Ecofiction (Genre/Form Term)

Work cat.: Brown, P. The wild robot, 2016.

LB Kids website, May 27, 2016 (The Wild Robot, by Peter Brown; "Can a robot survive in the wilderness? When robot Roz opens her eyes for the first time, she discovers that she is alone on a remote, wild island. She has no idea how she got there or what her purpose is--but she knows she needs to survive. After battling a fierce storm and escaping a vicious bear attack, she realizes that her only hope for survival is to adapt to her surroundings and learn from the island's unwelcoming animal inhabitants. As Roz slowly befriends the animals, the island starts to feel like home ... a heartwarming and action-packed novel about what happens when nature and technology collide")

Sivils, M.W. American environmental fiction, 1782-1847, 2015.

Pearl, N. Book lust, c2003: p. 77 (ecofiction; novels whose theme is the interconnectedness between humans and the natural world and the attendant dangers we face should that connection be severed through the continued degradation or destruction of the environment and our natural resources; defining fictional work in this field is Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang)

The Cambridge history of the American novel, 2011: p. 1122 (Ecofiction is an elastic term, capacious enough to accommodate a variety of fictional works that address the relationship between natural settings and the human communities that dwell within them. The term emerged soon after ecology took hold as a popular scientific paradigm and a broad cultural attitude in the 1960s and 1970s) p. 1123 (contemporary ecofiction can be divided into three broad categories: wilderness narratives; stewardship narratives that weave together the linked fates of human communities and the land; and postnatural narratives that reject both wilderness and the land as dominant tropes or structural frameworks, turning instead to urban, suburban, and other postmodern landscapes to explore the complex and ambiguous ecological contexts of contemporary life) p. 1133 (promise of a better future is fairly constant in American ecofiction, though it is typically grounded in the return to relatively pristine places and the traditions that encouraged either the preservation of untamed wilderness or the stewardship of land respectfully adapted to human use)

Dwyer, Jim. Where the wild books are : a field guide to ecofiction, ©2010: p. vii (fiction emanating from the environmental movement; new term emerged: ecofiction; ecologically oriented fiction had existed over a century previously, and it can be considered an important precursor to contemporary ecofiction) p. viii (1. The nonhuman environment is present not merely as a framing device but as a presence that begins to suggest that human history is implicated in natural history. 2. The human interest is not understood to be the only legitimate interest. 3. Human accountability to the environment is part of the text's ethical orientation. 4. Some sense of the environment as a process rather than as a constant or a given is at least implicit in the text; environmental concerns have become ever more common in the broad genres of romance, western Americana, speculative fiction, and mysteries) p. 3 (It is usually spelled as one word, but sometimes hyphenated or split into two words: "eco-fiction" and "eco fiction." The terms "environmental fiction," "green fiction," and "nature-oriented fiction" are sometimes used interchangeably with "ecofiction," but might better be considered as categories of ecofiction. Ecofiction is a composite subgenre made up of many styles and can be found in many genres, primarily mainstream, westerns, mystery, romance, and speculative fiction)

Encyclopedia of the novel, 1998 (Environmental Novel. Like the feminist novel, the environmental novel is both an entity and a perception or way of reading; Environmentalists may now be considered stock characters; plots involving environmental activism; environmentally motivated plots; reflect an ecological awareness and contribute to a rethinking of the idea of nature and of the human being's place in it; informed by ecological principles)

What is eco-fiction?, via Eco-fiction.com website, May 27, 2016 (Eco-fiction is ecologically oriented fiction, which may be nature-oriented (non-human oriented) or environmental-oriented (human impacts on nature). Eco-fiction is an older term from the 1970s. It became popular with environmental movements then, and opened up a whole new world of the study connecting humanities and nature; Eco-fiction is a broad term describing ecological fiction)

The Princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics, ©2012: Environment and poetry (Environmental poetry, or ecopoetry, is related to the broader genre of nature poetry but can be distinguished from it by its portrayal of nature as threatened by human activities)

A companion to American fiction 1865-1914, 2005: p. 177 (ecological narrative--prose (usually fiction) that does not necessarily foreground its ecological concerns but contains and reveals them nonetheless) p. 178 (Nature writing is most often based on observation and rumination, offering the reader a view of a place and/or species that includes both research and personal response. ... Ecological narrative, on the other hand, is less apparently driven by activist or scientific concerns, even by particularly ecological ones. The reader finds and emphasizes the influence of the nonhuman world on all aspects of the text)

LCSH, May 27, 2016 (Ecofiction. UF Eco-fiction. UF Environmental fiction. UF Green fiction. UF Nature fiction. BT Fiction)

Fiction that depicts the interconnectedness of the human and natural worlds, and especially the impact of human activities on nature. For fiction that depicts the natural world and its phenomena see Nature fiction.

Note under Nature fiction