Science Fiction Theory and Ecocriticism

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The transformation and the destruction of nature often lead to science fiction most potent narratives and most striking imagery. Studying science fiction from an ecocritical standpoint offers a productive, interesting and relevant way to analyze how nature and environments are represented in this genre, while providing insight on the workings of science fiction itself. This book offers a survey of science fiction theory and an experiment in ecocriticism; it presents an analysis of the representations of nature and environments in the Rifters Trilogy by Peter Watts, and the novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy. In these novels, nature is in turn hybrid, dying, destroyed, lost, absent and mourned. Both works re-imagine nature, re-contextualize environments, and ultimately present post-natural worlds in ways that evidence similar literary strategies but with a major critical difference. This book should help shed some light on science fiction theory, ecocriticism, ecodystopian and post-apocalyptic literature, as well as concepts such as the post-natural, and should be especially useful to students and researchers exploring these topics.