Free Green Planets by Gerry Canavan Page B

destiny for humankind. The sequel, Parable of the Talents (1998) significantly complicates this ambition by revealing it as a kind of apolitical (perhaps even antipolitical) quietism. Also of interest is Butler’s wonderfully ambiguous Xenogenesis series from the 1980s, in which an advanced alien race from the stars intervenes, following a nuclear war, to both interbreed with humanity and convert the entire Earth into one of their spaceships.
    Samuel Butler, Erewhon (1872). Pastoral utopia in which all machines have been destroyed.
    Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia (1975). The novel that coined the term, Ecotopia imagines an alternative to U.S. social and environmental collapse located in a politically separatist Pacific Northwest, whose revolutionary institutions have been inspired both by ecological science and by Native American cultural practices.
    Karel apek, War with the Newts (1936). Čapek’s satire of imperialism and labor exploitation takes an apocalyptic turn in its final third, as the Newts transform the planet to their liking, sinking the continents so they have room to expand.
    Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game series (1985–). While the first book in the novel takes place almost exclusively within an anthropocentric context, later entries imagine alternative environments and ecologies, as well as the sorts of subjectivities that might be produced under radically different modes of life (such as hive consciousness). Ender’s crime rises even above the level of genocide: he exterminates the biosphere of an entire planet.
    Terry Carr (ed.), Dream’s Edge (1980). Anthology of ecological SF including Herbert, Le Guin, Niven, and Sturgeon, among others.
    Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962). Carson notably chooses to begin her work not with scientific data nor with political polemic but a science fictional “Fable for Tomorrow.”
    Angela Carter, The Passion of New Eve (1977). Race war, sadomasochism, and rape culture in a decadent, disintegrating United States.
    Suzy McKee Charnas, The Vampire Tapestry (1980). Charnas’s translation of the classic horror genre into a science fictional register imagines the vampire as a highly specialized predator operating in the very particular ecosystem that is human culture. Also of interest: her Holdfast Chronicles (1974–99).
    Ted Chiang, “Exhalation” (2008). Transcendent novella in which a race of argon-breathing artificial life forms, living in some sort of sealed canister, confront the inevitable and tragic end of their civilization.
    John Christopher, The Death of Grass (1956). A virus kills off a huge swath of Earth’s plant biomass, including varieties of grass (like wheat and barley), leading to massive upheaval and starvation.
    Arthur C. Clarke, “The Forgotten Enemy” (1949). A new ice age comes to London. Clarke’s famous 2001 series of novels may also be of note, given its interests in space colonization and in evolution.
    J. M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (2001). Philosophical-ethical treatise on vegetarianism and justice for animals premised on the cognitively estranging notion that animals—despite the way we treat then—have a self-evident right to life and safety.
    Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (2008). Teenagers are forced to fight each other to the death in gladiatorial games in a post-apocalyptic America.
    John M. Corbett, “The Black River” (1934). A massive oil spill destroys Los Angeles.
    Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park (1990). Science brings back the dinosaurs for an amusement park. What could possibly go wrong?
    Daniel DeFoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719). This is the unacknowledged template for any number of future post-apocalyptic narratives of survival after the collapse of civilization, beginning with the truly prodigious amount of material Crusoe is able to salvage from his wrecked ship.
    Samuel R. Delany, “The Star Pit” (1967). An extended mediation on the