soon as he dropped out of school. Then he joined the Royal Corps of Signals and served there for five years, from 1941 to 1946. Although his career as a writer began with The Winter Swan, published in 1949 thanks to a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship, several of his stories and poems had already been published in American science fiction periodicals. For instance, in February 1940, he wrote a non-genre story, “For Love of Country,” which was published in Lilliput, and a poem, “Dreamer,” in March 1941, published in Weird Tales, both under the name Christopher Samuel Youd. He also wrote some fanzine articles under the pseudonym Fantacynic. Before WWII, Youd was an active member of the science fiction and fantasy fan communities. In February 1949, he appeared in science fiction with “Christmas Tree” as Christopher Youd. His debut work, The Winter Swan (1949), was a fantasy that was written under his name, Christopher Youd. He wrote many non-fantastic novels throughout the years under various pen names, such as Hilary Ford, William Godfrey, Peter Graaf, Peter Nichols, Anthony Rye, William Vine, Stanley Winchester, Christopher Youd, and Samuel Youd. Yet, for most of his writing, along with science fiction, Youd opted to use the pseudonym John

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Christopher.1 John Christopher died of bladder cancer complications on February 3, 2012, in Bath, Somerset, at the age of eighty-nine. In an interview with Colin Brockhurst in 2009, Christopher states that he began developing a passion for writing around the age of ten when he started a sci-fi story that he never finished. In response to the question about whether he was a fan of SF from an early age, he maintains that he first became interested in science fiction after reading “the occasional story in more general boys’ magazines.”2 Afterwards, he found the (he guesses) September ‘32 issue of Astounding and became completely fascinated. Prior to that, he adds, he was a big fan of Coral Island and Swiss Family Robinson, both of which include characters that a boy can relate to in exotic yet realistic settings. He points out that 1930s science fiction offered extrapolation from existing scientific theory, which means that it might not be entirely and absolutely reliable, yet one might deceive oneself into believing that life on other planets would eventually be discovered. He claims to have abandoned sci-fi when later scientific knowledge revealed that the solar system was a desolate void in which interplanetary travel was impossible. However, he believes it was similar to being in the midst of a passionate love affair in which the passion could not be rekindled. His first science fiction book, The Twenty-Second Century (first published in 1954), is a collection of his early writings. His first serious science fiction novel was The Year of the Comet (1955), which was published in the US as Planet in Peril in 1959. Following the success of the first one, Christopher wrote the second science fiction novel, The Death of Grass (1956; in the US as No Blade of Grass, 1957), which earned him major success as a writer and enabled him to quit his regular job. Christopher himself notes that he was working in London for the South Africa-based Diamond Corporation as an assistant to the Director of their Industrial Diamond Information Bureau in those days. Although he did not know much about diamonds back then, he states that he could write and edit in English quite well, which was a crucial talent in an office run by and staffed mostly by Central European refugees.3 Other adult science fiction 1

John Clute and Peter Nicholls, “Christopher, John,” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, ed. John Clute and David Langford (London: SFE Ltd and Reading: Ansible Editions, July 19, 2021), accessed September 16, 2021, https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/christopher_john. 2 John Christopher, “Interview with Tripods author Sam Youd (aka John Christopher),” interview by Colin Brockhurst, April 10, 2009, accessed June 4, 2021, https://www.colinbrockhurst.co.uk/interview-with-tripods-author-sam-youdaka-john-christopher/380/. 3 Ibid.

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novels include The World in Winter (1962; in the US as The Long Winter), Cloud on Silver (1964; in the US as Sweeney’s Island), The Possessors (1964), A Wrinkle in the Skin (1965; in the US as The Ragged Edge), The Little People (1966), Pendulum (1968), and Bad Dream (2003). John Christopher has written light comedies, historical romances, gothic horror, and many thrillers, as well as science fiction and more realistic novels. Yet, in 1967, he successfully initiated a new phase of his sci-fi career, this time in the young adult category, with The Tripods sequence: The White Mountains (1967), The City of Gold and Lead (1967), and The Pool of Fire (1968); a prequel, When the Tripods Came (1988), was released years later. Among all other genres and works, The Tripods series is possibly his best-known work. The Tripods is a post-apocalyptic story in which “Tripods”—massive three-legged walking machines—arrive on Earth and take control of the humans by dominating their brains and keeping them obedient. Life in villages is now peaceful; there is minimal technology and no war, yet there is also no freedom. In this fascinating series, a thirteenyear-old kid named Will Parker and his companions struggle with starvation, greed, and vanity as they try to learn everything they can about the Tripods and overturn their reign. Other young adult SF novels include The Guardians (1970), In the Beginning (1972), Dom and Va (1973), Wild Jack (1974), The Fireball trilogy: Fireball (1981), New Found Land (1983), and Dragon Dance (1986); The Sword of the Spirits trilogy: The Prince in Waiting (1970), Beyond the Burning Lands (1971), and The Sword of the Spirits (1972); and a much later novel, A Dusk of Demons (1993). Similar to adult science fiction, most of Christopher’s young adult SF novels take place in a post-apocalyptic world where the young characters are confronted by a kind of traditionalist and even totalitarian system.4 Even though all the works mentioned above have received considerable acclaim, starting in the 1950s, Christopher is mostly famous for a number of exceptional “catastrophe” stories and novels in which humankind was destined to fail. The apocalypse for humanity comes with infertility in “The New Wine” (1954), radiation poisoning in “Begin Again” (1954), hunger and hydrogen bombs in The Death of Grass (1956), global cooling in The World in Winter (1962), earthquakes and volcanoes in A Wrinkle in the Skin (1965), alien invasion in The Tripods series (1967), plague in Empty World (1977), and madness and starvation in A Dusk of Demons (1993). In this productive period, Christopher was soon compared to John Wyndham. According to author Christopher Priest, who wrote John Christopher’s obituary, although Wyndham and Christopher knew each 4

Clute and Nicholls, “Christopher, John.”

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other and got along well, they were not close companions. Both writers were creating novels about numerous worldwide disasters during the 1950s, but their apparent similarities obscured actual distinctions. In particular, Christopher rejects the label of “cosy catastrophe,” a term “coined by Brian W. Aldiss in Billion Year Spree (1973) to describe the supposedly comforting ambience shed by the sort of disaster tale told by UK writers like John Wyndham.”5 Cosy catastrophes are post-apocalyptic science fiction works that explore the actions of a small number of individuals who manage to survive the apocalypse relatively unaffected. Concerning the comparison of his works to those of John Wyndham, Christopher notes that it is good to be mentioned in the same breath and that he truly admired his work.”6 Despite being regarded as John Wyndham’s rival and follower, the major difference between the two authors’ works is this: whereas Wyndham’s stories had heroes “whose middle-class indomitability” assured the reader that the crisis would somehow be resolved in the end, Christopher’s characters “inhabit and respond to a darker, less secure universe.”7 Most of his work during this period is characterised by “a harshness of perspective.” The novels, such as The World in Winter, A Wrinkle in the Skin, and Pendulum, all depict the consequences of political or environmental negligence as the characters encounter survival issues while attempting to live in a post-apocalyptic world devoid of security and civilization. His most recent work, Bad Dream, offers a satirical look at Britain’s near-future subjugation to Europe. As Priest underlines, it was Michael Joseph, the publishing house that had earned the success of John Wyndham’s series of post-war science fiction disaster novels, that published The Death of Grass. Christopher states that the inspiration behind The Death of Grass was Greener Than You Think by Ward Moore. As far as he remembered, the novel mentions a weed that invades the entire planet and grows uncontrollably everywhere, and he recalls a scenario where the characters enter water and discover grass growing inside the floorboards. He pondered the opposite and then considered what grass meant, such as wheat and other plants.8

5 John Clute, “Cosy Catastrophe,” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, ed. John Clute and David Langford (London: SFE Ltd and Reading: Ansible Editions, May 29, 2020), accessed July 3, 2021, https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/cosy_catastrophe. 6 Christopher, interview by Colin Brockhurst. 7 Clute and Nicholls, “Christopher, John.” 8 Christopher, interview by Colin Brockhurst.

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This eco-catastrophe novel has been reprinted numerous times. Christopher’s other novels that have similar disaster themes are The World in Winter, which focuses on a new Ice Age hitting Europe, and A Wrinkle in the Skin, which concentrates on a global sequence of severe earthquakes that destroy towns and cities. What these three sci-fi novels have in common is that they portray humankind’s efforts to establish a life appropriate for living in a post-apocalyptic world devoid of civilization and security as a result of a global environmental disaster. The following sub-chapter aims to analyse The Death of Grass as one of the first impressive examples of ecoscience fiction novels that challenge anthropocentrism by addressing the social collapse caused by an ecological disaster.

The Death of Grass Published in 1956, The Death of Grass is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel about a virus that eradicates all grasses, resulting in worldwide hunger. The novel begins with a very peaceful atmosphere, describing the travels of two young boys and their widowed mother from “the tarnished grimy environs of London”9 to the broad countryside, a dazzling valley called Blind Gill, to visit their grandfather. For a post-apocalyptic tale, the opening is rather unexpected, as life goes on normally and smoothly. Even though the story begins before the apocalypse emerges, it is classified as post-apocalyptic sci-fi since the reader witnesses both the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic events as the narrative develops. In this sense, The Death of Grass is an unusual eco-apocalyptic science fiction novel. The root of the apocalypse is a virus that attacks and infects all types of crops, including rice, wheat, oats, barley, and rye. The virus is first discovered in China and named the Chung-Li virus. It is also reported in Britain; however, due to the virus’s selectivity, it has little effect on the country’s agriculture. Initially, the Chinese government thinks that the virus can be controlled and eradicated. Yet it fails to do so, and the virus quickly spreads throughout Asia. Although Western countries, which consider themselves “lucky,” provide food aid to the Far East struggling with hunger, it is not enough to prevent the disaster that leads to massive famine and anarchy. The virus destroys all rice crops and causes the deaths of millions of people on the Asian continent. Authorities seeking to eradicate the virus develop a new pesticide, called Isotope 717, rather than grow a virusresistant rice strain. However, this chemical strengthens a stage of the virus that not only targets rice but also other crops. Hence, following the 9

John Christopher, The Death of Grass (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1958), 5.

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introduction of this insecticide, the Chung-Li virus mutates, infecting essential Western Asian and European crops like wheat and barley. In other words, all grasses, as the novel’s title suggests, are threatened by this mutant virus, and a global famine arises. The children mentioned in the first chapter are the main character, John Custance, and his brother, David. Blind Gill Valley is the place that will transform from a prosperous and fertile potato farm to a barren wasteland where the characters will battle and die for survival. In the next chapter, fast forward twenty-five years, and the siblings grow up. John works as an engineer in London with his wife Ann and their two children, and David runs his grandfather’s farm in Blind Gill. The story revolves around engineer John Custance and his old army friend Roger Buckley as they and their families try to escape from London after the leaked bombing news. They travel to the north to the farm of John’s brother, David, who has planted potato crops and bred pigs in an effort to endure the virus. They must take a gun shop owner called Pirrie with them after an attempt to obtain weapons in order to prevent the turmoil that would arise if the news were known to everyone. Their group expands in size along the journey, and the story becomes a horrific survival tale. When they arrive in the valley, they realise that they have gathered a large group as a consequence of meeting other survivors on the road and that not all of them will be permitted into the well-protected valley. When Pirrie stops John from taking just his family members to the valley, the group decides to force their way inside. In the end, Pirrie and John’s brother David are shot dead, and John takes control of the valley. The novel focuses especially on the social traumas resulting from this ecological disaster and the unpleasant decisions the characters have to make. In the first chapter of the novel titled “Prodrome,” Christopher frequently uses words like “peace,” “peaceful,” “peaceable,” “calm,” “calmly,” “quiet,” “rich,” and “richness” to draw attention to the beauty, abundance, and peacefulness of the valley and the landscape before the cataclysmic events began. His vivid descriptions and imagery make the reader feel the magnificence of nature. Some instances that illustrate the unspoiled green countryside of England and reflect the beauty and greenery of nature are: “the valley’s richness was the more marked; green wheat swayed inwards with the summer breeze, and beyond the wheat, as the ground rose, they saw the lusher green of pasture;”10 “The ground was rich and well cropped;”11 “And in its greenness the valley seemed an oasis 10 11

Christopher, The Death of Grass, 6. Ibid., 7.

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among desert mountains.”12 Thus, with these depictions at the very beginning of the novel, Christopher directs the reader’s attention to the condition of nature before it deteriorates. These depictions give the sense of a splendid land that is apparently unchangeable and everlasting. However, in the subsequent chapter, which skips ahead twenty-five years, apocalyptic events break out, implying that it is a fallacy to think that the peaceful and breath-taking countryside depicted in the first chapter can remain unchanged. David refers to it by claiming that it is an “old illusion” that the countryside remains unchanging. He says that “The country changes more than the city does. With the city it’s only a matter of different buildings—bigger maybe, and uglier, but no more than that. When the country changes, it changes in a more fundamental way altogether’.”13 David’s foreshadowing expression underlines a very important point: changes in the countryside mean that fertile green areas, vegetation, and food resources will be seriously harmed, and the human species, along with other living beings, will be directly affected by them. Indeed, it happens; the utopian landscapes depicted in the beginning, once lush, begin to give way to an eerie brown. While the colour “green,” which symbolises vitality, fertility, and life, is frequently used in the first chapter, with the onset of the catastrophic events in the second chapter, the colour “brown,” symbolising decay and death, dominates the narrative. Here are some instances that exemplify the landscape’s turning brown: “As the grass grew, in fields or gardens or highways, its blades were splotched with darker green—green that spread and turned into rotting brown;”14 “John looked out at what had been the lawn and was now a patch of brown earth speckled with occasional weeds;”15 “The valley, which had been so green in the old days, now showed predominantly black against the browner hills beyond;”16 “They went on, keeping to the east of John’s band, and the gold remained, gleaming dully against the brown grassless earth.”17 Thus, Christopher impressively displays the contrast between before and after the destruction of nature with his choice of words and the imagery he uses. He paints a very striking picture of how ruined grass affects the physical environment. Also, contrary to the peace felt at the beginning, the reader becomes uneasy and restless after the second chapter. Words that evoke uneasiness, such as “dark,” 12

Ibid., 8. Ibid., 13. 14 Ibid., 41. 15 Ibid., 43. 16 Ibid., 120. 17 Ibid., 152. 13

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“agony,” “fight,” “violence,” “trouble,” “chaos,” and “death,” are used many times in the rest of the narrative. As Robert Macfarlane states in the introduction of The Death of Grass, it can be put forth that this novel belongs to a mid-century science fiction trend that might be called “floral apocalypse” (also known as “cosy catastrophe”), in which writers used fiction to voice their concerns about human interference in the ecosystem. Works in this category are frequently focused on nature’s response to self-interested human actions, and they emphasise the danger posed by humankind’s persistent exploitation of the natural world. The Death of Grass includes the basic characteristics of a floral apocalypse, as scientists in the novel produce a chemical to eradicate the virus that attacks the grass, causing the virus to become stronger and more resilient, therefore disrupting the planet’s natural order and leading to global ecological destruction. Nevertheless, John Christopher denies the claim that his novel is a product of this trend or even the science fiction genre and states that it can be viewed as “a thought experiment in futureshock survivalism.”18 Whether it is accepted as an example of this trend or not, the prominent idea in the novel is that the human species is helpless in the face of an ecological force that emerges beyond its control. In this post-apocalyptic novel, Christopher builds a world in which grass, a part of the ecosystem, threatens the future of humanity as the key determinant of the approaching calamity. In this way, he shows the importance of vegetation for the entire planet. It is because grass is a symbol of abundance, unity, and harmony. It symbolises the interconnectedness of all living beings and the impact of each action on other life forms. Therefore, green grass represents health and welfare for the entire ecosystem, while dry grass symbolises disease and death. As the title of the novel implies, the death of grass signifies the destruction of the whole world. Thus, Christopher emphasises the human species’ insignificance on Earth; the devastating power of nature overwhelms humans who profess to be in charge of it. One of the most important details in the novel is that Christopher maintains a satirical tone in the characters’ attitudes towards the environmental disaster. In other words, The Death of Grass satirises the characters’ ignorance, subtly implying that British society as a whole is unaware of these problems. In the beginning, the main characters of the 18 Robert Macfarlane, introduction to The Death of Grass, by John Christopher. (London: Penguin Classics, 2009), accessed October 13, 2021, Google Books, https://www.google.com.tr/books/edition/The_Death_of_Grass/sPZ1GtHasZIC?hl =tr&gbpv=1&dq=Introduction.+The+Death+of+Grass,+by+John+Christopher.+Pe nguin,+2009.&printsec=frontcover.

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novel believe that the ecological disaster in China is far from them. Since they have not yet experienced its direct effects, the virus seems incomprehensible to them: “‘There’s such a richness everywhere. Look at all this, and then think of the poor wretched Chinese.’”19 Even though there is a lot of evidence around, the characters still cannot believe the reality of the disaster. As Olivia, Roger’s wife, puts it, “‘It’s hard to believe,’ . . . ‘isn’t it—that it really does kill all the grass where it gets a foothold?’”20 They ignore the calamity with indifference and scepticism. Their confidence in science and their inability to grasp the seriousness of the situation are unaffected by the growing evidence of hunger and mass crop destruction in the East. Moreover, while little children are starving in the Far East, they can talk, laugh, and joke about it since they live “in a land as peaceful and rich” as theirs.21 When a radio broadcast of the situation in China states that “the lowest possible figure for deaths in China famine must be set at two hundred million people,” Roger makes inhumane remarks and says, “‘What’s two hundred million?’ . . . ‘There’s an awful lot of Chinks in China. They’ll breed ‘em back again in a couple of generations.”22 After David expresses that they are lucky, though, that “a virus could have hit wheat in just the same way,”23 his brother, John, asks if it would have the same effect. He continues that they are not dependent on wheat in the same way that the Chinese and Asians in general depend on rice. John and the other characters view themselves as distinct citizens of a Western country, belonging to a civilization that is immune to the Chung-Li virus. They regard themselves as superior to the Chinese people, who are dying of starvation since they have not yet been affected by the virus. In fact, Christopher examines the limits of civilization and morality for the sake of the survival of the human species when confronted with a calamity of its own making. As a result of the destruction of all grasses, the story of the frightening hunger, forced migration, and violence that people face is depicted in the novel. The desperation of science paves the way for the collapse of civilization. All humans struggle to survive and become vicious gangs competing for self-defence. There is no order in this postapocalyptic world anymore. Middle-class people are in decline and fighting an anxious battle for survival. Britain, which always claims to be a “civilised” country, believes that it is necessary to reduce the population so 19

Christopher, The Death of Grass, 15. Ibid., 32. 21 Ibid., 17. 22 Ibid., 22. 23 Ibid., 17. 20

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that food sources can last longer and decides to bomb London, along with all other major cities. In this sense, as Macfarlane indicates, “The Death of Grass is distinguished by the implacability of its narrative tone, and the alarming speed at which morality is shown to decompose under emergency conditions.”24 It prophesies an ecological apocalypse while underscoring the fragility of human civilization and conscience. When analysed in the light of an ecocentric perspective, it is implied in the novel that viewing plant life (the grass in the novel) as a commodity existing just for the use of human species is a huge mistake since all living and non-living beings on the planet are interconnected. In this respect, Christopher opens up “a space to reconsider the vegetal as a distinct life form itself, beyond its instrumental use-value, or as an anthropomorphized reflection of human thought” by destabilising the relationship between plants and humans.25 In other words, while plant life is regarded as inferior, the death of grass proves the importance of plants in the ecosystem. With the annihilation of grasses, animals cannot be fed and must be killed, which means the depletion of animal food sources as well as plant food sources. David describes this dire situation in the letter he sent to his brother, John, as follows: ‘There isn’t a blade of grass left in the valley. I killed the last of the cows yesterday — I understand that someone in London had the sense to arrange for an extension of refrigeration space during last winter, but it won’t be enough to cope with the beef that will be coming under the knife in the next few weeks. I’m salting mine. Even if things go right, it will be years before this country knows what meat is again — or milk, or cheese.26

Presenting the interdependence between plant life and human life, The Death of Grass addresses the problem of the anthropocentric perspective that leads to the belittlement or even disregard of life forms like plants. Besides, it seems that among the characters, only farmer David is concerned about the virus and comprehends its catastrophic potential. In the letter, he suggests that John and his family come to the valley when things get out of hand and adds, “‘. . . We can live on root crops and pork — I’m keeping the pigs going because they’re the only animals I know that might thrive on a diet of potatoes. We’ll manage very well here. It’s the land 24

Macfarlane, introduction to The Death of Grass. Graham J. Matthews, “What We Think About When We Think About Triffids: The Monstrous Vegetal in Post-war British Science Fiction,” in Plant Horror: Approaches to the Monstrous Vegetal in Fiction and Film, ed. Dawn Keetley and Angela Tenga (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 111. 26 Christopher, The Death of Grass, 42-3. 25

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outside I’m worried about.’”27 Despite the reassuring statements from the authorities, David is able to notice the effects of the virus and comprehend its devastating outcomes. It could be argued that his ability to perceive and recognise the virus is based on his knowledge of ecology and nature as a farmer. In fact, the novel depicts many instances in which the alarming signs of the virus are evident. For example, while driving, John looks at the strewn autumn leaves and the clean suburban grass. As the car passes through an area of ten or fifteen yards where the grass has been uprooted, leaving nothing but barren ground, he says in disbelief, “‘No, I don’t think so, really. It couldn’t happen, could it?’”28 Another proof is revealed when the Custances and Buckleys head down to the beach with the kids for the summer vacation. Unlike the usual trips, this feels like “a strange journey through a land showing only the desolate bareness of virus-choked ground, interspersed with fields where the abandoned grain crops had been replaced by roots.”29 However, they continue to deny its power to affect them. As Ann states, their “minds can’t grasp it properly.”30 It is not possible for them to understand or estimate the impact of a virus that is unseen. They realise the danger of the virus only after witnessing events such as chaos, murder, rape, and government-planned genocide. Thus, before describing the decline of society and humanity’s return to a primitive community, Christopher constantly highlights the characters’ doubts about the virus’s significance and impact. Furthermore, the anthropocentric outlook has created such a barrier between nature and human beings that, while trying to eradicate the virus, authorities act without considering the benefit of the ecosystem. At first, the authorities thought that by removing affected crops and clearing the area surrounding them, they could keep the virus under control until a way to completely destroy it was developed. However, this method does not work, so they create a chemical to destroy the virus. In other words, they prefer to employ a short-term and inefficient solution rather than develop ecofriendly, sustainable methods. The conversation between Roger and John reflects it: [Roger] said: ‘Remember Isotope 717?’ ‘The stuff they sprayed the rice with?’ ‘Yes. There were two schools of thought about tackling that virus. One wanted to find something that would kill the virus; the other thought the best 27

Ibid., 43. Ibid., 33. 29 Ibid., 44. 30 Ibid., 80. 28

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line was breeding a virus-resistant rice strain. The second obviously required more time, and so got less attention. Then the people on the first tack came up with 717, found it overwhelmingly effective against the virus, and rushed it into action.’31

In the following lines of the conversation, it is mentioned that this problem could be solved appropriately if there was virus-resistant rice. However, due to a lack of foresight and ecological awareness among the inventors and users of Isotope 717, the virus mutated. They identified four phases before introducing the chemical, and it killed all of them. Yet they discover the fifth phase after realising that they did not completely eliminate the virus. Before Isotope 717 starts working, the stronger virus variants disguise Phase 5 and manage to keep it dormant. When 717 destroys the others, Phase 5 becomes free to exhibit itself. Besides, it differs from its predecessors in one significant way: while the Chung-Li virus was only interested in rice crops, Phase 5 feasts on all types of grass. As a result, a virus that devastates grass, which is regarded as an “unimportant component of existence,” causes human society to collapse. Moreover, with Isotope 717, which is offered as a solution by the authorities in the novel, Christopher highlights the devastating effects of hazardous chemicals and genetically modified organisms on the ecosystem. Reflecting Rachel Carson’s warnings in Silent Spring, the novel shows that human-produced poisons for the benefit of humans in the short term cause long-term disasters by upsetting the balance of the planet. In this sense, The Death of Grass, “like so many narratives of eco-apocalypse, is a vision of nature’s revenge for its sustained mistreatment – a return of the repressed.”32 Akin to other fictional works created in response to the overuse and misuse of the Earth’s resources, The Death of Grass highlights the coming effects of the reckless, disastrous neglect of humankind on nature. As the narrative develops, the leaked news regarding Phase 5 of the Chung-Li virus sparks major riots in the regions of the Far East closest to the infection’s epicentre. However, the Western countries watch this chaos only “with benevolent concern”33 and offer their “deepest sympathy.”34 As efforts to eradicate the virus continue in laboratories around the world, grain is sent to affected areas. However, all the efforts fail, and Phase 5 reaches all parts of the globe like its predecessors. While the West harvests roughly three-quarters of a normal crop, the East struggles with a much worse situation. By August, it becomes obvious that, compared to slightly better31

Ibid., 25-6. Macfarlane, introduction to The Death of Grass. 33 Christopher, The Death of Grass, 30. 34 Ibid., 31. 32

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off Burma and Japan, India faces a severe crop shortage and a resulting famine. Moreover, the issue of assisting disaster-stricken areas begins to take on a new dimension in the West. In an effort to help China in the spring, world reserve stocks have already been severely reduced. Therefore, with the possibility of a poor harvest even in the least impacted areas, Western countries decide to keep their stocks to themselves. The US House of Representatives enacts “an amendment to a Presidential bill of food aid, calling for a Plimsoll line for food stocks for home use,” proclaiming that “a certain minimum tonnage of all foods was to be kept in reserve, to be used inside the United States only.”35 Although it seems that Western countries think about their own citizens and future in their decisions, it can be claimed that Christopher emphasises the issue of environmental injustice. As explained in the first chapter, environmental justice requires the equal treatment of all individuals, irrespective of their race, colour, income, or nationality, in the development of environmental policies and laws. When a group of people are unequally affected by environmental problems due to any form of discrimination, then environmental injustice occurs. As David Schlosberg points out, the most apparent and frequently cited proof of environmental injustice in the world is the unequal distributive burden of environmental problems that poor communities, indigenous communities, communities of colour, and communities with economies other than the neoliberal model must bear.36 The emphasis here is on how the distribution of environmental threats reflects social and cultural disparities. The problem of inequality in general encompasses a wide range of concerns, one of which is the inequity of access to healthy and adequate food. The food policy observed in the novel is a clear example of environmental injustice, with Western countries engaging in racial discrimination by being reluctant to deliver food to Eastern countries and keeping all stocks for themselves. Unable to suppress her rage at the announcement of the US’s food stock policy, Ann says, “‘Millions facing famine . . . and those fat old men refuse them food.”37 Roger, who believes the United States’ decision is justifiable, says, “‘If I were giving the orders in this country, there wouldn’t have been any cake for the past three months, and precious little bread either. And I still wouldn’t have had any grain to spare for the Asiatics. Good God! Don’t you people ever look at the economic facts of

35

Ibid., 30. David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice: Theories, Movements, and Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 79. 37 Christopher, The Death of Grass, 31. 36

