(Eco)Anxiety in Nuclear Holocaust Fiction and Climate Fiction: Doomsday Clock Narratives by Dominika Oramus, 2023
Disaster fiction, nuclear holocaust, and climate change alike allows us to unearth and anatomise contemporary psychodynamics and enables us to identify pretraumatic stress as the common denominator of seemingly unrelated types of texts.
These Doomsday Clock Narratives argue that earth's demise is soon and certain. They are set after some catastrophe and depict people waiting for an even worse catastrophe to come. References to geology are particularly importantâin descriptions of the landscape, the emphasis falls on waste and industrial bric-a-brac, which is seen through the eyes of a future, post-human archaeologist. Their protagonists have the uncanny feeling that the countdown has already started, and they are coping with both traumatic memories and pretraumatic stress. Readings of novels by Walter M. Miller, Nevil Shute, John Christopher, J. G. Ballard, George Turner, Maggie Gee, Paolo Bacigalupi, Ruth Ozeki, and Yoko Tawada demonstrate that the authors are both indebted to a century-old tradition and inventively looking for new ways of expressing the pretraumatic stress syndrome common in contemporary society. This book is written for an academic audience (postgraduates, researchers, and academics) specialising in British Literature, American Literature, and Science Fiction Studies.
@gerrymcgovern We're so accustomed to turning on the faucet and there being groundwater, but once it's gone, it's gone. It would be great if the cash laden tech companies would seriously invest in and expand desalination, as well as wind and solar power to service these data centers.
Long rant ahead:
They are not serious with their #carbonoffsets . But, if we can get the #VotingRightsAct passed in the United States, #WeThePeople could potentially vote out any and all who support corporate interests over the environment and human health, and vote in people who are willing to legislate to protect the environment.
I only mention legislation, because I don't believe corporations do anything not for profit, unless legally mandated.
Superfluous things like massive data centers for frivolous things like #AI and #privatejet travel should be heavily regulated and taxed to pay for the infrastructure that humanity will need to survive climate change. The private jet class should not be able to get ocean front views in Pittsburgh when they're the reason the views might exist.
I'm so tired of these topics not being seriously covered by mainstream media when we are facing a #doomsdayclock on climate change.