Fuel is an idiosyncratic, speculative dictionary of fuels, real and
imagined, historical and futuristic, hopeless and utopian. Drawing
on literature, film, and scientific treatises-most produced long
before "climate change" was in circulation-Fuel argues for a
distinction between energy (a system of power) and fuel (a
substance, which can be thought of as "potentiality") as it
endeavors to undo the dream that we can simply switch to renewables
and all will be golden. From "Air" to "Zyklon B," entries in this
unusual "dictionary" include Algae, Clathrates, Dilithium, Fleece,
Goats, Theology, Whale Oil, and many, many more. The tone of the
entries ranges as widely as the topics: from historical anecdotes
(the Ford Fiesta "boozemobile") to eccentric readings of the
classics of "energy lit" (Germinal and Oil!); from literary
observations (a high octane Odyssey?) to excursions into literary
theory. The dictionary draws from an eccentric canon, including
works by Jules Verne, George Eliot's Silas Marner, Paolo
Bacigalupi's Windup Girl, and the Tom Cruise vehicle Oblivion,
among others. A message from this ambitious project is that energy
can be understood as a heterogeneous set of self-mystifying systems
or machines that block access to thought as they fascinate us.
Fuels emerge as more primal elements that the audience can grasp at
various points along the way to consumption/combustion. This
dictionary can help scramble our thinking about fuel-not in order
to demonize energy and not in order to create a new hierarchy in
which certain renewables take over from fossil fuels but instead to
open up potential ways of interacting with real and imaginary
substances, by wrenching them out of narrative and placing them
into an idiosyncratic dictionary to be applied by readers into new
narratives.
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