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this country?’”38 Roger’s stance reveals yet another common negative attitude of developed countries and people towards global environmental problems. That is, only the world’s underdeveloped and overpopulated areas are bound to suffer the devastating effects of a major environmental issue because they lack the technology or medication to cope with it effectively. In fact, Roger is the most anthropocentric and selfish character in the novel, who contemplates the economic dimension of the virus for the countries and argues that the economy is more important than anything else, even dying humans. His thoughts and attitudes about the subjects of devastated ecology, hunger in other countries, and the food policies of countries confirm his human-centred stance. Unlike Roger, Ann is a caring and thoughtful character in her attitude towards starving and dying people. She emphatically thinks of the people who are fighting and dying from famine in the eastern part of the world. In response to Roger’s brutal attitude, she utters, “‘If we stand by and let those millions starve without lifting a finger to help, then we deserve to have the same happen to us.’”39 Although the official statement highlights the extent of hunger, implying that any relief will be insignificant, it ignores the question of whether food can be preserved to comfort the sufferers. As the scope of the calamity and its spread to Western countries become clearer, advocates of sending supplies remain in the minority. It is evident from this instance that sophisticated, healthy, and wealthy Western people will want to do nothing but grieve for the millions of starving people on the other side of the world, as the disaster does not directly affect them. One of the most significant points in the novel is that, prior to the calamity, vegetation is portrayed as an ordinary thing in human life, something that is hence unnoticed and frequently disregarded. Nonetheless, the mass extinction of the grasses triggers the onset of hideous behaviour among people. When winter comes, the news from the East continues to worsen. India, Burma, and Indo-China all succumb to famine and barbarism. Japan and the Soviet Union’s eastern states follow them, and Pakistan bursts into “a desperate wave of Western conquest” that reaches Turkey before being stopped, despite the fact that it is made up of “starving and unarmed vagabonds.”40 Yet, the countries that have not been significantly harmed by the Chung-Li virus continue to be astounded by the situation. When David says that he has seen the nasty pictures of the events in the East, Ann responds, “‘That was the East, though, wasn’t it? Even if things were to get short — this country’s more disciplined. We’ve been used 38

Ibid., 31-2. Ibid., 32. 40 Ibid., 33. 39

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to rationing and shortages. And at present there’s no sign of any real trouble.’”41 Despite the virus making its way into Europe and wiping off entire crops, people in the West still do not take it seriously. Even after the virus has infected their country and they have seen growing, visible proofs, such as barren and lifeless fields, they are unable to comprehend its permanence. Although they think and talk about the seriousness of the situation from time to time, they prefer to keep their minds at ease by holding on to the optimistic image drawn by the government and the media without questioning too much. “After all, as the Press has told us sufficiently often, we’re not Asiatics”42 says Roger in a conversation among themselves and continues to deny the virus’s power to affect them. The overconfidence of Western countries like Britain causes them to believe that it is inevitable for the East to fail in the fight against the virus but that they can overcome it. According to them, the calamity in the East was brought on by the sort of carelessness one could anticipate from Asians. Despite the fact that the virus may not be entirely eradicable from the fields, Australians and New Zealanders claim to have shown that it can be kept under control there. Hence, they assert that with the same level of care, the West can endure endlessly with no greater consequences than short commons. It is claimed that the battle against the virus in the laboratory continues and that victory over the invisible foe is getting closer with each passing day. They do not take the ecological destruction happening in Asia seriously due to their strong trust in science and technology. They consider it simply a temporary situation until the virus problem is resolved, as Roger’s words reflect: ‘We’re a brilliant race,’ . . . ‘We found out how to use coal and oil, and when they showed the first signs of running out we got ready to hop on the nuclear energy wagon. The mind boggles at man’s progress in the last hundred years. If I were a Martian, I wouldn’t take odds even of a thousand to one on intellect of that kind being defeated by a little thing like a virus.43

Christopher portrays the Chung-Li virus as a deadly ecological calamity that has the potential to overthrow the human species with its entire scientific and technological means. In other words, Christopher emphasises that whatever the conditions or magnificence of human civilization may be, the power of nature should not be underestimated and that ecological disasters have a crucial impact in determining the fate of the human species. In John Fletcher’s words, in The Death of Grass, all civilised “qualities are 41

Ibid., 36. Ibid., 41. 43 Ibid., 27. 42

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overturned when a mutating virus attacks seed-bearing herbage and robs man of his daily bread in a ‘silent spring’ beyond even Rachel Carson’s worst imagining.”44 It is obvious that even with all its technology and advances, the great human civilization remains vulnerable to destruction and falls mainly as a result of environmental catastrophes such as the emergence of a virus. It is only when the Chung-Li virus mutates and attacks all grains a few years after its outbreak that Westerners are forced to accept the impact of the virus and struggle to survive in a famine-affected, violent, and crumbling society. Following the virus’s increasing vigour, governments present their own evaluations of the situation. The United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand decide to impose rationing on their populations to ensure that their grain stocks can endure the impending famine. Similar but more severe rationing is implemented in Britain for grain products and meat. As food rationing tightens, it is reported that in some other countries similarly situated, food riots emerge, particularly in those bordering the Mediterranean. This is met with pride in London, which contrasts that “indiscipline with its own patient and orderly queues for goods in short supply.”45 It is indicated in the novel that again it falls to the British people “to set an example to the world in the staunch and steadfast bearing of their misfortunes.” Even if things get worse, “patience and fortitude” are something they “know will not fail.’”46 Here, the anthropocentric British arrogance can be observed clearly, which reflects the view that British people are special and they can overcome any problem, no matter what it is. The British government’s approach to the crisis caused by the Chung-Li virus initially begins with rationing of bread and meat. However, as the situation becomes more serious, it rapidly devolves into lying and turning against its citizens. Roger Buckley, who has powerful connections, obtains a piece of secret information detailing the government’s plans to wipe out both major cities and their hungry inhabitants: “‘Atom bombs for the small cities, hydrogen bombs for places like Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds — and two or three of them for London. It doesn’t matter about wasting them — they won’t be needed in the foreseeable future.’”47 It is quite ironic that an “insignificant” virus drives humans to abuse nuclear weapons against their own kind by wiping out all traces of civilization when the ugliness of primitive impulses emerges. 44 John Fletcher, “Cultural Pessimists: The Tradition of Christopher Priest’s Fiction,” The International Fiction Review 3, no. 1 (1976): 21. 45 Christopher, The Death of Grass, 46. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid., 50.

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Following the horrible news of the bombing, John and Roger decide to take their children from preparatory schools and move their families out of London. After taking his daughter Mary, John has to get away from a school of young students and teachers, knowing that they are in an area that will be closed when the bombs drop. They proceed to fetch his son Davey after picking up Mary and barely fleeing London by shooting two young soldiers on the road with the assistance of a gun shop owner named Pirrie. As the country starts to descend into terrible violence and anarchy, the characters’ monstrosities come out, and the feelings of compassion and guilt quickly fade. When their son insists on bringing his closest friend along with them, John and Ann are compelled to face their own conscience once more. Surprisingly, Ann, the most compassionate character in the novel, mercilessly refuses to let the little boy come with them and save his life, choosing to leave him to his inevitable death with the rest of the school. This act symbolises a turning point in the narrative, a point beyond which the protagonists’ morality can no longer be redeemed. From this moment on, they accept the dark future towards which humanity is heading and come to terms with the new cruel and brutal reality caused by environmental doom. They are no longer able to recognise themselves, as the conversation between Ann and John reflects: ‘Before all this is over ... are we going to hate ourselves? Or are we just going to get used to things, so that we don’t realize what we’re turning into?’ John said: ‘I don't know. I don’t know anything, except that we’ve got to save ourselves and save the children.’ ‘Save them for what?’ ‘We can work that out later. Things seem brutal now — leaving without saying a word to all the others who don’t know what’s going to happen — but we can’t help it. When we get to the valley, it will be different. We shall have a chance of living decently again.’48

After committing their first murder and escaping London, John’s gang completely abandons the social order by becoming a part of a postapocalyptic world in which robbery, assault, and homicide are prevalent. Throughout the group’s travels across the British countryside, more people are killed by John and his followers, along with a defenceless mother. The debates about what is right and wrong gradually end since there is no longer any right or wrong, only survival and death. Before the apocalypse, they had been a part of a virtuous society that had existed for approximately four thousand years. It was gone in a day. As the plot develops, Ann and her daughter Mary are kidnapped and raped along the way; Pirrie kills his wife 48

Ibid., 55-6.

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and compels a young girl to be his partner; and John leads a vicious and expanding group of starving survivors looking for a safe place. The interactions between people become increasingly unpleasant, and by the time the gang reaches Blind Gill, John and his group have changed dramatically from the characters introduced at the beginning of the novel. At the end of the novel, when the characters arrive at the valley where they can survive, it is emphasised that not much is left of their humanity but only distorted and corrupted parts. When they think about the atrocities they were involved in, they realise how they have lost their humanity, as mentioned in the novel: they witnessed the signs, by now familiar, of the predatory animal that man had become: houses burning, an occasional cry in the distance that might be either of distress or savage exultance, the sights and sounds of murder. And another of their senses was touched — here and there their nostrils were pricked by the sour-sweet smell of flesh in corruption.49

The stunning twist happens when John and his gang reach David’s rural farm, Blind Gill. David immediately informs John that there is not enough space for all the people he has brought, but only for his family members. However, John, who has now turned into “a kind of gangster boss,” does not accept this offer and decides to take his entire group in, saying grimly that nothing will stop him from getting all of them to safety. So, John and Pirrie make a plan to sneak up on the valley and take control of it, which results in David and Pirrie’s deaths. They have committed terrible acts throughout this entire course of events, as Ann admits: “We’ve done beastly things. Some of us more so than others, perhaps, but all of us to some extent.”50 Despite knowing this, they prefer to leave behind what they have become and forget all that has happened, believing that they are going to be “happy and human again.”51 In conclusion, The Death of Grass is a ground-breaking novel in the catastrophe fiction and eco-science fiction genres, depicting England, devastated along with the Asian continent, plunged into famine and chaos by a virus that attacks the crops humans need to live. In response to the Anthropocene era, when urbanisation increased and humans exploited natural resources to the fullest regardless of environmental ethics, John Christopher depicts a post-apocalyptic scenario in which plants directly determine the destiny of humankind. In fact, as Macfarlane emphasises, “In 49

Ibid., 170. Ibid., 159. 51 Ibid., 171. 50

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the opening chapters, Christopher sketches an environmental context for the emergence of Chung-li: years of over-production, a turn to mono-culture, and the excessive use of pesticides to maximise yield following the privations of the War.”52 Hence, all this pressure on nature makes an ecological disaster inevitable. In one of the scenes, Ann says, “‘In a way, I think I feel it would be more right for the virus to win, anyway. For years now, we’ve treated the land as though it were a piggy-bank, to be raided. And the land, after all, is life itself.’”53 With Ann’s words, Christopher emphasises humanity’s erroneous approach to land, reflecting the ecocentric viewpoint, especially Leopold’s view that the land is not merely soil but a living organism. He argues that the main causes of the depicted environmental disaster are the continued exploitation of land, the ignorance of its intrinsic value, and the failure to understand the fact that it is life itself. As a result, the annihilation of grass, another component of life, drives humans to tyranny, brutality, and barbarism, emphasising how important grass is in the ecosystem. Lastly, like other science fiction novels that concentrate on ecological disasters, The Death of Grass also highlights the importance of developing a more ecocentric and holistic approach to environmental problems by considering the balance of the ecosystem.

52 53

Macfarlane, introduction to The Death of Grass. Christopher, The Death of Grass, 43.

CHAPTER IV INDUSTRIAL WASTE AND DROUGHT

J. G. Ballard James Graham Ballard (1930–2009) was a British short story writer, essayist, and novelist best known for his post-apocalyptic novels, which helped him become identified with the New Wave movement of science fiction. Ballard was born on November 15, 1930, in Shanghai, China, where his father worked as a chemist for a big Manchester textile business. As Ballard explains in his autobiographical article “From Shanghai to Shepperton,” this business had a subsidiary in Shanghai, where his father served as chairman and managing director throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s. Therefore, he grew up in the Shanghai International Settlement, a foreign-controlled neighbourhood where all the foreigners had an American way of life.1 Ballard states that the people in this region possessed residences in the American style, with air conditioning and refrigerators, as well as American automobiles. Until 1946, the year he moved to the United Kingdom, he had never seen an English automobile. He was sent to the Cathedral School in Shanghai, where the headmaster was a very dictatorial British clergyman. Ballard notes that the headmaster would set rules for some minor infractions, such as copying about thirty pages of a school exercise book. He claims that this circumstance was a major factor in encouraging him to begin writing his own stories.2 Ballard admits that Shanghai was one of the world’s most unusual and weird cities, a place where nothing was off limits; there was a clash of every possible political and social atmosphere. The war and its effects, therefore, dominated the majority of his childhood. After the Sino-Japanese War started in 1937, his family was forced to evacuate their suburban home and rent a house in central Shanghai to avoid being bombed by Chinese and Japanese soldiers. The International Settlement in Shanghai was seized by 1

J. G. Ballard and David Pringle, “From Shanghai to Shepperton,” in The Profession of Science Fiction: SF Writers on their Crafts and Ideas, ed. Maxim Jakubowski and Edward James (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), 44. 2 Ibid., 45.

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the Japanese after the Pearl Harbor attack, and the internment of Allied civilians began in early 1943. Ballard, his parents, and his younger sister were all held in the concentration camp for more than two years. He went to school in the camp, where the teachers were all camp prisoners from various occupations. These early experiences of “extremity and displacement” are described in Ballard’s fictionalised autobiography, Empire of the Sun (1984).3 The apocalyptic atmosphere and setting of his fiction novels are considered to be the result of his early exposure to the turmoil of war. Ballard moved to England with his mother and sister after the end of the war in 1946. They lived in Plymouth, and he went to The Leys School in Cambridge. A few years later, in about 1948, Ballard’s mother and sister went back to China to rejoin their father. When he was not at school in Cambridge, he stayed with his grandparents in Birmingham for about a year. Ballard recalls his grandfather as “a very straightlaced puritanical Edwardian gentleman.”4 He states that his grandparents, who were in their 70s following WWII, were furious right-wing conservatives. According to Ballard, his grandparents were confronted with the apocalypse of the postwar Labour Government, which wrecked their entire world. In 1949, his mother returned from China while his father remained there. In the same year, he began studying medicine at King’s College, Cambridge, with the intention of becoming a psychiatrist. While still in school, he developed a strong interest in psychoanalysis and devoured nearly all of Sigmund Freud’s works. In addition, he was already producing a significant amount of experimental fiction during this time, which could be classified as avantgarde fiction, and he was greatly influenced by the psychoanalysis he had studied, Kafka, and surrealist painters. Although his one or two earliest short stories, which were submitted to Horizon, were dismissed by the editors, he won the crime story competition with his short story “The Violent Noon” in 1951, when he was in his second year at Cambridge. It was written as a pastiche of a particular Hemingwayesque short story with the aim of winning the competition. After witnessing how well his story was received, Ballard decided to dedicate all his effort to seeking a career as a writer. Indeed, he aspired to be a writer and pursue a medical career at the same time at this point in his life. However, understanding that he would not have time to write while practising clinical medicine, he dropped out of his medical studies and registered at London University in October 1951 to study English literature. Unfortunately, he was expelled at the end of the year for not possessing the 3

Roger Luckhurst, “BALLARD, James Graham,” in The Concise New Makers of Modern Culture, ed. Justin Wintle (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), 38. 4 Ballard and Pringle, “From Shanghai,” 49.

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necessary prerequisites to become an English literature student. Ballard then worked as a copywriter for an advertising agency and sold encyclopaedias. He continued to write short stories but was unable to find a publisher for them. In 1954, Ballard enlisted in the Royal Air Force and was sent to the Royal Air Force flight training camp in Canada. As he notes, that is where he “discovered science fiction, in the magazine racks of the airbase cafeteria, and [he has] never looked back since!”5 While still serving in the RAF, he penned his first science fiction story, “Passport to Eternity,” which was a kind of pastiche and a summary of all the American SF he had read in Canada. Ballard expresses his interest in science fiction with these words: “I think I simply hadn’t found the narrative conventions which would carry my real interests, and when I stumbled on science fiction I realized ‘Ah! this is the right vehicle for my imagination.’”6 He claims that he was writing against the background of British and American fiction in the early 1950s, at the peak of the naturalistic novel, in which he had no interest. Wolfe’s Limbo 90 was one of the books that inspired him to write science fiction. For him, reading Limbo 90 and seeing a creative imagination unleashed was truly inspirational. Ballard wrote a number of SF stories, including “Escapement,” which was published in New Worlds (a British SF magazine), and “Prima Belladonna,” which appeared in Science Fantasy (a British fantasy and SF magazine); these were the two short stories that made his debut in science fiction. In fact, Ballard states that at first he aspired to write for American magazines. It is because he claims that it never occurred to him to write to British ones and that he did not even think he was familiar with the New Worlds.7 He adds that American magazines of that time were much more extensively distributed. According to Ballard, American magazines had a far greater degree of professionalism, and Galaxy was the magazine he respected the most (he regrets having no stories published in it). Yet Edward John “Ted” Carnell, the editor of New Worlds, encouraged Ballard to go on writing in his own way and published almost all of his early stories. Thus, by 1956, he had established a long-term relationship with New Worlds magazine, in which he published his experimental short stories. These stories were collected in The Voices of Time and Other Stories (1962), Billennium (1962), Passport to Eternity (1963), The Four-Dimensional Nightmare (1963), The Terminal Beach (1964), The Impossible Man (1966), The Overloaded Man (1967), The Disaster Area (1967), The Day of Forever 5

Ibid., 56. Ibid., 59-60. 7 Ibid., 58. 6

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(1967), Vermillion Sands (1971), and Chronopolis and Other Stories (1971). Furthermore, Ballard’s passion for the visual arts led to his participation in the burgeoning Pop Art movement, and he exhibited a series of collages in the late 1950s that mirrored his ideas for a new form of novel. He notes that there were many other pop artefacts that made a tremendous impression on him when he attended the “Tomorrow” exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1956. He was taken aback by the fact that these are the types of issues that a science fiction writer should be concerned with. He states that the pop artists’ approach seemed to be similar to that of science fiction. In other words, the pop artists were seriously engaged with the world they were a part of. So he believed the science fiction writer needed to take the same steps to escape from time travel, interplanetary travel, telepathy, and “all this nonsense.”8 Many critics today rank Ballard as one of the most influential post-war authors, particularly due to his “subversion of the indigenous novel.”9 However, this recognition has taken time owing to the fact that he was primarily known as a science fiction writer for the first half of his career. Ballard has had great success in helping to transform perceptions of this underrated genre. He achieved this by “fusing the low cultural energies of science fiction with the avant-garde in the 1960s, using it to produce an extraordinary vision of alienated, science-fictionalized existence in the advanced capitalist West.”10 Thanks to his strong depiction skills and interest in Surrealist art, landscapes play an important role in Ballard’s novels. As D. Harlan Wilson highlights, his novels The Drought and The Crystal World “narrativize Surrealist artwork in such a way that landscapes often seem more alive and cognizant than many of the characters, who, pursuing complex desires for agency and self-discovery, interact with the landscapes in meaningful, ‘interpersonal’ ways.”11 Therefore, Ballard is known for his highly stylized depictions of vividly depicted landscapes. The most obvious and long-lasting influence on his writing in this regard has been Surrealist painting, especially the paintings of Salvador Dali and Paul Delvaux. In addition, Ballard’s interest in psychology and the psychological significance of desolate landscapes and collapsed technology dominate much of his writing. In general, he avoided science fiction topics like space 8

Ibid., 64. Luckhurst, “BALLARD,” 38. 10 Ibid. 11 D. Harlan Wilson, “DISASTER AREAS: The Natural Disaster Quartet,” in J. G. Ballard (University of Illinois Press, 2017), 54. 9

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travel, time travel, and aliens, preferring to focus on the human mind. Ballard published a controversial literary manifesto titled “Which Way to Inner Space?” in 1962, in which he argues that creative sci-fi should abandon the repetition of outer space stories in favour of exploring the inner space of the human psyche. Taking inspiration from Sigmund Freud and the surrealists, Ballard remarked that science fiction writers should concentrate on psychological investigation instead of the space exploration commonly described in more traditional SF. Using the phrase “inner space” to characterise the subject of his concerns, Ballard states that The biggest developments of the immediate future will take place, not on the Moon or Mars, but on Earth, and it is inner space, not outer, that needs to be explored. The only truly alien planet is Earth. In the past the scientific bias of s-f has been towards the physical sciences–rocketry, electronics, cybernetics–and the emphasis should switch to the biological sciences.12

In a nutshell, abandoned landscapes, the characters’ entranced immobility, and the simple and lively narrative style are the elements that distinguish Ballard’s works. He is known for his portrayal of a postapocalyptic world in his novels. The first four novels, in particular, discuss the global catastrophe in which a natural disaster puts human life at stake on earth and causes the fragmentation of civilization. In fact, Ballard rose to prominence in the early 1960s after publishing his eco-disaster tetralogy: The Wind from Nowhere (1961), The Drowned World (1962), The Burning World (1964; also The Drought, 1965), and The Crystal World (1966). In these novels, the planet Earth is destroyed by wind, flood, drought, and crystallisation. Lorenz J. Firsching remarks that “each of the four . . . depicts present-day civilization being destroyed by one of the classical elements (by air, water, fire, and earth, respectively).”13 Each explores a different catastrophic event and the unusual behaviours of the few survivors. As Luckhurst emphasises, in the so-called “Disaster Quartet,” “Unlike the heroic tradition where a band of scientists or engineers reverse the disaster and save humankind, Ballard’s enervated figures seek ways of actively embracing the post-disaster world, often finally choosing physical death.”14 Only in The Wind from Nowhere can a character be said 12 J. G. Ballard, “Which way to inner space?” in Science Fiction Criticism: An Anthology of Essential Writings, ed. Rob Latham (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2017), 103. 13 Lorenz J. Firsching and R. M. P., “J.G. Ballard’s Ambiguous Apocalypse (L’apocalypse Ambiguë de J.G. Ballard),” Science Fiction Studies 12, no. 3 (1985): 297. 14 Luckhurst, “BALLARD,” 38.

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to wage a typical sci-fi battle against calamity. In other novels, the characters remain passive and embrace doom as a metaphysical completion. To mention it briefly, in The Wind from Nowhere, the first novel in the series, powerful, accelerating winds sweep the entire planet, destroying civilization. The Drowned World is the second novel of these four and focuses on the ecological transformation of the earth as a result of climatic devastation. Taking place in 2145, the novel depicts a future London that has been inundated due to climate change. An unexpected increase in solar radiation damages the Earth’s atmosphere, transforming the flora and fauna and making it difficult for humans to survive. The whole planet is submerged, and a band of scientists work in a biological testing station where they are in charge of mapping the inhabitable parts of the Earth with its newly formed ecosystem. Unlike The Drowned World, the third novel, The Burning World, depicts a world where water is limited. Following a prolonged drought, rivers have receded and the land has turned to dust, causing human beings to travel to the oceans in quest of water. The last novel in the series, The Crystal World, portrays the dystopian end of humanity and the planet, hastened by an unidentified and fatal virus that causes biological life to crystallise and freeze. Ballard explains why he used and reused the disaster story as follows: I wanted to deal with a large canvas. I was interested in events, if you like; systems of a very large area. The entire biological kingdom viewed as a single organism, as a single continuing vast memory. In fact I’ve never thought of them as being disaster stories, because I don’t see them as having unhappy endings. The hero follows the logic of his own mind; and I feel that anyone who does this is, in a sense, fulfilling himself. I regard all those novels as stories of psychic fulfilment.15

Therefore, all four novels focus not only on the change of the ecosystem to a great extent and on the way people move towards a new and entirely altered relationship with the environment, but also on the psychological transformation of the characters in this context. As he tells Linnett, for Ballard, the apocalyptic scene is indeed the way he sends his characters on a kind of journey. He states the reason for concentrating on the inner world of human beings as follows: I was dealing with states of tremendous psychological crisis and transformation. Possibly because of my own background in the Far East during the war, and so on. I’ve always felt that there are situations such as 15 Peter Linnett, “J. G. Ballard Interview,” Corridor 5 (1974), accessed November 7, 2021, https://www.jgballard.ca/media/1973_corridor5.html.

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great natural disasters, or wars -- huge transformations of ordinary life where the barriers between external world and internal world of the mind begin to break down, and you get a kind of overlap. All this seemed to me a very potent, very powerful area --- for my imagination anyway.16

Thus, Ballard, inspired by his own psychological transformations, associates the inner chaos of his characters with the external disruptions in their physical surroundings. While his early novels were simplistic yet creative science fiction, frequently centred on natural disasters, his later works were more about post-technological issues with astonishing visual landscapes. Ballard depicts the theme of technological collapse not in a harsh, cataclysmic manner but rather as a slow degradation, which he conveys through both landscape and what has come to be recognised as “inner space.” Other novels depicting, in Tim Woods’ words, “obsessive characters searching for something beyond normal life in a surreal fusion of environment and the unconscious” include Crash (1973), about a man’s sexual fantasies linked to his fixation with dying in a car accident (David Cronenberg turned it into a controversial film in 1996), Concrete Island (1974), The Day of Creation (1987), and Cocaine Nights (1996).17 Aside from these works, his recent novels include Running Wild (1989); The Kindness of Women (1991), a sequel to his 1984 novel Empire of the Sun; Rushing to Paradise (1995); Super-Cannes (2000), “which deals with the executive super-capitalist dreams of utopia and explores how we might yet escape that dark and violent cul-de-sac,” Millennium People (2003), and Kingdom Come (2006).18 A User’s Guide to the Millennium (1996) is a collection of his journalism. In summary, Ballard is regarded as one of Britain’s best writers, and his works have earned him the term “Ballardian,” which means “resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in Ballard’s novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak artificial landscapes, and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments.”19 Ballard is a very prolific writer, yet in this study I focus on the environmental catastrophe that he deals with in his first four novels, known as the “disaster quartet.” As Wilson notes, “some reviewers called 16

Ibid. Tim Woods, Who’s Who of Twentieth Century Novelists, ed. Tim Woods (New York: Routledge, 2001), 28. 18 Ibid., 29. 19 “Ballardian,” Collins English Dictionary, accessed September 27, 2021. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/ballardian. 17

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these novels cautionary tales that warned against anthropogenic activity.”20 Based on this view, the following sub-chapter aims to explore the role of anthropogenic actions on ecology in Ballard’s novel The Drought from an ecocritical perspective.

The Drought The Drought is an extended version of The Burning World, which was previously published in 1964. While the exact publication date of this novel is unknown, it was first published in 1965 with a new title, The Drought, by Jonathan Cape. It is worth noting that although The Drought appears to be a substantially expanded version of The Burning World, Ballard just divided the original chapters into shorter ones and gave them new titles. Only several passages have been significantly changed; however, such modifications are rare and usually limited to the first few chapters. The majority of the alterations between the two versions are in the form of additional sentences. There are only a few more pages in The Drought, and the plot remains the same. The novel, as the title implies, depicts a world where the human race fights for water and all life is on the verge of extinction due to a global drought caused by industrial waste. As a polluting molecular layer forms on the surface of the oceans that prevents evaporation, the Earth turns into a gigantic desert. The environment gradually changes as cities made of concrete are surrounded by seas of scorching sand rather than arable land, and the seashore recedes to reveal endless crystalline salt deserts. Fires turn trees and buildings to white ash, causing the world to perish and society to collapse. In brief, Ballard extrapolates a world in which human activities have resulted in an ominous future marked by extreme drought. In this sense, The Drought can be considered a suitable text for an ecocritical study since it depicts the interrelationship between humans and ecosystems. The main characters in the novel are Dr. Charles Ransom; his divorced wife, Judith; his friend Philip Jordan, the mysterious young man who wanders around the lake alone and disappears constantly; Jordan’s blind foster father; the “witchlike” alcoholic Mrs. Quilter; her retarded son Quilter; Quilter’s protector, the snobbish rich architect Richard Foster Lomax; his malicious spoiled sister Miranda Lomax; the zookeeper Catherine Austen; and the Reverend Howard Johnstone, the minister of the Presbyterian Church. The novel is divided into three sections, and the plot revolves around the protagonist, Dr. Charles Ransom’s, travel from the city 20

Wilson, “DISASTER AREAS,” 52.

