Ecology, Civility, and Civilisation in late-Victorian Science Fiction Seminar

This talk examines the permeation of environmental concerns and ecological ideas within science-fiction’s ‘alternative history’ subgenre. Set in near or distant futures, William Delisle Hay’s The Doom of the Great City (1880), Richard Jefferies’ ‘The Great Snow’ (1876), ‘Snowed Up’ (date unknown), and After London (1885), Robert Barr’s ‘The Doom of London’ (1895), and Grant Allen’s ‘The Thames Valley Catastrophe’ (1897) each inflict devastation on Britain’s capital. Examining this vehement and unprecedented outburst of literary violence against London, I argue that the texts reflect both growing environmental alarm and the intensifying role of ecological models and metaphors in representations of the human during these decades.