My short story Robin’s Last Songwas republished recently in the superlative online magazine Metastellar. The story had first been published in 2021 in Issue 128 of Apex Magazine. An earlier version of the story called Out of the Silence appeared in the literary magazine subTerrain Magazine Issue 85 in 2020.
I raced up the stairs to the auditorium then quieted my breath and listened at the door, heart thumping like a bird trying to escape. Professor Gopnik was ten minutes into his lecture; I could hear his commanding voice: “… estimates that the entire number of birds have been reduced by a third in five decades—I mean common birds like the robins, sparrows, warblers, and even starlings…”
He was talking about Rosenberg’s paper in Science. The study shocked the scientific community; but I had already observed the decline of the house sparrow around my aunt and uncle’s house near the Old Mill. And the robin—my namesake, whose song heralded spring for me—had grown quiet.
I imagined Gopnik waving the journal at the class in his typical showman style. He had a habit of wandering the stage like an evangelist, fixing each student with intense blue eyes as if challenging them to believe. I thought him an over-confident condescending prig. But for someone who looked as young as the students he was teaching, Gopnik was brilliant. And what he was doing was so important. I wanted so badly to work under him as a grad student. But he terrified me.
The Story Behind the Story
It all began with my discovery of an emerging bioacoustic tool, soundscape ecology, that measures biodiversity and ecosystem functionality. I’d just read the disturbing 2019 Science article by Rosenberg and team who determined that our slow violence of habitat degradation and toxic pollution has reduced the world’s bird population by a third in just five decades. I was devastated; I could not imagine a world without the comforting sound of birds. What would it be like if all the birds disappeared?
Already primed with research into genetic engineering for the sequel to my 2020 eco-novel, A Diary in the Age of Water, my muse (often delightfully unruly) played with notions of the potential implication of gene hacking in ecological calamity and how this might touch on our precious birds: when nature “is forced out of her natural state and squeezed and moulded;” her secrets “reveal themselves more readily under the vexations of art than when they go their own way.”
Robin’s Last Songis a realizable work of fiction in which science and technology are both instigators of disaster and purveyors of salvation. Today, gene-editing, proteomics, and DNA origami—to name just a few—promise many things from increased longevity in humans to giant disease-resistant crops. Will synthetic biology control and redesign Nature to suit hubris or serve evolution? What is our moral imperative and who are the casualties? As Francis Bacon expressed in Novum Organum, science does not make that decision. We do.
I also recently sat down with Rebecca E. Treasure of Apex Magazinefor a conversation about story, ecology, and the future. Here’s how it begins:
Apex Magazine: The Way of Waterin Little Blue Marble is such a powerful piece touching on water scarcity and friendship, a dry future and the potential for technology to overtake natural ecology. Robin’s Last Songexplores extinction, human fallibility, friendship, and again, that conflict between technology and nature. Do you think we’re heading toward the kind of dystopia shown in these stories?...
“Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds. The early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.”—Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Issue #128 ofApex Magazinefeatured an interview that Rebecca E. Treasure did with me, posted on December 10, 2021 on their site. We discussed the power of story, the use of dystopian narrative, and the blur between fiction and non-fiction to create meaningful eco-fiction. Here’s part of the interview. For the complete interview gohere:
INTERVIEW
Nina Munteanu, author of “Robin’s Last Song,” is a prolific creator with multiple books, podcasts, short stories, and nonfiction essays in publication. Her work spans genre, from eco-fiction to historical fantasy to thrillers, and of course, science fiction. Her work as an ecologist informs all of her writing, which circles around an essential exploration; the relationship between humanity and our environment.
At the top of Nina Munteanu’s website, there is a quote: “I live to write, I write to live.” This sentiment is reflected in her fiction, which is not just about characters in compelling situations solving their problems with compassion, but is about all of us, our planet, our environment, and our future.
Nina Munteanu sat down with Apex for a conversation about story, ecology, and the future.
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APEX MAGAZINE:Your novels and short stories examine the role and evolution of humanity in the context of nature and technology. As an ecologist, what do you believe needs to happen—internationally, nationally, locally, and personally—to restore our planet and move forward in a sustainable way?
