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Mid-twentieth-century developments in science and technology
produced new understandings and images of the planet that
circulated the globe, giving rise to a modern ecological
consciousness; but they also contributed to accelerating crises in
the global environment, including climate change, pollution, and
waste. In this new work, Patrick Whitmarsh analyzes postwar
narrative fictions that describe, depict, or express the earth from
above (the aerial) and below (the subterranean), revealing the ways
that literature has engaged this history of vertical science and
linked it to increasing environmental precarity, up to and
including the extinction of humankind. Whitmarsh examines works by
writers such as Don DeLillo, Karen Tei Yamashita, Reza Negarestani,
and Colson Whitehead alongside postwar scientific programs
including the Space Race, atmospheric and underground nuclear
testing, and geological expeditions such as Project Mohole (which
attempted to drill to the earth's mantle). As Whitmarsh argues, by
focusing readers' attention on the fragility of postwar life
through a vertical lens, Anthropocene fiction highlights the
interconnections between human behavior and planetary change. These
fictions situate industrial history within the much longer
narrative of geological time and reframe scientific progress as a
story through which humankind writes itself out of existence.
Mid-twentieth-century developments in science and technology
produced new understandings and images of the planet that
circulated the globe, giving rise to a modern ecological
consciousness; but they also contributed to accelerating crises in
the global environment, including climate change, pollution, and
waste. In this new work, Patrick Whitmarsh analyzes postwar
narrative fictions that describe, depict, or express the earth from
above (the aerial) and below (the subterranean), revealing the ways
that literature has engaged this history of vertical science and
linked it to increasing environmental precarity, up to and
including the extinction of humankind. Whitmarsh examines works by
writers such as Don DeLillo, Karen Tei Yamashita, Reza Negarestani,
and Colson Whitehead alongside postwar scientific programs
including the Space Race, atmospheric and underground nuclear
testing, and geological expeditions such as Project Mohole (which
attempted to drill to the earth's mantle). As Whitmarsh argues, by
focusing readers' attention on the fragility of postwar life
through a vertical lens, Anthropocene fiction highlights the
interconnections between human behavior and planetary change. These
fictions situate industrial history within the much longer
narrative of geological time and reframe scientific progress as a
story through which humankind writes itself out of existence.
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