Where the Wild Books Are: A Field Guide to Ecofiction

Preface

vii preface In the early 1970s a veritable fusillade of new fiction emanating from the environmental movement exploded onto the American literary scene. As with the new feminist fiction, these books weren’t mere escapism, even though many were action-packed and entertaining. As critics joined the ranks of readers , a new term emerged: ecofiction. A look back at the literature reveals that ecologically oriented fiction had existed over a century previously, and that it can be considered an important precursor to contemporary ecofiction. Where the Wild Books Are is a guide to the growing fields of ecofiction. It is intended for use as a reader’s advisory and reference work for scholars, fiction aficionados, and librarians. Librarians can use it as both a reference and collection development tool. It can also be used as a textbook or for supplemental reading in college courses on literature and the environment. Professors, librarians, and reading group leaders can use it to develop their curricula and reading lists. This is not intended to be “the last word” in ecofiction, simply the most complete and best research guide to date. It is intended to encourage reading, discussion, and debate. Selecting the works and authors covered in this book was a painstaking process involving the application of objective criteria tempered by my own subjective reactions. (Did I learn something, gain a new perspective, or have a strong emotional reaction?) The background research for Where the Wild Books Are included reading over a thousand novels, several thousand reviews, and hundreds of critical works, attending conferences, and directly consulting other authors and critics over the course of a quarter century. The people mentioned in the acknowledgments and many others helped shaped my definition of ecofiction, deepen my understanding of it, relate it to literary movements , and identify both central and more obscure authors and works. My criteria for determining whether a given work is ecofiction closely par- viii preface allel Lawrence Buell’s: “1. The nonhuman environment is present not merely as a framing device but as a presence that begins to suggest that human history is implicated in natural history. 2. The human interest is not understood to be the only legitimate interest. 3. Human accountability to the environment is part of the text’s ethical orientation. 4. Some sense of the environment as a process rather than as a constant or a given is at least implicit in the text” (1995, 6). Chapter 1 is a discussion of exactly what ecofiction is. Please note that the debate on this issue is ever evolving and there are many valid and varied perspectives. Chapter 2 defines and analyzes ecofiction, tracing its history from its emergence in the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Contemporary ecofiction is incredibly complex and varied. Chapter 3 is an attempt to categorize it. Almost all the books evaluated in this study were written in English or are available in English translation, but just as the natural environment and its problems do not recognize political or linguistic borders, neither does art. Therefore, a rather lengthy chapter is devoted to ecofiction from around the world. A great deal of ecofiction in other languages, particularly Asian and African languages, remains to be translated into English. The scope of further research on ecofiction should be broadened in four directions: geographically/ linguistically, ethnically, inclusion of children’s literature, and by format, including feature films, television programs, and the growing body of fiction found exclusively on the Internet. Since environmental concerns have become ever more common in the broad genres of romance, western Americana, speculative fiction, and mysteries , they are covered in separate chapters. An individual author or work may fall into several categories, creating considerable overlap. Dana Stabenow, for example, is an Alaskan Inuit ecofeminist author who has written both mysteries and science fiction. Rather than interspersing many bibliographies throughout the book, a single author bibliography is provided. Each entry includes author, title and subtitle, and publication information. Whenever possible, an edition in print preface ix or at least a recent edition was chosen, and that publication date is listed. The original publication date for each work is included parenthetically in the discussion of the books in the text and at the beginning of the bibliography entry, if a later edition is listed. Please note that this book is not intended as a comprehensive bibliography for every author covered, since such a book would...