NINA MUNTEANU: All things animate and inanimate naturally oscillate toward equilibrium or balance in a kind of stable chaos of polarities. Goethe and Hegel told us this long ago. Our actions have exacerbated this oscillation through massive extraction, habitat destruction, and pollution with associated conflicts, take-over and subjugation. Everything is connected and all have contributed to climate change and habitat change. Our mission—given that we’re responsible for much of that imbalance—is to help the planet return itself to balance. That means ensuring that Nature’s natural checks can do their job to ensure functional forests and phytoplankton, a healthy ocean, a resilient biodiversity—all systems that we rely on for our own healthy existence. Restoring our denuded global forests, and the oceans will need the concerted and united efforts of all nations and individuals. We have the knowledge, the science, and technology; all that is needed is the will. And that can only change as our own narrative changes. That’s where storytelling plays a key part. Surveys have proven that fiction can be deeply persuasive through character journey that convinces at a deeper more emotional level (as opposed to a litany of facts that appeals only at an intellectual level).
AM:Do you believe industry and sustainability are compatible? What about colonialism and sustainability? Capitalism? In other words, is sustainability something we can achieve with our current systems, or is global systemic change required?
NM: Some people—mostly economists—would say definitely yes to the first question; we just need to be conservationist in our approach to doing business. But the very basis of capitalism is exploitation, not conservation. The driving force behind capitalism is fear and uncertainty and its main process is exploitation. From an ecologist’s perspective, this makes sense for a community during its early succession and growth stage … when it first colonizes a new area. Ecologists call this approach r-selected (for rate), based on the need to be profligate and fast-growing to successfully establish. But as we reach a climax community and our carrying capacity—where we are now—this r-selected approach no longer works. We need an economic model that better matches this new paradigm. NOT based on continued growth! A climax global economy, one based on cooperation not competition. Elisabet Sahtouris calls this ecological economy “ecosophy.” In his book Designing Regenerative Cultures, Daniel Christian Wahl talks about changing our evolutionary narrative from one based on fear defined by a perception of scarcity, competition, and separation to one based on love defined by a perception of abundance, a sense of belonging, collaboration, and inclusion. He promotes a regenerative economy based on true reciprocation.
And moving forward we can take a lesson from Robin Wall Kimmerer who promotes a gift economy—an economy of abundance—whose basis lies in recognizing the value of kindness, sharing, and gratitude in an impermanent world. This is what she says: “Climate change is a product of [our] extractive economy and is forcing us to confront the inevitable outcome of our consumptive lifestyle, genuine scarcity for which the market has no remedy. Indigenous story traditions are full of these cautionary teachings. When the gift is dishonored, the outcome is always material as well as spiritual. Disrespect the water and the springs dry up. Waste the corn and the garden grows barren. Regenerative economies which cherish and reciprocate the gift are the only path forward. To replenish the possibility of mutual flourishing, for birds and berries and people, we need an economy that shares the gifts of the Earth, following the lead of our oldest teachers, the plants.”
AM: The language in your stories is richly thematic, using strong description to weave the subtext into the piece. For example, “killing two squirrels with one stone.” Is that something that comes about organically as you compose a piece, or a more intentional part of editing?
NM: I use both processes to achieve a final narrative that is multi-layered with metaphor, symbols, and deep meaning. The first process is through intuition derived through intimacy; the second process is more deliberate and generated through objectivity. Insights from intimacy come about organically, during moments of true inspiration, when my muse connects me to the deeper truth of a character’s voice and actions. Given that the inner story runs many layers (some of which I, as writer, may not even be overtly aware) and links in a fractal relationship with the outer story, those moments of inner inspiration happen as if of their own accord. That’s what writers mean when they admit that their characters “talk” to them and instruct them on what to write. When a writer achieves that level of intimacy and understanding, they can let the muse guide them.
Much of the description that is woven into story is generated through the editing process when I read the manuscript as a reader. The process involves letting the story sit for a while so when I return to it, I am reading more objectively. During this process, I apply my knowledge in storytelling craft to showcase combustible moments in plot, and work in foreshadowing, subtext, and compelling metaphor. A writer can’t add metaphor without context related to story theme (otherwise this may result in what the industry calls “purple prose”). Metaphor—given its roots in the deeper psyche of a culture—must arise organically from a deep, sometimes intuitive, understanding—where the personal meets the universal.
AM:Your work takes complex topics that are nonetheless critical to humanity’s future and pulls stories with compelling characters out of them, making the science accessible, the warnings personal to the reader. This has always been one of the callings of science fiction. What is the role of stories in the climate action movement?