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of Mount Royal to the coast and ends with his return to the city ten years later. The first part focuses on Ransom’s past, his relationship with the other characters, and the inhabitants fleeing their town, Larchmont, in search of water along the shore. As the rivers run dry, Ransom is one of the last few people who refuses to go to the ocean. Ransom has been living alone on his houseboat since his wife, Judith, abandoned him for the police captain, Hendry. From his houseboat, he watches as the last remaining water of the dried-up river washes away what is left of the ecological and social order. On this dry land, Ransom experiences various adventures. First, he visits Catherine at the zoo, where she works. There, he discovers that Quilter is stalking him at Richard Lomax’s command. On his way back from the zoo, he is chased by a dozen “black-suited figures.” These men, one of the unemployed fishermen’s gangs who fall under the influence of a madman named Jonas, eventually catch Ransom in a fishing net. From their brief conversation, Ransom learns that Jonas has kidnapped him as he gathers more people before he sets off in search of a new river he claims to have spotted far away. Ransom is able to escape when Jonas takes his attention away, but the gang then shows up and makes another attempt to capture him and Catherine. In addition, Ransom encounters Reverend Johnstone and finds that he has recruited a small, armed group behind him to protect their family from the fishing gangs. After the vandalism that has taken place in the city of Mount Royal due to the conflicts between these two groups, Ransom and a few of his neighbours eventually set out to find shelter in the “dune limbo” of the new seashore, yet a few devotees and other lunatics stay behind. While Ransom, Catherine, Philip Jordan, Jordan’s stepfather, and Mrs. Quilter make their way to the coast, Richard and Miranda Lomax, Quilter, and the others stay in the burning city. Thus, the second part recounts the decade after the environmental disaster, when most of the refugees perish and the survivors seek to obtain clean water by purifying seawater with old and worn-out equipment. They struggle to fit into the new social order at the edge of the ocean, where the government has built water distilleries to extract drinking water from the bitter sea. For another ten years, people desperately fight for survival and steal water from one another since there is not enough water for everyone in this new chaotic world order. The third part follows Ransom and the few surviving characters as they return to the lakeside town of Larchmont in search of water. When a wild animal from the city zoo appears, they develop hope that there is water somewhere along the road. Therefore, Ransom and his companions travel inland again to see what has happened to the city and its last few residents. They discover that those who stay in the city have somehow found a new

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way of life that is hideous but suited to the global drought, which is the drought of the psyche as much as the earth. As an example of a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel, the opening paragraph of the first page of The Drought begins with a description of the post-apocalyptic setting: At noon, when Dr. Charles Ransom moored his houseboat in the entrance to the river, he saw Quilter, the idiot son of the old woman who lived in the ramshackle barge outside the yacht basin, standing on a spur of exposed rock on the opposite bank and smiling at the dead birds floating in the water below his feet. The reflection of his swollen head swam like a deformed nimbus among the limp plumage. The caking mud-bank was speckled with pieces of paper and driftwood, and to Ransom the dream-faced figure of Quilter resembled a demented faun strewing himself with leaves as he mourned for the lost spirit of the river.21

The narrative starts with a strong and striking emphasis on the destroyed flora and fauna, as well as the dying ecosystem. The depictions of dead animals drifting in the water and sludge piles allude to the aftermath of a global ecological catastrophe. The phrase “mourning for the lost spirit of the river” is a powerful representation of the novel’s essential message. A reflection of deep ecology philosophy, this phrase highlights the idea that water is a living entity. It is because, according to deep ecologists, rock, soil, and water are all living organisms. Besides, as Leopold contends, “Waters, like soil, are part of the energy circuit.”22 In other words, water is a symbol of vitality and fertility. Therefore, the drying up of the river (i.e., water) that supplies life to all living things on Earth and the loss of its spirit cause the energy between it and other organisms to be cut off and their souls to wither as well. As can be observed, at the beginning of the novel, the setting is pretty catastrophic; there is a global drought, which is currently in its fifth month. It is mentioned as the culmination of a ten-year period of extended droughts that occurred with increasing frequency all around the planet. The vast expanses of water have shrunk “first into shallow lagoons and then into a maze of creeks.”23 Throughout the novel, Ballard often makes vivid depictions of how dry the water supplies have become, making comparisons between before the drought and now:

21

J. G. Ballard, The Drought (1965; repr., Hammersmith, London: Flamingo, 2001),

3. 22 23

Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 217. Ballard, The Drought, 4.

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By then the lake, once a stretch of open water thirty miles in length, had subsided into a series of small pools and channels, separated by the banks of draining mud. A few last fishing craft sailed among them, their crews standing shoulder to shoulder in the bows. . . . Normally, in late summer, the river would have been three hundred feet wide, but it was now barely half this – a shallow creek winding its slow way along the flat gutter of the banks.24

With repetitions describing the dryness of water, rivers, and lakes, Ballard emphasises the importance of this natural resource for the entire ecosystem. The shrinking of the river, Ransom utters, was like witnessing “its countless associations fading.”25 The fading of the river’s “countless associations” alludes to the collective shrinking and death as the boundless fertility of the water is drained, depriving all beings of universal connection. In this regard, how the function of the river has evolved through time is conveyed in the novel as follows: Above all, Ransom was aware that the role of the river in time had changed. Once it had played the part of an immense fluid clock, the objects immersed in it taking up their positions like the stations of the sun and planets. The continued lateral movements of the river, its rise and fall and the varying pressures on the hull, were like the activity within a vast system of evolution, whose cumulative forward flow was as irrelevant and without meaning as the apparently linear motion of time itself. The real movements were those random and discontinuous relationships between the objects within it, those of himself and Mrs. Quilter, her son, and the dead birds and fish.26

The “immense fluid clock” and the solar system analogies are powerful metaphors that highlight the significance of water to the entire planet. The absence of this energy, which pulls all animate and inanimate beings around it just like the planets attract their satellites, symbolises planetary annihilation. Hence, by stressing the interdependence between humans and ecosystems, Ballard shows how changes in the environment affect all living things, including humans. With the death of the river so would vanish any contact between those stranded on the drained floor. For the present the need to find some other measure of their relationships would be concealed by the problems of their own physical survival. None the less, Ransom was certain that the absence of this great moderator, which cast its bridges between all animate and

24

Ibid., 4-5. Ibid., 8. 26 Ibid. 25

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inanimate objects alike, would prove of crucial importance. Each of them would soon literally be an island in an archipelago drained of time.27

Thus, the image of a dying river once again implies the drying up of the symbolic vitality and energy associated with the water, which is a reference to the ecocentric understanding. The description of the river as the “great universal moderator” that creates connections between all living and nonliving things, in particular, underlines how powerful and vital a resource water is. This natural resource reinforces the symbiotic relationship between all animate and inanimate things in the ecosystem. In other words, the river and its interactions with all kinds of matter and components form a community in which water, soil, and other entities are mutually active. Considering that the river is the principal element in this community, its drying up means the web of relationships between all life forms is also desiccating. Ballard’s vivid descriptions and imagery throughout the novel make the reader feel the severity of the drought. While the word “drought” is used twenty-five times in the novel, words that evoke drought, such as “dry,” “arid,” “heat,” “fire,” “ash,” “evaporating,” “hot,” “desert,” and “burning,” are also mentioned many times. Some instances that illustrate the intensity and impact of the drought are: “Across the surface of the lake the pools of evaporating water stirred in the sunlight;”28 “he watched the abandoned houses stretching along the ash-covered streets;”29 “The dried trees and hedges splintered in the hot sky;”30 “The heat of the waterfront fires drove across the river like a burning sirocco;”31 “Beyond the dunes was the desert floor, littered with fragments of dried mud like shards of pottery;”32 and “No longer cooled by the evaporating water, the dunes around the oasis reflected the heat like banks of ash.”33 Thus, by frequently using words that imply drought, heat, and fire throughout the novel, Ballard keeps the reader’s attention focused on the environmental condition of the city. It is narrated that after a while, the drought reaches such a level that it becomes difficult for people like Ransom to remember what the word rain means:

27

Ibid., 8-9. Ibid., 25. 29 Ibid., 60. 30 Ibid., 86. 31 Ibid., 106. 32 Ibid., 177. 33 Ibid., 231. 28

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Rain! – at the recollection of what the term had once meant, Ransom looked up at the sky. Unmasked by clouds or vapour, the sun hung over his head like an ever-attendant genie. The fields and roads adjoining the river were covered with the same unvarying light, a glazed yellow canopy that embalmed everything in its heat.34

The metaphors of the sun, gleaming in the clear sky like a devil and covering everything with its heat like a canopy, imply that the world has turned into an inferno. Just as the fire of hell burns everything, the scorching heat of the sun triggers forest fires, damaging the ecosystem and all living things, causing them to burn both metaphorically and literally. The smoke and flames of fires fatally affect most animals in forests and zoos, and some even die. Ballard frequently portrays dead animals throughout the narrative to show how the scarcity of water has already begun to harm all living beings. Some examples are: “The slopes of mud, covered with the bodies of dead birds and fish, stretched above [Ransom] like the shores of a dream;”35 “She [Catherine] knelt down by the water’s edge, frowning at the dead fish and birds that drifted past;”36 and “Everywhere the bright bones of dead cattle lay by the empty water troughs.”37 Regarding the cause of the drought, the following chapters reveal that a major scarcity of world supplies emerged a decade ago when the expected seasonal rainfall in a number of key agricultural areas did not occur. Areas that were once agriculturally fertile have now turned barren. The water had receded so much that the river was not a natural habitat any more than “a handful of pebbles and water-weed in an aquarium.”38 The next few months produced only a few inches of rain, and the farmlands were completely destroyed after two years. These new deserts were abandoned permanently after their residents relocated elsewhere. When the rain ceased to fall, it became clear that the cause of the problem was industrial pollution. Covering the off-shore waters of the world’s oceans, to a distance of about a thousand miles from the coast, was a thin but resilient mono-molecular film formed from a complex of saturated long-chain polymers, generated within the sea from the vast quantities of industrial wastes discharged into the ocean basins during the previous fifty years. This tough, oxygen-permeable

34

Ibid., 6. Ibid., 4. 36 Ibid., 15. 37 Ibid., 110. 38 Ibid., 22. 35

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membrane lay on the air-water interface and prevented almost all evaporation of surface water into the air space above.39

As can be understood from the quote above, Ballard attributes the root of this environmental disaster to anthropogenic activities. It is explained in the novel that for years, humankind has dumped industrial waste, toxic chemicals, and dangerous levels of nuclear material into the seas. Although the formation process of these polymers remained unclear, huge amounts of “highly reactive industrial wastes—unwanted petroleum fractions, contaminated catalysts and solvents—” continued to be discharged into the sea.40 All these pollutants came together in a new chemical process to create ultra-thin yet incredibly durable polymers that cover the entire ocean, causing drought. As a solution, rotary flail-equipped trawlers and naval fleets started to operate up and down the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North America as well as the seashores of Western Europe, but it had no lasting effect. The layer rapidly replaced itself by lateral extension from the surrounding surface, refilled by rainfall from the reservoir below, making the removal of all surface water merely a brief reprieve. In this sense, The Drought presents a clear and convincing illustration of how industrial pollution and the resulting global drought can be considered one of the undesirable impacts of anthropogenic activities on nature. Besides, Ballard’s portrayal of industrial pollution being poured into the streams and waterways echoes Rachel Carson’s warnings in Silent Spring. Carson states that Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species—man—acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world. During the past quarter century this power has not only increased to one of disturbing magnitude but it has changed in character. The most alarming of all man’s assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible.41

As Carson points out and Ballard illustrates, the pollution of natural resources with lethal substances, one of the most worrisome actions of humankind, has irreversible consequences for the entire ecosystem. Furthermore, Ransom, one of the characters in the novel who has the closest connection with the natural world, believes that the film on the 39

Ibid., 36. Ibid., 37. 41 Carson, Silent Spring, 11. 40

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surface of the sea is a reaction of nature to the industrial waste released into it. The breaking of the rain cycle, as Ransom remarks, is an “act of retribution” of nature that impresses “by its simple justice.”42 It is because humans have used cetyl alcohol films for a long time to keep water reservoirs from evaporating. Nature, long silent in the face of all these destructive human actions, has simply “extended the principle, applying a fractional tilt, at first imperceptible, to the balance of the elements.”43 It prevented the evaporation of surface water by forming a layer that was impossible to remove. In short, it is implied that the drought is like nature’s devastating reaction to humanity since humankind polluted and damaged water supplies as if they were boundless. It is mentioned that, as if to further tease humankind, large clouds would continue to form over the earth’s oceans and “would sail steadily towards the shorelines but always deposit their cargo into the dry unsaturated air above the sealed offshore waters, never onto the crying land.”44 In this sense, Ballard personifies nature, placing it in a position to avenge humanity for its destructive actions. Ballard continues to portray the hardships people face due to drought with powerful language and images. It is narrated that as the rain cycle was disturbed by the polymeric layer coating ocean surfaces due to industrial waste, the drought worsened due to a smog-covered atmosphere and “dust columns rising into the sky from a landscape that seemed to be on fire.”45 The authorities erroneously assumed they could plant clouds once the rains were over, but there were no clouds to sow. With this detail, Ballard, like Christopher, highlights the inadequacy of science in the face of nature. Although most individuals kept some fresh water on hand, resources were limited, and supplies were running out. The absence of rain cycles and constant sun exposure have caused humans to suffer from a lack of food and, especially, drinkable water. Therefore, the majority of people have started to head for the oceans. People, who are in a difficult situation due to water scarcity in the cities, have begun to leave their homes and travel thousands of miles to find water. An example of this situation occurs at the beginning of the novel: a family who comes to Mount Royal for water is caught and accused of taking water from the city’s church. Edward Gunn, owner of the local hardware store, stepped forward, an accusing finger raised in front of his beaked grey face. ‘I caught him in the church, Reverend, with a bucket. He was taking water from the font.’

42

Ballard, The Drought, 37. Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid., 42. 43

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‘The font?’ Johnstone gazed down magisterially at the little driver. With heavy sarcasm he bellowed: ‘Did you want to be baptized? Is that what you wanted, before all the water in the world was gone?’ The stocky man pushed Gunn aside. ‘No, I wanted water to drink! We’ve come three hundred miles today –look at my kids, they’re so dry they can’t even weep!’ He opened his leather wallet and spread out a fan of greasy bills. ‘I’m not asking for charity, I’ll pay good money.’ Johnstone brushed aside the money with the barrel of the shot-gun. ‘We take no cash for water here, son. You can’t buy off the droughts of this world, you have to fight them. You should have stayed where you were, in your own home.’46

Thus, as Ballard demonstrates, people come to the point that they will not share the water resources they have, even if it comes to a child’s life. Besides, money has no value anymore in this post-apocalyptic world; it has been replaced with water. For instance, early in the first part of the novel, when Catherine asks Ransom if he has any water to spare, Ransom puts his hands in his trousers and says he does not. He instinctively searches his pocket for water as if it were money. Therefore, the people who stay in the town group among themselves and fight each other for the resources that will sustain their remaining lives. Yet soon, things get out of hand. It is obvious that not only animals and nature but also human beings are affected by environmental degradation. Desperate in a burning world, the human species tries to survive by robbing and killing. They must steal water because, even if they can reach the sea, nothing but salt is present everywhere. After a short while, when the water supplies are depleted, brutality breaks out and madness prevails. The novel portrays at length the horrific events, calamities, and desperate moments that humans face. For example, due to the struggle between them, fishermen set the church on fire while the churchmen burned some of the town’s houses. With this act of vandalism, Ballard shows how environmental destruction gradually corrupts the human soul. Unaware of the connection between themselves and the ecosystem, the residents set the already drought-scorched town on fire. The state of the town after this action is described as follows: For the next three days the fires continued to burn in Mount Royal. Under a sky stained by an immense pall of black smoke, like a curtain drawn over the concluding act of the city, the long plumes rose high into the air, drifting away like the fragments of an enormous collapsing message. Mingled with the fires of incinerators and abandoned garbage, they transformed the open plain beyond the city into an apocalyptic landscape.47 46 47

Ibid., 29-30. Ibid., 42.

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As a result, rather than working to find solutions to the uncontrollable ecological issues, humans prefer to blame one another and make the situation worse. Highlighting how civilization falls in search of even a drop of water, Ballard depicts the return of advanced modern cultures to primordial conditions: Ransom looked out at the deserted avenue. Most of the houses were empty, windows boarded and nailed up, swimming pools emptied of their last reserves of water. Lines of abandoned cars were parked under the withering plane trees, and the road was littered with discarded cans and cartons. The bright flint-like dust lay in drifts against the blistered fences. Refuse fires smouldered unattended on the burnt-out lawns, their smoke wandering over the roofs.48

After people damage the surroundings, Ransom and a handful of his neighbours feel obliged to head to the shore to escape the devastating effects of fire and drought. However, on their way towards the coast, they encounter a huge traffic jam. As he approaches the bridge, Ransom realises what has caused the traffic: the bridge has been blown up to slow people down from reaching the shore. The centre span, an area of around one hundred feet in length, has been demolished, leaving the steel cantilevers lying stiffly on the riverbed and the sides of the road shredded like metal core. Three army trucks have been chained together as block vehicles at the bridge’s entry. In this chaotic environment, there is no sign of order. Ransom stops at the intersection and looks for any indications of a police station or an army command centre. He asks the man he sees what their chances are of getting ashore, that they will need water soon, and if there are police around. The man replies that a double-wire fence surrounds the beach, with the army and police stationed on the opposite side and allowing only a handful of people daily to pass. Large distillation facilities are located behind the shacks, he continues, and the army and police advise everyone to remain put because there will be plenty of water nearby. So, even before getting to the sea, Ransom discovers that the military has taken over the protection of the water, which was previously recklessly exploited before the drought, and that only specific people are allowed to get through the double-wire fences. The military will shoot anyone who attempts to climb the wire against orders. Moreover, Ballard gives a very impressive depiction of the physical landscape that has changed and is changing as a result of the drought. When

48

Ibid., 28.

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Ransom and his companions arrive, they discover that the beach has vanished, replaced by an unlimited number of abandoned automobiles. Below them, stretching along the entire extent of the coastal shelf, were tens of thousands of cars and trailers, jammed together like vehicles in an immense parking lot. . . . Immediately all sense of the sea was lost, the distant dunes hidden by the roofs of trucks and trailers, and by the drifting smoke of garbage fires.49

In this sense, Ballard devotes special attention to portraying how technological and industrial “garbage” can reshape the landscape. Although the car, a significant invention of twentieth-century civilization, has completely covered the shore, it serves no purpose or has any value at the moment. Technology and transportation lose their function; civilization begins to crumble. This detail is important for an ecocritical reading since it alludes to the complete annihilation of the physical environment by the metal pile. At the same time, it serves as a reminder for the characters that both the natural landscape and the established social order are changing and transforming. The imagery of drained land being ornamented with garbage instead of vegetation clearly illustrates this transformative aspect: “The metal refuse scattered about the dunes provided the only floral decoration— twisted bedsteads rose like clumps of desert thorns, water pumps and farm machinery formed angular sculptures, the dust spuming from their vanes in the light breeze.”50 In this context, cultural and industrial waste are not only a representation of environmental degradation and social disorder but also the substance from which the future world will be formed. As the narrative develops, images of piled-up metal garbage heaps, objects made of garbage, and garbage-affected landscapes gain more prominence. The characters need to do everything they can to stay alive physically in this new world order while also dealing with the psychological effects of their surroundings. For instance, when Philip Jordan, the mysterious young man whom Ransom feeds and clothes when he visits him, points to the cabin he has made, he exclaims proudly that it has been constructed out of whatever trash he could find. The collection and reuse of generated waste becomes a physical survival tool and a metaphor for the restoration of civilization. Therefore, the reshaping of waste objects refers to the effort to build a future both literally and figuratively: “what was new in their lives and relationships they could form only from the residues of the past, from

49 50

Ibid., 115-16. Ibid., 177.

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the failures and omissions that persisted into the present like the wreckage and scrap metal from which they built their cabins.”51 In the last chapter, Ransom and his companions slowly make their way back from the arid, dried riverbed nearly a hundred miles to Mount Royal in the north. Their journey provides the reader with detailed and deeply affecting depictions of a wrecked world in which cities, roads, buildings, and vehicles are all buried in dust and sand. In these depictions, it is mentioned that the exteriors of warehouses and half-ruined buildings delineate the buried streets; the doors of a small bank have been shattered by axe blows; and the burnt-out wreckage of a bus terminal is filled with a pile of glass and dulled chrome. It is revealed that due to the lack of water, the Earth has turned into a gigantic, infinite dust land that blows dust everywhere. When they reach the western part of the city, Ransom is completely confused, considering all the other aspects of the land they passed through. His senses are numbed by the central plain’s drought, which extends over the entire continent with its devastation and never-ending deserts. He gets the impression that he is moving through an enormous graveyard because of the constant desert light, the absence of any colour, and the stark whiteness of the barren landscape. Most significantly, the immobility gives even the smallest disturbance an almost hallucinogenic intensity. Hence, as they get closer to Larchmont, it gives the feeling that Ransom and the others are approaching a cemetery. Everything has died in this arid world, which is described in the novel as follows: The sloping bank was covered with old cans and dead birds and fish. A few yards to [Ransom’s] left the body of a dog lay in the sunlight by the edge of the water. . . . This miniature universe, a capsule containing whatever future lay before him, had expired with everything else on the floor of the drained river. . . . At his feet the swollen body of the dog was blurred by the heat, and for a moment the whole landscape seemed to be covered with corpses.52

As can be observed from the passage above, Ballard repeatedly uses stark images of aridity to highlight how drought affects all living creatures in this world that has turned into a hell. In addition, the lack of water signals the beginning of a new world order in which there is plenty of sand and almost no water. As Firsching points out, water, which reflects the uncertainty from the beginning to the end of the novel, not only builds bridges between people but also separates them. Until it dried up, the role of the river was, in a way, to establish “unseen

51 52

Ibid., 147. Ibid., 95.

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links between the people living on the margins of the channel.”53 However, as the river began to desiccate, the bond between people deteriorated as well. Therefore, the absence of the river has distanced people from one another and from their surroundings. In the second part of the novel, the coastal communities formed by people leaving the devastated cities are described. However, very soon, “these communities repeat the flaws of urban civilization, with their hierarchical social structures, capitalist economies, and predatory military policies.”54 In these coastal communities, water is a means of exchange and, hence, a means of exploitation. Besides, when Ransom and others arrive at the desolate remains of Mount Royal, they find that many of the characters introduced in the first chapter of the novel are still alive. They discover that the city’s architect, Richard Foster Lomax, was well aware of the hidden reserves beneath the city and that they have been living on this water for the past ten years. It turns out that Lomax is in control of the remaining water to dominate others around him. Water here, in other words, “becomes a medium or instrument for exercising political/economic power.”55 Furthermore, since Ransom and his companions did not bring water from the coast with them, they were not treated well by the people who stayed here and established a new order. It is obvious that all the tools of civilization have lost their value in this postapocalyptic world, and the only important and valuable commodity is now water. Therefore, those who have authority over water also have control over the planet and other people. The attitude of Richard Lomax, who controls the water, towards those who come to him clearly illustrates this situation: “Lomax whipped off his wig and slipped it into his pocket. ‘Tell them to go! I’m tired of playing Father Neptune. This is my water, I found it and I’m going to drink it!’”56 Gazing down at Lomax, Ransom realises how much he has degraded over the last ten years and describes him as “the serpent,” seeking to reclaim his apple “in this dusty Eden” and hold onto the world before the drought, even for a brief period of time.57 The serpent, which is the symbol of the Devil or Satan who deceives the whole world, means deceitful, evil, cunning, and dangerous, and Lomax is the person who embodies these characteristics in the novel. Thus, with the serpent metaphor, Ballard highlights the evil side of Lomax, who bites people and destroys them with his venom. Yet, in the final part of the novel, Quilter destroys Lomax’s water tank. Immediately after “this act of destruction 53

Ibid., 8. Firsching, “J.G. Ballard’s,” 304. 55 Ibid. 56 Ballard, The Drought, 216. 57 Ibid., 217. 54

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aimed at the old order,” it starts to rain, symbolising “the birth of a new order.”58 Eventually, dark clouds reach the sky and bring hope after years of endless, dusty, and deadly drought. The rain at the end of the narrative can also be interpreted as humanity’s last chance to realise its mistakes and make amends. Throughout the narrative, some characters, including Richard Lomax, Quilter, and Miranda, are constantly fighting for power and dominance. This power struggle reflects the hierarchical nature of human relationships. After the transition from a primitive communal society to a hierarchical society, fighting and dominating each other have become methods of survival for people. As Ransom remarks, “There are too many blood feuds. It’s an endless string of little communities, trapping their own small pieces of the sea and frightened of everyone else.’”59 It can be claimed that Ransom’s words epitomise the essence of human beings, creatures capable of killing their own kind to meet their needs and desires. Just as in The Death of Grass, in which humans use nuclear weapons against their own kind and brutally kill each other for survival, the same barbarism and savagery are observed in The Drought. The scene where refugees fight and kill each other while trying to steal water from one another on the shore is the most striking illustration of this. The resulting scene is vividly depicted as follows: As Ransom walked over to the fish-tank he was thinking, not of this, but of the first great wave, some six months after their arrival. Then the tide had gathered for them a harvest of corpses. The thousands of bodies they had tipped into the sea after the final bloody battles on the beaches had come back to them, their drowned eyes and blanched faces staring from the shallow pools. The washed wounds, cleansed of all blood and hate, haunted them in their dreams.60

As can be inferred from the passage, humans prepare themselves for their own demise in a slow but devastating way. Humanity, always chasing power and money, does not change even in such a disaster and kills each other to get to the scarce water resources. In this collapsing social world, human beings now “live like animals.”61 The expression “living like animals” conveys the message that all living beings are equal in meeting their most basic needs and that none of them is superior to the other. In other words, Ballard underlines how, when all civilization and cultural norms that

58

Firsching, “J.G. Ballard’s,” 304. Ballard, The Drought, 149. 60 Ibid., 148. 61 Ibid., 149. 59

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distinguish humans from animals disappear, humans turn into these “primitive beings” that they despise. Besides the cruelty of people to each other, the novel also illustrates the hegemony and tyranny of humans over nature. As the human species consistently focuses on material interests without considering the consequences of their actions, they forget about animals, plants, and the well-being of the ecosystem. Unfortunately, the ecological catastrophe brought on by humans also results in the deaths of other living beings in nature. The heartbreaking scene, in which Ballard depicts the agonising cries of thirsty animals in the zoo, impressively demonstrates how nature and other creatures living in it are silenced and their cries go unheard. A monotonous chorus of bellows and grunts sounded around the zoo, the visceral cries reflected off the concrete pens. The smaller cages housing the ornamental birds and monkeys were empty. In one of the stalls a dead camel lay on the floor. Near by, a large Syrian bear prowled up and down its cage, arms and head rolling around the bars. A hyena stared at Ransom like a blind pig, emitting a high-pitched whine. Next to it a pair of cheetahs flicked around their cages, their small, killing heads swivelling as Ransom passed.62

So, it is evident that all kinds of animals are in dire situations in this droughtstricken world. Although the animals are fed and watered by empathetic characters such as Catherine and Philip Jordan, it is not a permanent solution. Moreover, not only land animals but also marine creatures have been affected by the calamity, as can be seen in the following passage: Suspended in the dim air around him, their pearly bodies rotating slowly like the vanes of elaborate mobiles, were the corpses of hundreds of fish. Poisoned by their own wastes, they hung in the gloomy water, their blank eyes glowing like phosphorus, mouths agape. In the smaller tanks the tropical fish effloresced like putrid jewels, their coloured tissue dissolving into threads of gossamer. Gazing at them, Ransom had a sudden vision of the sea by the coastal beaches, as clouded and corpse-strewn as the water in the tanks, the faces of the drowned eddying past each other.63

Among the characters in the novel who have the strongest connections to nature and other living creatures are Catherine Austen and Philip Jordan. Catherine is a compassionate animal lover who accepts the water that Richard Lomax sends to provide water to the thirsty animals in their cages at the zoo. She prefers to stay in the zoo and help the animals rather than flee the city until the events get out of hand. When Ransom tells her to be sensible and that Lomax is not giving the water for charity and that he 62 63

Ibid., 62. Ibid., 66.

