[Alchemist]

Two questions, one more general and one more specific:

1) The general one: What sf novels or stories have dealt with environmental decline?

2) More specific: Have there been any sf novels or stories that expand on the concept of peak oil and the resulting transition to and reality of a "post-fossil fuel" civilization?

[Hitmouse]

1. The Drowned World and The Drought JG Ballard, Greybeard Brian Aldiss

will probably think of a dozen others in the next few minutes.

[Roland 85]

Paolo Bacigalupi deals almost exclusively with this topic. His The Windup Girl is an amazing read, and just won Nebula and Locus. I hope it gets the Hugo as well (Review on my blog (http://rolandscodex.blogspot.com/2010/06/windup-girl-paolo-bacigalupi.html)). His YA novel Ship Breaker is on the same topic, as well as many of his short stories.

[nquixote]

I actually love this subgenre. Reading stories by hyper-optimists like Charles Stross and Vernor Vinge, about how we're all about to upload our personalities into Matrioshka brains and hang out with self-bootstrapping AI gods, is certainly fun and cool, but kinda makes me shake my head and laugh. Bacigalupi's vision is much closer to what I think is going to actually happen...

We need a popular name for this subgenre. Maybe something that ends in -punk, since it's a bit of a downer of a vision. "Declinepunk"?

[Roland 85]

I think books in that category generally fall in the apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic genre, when they aren't dystopic. Also, The Windup Girl for example is Biopunk.

[Omphalos]

Environmental decline: The Dune books, Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper. Ill Wind by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason dealt with total environmental decline after an oil spill, and surprisingly for a KJA book, it did not totally suck.

Oil: Dragon In the Sea, by Frank Herbert deals with oil scarcity. So does High Justice by Jerry Pournelle. Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach is about an alternative strategy. Last of the Winnebagos by Connie Willis is set in an oil scarce world. The People of Sand and Slag by Bacigalupi dealt with alternate fuel strategies too.


Some of these ideas turned up in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Heinlein, and Last and First Men, by Stapledon.

[Roland 85]

Uh, how is any Dune book about environmental decline? @_@ If anything, they are exactly the opposite.

[Omphalos]

So human meddling with the environment of Arrakis turned out to be good for humanity in general? One of the big messages of the first four books is that if you screw with the environment to create a "utopia" you will mess up the environment in other respects and risk survival. Perhaps its that you've missed the ambitiousness of the message. One man's good is another man's evil. Really, try taking a look at some of the Herbert interviews, the theses and dissertations, the books, etc.

HERE'S (http://tau.solahpmo.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4) a list of dang near all of them.

[Chuffalump]

The Death of Grass by John Christopher

[Roland 85]

So human meddling with the environment of Arrakis turned out to be good for humanity in general? One of the big messages of the first four books is that if you screw with the environment to create a "utopia" you will mess up the environment in other respects and risk survival. Perhaps its that you've missed the ambitiousness of the message. One man's good is another man's evil. Really, try taking a look at some of the Herbert interviews, the theses and dissertations, the books, etc.

HERE'S (http://tau.solahpmo.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4) a list of dang near all of them.

No, it's just that "decline" means "deterioration", and Dune is about alteration. It is a completely different concept, that's why I don't think it's appropriate to the topic. Not because the changes to Arrakis are a good thing.