Death by Landscape

From the author of Oval, a collection of "fan nonfiction" that proposes new possibilities and genealogies for weird fiction in the age of extinction.

What kinds of stories will help us rethink the human-centric perspective of Earth? This collection of "fan nonfiction" offers a syllabus for feminist sci-fi, proposing new possibilities and genealogies in the age of extinction.

Elvia Wilk investigates creative works across time and genre, breaking down the binary between dystopia and utopia, real and imagined, self and world. She makes connections between works by such wide-ranging writers as Mark Fisher, Karen Russell, Han Kang, Doris Lessing, Jenny Hval, Anne Carson, Octavia Butler, Michelle Tea, Helen Phillips, Jonathan Lethem, Kathe Koja, Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, and Hildegard von Bingen.

What happens when research becomes fandom or even obsession, when the observer breaks through the glass? When you realize you are in love with a movie you are reviewing; when you are suddenly playing a character in a LARP you thought you were observing from afar; when a medieval nun suddenly feels like an intimate friend? Through the eye of the fan, this collection studies literal and literary world-building projects--solarpunk futures, vampire role-plays, environments devoid of humans--connecting the micro to the macro and revealing how our relationships to the natural world and to one another.