NM: Our capacity and need to tell stories is as old as our ancient beginnings. From the Paleolithic cave paintings of Lascaux to our blogs on the internet, humanity has always shared story. Story is powerful in how it helps us define who we are, what’s important to us, and where we are going. Stories compel with intrigue, stir our emotions, connect with our souls through symbols, archetypes and metaphor. Stories inspire action. We live by the stories we tell.
For too long, our stories have promoted a dominant worldview of exploitation and capitalism. We’ve been telling the patriarchal story of “othering” for too long; we need a new voice and a new worldview to replace our old stories of conquering and taming a “savage land” and “savage people.” When Copernicus proclaimed in 1543 that the sun did not revolve around the Earth, it took a long time for the world to accept and let go of its Ptolemaic Earth-centered view. But the world did come around eventually to the point now that this is common knowledge and lies embedded in our daily lives and language.
Storytelling about how the Earth takes care of us and how we can take care of Earth is urgently needed. This means shifting our stories from an exploitive capitalist narrative of separation toward an inclusive partnership narrative. This means embracing a more eco-centric worldview; a worldview in which humanity is not central, but lies embedded within greater planetary forces and phenomena. A worldview that sees humanity only as part of a greater entity, as participant in a greater existential celebration of life and the elements. A humanity that must learn to play along, not bully and take over. A humanity that must embrace compassion, respect and kindness; a humanity directed by humility—not hubris. It is my firm belief that until our worldview embraces humility in partnership with the natural world—until we cast off our self-serving, neo-liberal, capitalist ideologies—we will remain hampered in our journey forward. When we change our stories, we change our lives and we change the world along with it.
This is already happening with the emergence of a strong eco-voice by writers through the feminine voice, the gylanic voice, the voice of the marginalized, of ecology and the environment itself. Authors such as Barbara Kingsolver, Annie Proulx, Margaret Atwood, Richard Powers, Emmi Itäranta Cherie Demaline, Grace Dillon, and Cormac McCarthy give Nature a face and voice to care about. And caring is the first step.
AM:Your stories also bridge fiction with nonfiction, using speculative fiction as a lens to bring your subject into focus for the reader. How does that work? Why do you approach story in this way?
NM: Marcie McCauley with Temz Review observed that, “[Munteanu] does not appear to view fiction and non-fiction as separate territories; or, if she does, then this book [A Diary in the Age of Water] is a bridge between them.” In Herizons, Ursula Pflug called the book “a bit of a hybrid, and Munteanu a risk-taker.” Buried in Print wrote of the same book, “ultimately it exists in an in-between place, some mystical elements of the generational tale possibly alienating the dedicated science-y readers and the instructional elements possibly alienating fiction devotees. And, yet, I read on: strangely compelling.”
I find that I enjoy this in-between place that blurs fiction with nonfiction. It’s more edgy, gripping, and believable, albeit fantastical, even playfully challenging at times. For instance, I may subvert facts, creating semi-facts to tease the discerning reader (e.g. when the diarist in “A Diary in the Age of Water” observed that President Trump had gone blind from staring at the sun during an eclipse; while Trump did stare directly at the sun without eye protection during an eclipse in 2017, he did not go blind—yet). Readers have told me that the story was more impactful; they honestly didn’t know what was taken from fact and what was fictionalized. Such narrative reads like a true story and there is little more tantalizing than eavesdropping on another’s real experience and intrigue. The risk—that the blur will either confuse the reader or invalidate its truths and message—is hopefully addressed through compelling narrative that engages the reader. But this is also why I tend to include an extensive bibliography at the end of a novel or short story.
Readers have told me that my fiction/nonfiction storytelling trope, like “mundane science fiction,” grips my stories with a more keen sense of relevance. Given that I am writing mostly climate fiction and eco-fiction these days, that sense of relevance is exactly what I wish to achieve.
AM: A last question. Both “The Way of Water” and “Robin’s Last Song” showcase the relationships women have with each other, the importance of human connection, the damage that disconnecting from each other can do and, inversely, the power of connection. In your view, what is the role of individuals and local communities in the climate crisis?
NM: There are many things we can do as individuals and as part of a community. I was recently asked this question by the Toronto Star and I responded with three things:
● First, plant a tree; make an actual difference through action. By doing that, we get out from hiding under the bed and face the monster of climate change and show that we care and that we are not alone.
● Second, vote for green politicians. Politicians need to hear directly from their communities. They need you to push them to act on climate change.