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intends to use the animals for his own purposes, Catherine responds that she will not abandon these animals and let them die as long as there is food and water available. Clearly, this attitude proves Catherine’s love and care for animals, since she accepts the water that Lomax gives, albeit maliciously, for the sake of the animals’ survival. Similarly, Philip Jordan is another character who tries to save suffering birds and fish in the river. The novel highlights Jordan’s fondness for animals and how, as “Friend of the water-birds, he was able to tame swans and wild geese.”64 For instance, at the very beginning of the novel, Jordan finds a heavy-haired swan in the oily waste of the river and asks Ransom to save the animal. However, Ransom realises that it is not possible to clean and save the swan and tells Jordan that he cannot spare the water. The bird is near dead, and there must be an order of priorities. Jordan tells the doctor that there is a priority and that he will find water. Here, it can be claimed that through the character of Jordan, who prioritises saving a dying bird, Ballard criticises the fact that humans are always seen as superior to animals, whether there is an ecological disaster or not. However, there are also characters who show the opposite attitudes towards those who connect with nature and animals. By portraying antinature characters, Ballard shows how people upset the balance of nature and how they ignore this fact despite the disasters they experience. In particular, Richard Lomax, the rich and showy architect, is the most prominent character who refuses to comprehend the obvious impact of the disaster. The conversation between Lomax and Ransom is the clearest indication of this ignorance. Lomax gazed out at the obscured skyline of the city, from which the smoke rose more and more thickly. To his right the bleached white bed of the river wound its way between the riverside villas. ‘What’s going on out there? You know more about these things than I do.’ Ransom gestured at the windows. ‘It’s plain enough. You really must have been busy if you haven’t noticed. The entire balance of nature has---’ Lomax snapped his fingers irritably. ‘Don’t talk to me about the balance of nature! If it wasn’t for people like myself we’d all be living in mud huts.’65

Despite the intensifying ecological crisis, Richard Lomax does not appear to care about it and refuses to listen to explanations about the balance of nature. He is so disconnected from nature that he cannot grasp the worldwide consequences of the calamity. Lomax is very similar to Roger, the anthropocentric character in The Death of Grass. Both strongly reject 64 65

Ibid., 22. Ibid., 51.

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the ongoing catastrophe and believe that it can be overcome by human reason, science, and technology, but both ultimately fail in their beliefs. When Ransom points to the dusty riverside and says, “‘They look like mud huts already. We’re moving straight back into the past,’” Lomax shakes his head and replies, “‘You’ve got your sense of direction wrong, my boy. It’s the future each of us has to come to terms with now.’”66 It is not surprising that an architect who builds buildings for humanity while destroying nature has a human-centred perspective. Richard Foster Lomax is a perfect example of the capitalist mindset that is at the root of the drought and disaster. He is the embodiment of the greed, hunger for power, and obsession with technology that characterise twentiethcentury civilization. He resides in “the glass-and-concrete mansion,” which has an outdoor swimming pool and a fountain.67 While he tells Ransom that he is staying in the city and has some plans, Lomax expresses clearly what the water means to him: “All that water, a mineral I despise, utterly unmalleable, fit only for fountains.”68 Lomax is presented as a greedy entrepreneur who values material wealth more than anything else, even water, an essential resource for life. In this sense, he is likened to the devil more than once in the novel: “The billows of red smoke rose from the city, reflected in Lomax’s suit and puckish face, and for a moment transforming him into a plump, grinning Mephistopheles.”69 As Michel Delville points out, the “self-destructive behaviour” of Lomax is “directly linked with his wish to deny or reverse the progress of the catastrophe.”70 However, unaware of how powerful nature is, he fails to make his desire come true. Nature has its own laws, and everything that must occur does so in accordance with those rules. The Drought proves that the laws of the ecosystem override human-made rules and systems. Alongside Richard Lomax, the other unpleasant character is the menacing and aggressive Reverend Johnstone. His sermons caused people to burn down and destroy Mount Royal. Johnstone draws a parallel between Jonah’s desire for Nineveh to be destroyed and humanity’s subconscious desires for the end of the present age. He preaches as follows: Just as the withering of Jonah’s gourd by the worm was part of the Lord’s design, so they themselves should welcome the destruction of their homes

66

Ibid., 52. Ibid., 31. 68 Ibid., 53. 69 Ibid. 70 Michel Delville, “The Nature of the Catastrophe,” in J. G. Ballard (Liverpool University Press, 1998), 11-2. 67

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and livelihoods, and even their very shelter from the drought, knowing that God’s grace would come to them only through this final purging fire.71

So, while Johnstone encourages his listeners to embrace this calamity, he also associates it with the fall of Nineveh as a sin city and thus with cities in general. People, impressed by this sermon, somewhat fulfil this prophecy by setting Mount Royal on fire in the subsequent chapter. In The Drought, the collapse of the existing civilization is the forerunner of a new but rather unfamiliar and chaotic order. Ballard also tries to show in The Drought how individuals’ psychological states are affected by changing landscapes. He frequently addresses how humans deal with natural disasters or environmental changes to which they have unintentionally contributed.72 Thus, Ballard focuses on how massive, systematic changes affect the characters’ inner worlds. He explores the physical and psychological effects of ecological calamities. The characters accept the disaster and adjust themselves to the dreadful conditions. As his characters move towards a new and different relationship with the environment, Ballard connects the transforming physical world with the evolving inner world. Wilson also emphasises that “Ballard establishes a connection between interior and exterior, subjectivity and objectivity, the human mind and the untamed earth.”73 As water resources dry up and vanish, it ruins human societies as well as all living species that depend on them. As a result, each individual becomes disassociated from society and lost in time. People break away from their pasts, and their memories disappear, for the sake of survival in this new world order. Therefore, the concept of time becomes pointless since a world devoid of water is also devoid of significance and value. Yet this stopping of the clock had gained them nothing. The beach was a zone without time, suspended in an endless interval as flaccid and enduring as the wet dunes themselves. Often Ransom remembered the painting by Tanguy which he had left behind in the houseboat. Its drained beaches, eroded of all associations, of all sense of time, in some ways seemed a photographic portrait of the salt world of the shore. But the similarity was misleading. On the beach, time was not absent but immobilized . . .74

Expressions regarding the concept of time as well as its disappearance or cessation are repeatedly highlighted throughout the novel. Even though they are a bit closer to the water on the shore, the survivors feel miserable 71

Ballard, The Drought, 45. Woods, Who’s Who, 28. 73 Wilson, “DISASTER AREAS,” 57. 74 Ballard, The Drought, 147. 72

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and despairing since time has eroded all their past and future with drought. They get the impression that they are submerged in the sand dunes. The settlement now has a gloomy and unhappy atmosphere. This is partially brought on by the survivors’ ongoing, unclear sense of regret. So many people have died on beaches or been driven in large numbers to perish at sea that it appears like their ghosts are wandering in the bitter salt. However, it also reflects how the gradual decline of diversity and movement is vanishing as the last bits of their former lives—the only things left to them— sink into the arid sands. It is obvious that the loss of the notion of time causes the objects to lose their meaning and the characters’ memories to melt. As Firsching remarks, “Water is symbolically important in Drought chiefly as an absence. The disappearance of water in the encroaching sands corresponds to the disappearance of time and memory.”75 Trapped in the middle of an ecological disaster, Ransom, at the very beginning of the novel, is portrayed as a lost individual struggling to find a purpose to live. As almost everyone in the town rushes to the shore for water, Ransom decides to stay and observe the disintegration of civilization. Surrounded by remnants of a very distant past, he wanders aimlessly, unable to react emotionally. Taking the leftovers of the whisky from the kitchen cabinet, he sits on the edge of the sink and starts scrubbing the tar marks from his cotton pants. He would have to leave the houseboat for the last time in the next hour and go onshore. However, notwithstanding how minor they would now be, he does not feel eager to abandon the trade and undergo all the necessary social and mental adaptations. His beard has grown, and the sunlight has nearly completely whitened the edges of his golden hair. He appears to be “a seafaring Nordic anthropologist, standing with one hand on his mast, the other on his Malinowski,” thanks to this and his exposed, sunburned chest.76 Despite his eager acceptance of this new identity, Ransom soon comes to the realisation that it is still merely the product of his imagination and that the actual Odyssey is ahead of him as he travels from land to coast. However, Ransom, as the clearest example of this change, does not fear or flee from the disaster but rather welcomes and embraces it, hoping to reinvent himself in the new landscape. Indeed, there is a conflict inside Ransom between his desire for solitude and his relationships with other people. Others go to him for help, but he craves isolation from the rest of the world, which may be a symbol of the completion of his inner world with the outer world. As Delville remarks, “Ransom’s journey to the seacoast is 75 76

Firsching, “J.G. Ballard’s,” 304. Ballard, The Drought, 10.

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deeply and consistently symbolical of a journey into the depths of the inner self–a mental pilgrimage in which each individual event, encounter or set of circumstances invariably signifies a second order of correlated meanings.”77 The connection between the physical world and the inner world becomes evident when Ransom understands that the long journey up the river has been “an expedition into his own future, into a world of volitional time where the images of the past were reflected free from the demands of memory and nostalgia, free even from the pressure of thirst and hunger.”78 The narrative comes to an end when Ransom, exhausted by his search for water, unites his outward journey with his interior one. Although it was not yet noon, the sun seemed to be receding into the sky, and the air was gradually becoming colder. To his surprise he noticed that he no longer cast any shadow on to the sand, as if he had at last completed his journey across the margins of the inner landscape he had carried in his mind for so many years. The light failed, and the air grew darker. The dust was dull and opaque, the crystals in its surface dead and clouded. An immense pall of darkness lay over the dunes, as if the whole of the exterior world were losing its existence.79

In this regard, the novel presents a new subjectivity that emerges as a result of the relationship between interior and exterior landscapes. People become part of the inorganic world. Indeed, humankind has never been separated from the Earth. The anthropocentric fallacy, which causes a sharp distinction between subject and object, animate and inanimate, is used to commodify the abiotic world as a resource. In conclusion, in The Drought, Ballard addresses the physical and psychological changes caused by the ecological disaster because of anthropogenic actions. This novel is based on a holistic reconstruction of the planet’s ecosystem, disrupting the connection between human civilization and the environment to the point where life becomes increasingly vulnerable and on the edge of extinction. In The Drought, it appears that Ballard explicitly blames humans for acting recklessly, contaminating the oceans, and eventually causing a global drought. By depicting that humans have no influence or control over either the outer or interior worlds, Ballard puts humankind in the face of the physical world. Indeed, in this novel, he constructs a representation of the frailty of the capitalist-minded human species and the civilization they fashioned.

77

Delville, “The Nature,” 10. Ballard, The Drought, 217. 79 Ibid., 232-33. 78

CHAPTER V OVERPOPULATION AND ITS SOCIAL IMPACTS

Brian Aldiss Brian Wilson Aldiss (1925–2017) was a British anthologist, artist, editor, critic, and writer best known for his science fiction short stories and novels. He was born on August 18, 1925, in East Dereham, Norfolk, England. Aldiss received his education at St. Peter’s Court Preparatory School, Bacton, during 1933–36; at Framlingham College, Suffolk, during 1936–39; and at West Buckland School, Devon, during 1939–43.1 He was enlisted by the Army in September 1943 and was sent to Britannia Barracks, Norwich, after training and joining the Royal Signal Corps at Camp Catterick in Yorkshire. He served in the Royal Signal Corps in India, Assam, Burma, Sumatra, Singapore, and Hong Kong from 1943 until his discharge in 1947. These four years provided him with material for a variety of successful books and stories, such as the popular Horatio Stubbs series. After being released from the British Army, Aldiss worked as an assistant in Oxford bookstores, turning this experience into a series of fictional bookselling sketches that were ultimately compiled into his debut book, The Brightfount Diaries, published in 1955. He subsequently continued to publish stories and started earning more money than he did at the bookstore job, eventually becoming a full-time writer. Aldiss has since produced a number of novels, short stories, essays, and volumes, mostly science fiction or fantasy, and remained a prominent figure in British and world SF for the following sixty years. He passed away on August 19, 2017.2 Aldiss states that he began writing when he was only three years old. He would write little stories, and his mother would tie them up and place them 1

Robert Reginald, Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature: A Checklist, 1700-1974 with Contemporary Science Fiction Authors II., vol. 2 (Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1979), 792. 2 John Clute and David Pringle, “Aldiss, Brian W.,” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, ed. John Clute and David Langford (London: SFE Ltd and Reading: Ansible Editions, August 16, 2021), accessed November 30, 2021. https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/aldiss_brian_w.

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on the shelf.3 Witnessing an eclipse as a child and discovering the pulp magazine Astounding Science Fiction helped him realise his interest in the science fiction genre. Afterwards, he read all the novels by H. G. Wells, Robert Heinlein, and later Philip K. Dick.4 Aldiss debuted in science fiction with “Criminal Record,” which appeared in the July 1954 issue of Science Fantasy. This was followed by notable stories such as “Outside” (published in New Worlds in January 1955), “Not for an Age” (Observer, January 1955), “There Is a Tide” (New Worlds, February 1956), and “Psyclops” (New Worlds, July 1956), all of which featured in his first short story collection, Space, Time, and Nathaniel (1957). The Canopy of Time and No Time Like Tomorrow are two other collections of his short stories, both published in 1959. By the mid-1960s, Aldiss had established a level of success that allowed him to publish collections on a regular basis. He has so many collections of short stories, novellas, and novelettes that listing them all fills up a whole page. However, the Nebula Award-winning novella The Saliva Tree (1965), which was included in the collection The Saliva Tree and Other Strange Growths (1966), is one of his most notable works. Some of the other outstanding collections are: Intangibles Inc. and Other Stories (1969); The Moment of Eclipse (1970), which won the British Science Fiction Association Award (BSFA Award) in 1972; Neanderthal Planet (1970); The Book of Brian Aldiss (1972; published in the UK in 1973 as The Comic Inferno); Last Orders and Other Stories (1977); New Arrivals, Old Encounters (1979); and Seasons in Flight (1984). Most of the best pieces of his first decade of publishing have been collected in Best SF Stories (1988), Man in His Time: The Best Science Fiction Stories of Brian W. Aldiss (1988), and A Romance of the Equator: Best Fantasy Stories (1989). Later collections published in the following years include: A Tupolev Too Far and Other Stories (1993); The Secret of This Book (1995); Supertoys Last All Summer Long and Other Stories of Future Time (2001), which includes the short story “Supertoys Last All Summer Long” (1969), the original inspiration for the Stanley Kubrick/Steven Spielberg film A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001); Cultural Breaks (2005); and The Invention of Happiness 3

Charlie Cooper, “My Secret Life: Brian Aldiss, 87, author,” The Independent 11 (April 11, 2013), accessed December 1, 2021. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/my-secret-life-brian-aldiss87-author-8567603.html. 4 Sam Roberts, “Brian Aldiss, Author of Science Fiction and Much More, Dies at 92,” The New York Times (August 24, 2017), accessed December 1, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/books/brian-aldiss-author-of-science-fictionand-much-more-dies-at-92.html.

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(2013). Like John Christopher, Aldiss has also used various pen names. He continued to write short stories mostly under his own name as either Brian W. Aldiss or just Brian Aldiss, but occasionally under the pseudonyms Jael Cracken, John Runciman, Dr. Peristyle, and C. C. Shackleton.5 Aldiss published his first science fiction novel, Non-Stop, in 1958 (published in the US in 1960 as Starship) and received a special plaque from the Sixteenth World Science Fiction (Solacon) as “Most Promising New Author of the Year.”6 He later published four short novels: Vanguard from Alpha (1959), The Interpreter (1960; published in the US as Bow Down to Nul), The Male Response (1961), and The Primal Urge (1961). According to Collings, only the first two are truly works of science fiction, and none adequately present Aldiss’s abilities.7 In 1962, one of Aldiss’s most striking and essential novels, Hothouse (published in the US as The Long Afternoon of Earth), was released. Based on a series of short stories published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1961, this fix-up8 novel won Aldiss the Hugo Award in 1962 for representing “great structural skill and a significant advance over his thematically assembled short story collections.”9 Set in the distant future, at a time when the Earth stopped rotating, Hothouse depicts the last survivors of the human species living in the branches of a gigantic tree spanning continents. Clute and Pringle note that although criticised by James Blish (an American science fiction and fantasy writer) and others for being scientifically illogical, a work like Hothouse, which showcases all of Aldiss’s “linguistic, comic, and inventive talents” and successfully dramatises a wide range of concerns, demonstrates the utmost inapplicability of such criticisms. These concerns include “the conflict between fecundity and Entropy, between engorgement and chaos, between the rich variety of life and the silence of death.”10 After Hothouse, The Dark Light Years was published in 1964. It is a significant novel for its ironic portrayal of a common science fiction 5

Clute and Pringle, “Aldiss, Brian W.” Michael R. Collings, Brian Aldiss (Wildside Press, 2006), 1. 7 Ibid., 15. 8 “A fix-up (or fixup) is a novel created from several short fiction stories that may or may not have been initially related or previously published. The stories may be edited for consistency, and sometimes new connecting material, such as a frame story or other interstitial narration, is written for the new work. The term was coined by the science fiction writer A. E. van Vogt.” “Fix-up,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia (February 13, 2022), accessed February 25, 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fix-up#:~:text=A%20fix%2Dup%20(or%20fixup, written%20for%20the%20new%20work. 9 Collings, Brian Aldiss, 16. 10 Clute and Pringle, “Aldiss, Brian W.” 6

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dilemma: how to deal with intelligent aliens that are visually hideous. In the same year, Greybeard, which is set in a future in which humankind has become infertile as a result of a nuclear bomb test carried out in Earth’s orbit, was released. The novel depicts a world inhabited by an elderly, childless populace. In 1965, Earthworks, focusing on an ecological crisis brought on by overpopulation, was published. In 1967, An Age (published in the US as Cryptozoic!), which offered an unusual and unique approach to time travel (a popular SF theme), was published. Other notable sci-fi novels by Aldiss include Report on Probability A (1968); Barefoot in the Head (1969), about a future battle in which psychedelic drugs are used as weapons; The Eighty Minute Hour, or The 80 minute Hour (1974), depicts a world in chaos as a result of a nuclear war; Enemies of the System (1978); Helliconia Spring (1982), Helliconia Summer (1983), and Helliconia Winter (1985), a trilogy that chronicles the history of a civilization on the Earth-like planet Helliconia as the planet passes through centuries-long seasons; White Mars or, the Mind Set Free Little (1999); Super-State: A Novel of Future Europe (2002); Jocasta (2006), a re-telling of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Antigone; Sanity and the Lady (2005); HARM (2007) and Finches of Mars (2012). Aldiss was a highly prolific science fiction writer who wrote in a wide range of genres. He has written over eighty novels and over three hundred short stories; several collections of poems; several plays; and a few autobiographies. The semi-autobiographical Horatio Stubbs series: The Hand-Reared Boy (1970), A Soldier Erect (1971), and A Rude Awakening (1978) are among his other novels, all of which depict a character named Horatio Stubbs during school and war. In addition to these, Aldiss has edited a huge number of anthologies and has also retold the stories of Dracula, Dr. Moreau, and Frankenstein in the novels Frankenstein Unbound (1973), Moreau’s Other Island (1980), and Dracula Unbound (1990). Frankenstein Unbound was made into a film in 1990. Moreover, as Higgins and Duncan highlight, in the 1960s, Aldiss became a key figure in the British New Wave movement, along with Michael Moorcock and J. G. Ballard. One of the leading names in British science fiction, Aldiss was also the first president of the British Science Fiction Association, where he served between 1960 and 1964. In 1964, together with Harry Harrison, he started Science Fiction Horizons, the first UK critical SF journal, publishing only two issues (Spring 1964 and Winter 1965) and including articles by James Blish, Kingsley Amis, and William S. Burroughs. Aldiss also wrote Billion Year Spree (1973), the first major literary history of science fiction. It was later revised and expanded by David Wingrove and published as Trillion Year Spree in 1986. Billion Year

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Spree was one of the most important early works in defining science fiction as an acknowledged field of academic study. In it, Aldiss provides a historical background for the genre, tracing its origins to the Gothic novel, particularly Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). According to Aldiss, “SF emerges from the gothic romance as it examines the impact of the industrial revolution on the human condition.”11 He argues that Mary Shelley can be classified as one of the first science fiction writers since Frankenstein focuses on science rather than the supernatural. For Aldiss, Frankenstein is the first true SF novel, and it defines the essential principles of the genre. Throughout his long career, Aldiss received plenty of awards, including the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pilgrim Award for his contributions to the study of science fiction in 1978 and the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA)’s Distinguished Scholarship Award in 1986. In 1989, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was the “Permanent Special Guest” of the annual conference of the ICFA from 1989 through 2008. He was also the guest of honour at the conventions in 1986 and 1999. In 2000, he was named a SFWA Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America, and in 2004, he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. In 2005, he was given the title of OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for “services to literature” on the Queen’s Birthday Honours list. In acknowledgement of his contribution to literature, the University of Liverpool awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2008.12 In summary, Aldiss was passionate about literature, especially science fiction. He worked tirelessly to encourage, support, and promote new writers throughout his career. In Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction, Aldiss defines science fiction as “the search for a definition of mankind and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science).”13 So, Aldiss suggests that science fiction is an exploration of how science and technology compel humanity to reconsider its relationship with the environment and the universe. Humankind’s search for its “status in the universe” implies that humans are linked to ecology, regarding the interrelationships of species. Despite the use of common scifi elements like aliens, spaceships, and time travel in his works, Aldiss places high importance on environmental concerns as well. He advocates the possible significance of science fiction as environmental literature by 11

Higgins and Duncan, “Key Critical Concepts,” 135. Clute and Pringle, “Aldiss, Brian W.” 13 Brian Aldiss and David Wingrove, Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (New York: Atheneum, 1986), 25. 12

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stating that the “greatest successes of science fiction are those which deal with man in relation to his changing surroundings and abilities: what might loosely be called environmental fiction.”14 With this statement, Aldiss emphasises the importance of the science fiction genre in creating environmental awareness. He proposes the idea that humankind’s relationship with the environment and its ability to use science and technology allow it to change both the environment and the diversity of surroundings available to it. Moreover, Aldiss’s definition underlines science fiction writers’ distinctive ability to imagine and portray the role of humans on Earth. Also, his popular definition of the genre, “Hubris clobbered by nemesis,” encompasses a critique of the human-centred perspective.15 In this context, the critique of anthropocentrism holds an important place in most SF works, such as Aldiss’s Earthworks, which explores the ecological catastrophe caused by overpopulation. Ursula K. Heise states that overpopulation became a literary topic in the 1950s, but it was limited to rare short stories, such as Kurt Vonnegut’s “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” (1953), Frederik Pohl’s “The Census Takers” (1955), and Cyril Kornbluth’s “Shark Ship” (1958). It was only in the 1960s that it became a significant theme in science fiction, sparking an entire series of novels, which include Anthony Burgess’s The Wanting Seed (1962), Brian Aldiss’s Earthworks (1965), Lee Tung’s The Wind Obeys Lama Toru (1967), James Blish and Norman L. Knight’s A Torrent of Faces (1967), and John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (1968). Thus, between the early 1960s and the mid-1970s, a significant number of scientific and literary works appeared that dealt with the topic of human population expansion and its repercussions.16 Besides, after Silent Spring, the most significant environmentalist work is accepted as Paul R. Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb. In his book, published in 1968, Ehrlich warns of the impact of overpopulation on major societal turmoil and mass famine and urges quick action to restrict population growth. He states in the prologue of the book that the struggle to feed the entire human race is over. Despite whatever crash programmes are implemented now, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in the 1970s and 1980s. Nothing can currently stop a significant rise in the global death rate.17 Published during a period of great conflict and social unrest, 14

Ibid., 29. Ibid., 26. 16 Ursula K. Heise, Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 71-2. 17 Paul R. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (1968; repr., New York: Ballantine Books, 1978), xi. 15

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Ehrlich maintains in The Population Bomb that there is a single, basic cause for many of the world’s most worrying incidents: too many humans, jammed into too small spaces, depleting the planet. For Ehrlich, if humankind does not reduce its population quickly, all of humanity will face mass hunger on a dying Earth. Thus, regarding the population problem of the late 1960s and early 1970s, population ecologists and fiction writers alike created scenarios about too many humans sharing too little space and how overpopulation would wipe out what was left of the Earth. Drawing on scientific data, SF writers began to focus on what the ever-increasing population meant in terms of the interaction of the human species with the environment. In this context, they explored the ecological and social consequences of population growth beyond the carrying capacity of the planet. They also investigated the future of individuals and societies under overcrowded conditions and the depletion of natural resources due to high consumption levels. As a result of population growth, science fiction writers tended to express their concerns about the availability and distribution of urban space. Published in 1965, Aldiss’s Earthworks is a dystopian science fiction novel that explores all these concerns caused by overpopulation. The next sub-chapter applies an ecocritical approach to investigate the origins and consequences of overpopulation on the planet, as depicted in Aldiss’s Earthworks.

Earthworks Set on an overpopulated Earth in the twenty-second century, Earthworks portrays the world’s continents as mostly uninhabitable. In this dystopian world, the population largely lives in cities, which are governed by a police state, while the barren countryside is ruled by a wealthy and privileged farmer class. Farmlands have been destroyed by industrial agriculture, and cities have become full of sick people due to a lack of food and nutrients. There is severe economic inequality in this collapsed world. Condemned for the slightest crimes, the rural prison worker population is forced into labour by farmers to grow food, which is scarce. Apart from the poor common people and the wealthy living in the cities, there are the Travellers, a freedom resistance group trying to lead a free life on the streets. They are seen as criminals freed from social surveillance in the eyes of the government. Also, in this world devastated by overpopulation and overcultivation, robots are valued more than human beings. Describing a future England that is very similar to today’s world, Earthworks puts emphasis on barren lands made barely fertile by toxic chemicals and an oppressive hierarchical society. In this regard, while portraying a dystopian

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world, Earthworks presents a fictional narrative that draws attention to the obvious connections between environmental problems and socioeconomic issues. This novel provides a narrative that invites readers to consider how overpopulation affects both the environment and humans. It also criticises the human species’ exploitation of the planet to the point where the ecosystem collapses. In view of all these, this sub-chapter argues that Earthworks emphasises the devastating effects of overpopulation on the ecosystem and humans by foregrounding and depicting the barren lands, inadequate and toxic food supplies, socioeconomic inequality, the rise of automatons, and the loss of identity experienced by the characters. The plot is narrated by the protagonist, Knowle Noland, who is the captain of the Trieste Star, a largely automated transport ship that carries sand from the African coast to soil factories in England and Europe. Huge atomic ships transfer soil from Africa all over the world because only in Africa is the soil still fertile. The soil factories use African sand to produce earth in an attempt to replenish lost topsoil. In Noland’s world, where both earth and life are worn out, soil has become a rare and valuable resource. Food is limited, the air is polluted, and meeting the fundamental needs for survival occupies daily life. The novel begins with the appearance of a dead man floating on the sea towards Noland’s ship upon his arrival in Africa. The dead man drifted along in the breeze. He walked upright on his hind legs like a performing nanny goat, as he had in life, nothing improper, farther beyond the reach of ideology, nationality, hardship, inspiration, than he had ever been in life. A few flies of ripe dimension stayed with him, although he was far from land, travelling light above the surface of the complacent South Atlantic. The tasselled fringe of his white silk trousers –he had been a rich man, while riches counted –occasionally catching a spray from the waves.18

It is mentioned that an anti-gravity belt, which only the wealthy can afford, keeps the dead man above the waves. Beginning the narrative with the depiction of a rich dead man, Aldiss emphasises that in an ecologically devastated world, all people are affected by this disaster, regardless of their ideology, nationality, or socioeconomic status. When the body is brought aboard, Noland discovers some love letters on him and keeps them. The letters have been addressed by Justine to a man named Peter. Soon after, Noland lands the ship ashore on the African coast, near Walvis Bay, the future capital of Africa. There, he meets Justine, who is mentioned in the letters and is involved in a series of events that will affect the fate of the world. So, the novel has a pretty haunting atmosphere with a dead body drifting in the wind, a main character clutching love letters, and 18

Brian Aldiss, Earthworks (1965; repr., New York: Avon Books, 1980), 7.

