ABSTRACT
This part engages with the narrative of ‘human mastery over nature.’ In contrast to the intensification of the human/nature divide common in technocratic responses to the Anthropocene, the part introduction stresses the need to go beyond the illusion of human mastery to show that the calamities of this era can only be aided by engaging grassroots civic society. This involves an attention to storytelling in its widest sense (including narratives, tropes and affects) that profoundly shapes contemporary understandings of the planetary crisis. In this context, I highlight science and speculative fiction, the genre of the two creative texts explored in this part, and its especially prominent relationship to the Anthropocene. Whereas The Island Will Sink tests the limitations of employing dystopian, (post-)apocalyptic disaster narratives for responding to climate change as transmitted through various different media, “Water” presents a counter-narrative to this dominant apocalypticism, as it explores multispecies kinship in the mode of romance and humour.