● Third, find your tribe and create a movement. Everyone says that people have the power, but that power comes best through numbers and solidarity. Find your tribe and you’ll find yourself more motivated. So, start with you and your home: plant trees; put in a rain garden; put in permeable driveways and solar panels; lower meat intake, especially beef; don’t buy bottled water. Then connect with your physical community and social media community. Let them know what you’re doing and why. Work with your community. All members of a community can help change how your street looks and behaves by communicating with your local government, attending meetings, and having a voice. Initiate a tree-planting program in your parks and street greens. Do stream or lake cleanups. Let the leaders of your community know you care and are willing to do something about it. The wave of change starts local and ripples out into a global phenomenon. Change comes from the heart and heart is where the home is.
Road along Otonabee River on a foggy winter morning, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Rebecca E. Treasure grew up reading science fiction and fantasy in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. After grad school, she began writing fiction. Rebecca has lived many places, including the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Tokyo, Japan. She currently resides in Texas Hill Country with her husband, where she juggles two children, two corgis, a violin studio, and writing. She only drops the children occasionally. To read more visit www.rebeccaetreasure.com.
It was two years ago, on a crisp April morning—as I walked the naturalized trail through Peterborough—that magic found me.
I was heading north and unsure where the trail would take me. My muse had brought me here to explore my new environment; I’d recently moved from the bustle of Toronto and felt the restlessness of discovery. The trail wound mostly through backyards and cleared parkland, lined with mixed woodland of locust, black walnut, maple and oak and clearings bordered by thickets of sumac and buckthorn. I caught glimpses of houses and backyards as I walked the trail, surrounded by a chorus of lively birdsong. Robins and cardinals. Goldfinches. Red-winged blackbirds brought fond memories of childhood with their signature conk-la-ree! Chickadees flitted across the trail and sang their chickadee-dee-dee. A group of grackles took over a lilac-buckhorn thicket, their chatter sounding like an overused squeaky clothes line.
The trail crossed a main road then a minor one and the backyards became harder to see as the shrubs and trees that lined the trail grew dense.
Then, at a set of rocks on the east side of the trail, the thicket opened to a grassy rise and I glimpsed a small path, leading up the rise. The path was more like a depression in the grass where repetitive footfalls had created a trail of sorts. Several mature buckthorns and willows dotted the crest of the rise. And beyond the crest … well, that was my question. What lay beyond it? From my current position I could only make out the possibility of forest in the distance. The main trail up to this point had been through forest scrub of sumac, dogwood, black locust and other shrubs dense enough to obscure what lay beyond them.
Drawn to what lay beyond the rise, I turned onto the path, boots crunching on a brittle layer of frost that had settled on the grass and leaf litter. It was a steep climb through slippery wet grass. When I crested the hill, I stopped and inhaled with wonder at the unexpected view below me. It was as though I’d walked through a portal. Gone was any sign of Peterborough suburbia; below me, stretching in all directions lay a vast natural meadow, with a maple-beech woodland rising to the east; striking white limbs of poplar trees marked the leading edge of the monochrome forest.
The meadow that stretched before me was a gently rolling landscape of pale gold grasses and a chaos of strewn limestone rocks and gravel dotted by russet junipers and the gray-brown umber of dwarf hawthorn, buckthorn and sumac shrubs. In a lower depression in the centre of the meadow, a grove of young cedar trees added splashes of green to the gold-copper mosaic.
I made my way down into the rock-strewn meadow and was immediately struck by the silence. As though a hush had settled there, a kind of sacred humility stayed me. I felt unexpectedly blessed. I walked with silent steps as if in a church, toward a grove of stunted sumacs and came suddenly face to face with two white-tailed deer. We were both startled. In that protracted moment when our gazes met, time paused and the world stopped. Then one deer sprang away, followed by the other, their shocking white behinds bobbing as they fled through the sumacs toward the forest.
As if by design, at that exact moment, it began to snow. Huge flakes fell lazily like confetti in a mild breeze. Then it came down in a thick passion.
I felt the presence of magic.
Alvar Ecosystem
In the next two years, I returned many times to this magic place of barren beauty. My good friend and naturalist Merridy suggested that this meadow was likely an alvar, a distinct ecosystem that establishes on a limestone or dolostone plain with thin or no soil, and characterized by sparse grassland vegetation. This made sense to me, given the habitats I’d observed. Also called a pavement barrenof limestone pavementand a calcareous grassland, alvars are often flooded in the spring and affected by drought in midsummer. Because of this, alvars support a distinct prairie-like community of grass, lichen and mosses, as well as stunted trees and shrubs.
