O'connor, Robert ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8892-5929 (2025) ‘“There weren’t many Google hits for ‘telepathic octopus’”: The ‘realism’ of the non-human in Ted Chiang’s “The Story of Your Life”, Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon and Doug Johnstone’s The Space Between Us.’. In: Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment – UK and Ireland (ASLE-UKI) Online Seminar, “The Animal and the Other”, 9 April 2025 [online], 9 April 2025, Online. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

In her 2016 work Staying with the Trouble, Donna Haraway posits a new epoch; the Chthulucene. For Haraway, the focus must shift away from an anthropocentric centre towards a more nonhuman and multispecies narrative as a counterbalance to the inevitable climatic and environmental collapse which faces us: “Specifically, unlike either the Anthropocene or the Capitalocene, the Chthulucene is made up of ongoing multispecies stories and practices of becoming-with in times that remain at stake, in precarious times, in which the world is not finished and the sky has not fallen – yet. We are at stake to each other” (55). In times of existential, environmental crisis, it becomes more important to interact with narratives of the nonhuman to form new methods of connectivity with the natural world and understand our own place within the biosphere.
Speculative fiction is uniquely positioned to present these core values of the Chthulucene. For instance, we are recently seeing a new interpretation of alien visitation – moving away from marauding colonisation and destruction of key landmarks – which imagines them as, arguably, more “realistic” biological entities. Speculative fiction writers are beginning to realise that the mysterious creatures of the deepest oceans could hold inspiration for how extraterrestrial life could realistically look and interact with us.
Ted Chiang’s “The Story of Your Life” (1998), Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon (2015), and Doug Johnstone’s The Space Between Us (2023) all present a more realistic interpretation of alien visitation, one which is not only engaged with aspects of interspecies communication but also environmental commentary. This paper will demonstrate how these works, by moving away from the westernised anthropocentric imagining of extra-terrestrial bodies, are exemplars for a new generation of speculative fiction writers who are choosing to reframe the alien contact story. The results are not fables for capitalism and colonialism, but instead are narratives that depict interspecies existence whilst, in turn, presenting us with speculative scenarios and solutions regarding environmental concerns. (350 words)

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Lecture)
Status:	Unpublished
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PR English literature
School/Department:	School of Humanities
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/12109

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