The Nature of Tomorrow: A History of the Environmental Future

Rawson (Eden on the Charles), a history professor at Brooklyn College, surveys “Western ideas about the natural world [and] visions of the environmental future” in literature in this erudite study. Depictions of the future in literature and media have often been “based on the single-minded expectation of endless growth on a finite planet,” Rawson writes. He begins in the 15th century, when Europeans realized “the world was a far larger place than they had realized,” and so-called voyages of discovery set the West down a path that viewed the future as a place of growth. Rawson covers Louis-Sebastien Mercier’s The Year 2440, “the first utopia ever to be set in the distant future,” published in 1771; Cousin de Grainville’s The Last Man from 1805, a terrifying “fictional account of the end of humankind”; H.G. Wells’s The Food of the Gods, which suggests that humanity’s need for growth will surpass what Earth can provide; The Jetsons, who rarely encounter “anything that is not artificially made”; and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Though Rawson’s prose can be dense, his examination of speculative fiction’s relationship to the natural world makes for a timely angle. There are some intriguing insights awaiting readers who are willing to do the work. (Nov.)