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ships transporting sand from one end of the world to the other. Earthworks begins with a dead man and ends with the threat of a global war as the only remaining solution. Between them, the narrative is equally dark and depressing, further intensifying the devastating impact of environmental destruction in a dystopian world on the reader. It is crucial to take a deeper look at Noland, the character that narrates the plot. Noland is a very cynical and cowardly character who can betray even his loved ones for the sake of escape from the troubles that befall him. For instance, as a child, when a police officer arrives at their home to arrest his owner, a bizarre former scrap collector named March Jordill, to whom he was sold by his family as a child, hides beneath a table. Later, Noland himself is arrested and sentenced to work on chemical-soaked farmland as a harsh punishment. Escaping the farm and breaking free from his penal slavery, he visits an abandoned village in search of books, where he meets and joins the Travellers. When the Travellers are caught by government forces, Noland betrays them too. After betraying the Travellers, he is recruited by another group of political radicals, the “Abstainers,” who assign him a position on one of the enormous semi-automatic freighters that travel the world’s oceans and demand that he assassinate a political leader. Therefore, he becomes engaged in a plot to start a global war that will kill millions of people. According to the Abstainers, war seems to be the only way to significantly reduce the population and establish a better world for the survivors. However, it is a risky job because, despite being one of the few people who can read, Noland is completely unaware of the realities of the world’s situation. So, Noland becomes a crucial figure in a political action that has the potential to save the planet but could result in great human cost. Hence, in Earthworks, alongside ecological destruction, Aldiss also explores the conflicts between control and liberty, authority and resistance, focusing on the role of a disloyal character in a global ecological struggle. Furthermore, Noland is a character who suffers from recurring hallucinations in which he experiences vivid visions due to food poisoning as a child. For this reason, some parts of the plot are narrated in flashbacks and some while he is hallucinating. He claims that when he is awake, he is being pursued by a ghost he calls the Figure. “Once I looked back. Another man stood at a misty wheel behind me, his face dark and veiled, as if yet to be created. It was my doppelgänger! The Figure!”19 This phantom seems to serve as a projection of his inner suffering onto the outside world. Noland’s innate physical cowardice and his tendency to let anyone who comes into 19

Ibid., 30.

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contact with him fail, as in his previously mentioned betrayals, make his conscience unsettled and give him the feeling that a “figure” is constantly following him. It can be claimed that it is his conscience that haunts him. Yet he is also a person who does fight with his mental illness, which is envisioned as his doppelgänger, and ultimately succeeds. The struggle within himself gives Noland the courage to face the outside world. In this sense, Noland’s ability to evaluate and see the essence of his own actions is one of the most striking aspects of the novel. Through the character of Noland, Aldiss reflects the central theme of the novel: the harshness and cruelty of the outside world serve as a stark reminder that humankind is its own worst enemy. Since he is semi-literate, Noland narrates the plot in a clumsy and confusing way, demonstrating his own perplexity as well as the surprising nature of his society. This narrative device, which makes the novel inept both structurally and stylistically, also emphasises the cultural collapse as well as the ecological. Noland mentions how he has attempted to figure it out many times while lying in bed and talking to Doctor Thunderpeck. Since he can read, he discovers many things in books. Learning what the old world was like from the books he read, Noland is surprised at how their ancestors were “so foolish as to waste their resources the way they did.”20 Recalling his earlier conversations with his master Jordill, the philosophical ragpicker, Noland cites the reason behind the catastrophe: ‘We can’t tell what the world used to be like, boy,’ he said. ‘But it seems from books that the population rose steeply in the twentieth century. That brought acute crises in famine-struck areas like the East and the Middle East—that’s lands on the other side of Africa. They needed a fourfold increase in food production to cope with the extra mouths, and of course it couldn’t be done. Water was the limiting factor.’21

As can be understood from the quotation above, high population expansion puts additional pressure on the Earth’s resources. Agricultural land is degraded as more humans seek places for habitation and farming, leaving only a small percentage of the land to feed the rising population. As a result, humanity constantly cultivates the land to increase food production, resulting in soil degradation and reduced fertility. As Jordill points out, this is exactly why the environmental disaster occurred: countries like America and Australia-Zealand overproduced in an effort to feed the rest of the globe, but by doing so, they simply wreaked havoc on their own territories. He says that “Once land gets in a state, once it begins to deteriorate, it is hard 20 21

Ibid., 23. Ibid., 23-4.

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to reverse the process. Land falls sick just like people—that’s the whole tragedy of our time.”22 These descriptions make it obvious that the biosphere of the planet cannot support an ever-increasing human population, and the overpopulation problem causes irreversible deterioration on earth. In addition, it is indicated in the novel that the coming of “the big birth pill crisis, when the long-term effects of progestogen made themselves felt, and then the land wars that left the nations of Africa politically in the lead,” has increased the extent of the ecological catastrophe.23 Acknowledging that overpopulation is a real problem for the well-being of the Earth, Bryan G. Norton indicates that “population growth cannot be considered an independent driver of the social changes that result in environmental degradation.”24 The phrase “independent” here is significant because the population is regarded as a catalyst rather than an independent component. Overpopulation intensifies the effects of economic exploitation by functioning as a catalyst. With a large population, what appears to be a simple cultural shift becomes a major materialistic change on a global scale. For instance, the increase in the human population directly affects the amount of food needed to feed all the people in the world. Meeting this demand would result in the loss of large areas of the earth to destructive farmlands. In Earthworks, exactly this happens, as it is narrated: “In the interests of efficiency, farms had slowly grown bigger and bigger, swallowing the little unproductive units. As the population grew, the farms had to grow.”25 The road system undergoes significant simplification as the population increases and more land is required for agriculture. The changed earth is described in the novel as follows: Most of the old features of the land had been removed or altered. Small hills had been blasted flat, streams and rivers flowed in straight lines across the landscape. As we climbed up towards a gradual escarpment, I recalled how a line of great trees had grown here a few years ago. Now the wind blew unobstructed, and the shoulder of land lay bare and dismal. Machines brooded there.26

So, it is not the same Earth anymore; it is more like “an alien planet” where an unprotected landing on its surface could lead to “a painful death.”27 These 22

Ibid., 24. Ibid. 24 Bryan G. Norton, “Population and Consumption: Environmental Problems as Problems of Scale,” Ethics and the Environment 5, no. 1 (2000): 24. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27766053. 25 Aldiss, Earthworks, 41. 26 Ibid., 40-1. 27 Ibid., 40. 23

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stark depictions and metaphors make clear how interrelated and complicated the relationship between overpopulation and environmental impacts is. Moreover, as portrayed below, overcrowding has not only caused the destruction of land but also destroyed life on the seas. In the famine years, the more advanced nations went to the sea for sustenance. They brought all their cleverness to the problem, and immense technological resources. They developed new fertilisers to speed up plankton growth . . . and that proved fatal. The plankton died. All the great living harvests of the world’s immense oceans took sick of a tiny surfeit of poison. . . . And the death crept up the scale of life until the seas were multitudinous graveyards.28

The “graveyard” metaphor strikingly illustrates the extent of the destruction caused by humans. The cemetery is a dreary, unsettling, and frightening place devoid of life. It evokes fear, horror, and incomprehensibility. Therefore, Aldiss gives the same features to the seas in the graveyard analogy and provokes thought about the absence of any signs of life. These descriptions and incidents in the novel reveal the negative impact of the increase in human population and the number and total area of human settlements on the ecology, flora, and fauna. Besides, Aldiss criticises the anthropocentric outlook that prioritises human intelligence and technological advancements. The quotation above shows how the fertiliser humans developed without considering the welfare of ocean life resulted in a calamity. Aldiss implies that all life in the vast oceans of the world has disappeared because of the erroneous mentality and attitude of the developed nations. One day on his ship, Noland questions the interrelationship between humans and nature and tries to understand whether what has happened was the planet’s or humans’ fault. He finds it meaningless that there is so much water but no life, and he states that “that water too had turned against man just as the land did.”29 With Noland’s interrogation here, Aldiss underlines that humans cannot escape the outcomes of their actions. Although the human species considers itself superior to nature thanks to all its technological possibilities, in fact, nature has the power to recover; it is humans who are weak and powerless. “But man isn’t really that mighty. The seas recovered. It takes more than man to kill them. They live again now—but man has turned his back on them.”30

28

Ibid., 24. Ibid. 30 Ibid., 24-5. 29

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In Earthworks, Aldiss explores how Western socioeconomic structures unavoidably affect political and technological approaches to overpopulation concerns. Noland is a person who has never seen land and has been sentenced to spend his life on a freighter collecting sand from deserted locations like the Skeleton Coast and carrying it to a soil manufacturer in Liverpool. The soil manufacturer transforms the sand into a soil that is at least suitable for growing vegetables that can be used to feed cattle. It can be interpreted as a desperate attempt to avert an environmental disaster. Technology is used to prevent global famine, but this creates vast deserts, and surviving farms become mechanised and uninhabitable in the midst of toxic rains. So, technology does not bring salvation from ecological collapse. The demands of efficiency have resulted in massive, centralised cities. Moreover, in the novel, there is an emphasis on the failure of the system that recklessly cuts down trees and then uses tree substitutes for its needs. Noland expresses this absurdity as follows: Directly below me, the earth was broken and eroded. The infertile subsoil showed through. This was what had happened since shelter and binding provided by the trees were gone. The trees had been cut down to get rid of birds, which were currently being destroyed because of their ability to spread crop disease. Now we were building tree-substitutes; they would act as windbreaks, as the trees had done, and stop the wind from blowing away the soil and exposing more subsoil. Nobody admitted that this showed some sort of basic failure in the system.31

Hence, with the above passage, Aldiss reveals how unsuccessful and ridiculous the arrogant thinking system of humankind is, which causes it to act by ignoring the workings and functions of nature. Furthermore, everything is poisonous in this ecologically devastated world, like soil, air, and water. The majority of food is toxic as well. Almost every piece of land is intensively cultivated. Sand, transported from Africa, is infused with nutrients to build new farmlands. The food must be subjected to chemical processing to remove poisons and carcinogens. Noland describes the meal he ate with the Travellers as follows: The soup was vegetable water. The meat was that of a cow they had stolen from a cattle pen some miles away. The beast had been fed on stilbestrol to promote growth; its flesh was pulpy and obviously lacked key nutrients. Stilbestrol itself was known—and had been known for over a couple of centuries—as a carcinogen; but we had no option but to eat it. In the frantic drive to keep food production level with population increase, no pure food,

31

Ibid., 42.

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as the ancients would have recognized it, was left on the planet, except perhaps in a few remote corners.32

Humanity, unable to grow food on the lands it has ruined, tries to produce it with the fertilisers and chemicals it has developed. However, as Noland points out, these products have an artificial flavour. The food was the usual highly flavoured stuff; the flavour was artificial, and the foods were packed with preservatives. Since they had been chemically grown in the first place, the whole meal, like every meal, was artificial, and I swallowed a couple of vitamin pills afterwards, just to humour my metabolism.33

As can be seen, one of the most serious consequences of overpopulation is the scarcity of resources, and the novel highlights this problem by describing how starving people are compelled to eat poisonous and artificial-tasting foods. Another significant detail about the novel is that the characters see illusions; in particular, Noland has delusions that the dead man they encountered at the beginning of the narrative is watching and following them. Although the character named Thunderpeck indicates that it is just a sign of guilt, there are deeper meanings under it. Through the character Thunderpeck, Aldiss proposes that since Noland has betrayed the traveller Jess, he feels guilty, but more than that, all people in this world suffer from irrational anxieties. Even though they establish mechanisms to try to justify the senselessness, there are moments when these fears increase and become more powerful for some reason. Mental illness is one of such times; will and action are completely muddled in sick individuals, which explains Noland’s hallucinations. It is the only wise way to live in a world that is absurd and meaningless. For Noland, the “greater reality” exists in his head, and the world of physical action such as running, jumping, and bleeding is only a “shadow show.”34 For him, reality first begins deep within himself and then merges with the outside world. Ironically, he prefers to replace an insane reality with a sane vision. Everything he encounters threatens Noland’s frailty, putting him in a state of hallucination. For instance, “the shock” he experiences after being caught by the Travellers throws him “straight into a hallucination.”35 He describes his vision, triggered by fear of being caught by the farmer after fleeing the farmland, as follows:

32

Ibid., 51. Ibid., 19. 34 Ibid., 33. 35 Ibid., 44. 33

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With the thought, I launched myself forward, pulling out the knife. As we came together, I sank the knife into the Farmer’s ribs. That was real enough! But still he smiled, smiled as we fell together and rolled on the ground. Hugging him, intercorpse. But his smile –no, the world was spinning –his smile stank, and where his eyes had been. … The peculiar clarity of vision drew me down into little ripe craters, where worms, white ad so exquisitely built, threaded themselves through a dirty fabric. At once, I fell through the fabric of consciousness.36

Such visions, aroused by a rich imagination, lead Noland to turn inward, and similar events eventually bring him back to outer reality. Thus, through Noland’s hallucinations, Aldiss blurs the line between reality and illusion, implying that freedom is what people define through their illusions in this terrifying world. Moreover, it is implied that entire societies, as well as individuals, can become ill. There are a variety of causes behind the sickness in communities, but one of the most common is inadequate nutritional levels. Thunderpeck expresses that they “have the misfortune to live in one of the most undernourished periods in human history. There is a sufficiency of food in bulk, but in content it consists mainly of deadly poisons. When [they] eat, [they] take in toxics, and the psyche reacts accordingly.”37 With this description, Aldiss highlights how toxic foods affect not only the physical but also the mental health of people. Throughout the novel, the depictions show that the globe has become a diseased, overcrowded dumpsite. The chemicals have poisoned the land and brought many people to the brink of starvation. The concepts of ecology, nature, and environment have become empty and meaningless words. Not only the terms related to nature but also culture have lost their meaning as well. Europe grapples with dire poverty as well as a lack of intellectual thought. In this dystopian world, most people cannot read or write. Noland tells his story through a series of flashbacks, reviving the art of writing. As Noland points out, buildings that were once a symbol of culture have lost their function and meaning. This had been some sort of central part of the city; I recognized the building from which I had taken the books, without knowing what sort of building it was. In the books themselves I had found possible labels for it: bookstore, library, museum, reading-room; but which it was, or what the differences between the terms implied, I did not know.38

36

Ibid., 17. Ibid., 26. 38 Ibid., 44. 37

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It is conveyed that concepts such as art, culture, and writing, which are the intellectual parts of human existence, evaporate when humans cannot meet their most basic needs and are preoccupied with hunger. The novel portrays how all culture, even basic literacy, has vanished, leaving people with no choice but to compete over tiny rations of toxic food. According to Jordill, who has seen the old, flourishing world, humans’ separation from nature is the biggest mistake and the main cause of the disaster. He expresses: ‘People progressed by cutting themselves off from the natural world. But now they’ve taken it a stage further. When the soil grew so foul, they moved the cities on to raised platforms to cut themselves off from it, but that cut them off from their own past as well. That’s why everything’s gone to pot. We’re cut off from the wisdom of the ages.’39

The quotation above shows that humans’ separation from nature causes them to become alienated from reality and suffer in a ruined world. In the novel, it is stated that this ecological destruction described has mostly taken place in the First World and that the global centre and the new rising power are now in Africa due to its mainly unspoiled land that can still be used to raise food. As Justine indicates, “England is finished, worn out, ruined, just like all the other rotten little states of Europe, . . . and of Russia and China, and what was known as the United States, . . . Africa is the only place with fight left in it, in its men and territories.”40 That is why the other “poor tottering countries” have made treaties and alliances with various African states so that they can get assistance from them, such as buying sand.41 In addition to the fertility of the soil, one of the most technologically advanced African states in recent years has become Egypt. Most of the automatons have a large “Made in Egypt” stamp on them. However, Aldiss implies that African nations are greedy, just like European countries were a few centuries ago. In one of the scenes, Justine puts a tape on a player and turns it on for Noland. He recognises the voices: “They were the Englishspeaking radio stations of the various most powerful African States: Algeria, New Angola, Waterberg, West Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Goya, Nigeria” whose world stance was “tough and energetic” with “hints of aggression towards Europe and America.”42 Trying to show Noland the truth, Justine asks him to realise their greedy demands. She says, “‘They sound just like the European nations a couple of centuries ago, Knowle; did

39

Ibid., 103. Ibid., 111. 41 Ibid., 112. 42 Ibid., 113. 40

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you know that? They all want the same thing—more land!’”43 In this scene featuring Justine and Noland, Aldiss argues that ecological disasters stem from the selfish greed of powerful nations and their traditional political and ethical approaches to world problems. Since Africa is the continent that now has political and economic control, it has to deal with many power struggles. Although there have been rumours for several years about the potential for conflict among African nations, particularly among “the virile young peoples whose technologies often surpassed those of Europe and America,” Sayid Abdul el Mahasset, a powerful man who had just been elected president of Africa, had momentarily brought an “uneasy peace” among the countries ruled by him.44 In fact, Aldiss questions the possibility of such an easy solution because existing power structures affect and constrain effective and sane attitudes towards ecological and ecosocial problems. In this sense, Aldiss criticises the erroneous approaches to environmental crises based on Western delusions that technology is superior to ecology and ecosystems. Also, there is a place called Walvis Bay, a city that has been built on land that does not belong to any African country. Since the twentieth century, there has been much debate about it, but it is an independent region. The United African Nations is now using it to “build a great seacoast resort where all of Africa can meet on neutral territory and enjoy themselves.”45 It is viewed as the most concrete step yet taken to bring the continent together. Despite the enemies’ delaying and sabotaging the attempt, Walvis Bay is to be officially launched by President el Mahasset himself for the glory of Africa. The message here is clear: Aldiss implies that it is useless for countries to be in control of the world without realising their faulty actions. African states inevitably make the mistakes of the First World, so their failure is imminent. The novel highlights that the shift of political power from Europe to Africa does not help solve the existing ecosocial problems. Because the focus should be on developing policies for the restoration of the devastated Earth, not on which country should hold the political economy. Brian M. Stableford and David Langford argue that the problem of overpopulation has three aspects: pollution-induced environmental degradation, resource depletion, and social problems associated with living in crowded

43

Ibid. Ibid., 19. 45 Ibid., 93. 44

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surroundings,46 and all three aspects can be observed in Earthworks. In the novel, it is mentioned that the world has become so polluted that only a small percentage of the population is able to live in cities that are mechanically elevated above the earth. The city squats “on a giant platform, raised on legs high above the surrounding land where the poisons in the country air could less easily reach its inhabitants.”47 Besides, in this totalitarian world, people are sent to farms for even the smallest crimes, and these “criminals” are expected to die while working so that people in the cities can continue to live. The villages are now used to serve the sentence, as Noland points out: the only urban areas left were the enormous cities and the meagre villages, which in earlier, more prosperous times would have been referred to as labour camps. “But in this enlightened age, prisons were done away with, and you served your sentence for the most trivial offence by work on the land; ‘rustication,’ they sometimes called it.”48 So, the villages are used as places to punish people who commit petty violations. For instance, Noland is sentenced to the village and made to serve as a landsman for having a sort of vision one day while on the street, walking out into the traffic way and causing a bus to run up on to the pavement. Life on the farm, therefore, is predictably dreadful; as Noland describes, the fields are miles apart and all square or rectangular in shape. A village is established where one or two of these are close to a rare road. He states, “I used the old penal terminology—the ‘villages’ were simply work camps to which we returned exhausted in the evening.”49 The farm’s comparison to a labour camp is pretty striking. The conditions of the “village” and the treatment of workers by the guards recall the concentration camps. Hearing our guards shouting that first evening—still vivid! The loss of grip on life, after the prisons under the city, and now this muddy compound, its layout unknown, its uses unglimpsed, its smells unsmelt before. As we went as the voices ordered, glance backward to the long windowless car that had brought us—hated as it carried us half-suffocated on the journey here, now a splinter of longing at its security as it roars preparatory to going, to grinding through the gates, and down the long road for ever.50

46

Brian M. Stableford and David Langford, “Overpopulation,” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, ed. John Clute and David Langford (London: SFE Ltd and Reading: Ansible Editions, July 5, 2021), accessed December 29, 2021. https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/overpopulation. 47 Aldiss, Earthworks, 42. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid., 35. 50 Ibid.

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These lines, which depict the workers being brought to the work area in windowless vehicles, where they are out of breath and passing through long roads leading to their deaths, are almost a reflection of the Holocaust that took place during the Second World War. The situation in the village is so terrible that weird enclosures have been made to prevent the gases from blowing from the land, but they are improperly enclosed. Not taking enough precaution to protect the workers from the poisonous gas rising from the land and exposing them to this gas evokes the gas chambers in the concentration camps. As Noland mentions, in the village, there is complete chaos with shouting, undressing, and the smell of nudity. The guards kick the workers terribly and rush them frantically to collect the clothes. They feel extremely sick yet are still ashamed; they want to see but are afraid to gaze. Then they all come together with “the disgust of touch” and maintain “animal silence” as they hand over their belongings to the guards.51 Noland expresses how it all feels as follows: Naked, now we have nothing, nothing but the sweat and dirt on our bodies. Some horrible emaciation here, the swellings and deformation of avitaminosis, a hundred boils and blemishes, like live things growing on rocks. We plunge under a cold shower sprinkling a narrow and slippery corridor. Fear of water, red puckered elbow digs my blue ribs. The smell of the water, something in it that stings the eyes.52

Just like in the concentration camps, sanitation and facilities are extremely inadequate in this place as well. People sent to the villages are imprisoned by having to work under harsh conditions. They are subjected to cruel treatment, torture, and humiliation. The clothes they are supposed to wear also carry the characteristics of a concentration camp uniform; they are given “blue serge trousers and blouses,” which have no sex. Still, the outfit makes Noland feel strangely happy because they are “being given something! Presents from the Farmer.”53 After putting on their uniforms, they stand there uncomfortably, waiting for more yells. They exchange glances but do not dare talk. The only good thing about the village, according to Noland, is getting a “regular 20 grammes of animal protein every other day, at supper,” as better work is expected.54 He adds that this should not be underestimated because, in the cities, one can experience the complete absence of the meat ration for weeks at a time during the recurrent and inexplicable shortages. Hence, Earthworks, by depicting situations 51

Ibid. Ibid., 36. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., 39. 52

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similar to real-life experiences, demonstrates how socioeconomic inequality in society worsens during environmental crises and how environmental disasters related to overpopulation make other social problems more visible. In Earthworks, Aldiss primarily addresses the problems faced by the lower classes, which constitute the majority of society, with in-depth and lengthy descriptions. Noland’s experience in the village camp and every detail he gives about it underline how worthless these social groups are as human beings in this cruel and collapsing world. The expression “Like cattle, we teemed through the door”55 shows their place in society. It reflects the hierarchies that humans establish both in their interactions with animals and within their own species. With this phrase, Aldiss underlines how humans, who consider themselves more valuable than other life forms in nature and position themselves at the top of the status hierarchy, place lower-ranking people in society in an equal position with animals. Moreover, these lower-ranking people are seen as more valuable when “dead than alive,” since “the human body provides valuable phosphates for the land.”56 Clearly, the ecological catastrophe and global famine have reduced the majority of the human population to agricultural slaves and prisoners. The whole village island is “a sort of prison camp”57 where long years of service and almost nowhere to escape make the workers nothing but captives. In this sense, it becomes obvious how the three aspects of overpopulation are interrelated: a minority of the population trying to avoid pollution and have access to scarce food resources exploits the majority to death, creating social and economic inequality. Furthermore, one of the negative impacts of overpopulation is the loss of identity. Scott Sanders remarks that “Science fiction reproduces the experience of living in a regimented, rationalized society, within which the individual has become anonymous.”58 In other words, the priority of the continuity of the political and economic order over the individual poses a threat to identity. Thus, SF works extend and restate the core dilemma that the modernists grappled with—namely, “the fragmentation and anonymization of the self in modern society.”59 In this sense, Earthworks viciously portrays the oppression of the self and the silencing of individuality by the system, which is a manifestation of the reality experienced during WWII, especially 55

Ibid., 37. Ibid., 38. 57 Ibid., 40. 58 Scott Sanders, “Invisible Men and Women: The Disappearance of Character in Science Fiction,” Science Fiction Studies 4, no. 1 (1977): 14. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4239063. 59 Ibid. 56

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in the concentration camps. As in this one, in many dystopian sci-fi novels, camps are depicted as places where people’s identities are stripped away and they are intimidated by starvation and fear. As Sanders states, “No one familiar with the history of our time should be surprised, therefore, that visions of totalitarian futures have become a staple of science fiction since the Second World War.”60 Many of the recurring images of this historical experience are reflected in this novel: people dressed in uniforms, guards using violence on prisoners, barbed wire, and dogs enforcing order. The loss of identity, therefore, can easily be attributed to the totalitarian order. Sanders also argues that while society as a whole becomes more civilised, living within it becomes increasingly alienating. The individual’s ability to comprehend or influence the world decreases as the social order becomes stricter. Modern society’s dominant institutions, such as technological production, urbanisation, bureaucratic structure, and mass media, so heavily restrict the social world that the individual is driven to seek meaning and consistency. Based on this, SF writers have presented images of the self as “a puppet, a robot, an automaton.”61 The characters in most science fiction written since WWII are manipulated beings that live in a controlled world. All this sense of loss is conveyed in one of the scenes where Noland hallucinates: “In me grew that weary sense of lack of identity that was itself an identification. Non sum ergo sum. I lay inside a concrete pipe. By being nothing, I am in everything. Even concrete pipes. I could squirt through the sewers of the world unseen.”62 Indeed, even his name proves his alienation: Knowle Noland, “knowing no land,” symbolises his social estrangement. Noland, “no land,” is an allegorical name that suggests his status as an expatriate. Like all people, Noland is detached from the land. He has no place in a world of mechanised freighters, farms where it is fatal to breathe the air, and intrigues devoted to destroying a tyrannical order. Thus, in Earthworks, Aldiss depicts a society that has been completely subjugated in response to population expansion. Noland narrates that with technological developments, cargo ships have become obsolete, so human beings have become practically useless on these automated ships. He admits that the work he and his small crew did was insignificant, and robots could have done a better job. The appreciation of machinery and the loss of value that humans once had are expressed in the novel by Noland as follows:

60

Ibid., 16. Sanders, “Invisible Men,” 17. 62 Aldiss, Earthworks, 85. 61

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So we existed as parasites, impeding rather than helping the working of the ship. This feeling of uselessness was reinforced when we ran into harbour. In the old days—I’ve read about it—a harbour was a busy place, a dirty place perhaps, but a human one. Now a dock is a big metal mouth. You move into it and are swallowed by machinery. Machines unload you, machines trundle in your new unit of deep-frozen food, machines spit out new instructions to you. Machines see that you get swiftly on your way again.63

Noland further adds that, because of human confusion and organisations like trade unions, people used to have to spend a lot of time at the dock and travel ashore before setting sail again. But things have changed; the entire bizarre process of automatic loading and emptying now only takes a few hours. Then they are out on perpetual exile once more, frequently without seeing a single human soul, although the land is densely populated with them. He makes a very important point with these words: “It’s a funny thing in my job; you remain perpetually lonely in a world where loneliness is the rarest commodity.”64 With these descriptions, Aldiss implies that being or feeling alone in a world overflowing with humankind is an inevitable consequence of this overpopulated dystopian world. Besides, in this world where land is transferred from another country to grow food and strict authority is exercised, the heavy work has been handed to the machines as a result of increased automation. Hence, robots are honoured more highly than humans because of their higher productivity. Noland expresses this dire situation with these words: Certainly it was true that the mechanicals and robots that slaved among us were more valuable than we. Scratched and battered though they were, they worked better than we did. Every landsman made it a point of pride to do his tasks as slowly and badly as it was possible to do without tasting the overseer’s whip.65

As Noland states, despite all the machinery used on land, there was still a lot of work for humans—work that is “often too dangerous for machines.”66 He explains that their work on the pylons was too dangerous and complex for any machine that had yet to be invented. Besides, there were factories outside every village called “The Gas House,” in which “the poisons on which the produce had been nourished, the phosphates, potassiums, magnesiums, and the insecticides and arsenicals with which it had been

