Those of you who hang out here are probably sick of reading about our upcoming e-book, Ecotones, an anthology of ecological fantasy and science fiction featuring stories by Len Liu, Lauren Beukes, and Tobias S. Buckell.
But the end is near.
In about 24 hours, our Kickstarter campaign is coming to a close. You still have time to get in for our special pricing and push us to our first stretch goal!
As part of our promotional activities, our less high-profile contributors have participated in a blog tour – what I have been calling an ‘ecotour’. And this is our last stop. For this ecotour, I asked each of our participants to tell us why they wanted to be a part of this anthology. Today we have Andrew Leon Hudson here to tell us why he decided to take the helm of this year’s project and why ecotones are near and dear to his heart.
I was very keen to take part in the latest SFFWorld anthology for a number of reasons. On a basic level it was because I enjoyed being part of the last two books, and was very envious of everyone in the first one, so there was no way I was going to not submit something to the project this year.
Sightly more significant, for me at least, was being given the opportunity to edit the anthology. It meant I’d have a chance to try something I’ve wanted to do ever since I saw Nila directing the previous three books in this project. I’d like to organise other anthologies, but building one within the (semi-)controlled environment of the SFFWorld forum was a great start; it provided a core of enthusiastic participants without me having to throw the doors wide open to the entire internet! Baby steps, walk before you run, etc. I’m looking forward to running in the future though…
However, I was interested in the ecological theme the minute it was suggested. When I was a child, I remember watching the BBC’s ground-breaking natural history series Life on Earth—or, to be more precise, I remember fragments of it (I was very young when it was first broadcast). David Attenborough was probably my first non-fictional hero, and my admiration for him increased still further when I watched the whole series again for the first time as an adult, only five or six years ago: what he was saying simply and clearly about nature and evolution, in 1979, people are still arguing about and getting wrong today.
Ten or more years ago, I picked up a huge hardback book in a second-hand shop called Eco Wars*. I think it was dedicated to the memory of Dian Fossey and others who had lost their lives studying nature, ecology and the environment—it was something like that, though it’s been a long time since I read it now—and I remember reading it cover to cover in a week or so. It ran the gamut of ecological study, activism, conservationism, and the struggles that people have undertaken to try and make a difference.
I’ve always been a big reader of science fiction, and one of the things I love about the genre (about speculative fiction in general) is the potential for creating complex and challenging worlds for the stories to take place in. Life on Earth opened my eyes to how amazing the natural world and the processes operating within it really are, but I think reading Eco Wars made me realise more than anything else the fact that people are living through stories that are every bit as challenging and complex as anything in fantastical fiction, and often suffering as a result.
I think that the genre of eco-fiction is a valuable one. Not every individual can make a significant impact on the world, but we can share what we think, and stories have always been a good way to do that.
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Andrew Leon Hudson is an improper Englishman, unapologetic genre author, writer-for- hire and a freelance editor and designer. He can be found in Facebook, Twitter, and Spain.
* Editor’s note: The Eco Wars by David Day
If you would like to read more about the inspiration driving our contributors, here are the other stops on our Ecotour:
- Ecotones First Contact – hosted by Igor Ljubuncic
- View from the Soapbox – hosted by Andrew Leon Hudson
- Ecotour guest blog: Inundated – hosted by Daniel Ausema
- Meaning of Place – hosted by Rebecca Schwarz
- Ecotones – A Guest Post – hosted by Victor Espinosa
- Why Ecotones? – hosted by Jon Laidlow
- Ecotour – hosted by N. E. White
You can also read up a little about our project at the following places:
- an article by the editor (me!) at The Mary Sue
- we also got a mention on SFSignal (and they asked me about heroic animals soon after)
- a summary of an interesting “eco-fiction” discussion with Claude Nougat
- a brief project overview posted at Cli-Fi.net
Enter to win a $10 Amazon gift card by posting a link to this post on Twitter or Facebook. Remember to use the hashtag #Ecotones and come back here to let us know you promoted our anthology (provide link). The winner will be contacted via the email address used to comment. And we’ll announce the winner at the end of the blog tour (December 2nd, 2015).
Thanks for reading!
© 2015 SFFWorld.com / Andrew Leon Hudson / N. E. White
