ABSTRACT
This chapter traces how contemporary literary fiction has explored the ways in which humanity writes itself into the fabric of the planet. It shows that the preponderance of environmentally aware fiction that relies on the perspective of science fictional futures has been supplemented by writers who have focused on the geological and ecological inscriptions of the past and present. In rendering the economic, political and technological drivers of environmental change, the emergent literary fiction of the Anthropocene addresses associated issues of representation, responsibility and agency across a variety of spatial and temporal scales. The Anthropocene has shown itself to be a powerful and elastic term, permeating academic, artistic and media discourses. The story’s interlinkage of economy and ecology highlights the importance of material socioeconomic conditions in shaping the behavioural and technological drivers of Anthropocene changes. A dark adumbration of the Anthropocene’s massive shifts in landscape use due to factors such as urbanisation, hydrocarbon extraction and agribusiness.
