Strange birds and uncertain futures in Anthropocene fiction

Abstract

Climate change may be a scientific certainty, but the magnitude of its impact on the future of humanity–and of the Earth’s ecosystems–cannot be predicted with absolute precision, given the sheer number of factors involved. In this article, I explore two fictional works–Jeff VanderMeer’s novella The Strange Bird and Alexis Wright’s novel The Swan Book–that establish a connection between the uncertainty surrounding the climate crisis and animal characters whose minds remain opaque and unreadable. In my reading of these works, the inability to read animals’ mental processes, symbolic significance, and plot function mirrors the distressing precariousness of our present situation as a species teetering, with many other life forms, on the brink of a global disaster.