63

Ibid., 23. Ibid. 65 Ibid., 38. 66 Ibid., 42. 64

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protected, were sluiced off under heavy sprays.”67 Noland maintains that working with those sprays, organising the food products, and spending time in that toxic environment would take a year off a person’s life. Yet, robots were not permitted in the facility because “they would seize up, and they were too expensive to risk.”68 All these descriptions show that the increase in automation has started to pose a threat to human identity and has caused the devaluation of human life. Overpopulated, sickly towns; prison gangs that have to take care of the chemical-soaked countryside; and robots are all characteristics of this dystopian world. Cities are so crowded that some streets are being enlarged to give the populace a better thoroughfare, and some are being narrowed to make more room for the people. So, lack of space is one of the other negative impacts of population density and overcrowding. People, a crowd made up of “separate bodies, of groups, of processions,” move their way out, filling “the street space.”69 The situation people are in is so terrible that it is very difficult to lead a peaceful life among the human crowds. Unemployed people cannot afford to pay for a place to live, so they are forced to live on the street, where they can be arrested for vagrancy. When they find a job, however, cramming themselves and their family into one room leads “to madness, to suffocation, to boredom, to quarrels, and to the streets once more.”70 While one of the married couples sleeps in their room, the other partner walks outside, so they can find peace and avoid breeding. Walking also serves as a substitute for hunger, with the weariness of the legs defeating the pressure of the intestines. Hence, the detrimental environmental circumstances that are depicted in the novel highlight the challenges and problems brought on by overpopulation, particularly for the lower classes of society. In this context, the dystopian discourse of the novel serves to emphasise the need for serious solutions to the adequacy of the space and resources that the planet can provide compared to the rate of increase in the human population. In fact, Aldiss offers innumerable possibilities about the potential difficulties humans may encounter in the future world through Noland’s adventurous journey across the wastelands. In this regard, Noland may be viewed as a representative of humankind who goes through life in its rundown cities as a criminal working the depleted soil, as the commander of an automated vessel, and lastly, as an assassin who will start a nuclear war with the pull of a trigger. None of these elements are really unfamiliar; Aldiss 67

Ibid., 50. Ibid. 69 Ibid., 97. 70 Ibid. 68

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has just extrapolated an extreme scenario so that he can investigate how they affect the individuals through Noland. His master and protector, March Jordill, summarises the situation of the poor in this world in these words: “‘There is no future for our generations,’ . . . ‘Below a certain living level, there is nothing for the individual but today.”71 This view highlights the loss of identity for the poor in mass society in an overcrowded world. As Heise remarks, “midcentury totalitarian dystopias provided powerful templates for envisioning the erasure of the individual under a crushing state apparatus designed to control crowds rather than to support individuals.”72 In this context, Earthworks is one of the dystopian science fiction novels that emphasises the social and psychological effects of overpopulation, as can be observed from Jordill’s chant: ‘Gaze at each other, people! You should not have stopped your looking People of people, like unwatched topiary You grow unlikely shapes Out of the bulworks of your birthworks From the multitudinous bums Of your gods, no eye regards you— Look to yourselves, Earth’s peoples, Earthworks! Look, look hard, and take a knife, Carve yourself a conscience!’73

This slightly forced poem comes from Manskin, a suppressed religion that appears to have aimed to focus attention on human requirements. It is mentioned in the novel that the Manskin Believers were all dispersed by the police and sent for landsmen a long time ago. An overpopulated world is inevitably totalitarian. This might explain why this belief was outlawed; it was a manifestation of the miseries of overpopulation that seemed to be causing unrest. When the character named Old Lamb says that when he was younger, there was not all this tension caused by people’s differing opinions, Jordill replies: ‘Ah, you’re wrong there,’ . . . ‘Everyone has begun to believe the same again, now that human self-consciousness is sinking back into mass consciousness. We’re witnessing the belief in only one thing, though it comes superficially disguised in many forms—the belief in the animal darkness from which we rose so comparatively short a time ago. Over-population has not only

71

Ibid. Heise, Sense of Place, 70. 73 Aldiss, Earthworks, 101-2. 72

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brought a collapse of economic organization, but a collapse in mental organization. We’re all animists again. . . .’74

Jordill’s statement underlines how self-recognition has been destroyed under the double pressure of massive human crowds and overwhelming totalitarian institutions. It is implied that humans are looking for a solution to this problem through a return to animism and conventional mass consciousness. In addition to having no value, the common people in this crumbling civilization have lost their property to the ruling elite. The most obvious example of the high level of economic and social inequality is the Farmers, who have such a powerful position that the convicts working on their lands have no knowledge of them. As Noland points out, “In the city lived the Farmer. We did not know his name; he was too far above us for his name to be known in the village, even to the overseers.”75 While the workers cultivated the toxin-soaked land as punishment for minor crimes, the Farmer would sit “in his office in the distant city, shuffling his papers and never seeing the sullen ground over which he ruled.”76 It shows how “an old injustice” it is for them to live so lavishly while the people working under them are struggling “in the confines of their lives on half-rations.”77 Noland has been aware of the insecurity and injustice in the world since childhood. His city is ruled by the Farmer, about whom youngsters sing. The old childhood rhyme he learned in the orphanage and never forgot is: “Farmer farmer eat your earth– / Coffin cradle coffin berth / Send us food or send us measles– / You’re the–maker–of–dis–eases.”78 With this rhyme, Aldiss makes it clear that the people who hold power are the terrifying ones. Even in the “Farmers and Landsmen” game they played as children, “it would be Farmers and Travellers or Farmers and Citymen, but always Farmers and something,” because as little children they knew that Farmers were “big and powerful and cruel.”79 “Farmers had the right to pursue,” Noland says. “Farmers could beat. . . . when one of us played Farmer, he became the stronger. Under the mantle of that terrible title, the one became the superior of the other—even of the Traveller. . . . The rotten young teeth in our mouths grew white again when we became, briefly, Farmers.”80 Although the children had no idea who the Farmer was or what he was 74

Ibid., 100. Ibid., 41. 76 Ibid., 42. 77 Ibid., 94. 78 Ibid., 15. 79 Ibid., 95. 80 Ibid. 75

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doing, they were well aware that life in the platform cities depended on the Farmers. Since the Farmer was “a shadowy figure,” he was more frightening. Indeed, it illustrates that all the troubles in the world originate from above, from the authoritative and wealthy. In the eyes of Noland, the Farmer, who has turned out to be Peter Mercator, is a manipulative man with a capitalist mindset, just like Richard Lomax in Ballard’s The Drought. For Noland, it is “men like him who are ruining England, with their awful system of exploiting men and land alike.”81 Peter somewhat confirms this opinion by telling Noland that his interests are shaped by popular investments. He asserts that he sold his interest in Star Line Freighters five years ago and that the majority of his fortune today is based on the anti-gravity industry. “That’s the up-andcoming thing; if you’ve saved any money, Noland,” he says, “I’d advise you to put it in anti-gravity. Unless there’s a world war, of course.’”82 In fact, Aldiss demonstrates in a dialogue between Justine and Noland how rich people are blindfolded about their perspectives and actions. Justine puts forward that one of the main reasons why the world is in such destruction is the “materialist pride” of the poor that pervades the world and the “narrow beliefs” of the millions of them that deplete the Earth’s resources. Noland replies: Your kind has enjoyed the ascendancy throughout most of history. But I’m as good as you. I can read as well as you can, and I’m not so puffed up! My belly rumbles disgustingly in front of you because I’m hungry, yet you can talk about my gorging myself on the world’s supplies. That’s what your kind does!’83

Justine says that the current regime is practically unrivalled in the world because no one has clear views about the essence of humanity and the universal aspect of the human situation, and therefore it is foolish to argue. In fact, as this discussion between Justine and Noland shows, it is more vital to understand humankind’s interaction with its environment than it is to grasp only human nature. As depicted in the novel, the human species is doomed to bankruptcy both “spiritually and agriculturally”84 if it concentrates solely on its own desires and pleasures. Yet, at the end of the novel, Peter is revealed to be a humane person struggling to hold together a collapsing economic empire while trying to do the right thing for everyone. He says that he is not in charge of the 81

Ibid., 111. Ibid., 109. 83 Ibid., 112. 84 Ibid. 82

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punishment system and does not choose who cultivates the land. He adds that he is not attempting to relieve himself of blame and is not defending the system that bothered him more than Noland. In addition, Justine remarks that even though the farmers know it is wrong to exploit the land to feed the vast, greedy masses, they cannot help it because they must supply the rising demand; otherwise, they are imprisoned. In this regard, as Justine indicates, “Land conservation just doesn’t make economic sense when there are twenty-four thousand million people in the world.”85 In this hierarchical society where class distinction is at the top, besides the upper and lower classes, there is also a middle class called the Travellers, who “formed a free society within the great prison of England.”86 It is mentioned in the novel that since the conditions on the farmlands were very unsuitable for life, only those who had been found guilty of crimes worked there. To keep the number of land workers stable, laws in the crowded cities had to be tightened to the point that new violations would provide a supply of new labour. However, some of these workers managed to flee the villages and form gangs. These outcasts had little chance of returning to their families in the city because the cities, perched on high platforms above the ground, were nearly impossible to enter illegally. So, “the travellers travelled, living as free a life as possible within their wide prison, until they were hunted down by machines or dogs or men.”87 They travelled around with no other aim than to practice freedom in the face of mechanisation and oppression. Thus, while life in both the city and the farm is gruesome, there is optimism in the Travellers’ lifestyle, making them terrorists in the eyes of the government. In Earthworks, the only group determined to take action on environmental destruction and social injustice is the Abstainers, who ironically embrace the idea of an assassin that will drag the world into a global war and destroy the planet. It is a strategy developed by Justine and Peter Mercator to resolve the world’s problems. Their goal is to assassinate the president of Africa and drive the world into another global war. So, they believe they can cure the Earth by freeing it from the burden of millions of humans. Peter explains: ‘Mahasset’s got to go! We don’t want Africa united. With the President out of the way, the African states will fall apart. They will war with each other, and their allies in America and Europe will be drawn in. It will result in

85

Ibid., 140. Ibid., 53. 87 Ibid. 86

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nuclear war on the largest possible scale. The whole current structure of society will be wiped out.88

Justine continues to explain that she and Peter are members of one of the many secret religions that exist in the world, which is the strictest of all: the cult of Abstinence. The Abstainers, according to Justine, make every effort to persuade the general populace to adopt correct birth control methods, but even if some of these techniques have been around for centuries, one cannot successfully impose them “on a population that has sunk below a certain level of social awareness.”89 Therefore, they have sworn to abstain from sexual intercourse, as the reproduction of the human species depends on it and the situation is already sufficiently out of control. Through this unconventional group, it is obvious that Aldiss holds human reproduction as the main cause of the miserable condition and dark future of humans in the dystopian world he describes. The Abstainers believe that starting a world war by killing the president is the only way to end the entrenched, vicious cycle. Justine utters, “Human life is no longer sacred—we are at a period of history where it is a blasphemy. Motherhood is a blasphemy, love-making a perversion! The whole world situation is a tragedy!”90 According to Justine, cities that have been detached from all kinds of natural and beautiful things and have become a home of ignorance, superstition, and disease; the unhappy lives of people; the system that stigmatises people as criminals for working on farmland—all must be destroyed. To Noland’s question about who will survive the war, she gives the following answer: “The people best equipped to survive . . . the only people who even in these grim past years have had the courage to live their independent lives–the Travellers.”91 Thus, they aim for the Travellers’ survival to be the essence of humankind’s second chance. In Earthworks, Aldiss warns that if the problems detailed in the novel are not resolved, a day will come when nuclear war may be preferable to survival. However, the novel ends ambiguously; Noland heads towards a window slit for an assassination attempt that would alter society and perhaps save the planet, but whether the action took place is not specified in the novel. Instead, Aldiss takes the reader to the moment of decision and then lets them work out the consequences of that choice. He partially completes the picture; the readers must fill in the blanks on their own.

88

Ibid., 130. Ibid., 140. 90 Ibid., 141. 91 Ibid. 89

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In conclusion, published in 1965, Earthworks impressively reflects that population expansion is one of the main causes of environmental, social, and political problems like ecological destruction, social inequality, unfair distribution of resources, global competition, and war. This successful novel envisions a world where the human population exceeds the Earth’s capacity. It is a dystopian science fiction story set in the future, when the planet’s ecosystem has been severely disrupted and the world has become a police state. It basically reflects Aldiss’s view on the consequences of inconsiderate human reproduction and thoughtless consumption of resources. In this respect, the condition of humankind in Earthworks can be viewed as the cost of treating nature as an endless resource and putting it under an exploitative burden beyond its carrying capacity. Many people are worried about climate change these days, but too few consider the ongoing dependence on economic expansion and the ever-increasing human population. Aldiss depicts a possible future if nothing is done about this capitalistic, greedy perspective. This impressive novel exemplifies Aldiss’s ability to observe the world objectively and foresee the environmental catastrophe that is likely to happen.

CHAPTER VI RAMPANT CONSUMERISM AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION

John Brunner John Kilian Houston Brunner (1934–1955) was a British science fiction writer who was born on September 24, 1934, in Preston Crowmarsh, Oxfordshire, England. For his education, he first went to school at St Andrew’s Prep School, Pangbourne, and then attended Cheltenham College during 1948–51. Like Ballard, he also served as an officer in the Royal Air Force (from 1953 to 1955).1 Jad Smith claims in his book John Brunner, based on thorough study and filled with scholarly comments and observations, that his two years of service in the Royal Air Force influenced Brunner’s writing on a thematic level. Throughout his career, he studied how “groupthink could perpetuate” outdated thought processes and establish societal passivity. For him, the imposed obedience of military culture represented the worst type of mental confinement.2 Brunner’s imagination was constantly drawn to parallel worlds. In Brunner’s opinion, a competent science fiction writer should nurture awareness of parallel kinds of experience and open portals into the future that make readers more aware of them. In line with this viewpoint, he developed plots that took into account the possibility of parallel realities colliding. As Smith points out, Brunner once observed that “while we all inhabit the same world, we live in and among parallel worlds.”3 Personal, social, technological, and environmental realities concur for humans, but they do not always match their experiences. Smith states that Brunner’s first interaction with science fiction was entirely coincidental. When he was six and a half years old, finding his 1

John Clute, “Brunner, John,” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, ed. John Clute and David Langford (London: SFE Ltd and Reading: Ansible Editions, April 18, 2022), accessed April 25, 2022. https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/brunner_john. 2 Jad Smith, John Brunner (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 23. 3 Ibid., 1.

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grandfather’s rare 1898 Heinemann edition of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898), Brunner read it and “adorned its endpapers with Martian fighting-machines, and that was that.”4 Then he sought out more SF works and discovered a copy of Wells’s The Time Machine (1895). The Clipper of the Clouds (1886) by Jules Verne was given to him as a birthday present. He went to “a local paper-salvage shop” and requested to read “D. C. Thomson comics with SF-themed strips” before they were torn to shreds.5 Brunner was a full-grown sci-fi addict by the age of nine. He attempted to write a story about a Martian named Gloop, and despite failing to complete it, he aspired to be a science fiction author. Thus, Brunner began submitting science fiction stories to periodicals at a young age, and several of them appeared under the pseudonym K. Houston Brunner, based on his own middle names. He published his debut novel, Galactic Storm (1951), under the pen name Gill Hunt, at the age of seventeen. Yet it was not until 1958 that he began writing full-time, several years after completing his service in the military. His other pen names are John Loxmith, Trevor Staines, Ellis Quick, Henry Crosstrees Jr., and Keith Woodcott. Clute notes that “even in a field noted for its early starters, [Brunner’s] precocity was remarkable.”6 His first U.S. sale, “Thou Good and Faithful,” written under the pseudonym John Loxmith, appeared in Astounding in March 1953. The same year, under the pen name Kilian Houston Brunner, he published the short novel “The Wanton of Argus,” which he later acknowledged as his first novel. This novel was originally published in Two Complete Science-Adventure Books and then appeared in book form in 1954 as The Space-Time Juggler. He celebrated these achievements by attending a gathering of the London Science Fiction Circle. When Arthur C. Clarke, William F. Temple, and John Christopher, among others, greeted him warmly, he felt encouraged.7 At first, Brunner’s productivity was irregular from 1953 to 1957, owing to the difficulty of making a living as a full-time writer. Working full-time at a publishing house and elsewhere during this time left him with little time to write regularly. Still, despite his numerous responsibilities, Brunner’s production remained substantial. He routinely published stories in British periodicals and even got into the U.S. market. He also finished his first major long pieces, selling the space opera Threshold of Eternity to New Worlds as a serial in 1957 and The 100th Millennium as the dying-Earth tale “Earth Is But a Star” to Science Fantasy in 1958. They are two of his first 4

Ibid., 17. Ibid. 6 Clute, “Brunner, John.” 7 Smith, John Brunner, 21. 5

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novels published by Ace Books. Brunner began full-time freelancing following the signing of his first contract. In the following six years, besides working with other publishers, Brunner published twenty-seven novels with Ace Books under his own name and the pen name Keith Woodcott. Some of these novels include Echo in the Skull (1959; revised as Give Warning to the World in 1974); Slavers of Space (1960; revised as Into the Slave Nebula in 1968); The Atlantic Abomination (1960), a horrific story about a hideous alien, long buried under the Atlantic, who remains alive by mentally enslaving inferior species through Psi Power; Sanctuary in the Sky (1960), a story set in the distant future in a star system far from Earth; I Speak for Earth (1961), which focuses on Earth on the eve of completing its first spaceship; Meeting at Infinity (1961), a novel about a distant future Earth linked to parallel Earths “through the brisk interdimensional trade of the Market”; the Zarathustra Refugee Planets series, encompassing Secret Agent of Terra (1962; revised as The Avengers of Carrig in 1969); Castaways’ World (1963; revised as Polymath in 1974); and The Repairmen of Cyclops (1965), all of which were later compiled as Victims of the Nova (1989), focusing on the survivors of human-colonised Zarathustra; The Rites of Ohe (1963); To Conquer Chaos (1964); and The Day of the Star Cities (1965; revised as Age of Miracles in 1973).8 Although Brunner began his literary career by writing conventional space opera pulp science fiction, later on he began to explore different literary styles, particularly by making innovations in form and content. With the success of The Whole Man (1964), came new chances, and it even opened previously closed doors. The Whole Man, which consists of rewritten magazine stories with a lot of new content, is often regarded as one of Brunner’s most successful novels. In 1965, it received a Hugo Award nomination for Best Novel. The story is about a deformed person who develops telepathic abilities over time. Between February 1966 and February 1967, Brunner worked on two experiments in technique that focused on genre and narrative form. One of the resulting novels was Quicksand (1967), which combined features of “mainstream psychological suspense, far-future fantasy, and time-travel SF” without explicitly choosing one of these options.9 It indicated Brunner’s heightened interest in crossover fiction and the mainstream. The other novel was the Hugo Award-winning Stand on Zanzibar (1968), which marked a shift towards “close-focus SF” that Brunner created through a variety of techniques and narrative styles. 8 9

Clute, “Brunner, John.” Smith, John Brunner, 13.

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Quicksand and Stand on Zanzibar were the result of a long-term approach. They were “conceptual novels” that “entailed stylistic experimentation.”10 In these novels, Brunner sought to make sense of the story both in the traditional sense as well as through “the arrangement, juxtaposition, and cross-linking of parallel realities.”11 By this means, the novels differed significantly in terms of technique and market orientation. In Stand on Zanzibar, which deals with overpopulation, Brunner combined the narrative with whole chapters to create a wide-ranging plot that would depict the novel’s future world in a complicated and multifaceted way. Chapters were composed of many short paragraphs, lines, or sentences taken from real-world sources, such as pieces of conversation, slogans, advertisements, songs, and newspaper and book excerpts. Stand on Zanzibar was widely criticised by both critics and fans until it was finally accepted as “a classic of New Wave SF.”12 Brunner’s experiments in the sci-fi genre show that he has valued conceptual creativity above all else. In this sense, his interests were different from those of writers such as Brian W. Aldiss, who took John Wyndham as a model for producing a lyrical, British style in the sci-fi market dominated by the U.S. Brunner preferred Wells and his ideas, but this caused his settings and themes to be considered too American by British New Wave writers. His subsequent novels, The Jagged Orbit (1969) and The Sheep Look Up (1972), both Nebula Award nominees, solidified Brunner’s position as a leading author in the sci-fi field. The Jagged Orbit resembles Stand on Zanzibar in its narrative style; it contains exactly a hundred titled chapters that range in length from a single word to several pages. The Sheep Look Up is also technically innovative with its multi-perspective narrative and interlaced newspaper headlines. The Shockwave Rider (1975) uses similar reporting techniques in a narrative that focuses on a protagonist using his hacking talents to elude capture in a dystopian future. These four novels come together to form a kind of thematic dystopian series. Stand on Zanzibar depicts an overpopulated world where the entire population can hardly stand together on the island of Zanzibar. The Jagged Orbit is set in a dystopian future in which corruption is widespread at all levels and mental health has become a tool for societal control. The Sheep Look Up deals with environmental degradation in the United States. Lastly, The Shockwave Rider envisions a dystopian early twenty-first century America ruled by information technology. It is a well-known novel for

10

Ibid., 53. Ibid. 12 Ibid., 12. 11

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foreseeing the computer or internet virus (in the novel referred to as a “worm”) and predicting other cyberpunk concerns. Brunner’s health remained unstable for several years before his death on August 25, 1995, causing a drastic slowdown in his previously prodigious writing speed. After 1972, he began to return to a slightly showier and ironic version of his earlier space opera style in his dwindling publications. Some of these novels include Total Eclipse (1974), The Crucible of Time (1983), The Tides of Time (1984), Children of the Thunder (1989), A Maze of Stars (1991), and Muddle Earth (1993). Eventually, his reputation has been built on two aspects of his writing: “his significant contributions to the spaceopera redoubt” and “the immensely formidable tract-novels about the state of the world published between 1968 and 1975.”13 Brunner was one of the most prolific and renowned science fiction writers of the twentieth century, writing under his own name and a variety of pseudonyms. Although he is known for his SF works, his considerable ability is manifested in a variety of other ways, including writing poems, songs, some thrillers, contemporary novels, and screenplays. Besides, he was an active member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and wrote the song “The H-Bombs’ Thunder,” which has become “the anthem of the CND’s Aldermaston antiwar marches.”14 His opposition to nuclear weapons shaped much of his writing, leading him to address the fundamental question of the time: will the human species survive the consequences of its own ingenuity or not? As a result, his observations about the condition and future of humanity in his works have earned him a prominent position in the literary world. Jad Smith observes that Brunner began to explore ecological issues in his works in the early stages of his literary career. He approached ecology “as a question not only of human impact on biotic environments but also of changing social technological milieux on humans.”15 For instance, in his 1953 novelette, “Thou Good and Faithful,” the issue of environmental problems is presented throughout the story. There is a planet called Hub, which is mentioned to have resembled Earth before humanity destroyed it, and that new Earth now suffers from overcrowding and related troubles. In the two intergalactic colonisation stories, “Hope Deferred” (1956) and “Lungfish” (1957), he meticulously weaves cultural and environmental concerns. “Hope Deferred” depicts an economically unstable and more authoritarian Earth launching a problematic child migration programme with the goal of colonising Mars. The Mars Children, who were abandoned 13

Clute, “Brunner, John.” Smith, John Brunner, 30. 15 Ibid., 23. 14

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by their parents as newborns, have developed physical adaptations to the red planet’s biosphere and are barely identifiable as humans. Similarly, “Lungfish” portrays youngsters as subjects of a social experiment. From 1967 on, Brunner concentrated especially on the dismal status of the world. His best-known works on this theme are Stand on Zanzibar, The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Rider, which deal with overpopulation, the power of the military industrial complex and violence, environmental pollution, and the rise of the computer revolution, respectively. In these works, Brunner addresses the mentioned issues by incorporating them into a non-linear narrative structure. This dystopian novel series focusing on social and environmental issues is his greatest success with the ecological theme. These four disaster novels are also referred to as the “Club of Rome quartet.” The Club of Rome, founded in 1968, is an informal group of academics and businesspeople that conducts research and analysis about global issues and aims to stimulate a shift in human thinking. In 1972, they published a report called Limits to Growth, based on the projection of a comprehensive computer simulation of the Earth, and ran simulated scenarios to estimate the impact of declining resources and a growing human population. The Limits to Growth report and other works of the 1960s that sparked modern environmentalism, namely Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and Paul R. Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968), are said to have inspired Brunner’s works on environmental disaster. According to Jad Smith, as an environmentalist, Brunner wished for a better future and used his fiction as a tool to tell cautionary tales about real-life problems. As Michael Stern emphasises, “in choosing the determining grounds of his fictional worlds,” Brunner is not just predicting a potential future but also prophesying one in an effort to inspire resistance to its materialisation in the present or, at the very least, to elicit thought about the necessity of “the need for changing what is in order to both avoid what could be and help build what should be.”16 In this sense, The Sheep Look Up is his most suitable novel for ecocritical analysis, as it warns of potential environmental destruction and gives detailed explanations and examples of how to avoid this possibility becoming a reality.

16

Michael Stern, “From Technique to Critique: Knowledge and Human Interests in John Brunner’s ‘Stand on Zanzibar, the Jagged Orbit’, and ‘The Sheep Look Up,’” Science Fiction Studies 3, no. 2 (1976): 117. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4239015.

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The Sheep Look Up The Sheep Look Up is a dystopian science fiction novel about environmental degradation in the future United States. The plot, which is composed of multi-faceted narratives, is set primarily in the United States in an unspecified near future. Consisting of twelve-monthly chapters, beginning in December and ending in November, the novel takes place over the course of a year, with each chapter focusing on a month. It depicts numerous characters whose paths intertwine as they struggle to cope with the severe changes in their surroundings. In this dystopian future, the air is so polluted that it is impossible to breathe without wearing filter masks, which are now commonplace on the street. There is a scarcity of food and clean, drinkable water. Some people live in “wats,” which are communelike compounds where they try to live as cleanly as possible. The number of infant deaths is increasing, and pollution seems to have an impact on almost everyone. Numerous wars rage around the world. Africa suffers from poverty and starvation. Capitalistic greed cannot be restrained by regulation, and the economy is increasingly globalised. While people are troubled by the problems of pollution, the government is ineffective in resolving this environmental crisis, and worse, global corporations seek to profit from environmental problems by promoting products under the “Puritan” brand name that are supposedly non-toxic and even beneficial. These corporate interests compete to make a profit from filter masks, water purifiers, and socalled organic foods. However, only the wealthy minority living in “safe” neighbourhoods can afford them. Any opposition to this system is quickly suppressed. As the race to take advantage of the ecological crisis continues, the environment is devastated, and various plans to reverse the destruction fail. In short, the novel tells the story of the political failure and fall of the United States, leading to an environmental catastrophe that brings worldwide disease and death. By presenting the oppressive socio-political order and opportunistic socioeconomic forces, The Sheep Look Up demonstrates the direct relationship between capitalism and environmental degradation. In light of this, the purpose of this subchapter is to analyse how the events or characters described in the novel highlight the relationship between economic, political, and social systems and environmental problems. In the novel, there is not a single main character; instead, there are about twenty characters, most of whom are unaware of each other and rarely cross paths, and the novel zigzags between them. Each chapter of the novel introduces a different character and tells his or her story. Therefore, the characters followed throughout the narrative are a variety of every kind of

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human being. The characters introduced in the first chapter, entitled “December,” are Philip Mason, the Angel City insurance company’s Denver area manager; Peg Mankiewicz, a reporter; her friend Austin Train; Jacob Bamberley, head of Bamberley Trust Corporation; his adopted son Hugh Pettingill; and a nurse named Lucy Ramage. Although new characters are introduced in each chapter, the major plot of the novel is centred mainly around the characters that are introduced in the first chapter, and the plot is told by an unidentified narrator. Bennett Huffman states that The Sheep Look Up is composed in a “maximalist style, a narrative technique in which the fictional world is described in great and varied detail, taxing the reader’s attention span and thus opening up a space for noncognitive connections to be made.”17 In this respect, unlike the other three novels analysed, The Sheep Look Up has the characteristics of a postmodern novel. The writing style of this novel is broad and complicated, incorporating many different literary devices and elements. It includes pastiche and brief passages in a variety of forms, such as the news, headlines, advertisements, warning signs, unspecified dialogue, and thoughts. Most importantly, each chapter begins with a poem that refers to a different era and is a parody of the poetic style of that period. Unfortunately, no source mentions whether the poems were written by the poets of the period to which they relate or by Brunner himself. However, this lack of knowledge does not overshadow the purpose and function of the poems in the novel. The author uses the poems as dark humour parodies to satirise and draw the reader’s attention to historical human behaviour patterns that have contributed to the ecological and social breakdown the novel describes. Through all these literary techniques and stylistic devices, Brunner successfully and eloquently depicts the impact and extent of environmental degradation that he illustrates in the novel. The first chapter of the novel begins with a poem entitled “Prospectus,” dated 1862,18 which alludes to the period when the Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological Revolution, was about to begin. This period is associated with rapid scientific discovery, standardisation, mass production, and industrialization. Human beings, who could reach all parts of the world through industrialization and technological developments, have profoundly changed nature and the landscape. It seems that the poem presents an extremely optimistic vision of reshaping the natural environment 17 Bennett Huffman, “Postmodern Ecocriticism in the Science Fiction Novel: J. G. Ballard and Ken Kesey,” in The Environmental Tradition in English Literature, ed. John Parham (New York: Routledge, 2002), 66. 18 For the poem, see John Brunner, The Sheep Look Up (1972; repr., London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1974), 3.

