Dystopias and Utopias on Earth and Beyond

Douglas A. Vakoch is President of METI, dedicated to Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence and sustaining civilization on multigenerational timescales. As Director of Green Psychotherapy, PC, he helps alleviate environmental distress through ecotherapy. Dr. Vakoch is editor-in-chief of the book series Space and Society, as well as general editor of Ecocritical Theory and Practice. He has explored ecofeminism in six of his other books, including Ecofeminist Science Fiction: International Perspectives on Gender, Ecology, and Literature.

Foreword Vandana Singh

Preface Douglas A. Vakoch

Introduction Patrick D. Murphy

I. Climate Change and Future Earth Dystopias

1. An Ecofeminist Reading of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of Talents Hatice Övgü Tüzün

2. An Ecofeminist Treatment of Nourishment and Feeding in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy Debra Wain

3. Margaret Atwood’s Ecodystopic SF: Approaching Ethics, Gender, and Ecology Izabel F. O. Brandão and Ildney Cavalcanti

4. Ecofeminist (Post) Ice-Age Ecotopia: Doris Lessing’s Mara and Dann Books Julia Kuznetski

5. Ecofeminist Climate Fiction: Merlinda Bobis’s Locust Girl Iris Ralph

II. Utopias on Earth and Beyond

6. "Extinction is Forever": Ecofeminism and Apocalypse in Louise Lawrence’s Young Adult Short Fiction Michelle Deininger and Gemma Scammell

7. Ecofeminist Utopian Speculations in Henrietta Augusta Dugdale’s A Few Hours in a Far-Off Age (1883), Catherine Helen Spence’s A Week in the Future (1888), Mary Anne Moore-Bentley’s A Woman of Mars; Or, Australia’s Enfranchised Woman (1901), and Joyce Vincent’s The Celestial Hand: A Sensational Story Nicole Anae

8. Alien Ecofeminist Societies: "Sharers" in Joan Slonczewski’s A Door into Ocean Irene Sanz Alonso

9. Re-reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s SF: The Daoist Yin Principle in Ecofeminist Novels Amy Chan Kit-sze

10. Keeping Grows; Giving Flows: Reciprocal Relations and the Gift of Always Coming Home Karl Zuelke

11. "The Revolt of the Mother": Romanticizing Nature and Rejecting Science in Sally Miller Gearhart’s The Wanderground and Other Feminist Utopias Christy Tidwell