The term ‘alvar’ originated in Sweden to describe the unique ecosystem of the Swedish island of Öland, with its unique exposed limestone slabs. Alvars are a rare ecosystem; they are found in a handful of places, including the eastern European Baltic region, the United Kingdom and Ireland. In North America, close to 75% of alvars are located in Ontario. Ecologists describe seven habitat types for alvar ecosystems in Ontario. These include: tall grassy meadows, tall forb-rich meadows, low grassy meadows, low forb-rich meadows, dry grassland, rock margin grassland, and bare rock flats. In my various wanderings through thisalvar meadow over the seasons, I recognized several of these habitats, from wet marshy lowland grass-forb meadow to dry tall grasslands and rock-strewn stretches of dry flatland.
Given the role of disturbance in the formation of alvars, I studied the lower ‘bowl’ of the meadow more closely for signs. An old structure may have once stood where semi-structured rock piles were arranged to form a square. A patch of young cedars and birches—both flood-tolerant—surrounded it. I’d seen this same successional phenomenon in the Trent Nature Sanctuary, where it had been previously farmed. At the southern rising edge of the alvar stood a farmhouse, accessed by the little minor road I’d crossed earlier on the trail. I considered that this alvar was dominated by early sere plants, often the first to colonize a disturbed environment—lilac, hawthorn, buckthorn, sumac. Had there been a fire through here? Had someone tried to cultivate this site? It was surrounded by rural and residential development with a dedicated parkland (Trent Nature Sanctuary) of a drumlin maple-beech forest bordering it to the east. Attempts to cultivate parts of the nature sanctuary at one time are also evident.
This place remains a bit of a mystery and I am intrigued to solve it. Stay tuned…
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Mary Woodbury, author and publisher of Dragonfly.eco, lists some of her favourite “Eco-Fiction [that] Inspires Action” in the Spring 2021 issue of Ecology & Action. Among them is Nina Munteanu’s eco-novel “A Diary in the Age of Water”:
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications in 2020. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books.
I was recently interviewed by Matt Nappo on Minddog TVin New York, where we talked about the science and magic of water, climate change and how to not become cynical, the process of writing, what scares us and what takes us through it into great storytelling.
In February
2020, I was invited to speak and do workshops with over a hundred Grade 11 and
12 students about the future in the “2020 Vision into the Future” conference at
Wilfrid Laurier University in Brantford, Ontario.
Journalist,
urbanist and futurist Greg Lindsay gave a rousing keynote speech to start the
conference. Greg spoke about the future of cities, technology, and mobility.
Greg is the director of applied research at NewCities and director of strategy
at its mobility offshoot CoMotion. He also co-authored the international
bestseller Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live
Next.
I joined a
suite of technologists, visionaries and other scientists in presenting various
scenarios of the future through workshops and seminars.
Workshop
subjects included quantum cryptography, autonomous vehicles, flying cars,
robotic surgery, zero waste, computer glasses, and writing science fiction.
Instructive
seminars included topics such as feeding 9 billion people, mental health, AI
& computers, the science and meaning of water, urban development, the
future of transportation and space exploration.
How to Write Science Fiction
I gave two
workshops on how to write science fiction. The workshop began with a brief
discussion on what a story is (and is not) and a summary of the key tools of
writing good story (e.g. premise, plot, theme, character, and setting) with a
focus on world-building and the role of science.
Most popular image prompt for storytelling
Each group
then set out to create the framework for a story based on a premise from an
image prompt and shared what they’d put together. In one session we all worked
together with me scribing on one whiteboard, creating together as a class; in
another session, small groups formed and created their own story among four to
five members as I went from team to team.
Amazing
stories emerged in both cases from the image prompts chosen. Students
demonstrated imaginative, mature and original premises and carried through with
thoughtful and imaginative plot, theme and character journeys. I was very
impressed.
The Science and Meaning of Water
In this seminar I gave a summary of water’s life-giving
anomalous properties on Earth and discussed the history and field of limnology
(study of freshwater). I explored our history with water (including our
impacts) and the implications of climate change on our future with water on the
planet. Points of interest included water’s many weird properties, water’s
ubiquity and its origins, the hydrological cycle, and the often strange
adaptations of life with (or without) water. We then discussed future
implications of water scarcity (and geopolitical conflict) and some of the
things individuals and communities can do. Much of the talk drew from my recent
book Water
Is… The Meaning of Water.
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” will be released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in May 2020.