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for the benefit of humanity. As can be understood from the lines, the domestication of the wilderness, which is considered “a noble goal,” is an idealistic dream that has been constructed and implemented throughout history in Western culture. However, Brunner uses irony in the poem to emphasise that this dream stems from the anthropocentric worldview, which states that humans are superior to all other organisms on the globe and have the right to use natural resources, leading to the taming of nature for human needs. Brunner challenges this perception throughout the narrative by using irony. Following the poem, which praises human arrogance in the face of nature, a scene condemning the poem’s anthropocentric vision is depicted. Surprisingly, a man finds himself “hunted” by “wild animals” in “broad daylight on the Santa Monica freeway.”19 Terrified and unable to move while “monstrous menacing beasts edging closer,” the man flees from “a cougar,” “a jaguar,” “a cobra,” “a falcon,” and “a barracuda.” As he tries to run, however, he is killed by “a stingray.”20 Although this description may not make sense at first, it is later revealed that the beasts are just automobile brands named after predators, which are commonly associated with untamed nature. Using zoomorphism as a literary device, Brunner reinterprets the phrase “frightening wild.” By re-evaluating this attribute, given by humans to nature, with an ecocritical perspective, Brunner underlines that it is industrial life, not wildlife, that poses the greatest threat to human life. Thus, at the very beginning of the novel, the author establishes the conflict between Western industrial, technological, and capitalist systems and the opposition against them with the contrast between the introductory poem and the subsequent scene of the death by a car, a product of industrial development. The novel’s main plot revolves around a series of suspected cases of purposeful poisoning by Bamberley Trust Corporation, a company based in the United States. The Bamberley Trust is a charity organisation that provides food aid to famine-stricken areas of Africa and Central America. This corporation is run by a wealthy entrepreneur named Jacob Bamberley, who has turned to charity. This corporation processes cassava, a type of chemical, into a food they call Nutripon, which is distributed by Globe Relief, the world’s biggest humanitarian organisation. Mr. Bamberley rejects the idea that the foods are chemically processed; for him, it is erroneous to refer to this as a “chemical process;” they only “cook the stuff.”21 However, when the nurse Lucy Ramage is on her way to an African 19

Ibid., 4. Ibid. 21 Ibid., 36. 20

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village called Noshri to get the Nutripon shipment, she witnesses that the entire town has gone crazy and is robbing, burning, and killing. It is assumed that the villagers have gone mad after eating the product Nutripon, yet there is no proof of intentional food poisoning. General Kaika demands an investigation and accuses the United States of poisoning, killing, and driving his citizens insane. He arrests and expels the American relief workers from Noshri. When a reporter asks the plausible reason for the motivation behind his decision, although there is no evidence of deliberate poisoning yet, the general replies: Plenty of motive. For one thing, Americans go to any length to prevent an independent country whose government does not have white skin. Colored government must bow to Washington. Consider China. Consider Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Ceylon, Indonesia. If ever we have a strong united country of black people in Africa they will no longer be able to tread down their black countrymen.22

The general adds that he is conducting investigations to see if there was a purposeful scheme to diminish their power and help the invaders win the war. General Kaika’s statements propose the view that “it is the white men”23 who are responsible for any economic, political, or ecological war. He asks the reporter whether it was “black men who filled the Mediterranean with poison” and answers his rhetorical question by saying, “No, it was destroyed by the filthy wastes from European factories!”24 According to him, “It is the typical white habit to ruin what you have and then go to steal from other people.”25 So, with General Kaika’s statements, Brunner stresses the impact of developed, rich white countries on the environment; it is “the greed and carelessness”26 of these countries that have poisoned the land and the sea and started the chain of events that led to an ecological catastrophe. As the investigation progresses, Jacob Bamberley becomes a guest on the Petronella Page show, a famous news programme, to refute the claims that Nutripon is poisonous and is to blame for the murders in Noshri. Petronella asks Jacob if he is sending everything he does abroad; Jacob responds that everything they make is used for charity projects. Then Petronella inquires as to whether this is a non-profit organisation since he is one of the wealthiest individuals in the world and if he makes any profits from his contracts with charities. Jacob, though, insists on his goodwill, and 22

Ibid., 70. Ibid. 24 Ibid., 71. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., 55. 23

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he claims that the hydroponic facility’s goal is to cover costs at the very most and that making a profit is not its primary objective. Instead, he sees it as a charitable endeavour and a useful way to assist those in need. Jacob denies the accusation that the food he sent to Noshri is poisonous, saying that “Nutripon is wholesome and delicious!”27 However, when he is forced to consume a bowl of his produce by the host, unexpectedly, a bomb threat arrives, and the studio is evacuated. Thus, with this scene, Brunner highlights how hypocritical companies actually are; they plan everything to sell and launder their products. The author reinforces this viewpoint with the following statement of the character Dr. Clayford: company executives are so “dishonest, greedy, lazy, self-indulgent” that they are “ready at the drop of a hat to tell any lie that will protect them from the consequences of their actions. They’re the cause of all the troubles in the world today!”28 However, before the Noshri disaster is concluded, a similar incident occurs in Honduras, India. In the wake of this calamity, the claim that the poison was intentionally added to the food becomes even stronger. The nurse, Lucy, who was hospitalised in England for mental health treatment after suffering the psychosis that afflicted the Noshri people, thinks that the food was produced by the Bamberley Corporation to damage the government and exploit the natural resources of the affected nations. She states, describing the horror of madness, that “I saw what those devils did.”29 With the devil metaphor, Brunner emphasises the wickedness of profit-seeking corporate executives and deceitful political figures. Since the devil functions as a complicated ethical symbol associated with the embodiment of evil, a figure of deception, and the origin of chaos and unrest, Brunner attributes all these characteristics to those responsible for people’s insanity and environmental destruction portrayed in the novel. Brunner also makes reference to the developed countries’ control of a significant part of the world and their rule over it for colonial activities. According to Lucy, the reason for all this food poisoning that is driving people crazy is because rich countries are attempting to steal from those that still have some resources after destroying their own. They demand oil, tin, copper, zinc, and copper. There is also lumber, which is becoming increasingly rare. Lucy asserts that they have come up with a new plan to achieve their goal: to make everyone crazy so they cannot establish a powerful, stable, and independent government. They are now trying it in Honduras after it almost succeeded in Noshri and would have succeeded if it were not for General Kaika. With Lucy’s statements, Brunner underlines how capitalist 27

Ibid., 106. Ibid., 134. 29 Ibid., 169. 28

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countries mercilessly devastate the natural world in order to further their aims of economic expansion and dominance over one another and plunder other countries’ resources to have more. He further implies that nations may act in whatever manner they see fit in their pursuit of power and wealth, disregarding the health and safety of the populace. Later in the novel, it is revealed that one of the characters, Doctor Michael Advowson, analyses the Nutripon at Noshri and discovers that it contains “ergot,” a hallucinogen that is “responsible for outbreaks of medieval dancing mania.”30 Throughout the novel, Brunner frequently uses warning signs about air, water, and food pollution to draw the reader’s attention to the hazardous environmental conditions in the United States. Some of these signs are: “THIS BEACH NOT SAFE FOR SWIMMING,” “NOT Drinking Water,” “UNFIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION,” “Now Wash Your Hands (Penalty for noncompliance $50),” “FILTERMASK DISPENSER/Use product once only—maximum 1 hour,” “OXYGEN 25¢.”31 As can be derived from the signs, both drinking water and swimming water are so polluted and hazardous that routine warnings must be issued. In Noshri, for instance, it is difficult to find safe drinking water. It is narrated that rainwater collected in pots and tanks is safe to drink if a purifying tablet is applied. However, the rivers are bitter from the defoliant-laden campaign of the previous summer, and the invading forces have filled the majority of the wells with carrion as they withdrew. Besides, washing water is almost as scarce as drinking water. Shaving with regular tap water is impossible because the water infects the skin. Major seas, such as the Mediterranean and the Mekong, have perished. Contaminated by industrial wastes, the coast between California and Baja California has been covered with an impermeable layer of “oily residues,” like a “plastic sheet: a mixture of detergents, sewage, industrial chemicals, and microscopic cellulose fibres due to toilet paper and newsprint.”32 With all these descriptions, Brunner shows the severity of the water pollution. Besides, the novel also remarks that waste in the seas has had a detrimental impact on marine life. It is mentioned that it would be “a miracle” to hear the sound of fish in such a polluted sea; there were no fish above the surface. However, it is stated that humans attempt to find a solution to the fish problem by means of technological capabilities. For instance, they hope to be able to harvest squid from the reasonably secure bottom water using a modern, high-tech ship that is “one of the latest deep-

30

Ibid., 127. Ibid., 4-5. 32 Ibid., 154. 31

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trawling fish factories designed.”33 The narrator notes that since surface fish, such as “cod and herring,” were either pretty rare and therefore excessively expensive or dangerously high in hazardous substances like organic mercury, humans were trying to catch fish deep in the sea. When analysed in the light of an ecocentric perspective, these details show that the continuity of the existence of other living beings depends on the harmonious relationship between humankind and the ecosystem. In this sense, Brunner proposes the view that once external factors, such as accumulated pollution of natural resources, disrupt this balance, the ecosystem is damaged and the survival of the life forms living in it is threatened. In addition to water pollution, there is significant air pollution that necessitates the purchase of oxygen and the use of a filter mask in order to breathe without choking. In unfiltered air, throats do not endure very long. Since there is not enough oxygen, it is imported from other countries. As it is narrated, the country’s largest import is now tonne for tonne of oxygen because they produce less than sixty percent of the amount they consume. Ironically, alongside tonnes of oxygen, tonnes of “noxious gases” are also imported for cars, buses, and factories, but primarily for aircraft cabins. It is because on the busiest routes, the air becomes so full of exhaust fumes from other flights that passengers get sick from the air even on a calm day— “especially on a dead calm day” since “it takes longer for the fumes to disperse.”34 So, the authorities try to enhance cabin air at high altitudes. This example proves that the continuation of the capitalist economic system depends on the presence of a market where new consumer services are continuously requested and supplied in line with the needs of the customer. This necessity makes consumption the most important activity in the system. In this sense, it is quite ironic that, besides the oxygen necessary for breathing, toxic gases to be used for research are also imported in an attempt to make the flight more comfortable for the passengers. Additionally, throughout the novel, it is constantly highlighted that water and air pollution not only cause permanent damage to nature and the environment but also pose a great risk to human health. For instance, due to poor air quality, the chests of the children have become shallow, as if “to discourage overdeep breathing.”35 Regarding soil pollution, it is said in the novel that there is famine in Honduras, devastated by civil violence, and a team of UN experts is investigating the cause. They inspect a devastated coffee farm and discover bizarre wormlike pests that eat holes in the roots of the plants. These insects 33

Ibid., 177. Ibid., 32. 35 Ibid., 42. 34

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are called jigras, and they are resistant to all known pesticides. As it is mentioned in the novel, the authorities “made the jigras resistant to DDT, heptachlor, dieldrin, pyrethrum, the bloody lot,” but people “don’t need chemicals, they need food!”36 As a result, all these chemical products and DDT lead to a poisoned and contaminated environment, just as Rachel Carson predicted in Silent Spring. In this significant book, Carson discusses the dangers of pesticides, describing their devastating effects on both the environment and individuals. In the novel, Brunner depicts situations that exemplify these dangers. For example, the following instructive notice addresses the harmful effects of lead on children and provides some crucial information about lead: Lead: causes subnormality in children and other disorders. Exceeds 12 mg. per m³. in surface water off California. Probable contributory factor in decline of Roman Empire whose upper class ate food cooked in lead pans and drank wine fermented in lead-lined vats. Common sources are paint, antiknock gas where still in use, and wildfowl from marshes etc. contaminated over generations by lead shot in the water.37

Thus, as Carson contends and the remark above illustrates, humans and their physical environment are closely intertwined, and ecological processes govern human health. Natural resources serve to enhance this interdependence. According to Carson, when chemicals reach the land, they contaminate the water, soil, and air. In particular, chemicals entering waterways, directly or indirectly, affect the entire water system, meaning all water everywhere is at risk of contamination. Brunner echoes this view with the example of a letter describing the results of the analysis of the land and water samples in a citizen’s home: Dear Sir: . . . The sample of dirt contains an exceptionally high proportion of lead and mercury, trace quantities of molybdenum and selenium, and a small amount of salts of silver. There is no detectable cadmium. The water sample is contaminated with lead, arsenic, selenium and compounds of sodium and potassium, particularly sodium nitrite. We suspect that the garden of the house you have bought is sited on infill derived from mine tailings, . . . You do not mention whether you have children, but if you do we would draw your attention to the dangers they face from lead and sodium nitrite in such quantities.38

36

Ibid., 30. Ibid., 16. 38 Ibid., 133. 37

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Through the notice and letter of analysis, Brunner clearly and strikingly demonstrates that once hazardous chemicals contaminate natural resources, it is impossible for humans to avoid their outcomes. Underlining that wealthy company owners are responsible for ecological disasters around the world, Brunner also depicts the long-term effects of air, water, and soil pollution. Due to the natural resources’ pollution, people suffer from various diseases. They cope with many ailments such as “cystic fibrosis, phenylketonuria, haemophilia, hypothyroidism, mongolism, Tetralogy of Fallot, alexia, dichromatism . . . A list that [goes] on forever, as though it were a miracle anyone at all became a normal adult!”39 However, the novel constantly highlights that pollution has a greater impact on children than adults. An eight-year-old boy, for instance, is considered among the “lucky ones” since he only occasionally experiences asthma. Besides, it is reported that birth malformations have become more common as a result of pollution. It is stated in the novel that all of the chemical weapons employed during modern wars, including riot gases, tear gas, sleep gas, defoliants, and nerve gas, had soaked into these people’s cells just as they did the ground. Because of all these factors, the narrator notes that, despite expectations that life expectancy in the United States would keep increasing, it has actually started to decline during the past three years. In addition, to illustrate how toxic chemicals harm all living beings in the world, as the novel depicts, Brunner frequently employs striking notices. One example is: “Pelican, brown: failed to breed in California where formerly common, 1969 onward, owing to estrogenic effect of DDT on shell secretion. Eggs collapsed when hen birds tried to brood them.”40 As this notice exemplifies, the dangerous effects of chemicals are observed in animals as well. Hence, as Brunner effectively portrays in the framework of ecocentric philosophy, it is evident that hazardous chemicals like DDT have an impact on all living things in the ecosystem, not only insects in the targeted plants. With all these examples and descriptions, Brunner strikingly shows that environmental pollution seriously jeopardises and harms human health as well as the biosphere. In a setting of such severe environmental degradation and political incompetence, people try to carry out their daily routines and survive the illnesses and plagues, while the wealthy stay away from these misfortunes in their safe heavens. In this dystopian world, citizens of both developed and underdeveloped countries struggle with hunger, disease, and pain, while the rich live in their own paradise in luxury residences. A company building, 39 40

Ibid., 68. Ibid., 17.

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for instance, is depicted as a “cool and quiet” place as opposed to the outside environment because cosmoramic projections, the most recent technology to avoid the intrusion of filthy outer reality, are used in place of windows. Similarly, Bamberley’s office is protected from the outside world by windows that must not be opened and air that is sterilised and scented. Another affluent family, the Masons, reside in a building that is much like most contemporary costly apartment buildings: protected by a “sliding steel portcullis, bulletproof glass,” and a security guard on duty all the time. So, the wealthy families stay in guarded neighbourhoods with expensive security protection, which makes the gap between the rich and the poor more apparent. In this regard, the novel criticises the general lack of public protest and awareness against all these health, social, and economic problems related to environmental deterioration. It is stated in the novel that all these negative environmental impacts caused a brief wave of anxiety a few years ago, and the Environment Acts have been enacted. Many people believed that conditions had improved since the passage of this Act, yet it was an illusion. First and foremost, the Acts lacked sufficient authority. Various postponements, exemptions, and suspensions of execution could be requested, and corporations that would lose money by adhering to the new regulations used every means to avoid those. The other point is that people are not as cautious as they used to be; they sit back and assume the problem is under control, even though it is not. In the face of this environmental calamity, the public at large remains inert; they are too preoccupied with getting through each day and all the minor and major illnesses and economic troubles that afflict them. In many scenes, it is emphasised that the public is indifferent to environmental problems and that they no longer care about environmental conservation. The reason for this disinterest is described by a character called Doctor Doe, a well-known educational psychologist who speaks on the Petronella Page show but prefers to remain anonymous since his views are controversial. As Doe explains, People are actually afraid to be interested, because they suspect –I think rightly –that we’ll find if we dig deep enough that we’ve gone so far beyond the limits of what the planet will tolerate that only a major catastrophe which cuts back both our population and our ability to interfere with the natural biocycle would offer a chance of survival.41

The inactivity and callousness of people correspond to Brunner’s definition of “sheep,” a flock of people moving with the crowd, unable to see or comprehend the big picture. They cannot take action for change, and even 41

Ibid.

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if they could, they are unable to stand out from the crowd. It is emphasised that the inevitability of environmental degradation could be understood, but people rarely do. The novel ends with the following lines that form the entire epilogue of the novel: “The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, / But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, / Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread.”42 These lines, the inspiration behind the title of the novel, are taken from John Milton’s poem “Lycidas” (1637), and they epitomise the situation of the residents living in a decaying society. The Sheep Look Up attributes the global ecological catastrophe to Western habits developed from the anthropocentric viewpoint, which sees humans as conquerors rather than as part, member, or citizen of ecosystems, as advocated by the ecocentric view. Whereas this lack of understanding of the interconnectedness between humans and ecosystems fosters industrial and economic growth, it eventually disrupts ecological integrity and leads to an environment suitable only for rampant capitalism. Brunner condemns humankind’s dominance of the Earth with all its technological possibilities in the poem entitled “HERO FIDDLING.”43 With the logic of economic growth promoted by capitalism, big companies destroy the Earth and continue to take advantage of terrible environmental problems. Despite being a necessity, these companies and even green industries do not change their financial motivations in any way and do not build an eco-friendly economy. For instance, Puritan Health Supermarkets, a food manufacturer, takes advantage of the populace’s growing fear of pollution and sells its own brands, claiming their food is uncontaminated and healthy. Brunner uses examples of advertisements to show how the company markets its goods. The following is one of these ads: EAT IT IN GOOD HEALTH

Special this week at your Puritan Health Supermarket! Okinawa squash, reg. $0.89 $0.75! Penguin eggs (low on DDT, PCB), reg. $6.35 doz. $6.05! Pacific potatoes (unwashed), reg. $0.89 lb. $0.69! Butter from sunny New Zealand, reg. $1.35 qrt. $1.15! YOU TOO CAN AFFORD GOOD HEALTH AT PURITAN!44

In this ecologically ruined country, it is almost impossible to find real food, which is very expensive. As the soil, air, and water are all contaminated, “cheap foods” are produced that are “canned, frozen, freeze-dried, irradiated, precooked and even pre-digested,” which taste like “plastic and 42

Ibid., 461. For the poem, see Brunner, The Sheep, 175. 44 Ibid., 128. 43

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chewed paper.”45 Other companies, like Johnson & Johnson’s, which produces filter masks, and Mitsuyama Corporation of Japan, which manufactures water purifiers, do not hesitate to make a profit by using pollution as an excuse and advertising their products well. Life insurance premiums also climb because, according to the CEO of the insurance firm, decreased life expectancy in the United States has forced them to raise life insurance prices. By criticising all these destructive habits and behaviours, the novel reflects the ideals emphasised by the philosophy of deep ecology as a solution. It presents ecocentric criticism of various Western principles and practices in a dystopian setting, particularly through the character Austin Train. One of the main ideas behind Western ideologies is the notion that all non-human beings are inferior to humans. Ecocentrism and its variant, deep ecology, reject this view and raise awareness of the importance and value of the ecosystem in the face of such a mindset that celebrates human sovereignty. This nature-oriented philosophy questions the human-nature hierarchy upon which anthropocentric views of domesticating and exploiting nature are built. In the novel, Austin Train challenges this dichotomy by describing himself as a “commensalist” and establishing his environmentalist worldview on the principle that “you and your dog, and the flea on the dog’s back, and the cow and the horse and the jackrabbit and the gopher and the nematode and the paramecium and the spirochete all sit down to the same table in the end.”46 Austin Train is a former professor and well-known author whose ecological remarks received an adverse reaction from the authorities. After sparking the environmental movement by warning people about the risks of their lifestyle, he has disappeared from the public eye and gone underground, working as a garbage man in Los Angeles. There are only a few people who can contact him, and one of those is a journalist named Peg Mankiewicz. Across the country, a group of environmentalists calling themselves “Trainites,” inspired by Austin Train, launch a real attack on Western ideological and economic systems by spray painting cars and buildings with slogans and symbols. Some of these slogans were long: “THIS VEHICLE IS A DANGER TO LIFE AND LIMB. Many were short: IT STINKS! But the commonest of all was the universally known catchphrase: STOP, YOU’RE KILLING ME!”47 On every occasion, the inscription was finished with a rough egg-shape over a cross in the form of an X—the simplified graphic version of the iconic Trainite symbol, a skull 45

Ibid., 190. Ibid., 24. 47 Ibid., 15. 46

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and crossbones reduced to ֏. Meanwhile, plenty of Austin impostors emerge, and large numbers of self-identified followers of Trainites demonstrate aggressive, often violent resistance. The real Trainites, on the other hand, did not have a formal organisation, not even a newspaper. Nevertheless, they occasionally manifested themselves to bring attention to a company or enterprise that was threatening humanity. Obviously, it was not Austin who created this group; they were ex-radical students for whom declaring oneself a “commensalist” was a matter of principle. The narrative makes reference to how it had developed into a habit after the Vietnam disaster, when the use of massive amounts of herbicides, defoliants, riot gases, and poisonous chemicals caused the deaths of plants, animals, rivers, and people, and the land eventually turned into a desert. So, Trainites are an informal group that emerged immediately after the Vietnam catastrophe, and they live in small communities called “wats,” adhering to a set of environmentally sustainable practices. Decimus, the man killed by a car at the very beginning of the novel, was also a Trainite who advocated, as Arne Naess suggests, a “Deep Ecology lifestyle,” that is, “to live in harmony within what they accept as ecologically relevant guidelines.”48 The following quotation reflects the tenets of Decimus, who at least tried to adopt this lifestyle: His principle, at the Colorado wat, was third-world oriented; his community grew its own food, or tried to—crops had a nasty habit of failing because of wind-borne defoliants or industrial contaminants in the rain—and likewise wove its own cloth, while its chief source of income lay in handicrafts. The underlying concept was to dramatize the predicament of the majority of mankind.49

In this sense, wats are the embodiments of an effort to prevent the end of an ecologically collapsing world through a lifestyle change. Besides, they serve as safe havens from the outside world. For instance, as it is told in the novel, every wat employs at least one chemist to analyse their food and ensure its safety, especially for the benefit of the youngsters. Yet, despite the Trainites’ environmental awareness and insight, they cannot prevent toxic chemicals from poisoning the environment or a plant worm from being imported into the country by a reckless company. Since bees and earthworms, the cornerstones of agricultural systems, have gone extinct, they have to be imported. Throughout the novel, small advertisements about 48 Arne Naess, “Deep Ecology and Lifestyle,” in Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century, ed. George Sessions (Boston & London: Shambhala Publications, 1995), 259. 49 Brunner, The Sheep, 43.

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it are made by the Plant Fertility Corporation, such as “Grade-A MEXICAN HONEYBEES $165.95/ gallon! Grade-A EUROPEAN BEES only $220/ gallon! Best quality IRISH EARTHWORMS $67.50/ quart! GUARANTEED live on delivery!”50 However, the imported, supposedly “natural” worms turn out to be a hostile species that has a slightly bluish, bright colour. When these worms ruin the whole field, wats members’ livelihoods are ruined too. Despite this unfortunate event, wats community shows the possibility of a healthy, liveable, and clean environment and urges cultural effort outside of such places. Peg Mankiewicz, a reporter who grows dissatisfied with the corrupt and contaminated world, conducts one of these efforts. Her in-depth inquiry into Decimus’s death enrages her editor, Mel Torrence, who is anti-Trainites. Mel erroneously links the Trainite resistance with saboteurs, thinking they are responsible for the assaults, violence, and even deaths occurring all around the country. She contends that “‘Every last bunch of Trainites is a potential lynch-mob! I don’t give a fart what they claim their motives are— I judge by results, and what I see is that they wreck, they destroy, and when it comes to the crunch, they kill.’”51 Realising the blindfoldedness of people, the fallacy of Mel’s killing claims, and the fact that the true murderers are the ones “who are ruining the world to line their pockets,”52 Peg quits her job and goes to Colorado wat. She experiences the calm and pleasant lifestyle at this wat, which is the only example of a potential sustainable community. Although Colorado wat is a utopian place, Peg believes that it is insufficient in a society that requires change. Eventually, discontented with the wats members’ lack of engagement with the outside world, she leaves to continue the struggle initiated by Austin and Decimus. Finally, she devotes herself to critical writing, studying, and exposing the devastating impacts of wealthy countries on underdeveloped countries. Peg believes that by putting forth her effort and presenting the facts in this way, she can create change. Thus, by narrating Peg’s decisions and actions, Brunner highlights the value of striving to initiate a transformative effect for a better world. Similarly, Hugh Pettingill is dissatisfied with the situation in society and blames people like his stepfather, Jacob Bamberley, for the disasters. He expresses the thoughts and rage of many people in the novel while confronting his father about his role in the Noshri tragedy. ‘Here you sit, stuffing your fat paunch with food from all over the stinking world, when you’ve poisoned thousands of poor black buggers in Africa— 50

Ibid., 125. Ibid., 116. 52 Ibid. 51

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. . . Because of you and people like you we sit here in the richest country in the world surrounded by sick kids— . . . You and your ancestors treated the world like a fucking great toilet bowl. You shat in it and boasted about the mess you’d made. And now it’s full and overflowing, and you’re fat and happy and black kids are going crazy to keep you rich.’53

Hugh also escapes to Colorado wat; however, he is startled to find out that the residents here were not at all like the Trainites he had met outside. He struggles to make sense of what is going on around him, and he understands this: The simple life bit, the natural foods—so far, so good. Also the clothing woven from natural fibers which would rot: cotton, linen, wool. Fine. The composting of vegetable peelings and such, the sorting and cleaning of the inescapable cans, the return of plastics to the nearest reclamation company, which called for a once-monthly trip by the communal jeep. Great. . . . [The electricity] was clean power and could be generated from waterfalls and tides.54

Thus, instead of the militant action he identifies with Trainites, he witnesses a community where people are practising for the future and developing a viable lifestyle via the process of experimentation, as Naess suggests with the deep ecology lifestyle. Unlike Peg, Hugh demands immediate action with pistols and bombs. Therefore, he departs the wat and joins a tiny group of activists who commit acts of violence. He meets a woman named Carl and the Austin Train imposter, Ossie, who conspire to kidnap Hector Bamberley, the nephew of Jacob Bamberley. As the plot develops, international tensions climb, and environmental degradation in the United States steadily increases. A diarrheal epidemic breaks out in the country, and millions of people become affected in a very short time because the water that meets the needs of half the country has already been used. Thirty-five million people become sick; while adults get over it in a week or more, babies cannot recover. All over the country, a spike occurs in orders for very small coffins, the perfect size to carry a baby who died from acute infantile enteritis. Schools, factories, farms, and all kinds of public services are closed or cut back. It turns out that the worms used in the wat contain jigras, which wreak havoc on crops. Jigras, insects immune to pesticides, spread across the country, resulting in a severe food crisis. Looking at the dying potatoes at the wat, Peg asks Decimus’s widow: ‘What kind of future do we have, Zena? A few thousand of us living underground in air-conditioned caves, fed from hydroponics plants like 53 54

Ibid., 139-40. Ibid., 184.

