Fiction and the Sixth Mass Extinction is one of the first works to focus specifically on fiction's engagements with human driven extinction. Drawing together a diverse group of scholars and approaches, this volume pairs established voices in the field with emerging scholars and traditionally recognized climate fiction ('cli-fi') with texts and media typically not associated with Anthropocene fictions. The result is a volume that both engages with and furthers existing work on Anthropocene fiction as well as laying groundwork for the budding subfield of extinction fiction. This volume takes up the collective insistence on the centrality of story to extinction studies. In various and disparate ways, each chapter engages with the stories we tell about extinction, about the extinction of animal and plant life, and about the extinction of human life itself. Answering the call to action of extinction studies, these chapters explore what kinds of humanity caused this event and what kinds may live through it; what cultural assumptions and values led to this event and which ones could lead out of it; what relationships between human life and this planet allowed the sixth mass extinction and what alternative relationships could be possible.

Why might interdependence, the idea that we are made up of our relations, be horrifying? On the surface, interdependence-the idea that individuals are each made up of their relations-appears to be a beautiful thing. Ecology, social theory, and the driving forces of digital media seem to agree that more and deeper connections to others are better. Yet there is a dark side of interdependence, too, that remains hidden away. Interdependence threatens the western philosophical ideal of individualism, and this threat lurks unseen in the backs of our minds like a dark spectre. Philosophy can give the contours of this spectre, and film can shine a light on its shadowy details. Together, they reveal a horror of relations. Contributors to this volume interrogate the question of interdependence through analyses of contemporary film and give voice to new perspectives on its meaning. Conceived before and written during the COVID-19 pandemic and through a period of deep social unrest, this volume illuminates a dark reality that is both perennial and timely.

Fiction and the Sixth Mass Extinction is one of the first works to focus specifically on fiction's engagements with human driven extinction. Drawing together a diverse group of scholars and approaches, this volume pairs established voices in the field with emerging scholars and traditionally recognized cli-fi with texts and media typically not associated with Anthropocene fictions. The result is a volume that both engages with and furthers existing work on Anthropocene fiction as well as laying groundwork for the budding subfield of extinction fiction. This volume takes up the collective insistence on the centrality of story to extinction studies. In various and disparate ways, each chapter engages with the stories we tell about extinction, about the extinction of animal and plant life, and about the extinction of human life itself. Answering the call to action of extinction studies, these chapters explore what kinds of humanity caused this event and what kinds may live through it; what cultural assumptions and values led to this event and which ones could lead out of it; what relationships between human life and this planet allowed the sixth mass extinction and what alternative relationships could be possible.