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Bamberley’s? While the rest our descendants grub around on the poisoned surface, their kids sickly and crippled, worse off than Bushmen after centuries of proud civilization?’55

With this question, Brunner highlights the fragility of modern civilization in the face of ecological calamities as well as the failure of the erroneous approaches adopted to solve environmental problems. The novel also criticises real-life authorities and leaders by depicting that although the environmental disaster in the United States has reached a global scale and caused international problems, the politicians, media, and public in the country do not appear to be concerned about it. Throughout the narrative, TV news depicts incidents related to the lives of renowned people, pushing important environmental issues into the background. The following news exemplifies this: PRIME TIME OVER Petronella Page: . . . and welcome to our TARGET new Friday slot where we break our regular habit and cover the entire planet! Later we shall be going to Honduras for interviews right on the firing line, and by satellite to London for in-person opinions concerning the food riots among Britain’s five million unemployed, and finally to Stockholm where we’ll speak direct to the newly appointed secretary of the ‘Save the Baltic’ Fund and find out how this latest attempt to rescue and endangered sea is getting on. But right now we have a very sad episode in focus, the kidnapping of fifteen-year-old Hector Bamberley.56

As the example above illustrates, although there are serious environmental issues waiting to be discussed all over the world, the main focus is on the kidnapping of a company executive’s fifteen-year-old son. With this literary technique that brings news to the fore, Brunner criticises both individuals and the society they live in. This and many other details in the novel can be interpreted as satirical allusions to the US government’s political stance, which is more concerned with the strength and prestige of the country than the welfare of its citizens. The US government provides Nutripon foods to its own citizens as food aid since water filtering systems cannot filter bacteria and people are unable to work. However, the public starts to exhibit symptoms of insanity similar to those in Africa and Central America. As the country collapses, the rightwing US President, Prexy, who is more concerned with celebrity events than governing the nation, declares that the country is under attack and announces a state of emergency. There is social unrest all around the country 55 56

Ibid., 216-17. Ibid., 308-9.

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due to pollution, poor health, a lack of resources, and inadequate services. Hence, Brunner urges readers to question the credibility of political leaders through President Prexy’s incredibly ridiculous decisions and actions. As the crisis climbs, Austin Train appears and speaks on a national television programme. He gets arrested right away on the false accusation of abducting the son of Roland Bamberley, an opportunist businessman whose company produces water filters. The kidnapping was actually carried out by one of his followers under his identity. Train uses his publicly broadcast trial as an occasion to deliver a speech. By mentioning the absurdity of his trial, he states that there is so much pollution that “the planet Earth can’t afford it!”57 Begging humans to refrain from damaging the environment, he utters that “‘at all costs, to me, to anyone, at all costs if the human race is to survive, the forcible exportation of the way of life invented by these stupid men must . . . be . . . stopped.’”58 With Austin Train’s remarks, Brunner suggests that the only way for the Earth to survive as a healthy planet is if the United States and its consuming and polluting culture vanish. Train also exposes the reason for the insanity from Nutripon poisoning: the substance that caused it was a military hallucinogenic based on ergot, which was produced on an experimental basis from 1959 to 1963. It was stored at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal until the end of the year, and then it was discarded in a deserted silver mine in steel containers. Shortly before Christmas last year, one of the earthquakes in that area broke the first of the containers, and its contents leaked into the groundwater supplying the Bamberley Hydroponics Plant and the Nutripon factory, contaminating the food they produced. Another earthquake ruptured not one but dozens of BW-filled containers, resulting in a much greater leak that poisoned the entire city of Denver. So, it becomes clear that the Nutripon food has been contaminated with chemicals from groundwater, causing an outburst of murderous frenzy in those who consume it. As he concludes his speech, a cameraman notifies Train that President Prexy has ordered the broadcast to be cut off. Then the courtroom collapses due to the explosion of the bomb that Ossie had planted in a public building before he died, possibly killing everybody in the courthouse. One of the most important points in the novel about deep ecology philosophy is that the contrast between the attitudes of huge corporations and wats towards pollution and environmental problems are examples that reflect, in Naess’s words, “deep and shallow approaches.” Naess notes that 57 58

Ibid., 443. Ibid.

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in the shallow approach, “technology seeks to purify the air and water and to spread pollution more evenly.”59 So, companies’ producing purifying items and filters as a solution to pollution is a shallow approach. In contrast to the deep approach, the priority in the shallow approach is to tackle only “the superficial, short-range effects”60 rather than the root causes of pollution. On the other hand, wats are built on the fundamentals of a deep approach, such as adopting a lifestyle in harmony with nature, respecting the inherent value of nature, simplicity in their way of life, and awareness of the planet’s limited resource capacity. In this regard, Austin Train, Decimus, and Peg, as depicted in the novel, are intellectual personalities who attempt to create a deep ecological conscience through their actions. In particular, Peg’s way of informing people about the ecological crisis and aiming to educate them on possible solutions exemplifies the deep ecology approach. While Hugh’s methods are highly forceful and hence do not embody the peaceful essence of deep ecology, his action is nevertheless important in that it emerges only after Trainite ideals and demonstrations failed to attract the attention of those who devastated ecology. Another important point is that throughout the narrative, one of the characters, the famous Doctor Thomas Grey of the Bamberley Trust, tries to figure out a solution to the world’s environmental problems with the use of computers and other innovative techniques. He appears on the Petronella Page programme to explain the results. Reports and computer-generated forecasts suggest that the best course of action for ensuring a long, happy, and healthy future for humanity is straightforward. “We can just about restore the balance of the ecology, the biosphere, and so on—in other words, we can live within our means instead of on an unrepayable overdraft, as we’ve been doing for the past half century,” states Doctor Grey, “if we exterminate the two hundred million most extravagant and wasteful of our species.”61 As these very ironic and hauntingly funny results are announced, chaos erupts across the United States. In the last scene of the novel, a woman named Mrs. Byrne, living in Ireland, is depicted opening her door to a visiting doctor. She smells smoke and suggests calling the fire department because if she could smell it while suffering from a severe head cold, the fire must be huge. However, the doctor responds that it would be a long journey for the brigade since it comes from America. The last scene of the novel implies that the United States has been completely burned by chaos, skirmishes, and explosions.

59

Naess, “The Deep Ecological Movement,” 71. Ibid. 61 Brunner, The Sheep, 456. 60

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As Martin Amis notes, The Sheep Look Up is “a massive, chaotic, jangling hotch-potch” that delivers a “cautionary tale about the polluted and anarchical future” that awaits humanity.62 In this novel, Brunner describes the difficulties people experience by emphasising how societies are affected when the world deteriorates. Industrial pollution, which leads to land degradation and the depletion of freshwater resources, is a problem that both developed and developing countries face. In this future United States, where political and societal failures are at the centre, people are unable to breathe fresh air, consume pure water, or eat healthy food. Furthermore, pollution severely harms all life forms, including humans and animals. In this sense, throughout the novel, Brunner shows how humankind destroys itself by ruining the environment and how the environment and humans are intertwined. Pollution, disease, death, anarchy, and violence, as described in the novel, all make people feel like they are living in hell. In light of all these, the novel mainly criticises the inability of any authoritative person or institution, from political leaders to business organisations and individuals, to accept responsibility for the disaster. In conclusion, The Sheep Look Up examines how economic growth, mass consumption, and the disconnection of humans and nature, which are at the forefront of Western philosophy, pave the way for environmental and social injustices and the power structure’s exploitation of human and nonhuman life forms. It examines the flaws in modern social, economic, and philosophical frameworks. While raising issues about the consequences of unchecked economic expansion and modern society’s lack of ecological awareness, it also examines the various strategies for environmental action. In other words, the novel depicts a world ravaged by Western consumption habits and capitalist exploitation, where the ecocentric approach is completely ignored. It proposes the idea that in a consumer society ruled by economic concerns, nature, which has been commodified as a result of the anthropocentric perspective, cannot recover and new environmental calamities cannot be avoided. In this sense, it criticises not only the individuals but also the systems in which they live, as well as the institutional and political forces that push the planet towards the apocalypse.

62

Martin Amis quoted in Jad Smith, John Brunner, 11.

CONCLUSION

Eco-science fiction is one of the most significant literary genres that deals with the problems posed by the environmental crisis. By depicting numerous ecological catastrophes such as air, water, and soil pollution; overpopulation; climate change; etc., this genre attempts to imagine futures that could reflect the potential consequences and challenges of humankind’s pressure on Earth. In particular, eco-science fiction novels with apocalyptic themes warn of impending doom for the planet or, in many cases, complete annihilation. To put it another way, eco-science fiction writers imply in their apocalyptic narratives that the most dangerous threat to the world is humanity’s callousness and ignorance, because most people do not yet understand the seriousness of the ecological crisis. Although it is argued that these narratives paint a hopeless and depressing picture, they are effective in raising ecological awareness and illustrating the importance of protecting the environment. Therefore, imagination is used to predict the actual apocalypse and, if possible, prevent it. In this sense, eco-science fiction is more than “extrapolation;” it also considers what is currently causing environmental deterioration. It is a means of attempting to convey the causes of environmental problems and ecological crises and to suggest possible alternatives to avoid or deal with them. In this respect, four noteworthy British eco-science fiction novels, namely John Christopher’s The Death of Grass, J. G. Ballard’s The Drought, Brian Aldiss’s Earthworks, and John Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up, have been analysed in the light of ecocritical theory. For this aim, the perspectives and views of various ecocritics, particularly those of ecocentric philosophers, have been studied and applied. The analyses and interpretations in this book are built on the premise that the anthropocentric perspective, which affects how people interact, produce, consume, and determine values, plays a significant role in shaping the relationship between humans and nature. In this context, it has been argued that the environmental disasters depicted in the four British eco-science fiction novels analysed in this study stem from human-induced actions. Therefore, examining the novels within the framework of ecocritical theory has clearly illustrated that it is extremely significant to comprehend the direct connection between human activities driven by an anthropocentric approach and environmental problems.

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While these novels address the main concerns of the contemporary environmental movement, including uncontrolled use of chemicals, industrial and urban pollution, overexploitation of natural resources, and rapid population growth, they also allude to the social, economic, political, and capitalist systems underlying these problems. Obviously, each novel approaches these issues in a distinctive way. In The Death of Grass, the environmental disaster is caused by a deadly virus that destroys grass. In this novel, it has been revealed that Christopher criticises and takes a stance against the Western anthropocentric mentality. The virus, which initially attacks only rice in China, becomes stronger as a result of a chemical developed by Western scientists, and then it targets all crops and spreads throughout the world. This chemical, produced to destroy the virus, actually makes it more resistant, causing the balance of the ecosystem to collapse and a global environmental disaster to occur. The novel, an example of a post-apocalyptic narrative, depicts the capacity of a virus to cause a worldwide famine and plunge humanity into violence and barbarism. In this regard, it has been argued that The Death of Grass shows how insignificant humans are in comparison to the complexity and magnificence of nature. Along with the ongoing disaster, Christopher’s focus on the anthropocentric thoughts, attitudes, and behaviours of the characters facing this disaster is extremely striking. After the initial descriptions of the environmental devastation, the emphasis soon shifts to the characters’ reactions and how they become “barbarians” in their fight for survival. The Western people’s self-confidence and callousness, stemming from anthropocentric hubris, prevent them from seeing the signs of increasing hunger and its spreading across the world as a result of the massive crop loss. In this respect, it has been discussed that Christopher demonstrates how the human species disregards the norms of civilization and morality for the sake of survival in a time of disaster caused by its own actions. While drawing attention to the fragile nature of human conscience and societies, the author also makes it clear that a seemingly “insignificant” component of the ecosystem is more than enough to destroy the great human civilization and that science is not always successful in solving ecological problems. In this context, it has been concluded that Christopher puts forward the view that human-centred thinking will ultimately bring the end of humanity. Revealing the interconnectedness of nature and humans—the view advocated by ecocentrism—The Death of Grass discusses the problem of the anthropocentric mentality that leads to the belittlement or even ignorance of the other living organisms of the ecosystem. Furthermore, the catastrophe portrayed in the novel is not distant from the reality of

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environmental problems experienced in today’s world. Although it is a lesser-known work with little critical acclaim, it was published at a time when environmental issues were not widely discussed. The most notable detail about this novel is that it focuses on a disaster caused by the irresponsible use of chemical drugs, which Rachel Carson highlighted in Silent Spring. It was published six years before Carson’s touchstone book, which is often credited with sparking the modern environmental movement. A prequel to Silent Spring, The Death of Grass questions science and technology as driven by incomplete and inadequate knowledge of the dynamics of the ecosystem. The prospect of Christopher’s predictions coming true further contributes to the literary and historical significance of this novel, as it warns against an arrogant, anthropocentric attitude towards environmental disasters. The Drought by J. G. Ballard, on the other hand, imagines a world where all species are on the verge of extinction due to a global drought brought on by industrial waste. Similar to The Death of Grass, The Drought also forecasts that human actions will result in a catastrophic future. Portraying a post-apocalyptic world, the novel places a strong and dramatic emphasis on the dying ecosystem. It has been discussed that Ballard highlights the significance of water, one of the natural resources for all living things, by depicting the devastated vegetation and dead animals throughout the novel. In this regard, it has been revealed that the novel reflects the deep ecology philosophy, which suggests that all components in the ecosystem are interconnected and that the scarcity or absence of water is a harbinger of the collapse of the entire ecosystem. Furthermore, Ballard clearly demonstrates that anthropogenic actions are the root cause of this catastrophic and irreversible environmental disaster. In the novel, it is explained that for years, humans have spilled massive amounts of industrial waste, poisonous chemicals, and hazardous levels of radioactive material into the oceans. As a result, durable polymers formed on the ocean’s surface, obstructing water evaporation. Climate experts expected to be able to plant clouds, but there were no clouds to cultivate. Thus, as in The Death of Grass, the desperation of science and technology is observed in this novel as well. Drawing attention to the fact that the characters are unaware of their connection to nature, Ballard demonstrates that people become thieves, looters, and murderers in their pursuit of water. Thus, the author emphasises that people exacerbate the environmental crisis rather than attempting to find solutions to it. Ballard also underlines that the drought destroys not only the natural environment but also all cultural structures. In the novel, the characters are compelled to construct a new society as all industrial tools, inventions, and

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valuables lose their meaning in this burning world. In this context, it has been discussed that the survivors attempt to construct a new world out of cultural and industrial metal wastes in a world where nearly everything in nature has turned to dust due to drought. The scarcity of water heralds the beginning of a new world order in which water becomes an instrument for establishing dominance over others. Some characters, especially Richard Lomax, continually compete for power and supremacy throughout the novel. Accordingly, it has been argued that this power struggle is a reflection of the hierarchy that is sought to be established both among humans themselves and between humans and nature. Besides all these physical changes, in The Drought, Ballard also shows that the changing physical world affects the characters’ psychological wellbeing. He relates the physical world to the evolving mental world as the characters progress towards a new and unfamiliar interaction with the environment. By depicting Ransom, the protagonist of the novel, as someone who accepts and embraces calamity in the hope of rediscovering himself in the new surroundings, Ballard implies the necessity for humankind to adapt to the environment rather than shape it to its own will. In this regard, it has been concluded that Ballard provides a unique perspective by decentring the anthropocentric delusion that creates barriers between humankind and nature and thus uniting the inner world of humans and the outer environment. In Earthworks, the third novel that has been analysed, Aldiss reflects on the devastating effects of overpopulation on both nature and humans. By depicting an overpopulated future world, Aldiss echoes Paul R. Ehrlich’s view in his book, The Population Bomb, that the planet cannot support an ever-increasing human population and that this problem will result in irrevocable environmental destruction. As described in the novel, the Earth’s resources are on the edge of depletion as a result of the increased demand for housing and food required by the constantly growing population. Meeting the demand for feeding the entire world’s population has necessitated the annihilation of vast areas of the world. For years, humans have cultivated the land in order to increase food production, resulting in soil degradation and decreased fertility. Earthworks shows that overpopulation has destroyed land life, marine life, and the entire habitat. In this context, it has been discussed that Aldiss criticises the overexploitation of the Earth to the point where the ecology is ruined and challenges the anthropocentric attitudes that humans adopt while struggling to solve the problem of food scarcity. As in the first two novels analysed and also in Earthworks, the author questions the ability of technology to provide a solution to the environmental

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disasters that the world’s countries struggle with. It has been demonstrated that disregarding the essential features and functions of nature causes human actions to become absurd. Also, scarcity of resources is one of the most devastating results of overpopulation, and the novel depicts how people desperately eat artificial-tasting foods since there is no clean, organic food. Yet, these toxic foods affect both the physical and mental health of people. Besides, it has been revealed that by drawing attention to the illiteracy of the characters, Aldiss also emphasises that environmental disasters cause the collapse of not only the environment but all cultural values, including basic literacy, as well. Moreover, in this world where Africa now holds economic and political power, the mistakes made by the first-world countries are repeated, and world politics is prioritised over the effort to find a solution to the ecological disaster. Criticising this stance, Aldiss implies that countries’ greed for power and their erroneous approaches to world problems cause and exacerbate environmental catastrophes. Highlighting that overpopulation is a serious threat to the world’s welfare, Aldiss also extrapolates that population expansion will not only result in environmental degradation but will also bring about social problems. In this sense, it is emphasised in the novel that since farmlands have been ruined by industrial agriculture and food is limited in this dystopian world, society is doomed to live in a totalitarian order with extreme social and economic disparity. In the ruined world the novel portrays, the rich people live in cities raised from the ground, while the poor are condemned to work in highly poisonous farmlands. To escape pollution and have access to scarce food supplies, a minority of the population abuses the majority. In this sense, it has been discussed that the dreadful working conditions in the farmlands, along with the advent of automation, threaten the identity of workers and degrade their lives. The novel ends with the implication that the only way to end this disaster, injustice, suffering, and oppression is for the world to go into a global war, even if all people die. It has been eventually concluded that in Earthworks, Aldiss implies that if the population problem and related difficulties are not resolved immediately, a day may come when humans would rather destroy the entire planet than survive. John Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up, the last novel that has been examined, tells the story of an environmental collapse in the future United States caused by a failed political and economic system. This novel is quite different from the other three novels in terms of its literary form; it carries the characteristics of a postmodern novel. Therefore, it has a broad and intricate writing style that uses a variety of literary techniques and elements; it consists of pastiche and brief excerpts in various contexts, such as poems,

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news, headlines, ads, and cautionary signs. In addition, unlike the other three novels, this one does not depict a world suffering from a particular environmental problem; rather, it describes a nation polluted and corrupted everywhere, accumulating and reinforcing problems and abuses until it finally collapses under its own weight. The collapse is due to a variety of complex causes, including long-term air pollution, water pollution, treatment-resistant diseases, pesticides, social unrest, government violence, biological invasions, and their combinations. In this regard, it has been found that water, air, and soil pollution, as depicted in the novel, not only causes irreversible harm to nature but also constitutes a serious risk to human health. In addition, how large corporations that use pollution as an opportunity and source of income boost their profits has also been revealed. In this future United States, where everything is imported, an imported earthworm destroys all agricultural areas, and toxic chemicals harm both the environment and humans. Hence, similar to Christopher’s portrayal in The Death of Grass, in this novel, Brunner demonstrates the detrimental consequences of toxic pesticides, especially on children, just as Rachel Carson foretold in Silent Spring. Besides, the novel highlights that people suffer from a variety of illnesses due to the pollution of all natural resources, and environmental pollution leads to a decline in life expectancy and human procreation. One of the most important criticisms in the novel is that although the Environment Acts have been enacted to improve the conditions, they fail to function since they lack sufficient authority and the citizens remain passive and dormant. People, adapting to their decaying surroundings and trying their best to combat increasing pollution, are likened to “sheep” in the sense that they do not stand out from the crowd and take action for change. They struggle to live in the world’s most “developed” country, which is destroying itself day by day, convincing themselves that they lead “normal” lives. Moreover, it has been argued that in The Sheep Look Up, Brunner relates the depicted environmental catastrophe to Western habits shaped by the anthropocentric perspective that sees humans as conquerors of nature. Big companies ruin the Earth and continue to profit from environmental degradation with the principle of economic development supported by capitalism. While a lack of awareness of how humans and nature are intertwined promotes industrial and economic expansion, it eventually threatens ecological balance. In this regard, it has been exposed that in this novel, the environmental disaster is a social and political problem as well as an ecological one. Emphasising the effect of industrialised, wealthy white countries on the environment, Brunner argues that it is the greed and irresponsibility of the countries’ political leaders that initiate a series of

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events resulting in an ecological calamity. In addition to all these, it has been revealed that, similar to Earthworks, this novel also indicates that environmental destruction leads to socioeconomic inequality. The most important detail in The Sheep Look Up is that it offers a solution to avoid the environmental apocalypse: the deep ecology lifestyle. By denouncing all damaging Western habits and practices, the novel emphasises the ideals advocated by deep ecology philosophy through the character of Austin Train and the “wats” communities. Wats communities, which produce their own food, sew their own clothes, reject plastics, and adopt a sustainable life, demonstrate the likelihood of a healthy, clean, and habitable environment and stimulate cultural action outside. Based on the depiction of the wats community lifestyle, it has been discussed that the difference between the attitudes of large companies and wats concerning pollution and environmental issues exemplifies, as Naess puts it, “deep and shallow approaches.” As an example of dystopian and pre-apocalyptic fiction, The Sheep Look Up depicts a society whose social and ecological endurance has been seriously harmed and is gradually spinning out of control. The political, economic, and capitalist systems are incapable of solving environmental problems or predicting possible outcomes. In this regard, as Kate O’Neill argues, Brunner criticises not just humans but also “the structures they live in, and corporate/political power that, along with individual neglect and corner-cutting, pushes the planet towards doom.”1 This notable work, which has an important place in the field of eco-science fiction, mainly proposes the idea that the only way for the Earth to survive as a whole is the disappearance of countries, such as the United States, with their consuming and polluting cultures, off the face of the Earth. To sum up, several noteworthy conclusions can be derived after comparing and contrasting all four novels. To begin with, all are excellent instances of eco-science fiction, with apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, and dystopian narratives; while the first two novels examined present postapocalyptic narratives, the last two novels are dystopian narratives. Although each novel deals with a different environmental disaster, all four novels share the common aim of presenting intriguing environmental catastrophes in which humans are confronted with the consequences of their previous actions and decisions. In this sense, these novels emphasise the impact of reckless human activities and political, economic, capitalist, and ideological systems on the ecosystem and on all life forms on Earth. In this 1

Kate O’Neill, “The sheep look forward: Counterfactuals, dystopias, and ecological science fiction as a social science enterprise,” Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene 6, no. 44 (2018): 1. https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.303.

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sense, all these novels imply that humanity is its own worst enemy. In all four novels, the greatest hazard is not the natural calamity itself but the damage caused by humans to both the ecosystem and other life forms as well as to their own species. Murder, rape, abduction, poisoning, violence, slaughter, and genocide are only a few examples of the horrors depicted in these novels. All of these novels address humanity’s exploitation of nature, its mistreatment of other living beings (including their own kind), and the resulting devastation of the Earth. Another similarity is that all novels portray characters with a capitalist and anthropocentric viewpoint and those who oppose them, establishing a close relationship with nature and adopting an ecocentric stance. In The Death of Grass, Roger Buckley is the most anthropocentric character, relying on the power of science and technology to solve the ecological crisis and displaying a brutal attitude towards the starving Chinese. The character who exemplifies the opposite of Roger’s stance is the farmer, David Custance, who has knowledge of nature and has a strong bond with it. In The Drought, the architect Richard Lomax is the personification of modern civilization’s capitalistic ideals and greed. Along with Lomax, the other anthropocentric character is the intimidating and belligerent Reverend Johnstone, who advises people to burn down the city. Contrasting with these two characters are the compassionate Catherine Austen and Philip Jordan, who have close connections with animals and try to find water for them in their dried-up world. In contrast to the first two novels analysed, Earthworks does not portray a single character that displays a capitalistic and anti-nature approach. Implying that all authoritarian and wealthy people are behind the environmental disaster, the author attributes capitalistic and anthropocentric approaches to a group of people, the Farmers. The character who speaks for nature, on the other hand, is March Jordill, yet his voice is rarely heard in the novel. Finally, similar to Earthworks, in The Sheep Look Up, huge corporations and their executives reflect an anthropocentric mentality. In opposition to these capitalist companies, the people of wats commune, who have embraced a sustainable life and are in close relationship with nature, are depicted. Lastly, the common goal of these selected eco-science fiction novels is to arouse an ecologically conscious approach to today’s world by depicting the effects of anthropogenic activities. In this regard, all four of these novels are remarkable for their relevance to contemporary environmental problems. Christopher’s The Death of Grass, Ballard’s The Drought, Aldiss’s Earthworks, and Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up all depict a world in which the ecology has been severely damaged beyond repair. And all of

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them deliver a dire warning that the world will come to an end if the humancentred viewpoint is not abandoned and necessary precautions are not taken. All the novels convey the message that the avoidance of the environmental disasters they depict depends on humans’ improving their relationship with nature and acting accordingly. Thus, this study has demonstrated that all four novels contain explicit or implicit messages that can raise public awareness of the meaning and significance of the natural environment for all living things on Earth. Arne Naess remarks that “EVERYTHING HANGS TOGETHER – EVERYTHING IS INTERRELATED.”2 Since everything is so intertwined, human activities have numerous unforeseen impacts, many of which are destructive to the human species as well. Naess further contends that the immense network of interconnections that make up the planet is a feature of human existence that ecosophers joyously recognise, consider, and research. Because of the extremely limited knowledge of humans, the complexity of the world can put them in dangerous situations and even result in death, but “everything’s hanging together” is nonetheless perceived and envisioned as a desirable asset.3 As can be understood, one of the most significant obstacles in the face of the threat of ecological and environmental disasters is that the majority of the population is unaware of these issues. To solve or prevent environmental problems, all people must be informed of the dangers that may arise and understand the urgency of the issue. The political, economic, and capitalist structures fail to find solutions to environmental issues or anticipate possible consequences. Even worse, these systems exacerbate the problems. However, eco-science fiction narratives may provide insights or methods for emphasising or identifying potential disasters. In this sense, eco-science fiction literature has the potential to enlighten and warn more people about ecological problems. These narratives also inspire humans not just to learn more about the subject but also to act immediately to avoid the dismal future projected by the novels this book focused on and studied attentively with as much literary appreciation as confidence in their socio-political, philosophical, and ethical stand.

2

Arne Naess, “Ecosophy and Gestalt Ontology,” in Deep Ecology for the TwentyFirst Century, ed. George Sessions (Boston & London: Shambhala Publications, 1995), 240. 3 Ibid.

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