ECOLOGY

   Ecology is the study of organisms in relation to their environment. It is a relatively new discipline, the first notable work on the subject being Animal Ecology (1927) by Charles Elton (1900-1990). The complexity of the environmental relationships which determine the success, or even the survival, of populations has been realized only within the last half-century. The same period has seen a dramatic increase in the world's population and the virtual destruction of the natural environment in many populous areas, and such issues as the protection of food chains and increasing the efficiency of ecological systems have become extremely important.As is to be expected with respect to a scientific discipline no older than GENRE SF, there are very few early stories with ecological themes. W.H. HUDSON's fantasies of a mode of human life harmonized with Nature - particularly A Crystal Age (1887) - can be seen, with hindsight, as related to the theme, but their inspiration was mystical rather than scientific. An early story on an ecological theme is J.D. BERESFORD's "The Man who Hated Flies" (1929), a parable about a perfect insecticide which precipitates an ecocatastrophe by obliterating the pollinators of many plant species. Early sf writers were often oblivious to the simplest matters of ecology in their pictures of LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS, providing abundant carnivorous species without the herbivore populations required to sustain them; Edgar Rice BURROUGHS's image of Mars is a cardinal example. The only early PULP-MAGAZINE writer whose work showed anything more than a rudimentary consciousness of the subject was Stanley G. WEINBAUM. After WWII, however, writers began to use a good deal more ingenuity in their representations of ALIEN ecology, and produced numerous puzzle stories in which explorers on other worlds have to figure out peculiar relationships in the local fauna and flora. Examples are William TENN's "The Ionian Cycle" (1948), several stories by Clifford D. SIMAK - notably "You'll Never Go Home Again" (1951; vt "Beachhead") and "Drop Dead" (1956) - James H. SCHMITZ's "Grandpa" (1955), Brian W. ALDISS's PEST (Planetary Ecological Survey Team) series (1958-62) and a series by Jack SHARKEY begun with "Arcturus Times Three" (1961). More sophisticated examples are Richard MCKENNA's "Hunter Come Home" (1963), Neal BARRETT's Highwood (1972) and John BOYD's The Pollinators of Eden (1969). Jack VANCE's "Winner Loses All" (1951) is an interesting oddity with no human characters. Michael G. CONEY has deployed ecological puzzles in a number of novels, including Syzygy (1973) and Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975; vt Rex).Inevitably, the COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS has come to be seen more and more in ecological terms. Ecological planning is necessarily of central concern in stories dealing with TERRAFORMING. Thus an elementary strategy of ecological control is the key to the invasion of the land areas of VENUS in Fury (1950; vt Destination Infinity) by Henry KUTTNER, and in many novels about the colonization of MARS - e.g., Kim Stanley ROBINSON's RED MARS (1992 UK). The great majority of ecological-problem stories involving colonization derive their problems through slight distortion of ecological systems on Earth, or through simple analogy. Relatively few authors have been willing to take on the job of attempting to construct an alien ecology in some detail, although Johannes KEPLER made some interesting observations about the ways in which life might adapt to a lunar habitat in his Somnium (1634). Notable modern examples include numerous stories by Hal CLEMENT, including Cycle of Fire (1957) and Close to Critical (1958; 1964), Brian W. Aldiss's The Long Afternoon of Earth (fixup 1962 US; exp vt Hothouse UK), Poul ANDERSON's Fire Time (1974), Alan Dean FOSTER's Midworld (1975), Gordon R. DICKSON's Masters of Everon (1979), Aldiss's Helliconia trilogy (1982-5), Donald KINGSBURY's COURTSHIP RITE (1982), Larry NIVEN's The Integral Trees (1983) and its sequel The Smoke Ring (1987), Paul J. MCAULEY's FOUR HUNDRED BILLION STARS (1988) and Sheri S. TEPPER's Grass (1989).The precariousness of the human ecological situation has gradually but inevitably become one of the major themes of sf. The possibility of a worldwide DISASTER caused by soil-exhaustion is explored in A.G. Street's Already Walks Tomorrow (1938) and Edward S. HYAMS's The Astrologer (1950), both of which 2point out that ecological planning will be made difficult by the tendency of politicians to think about only the short term. Significant cautionary tales about ecological catastrophes include Ward MOORE's Greener than You Think (1947), in which a species of grass out-competes all other plant life, and John CHRISTOPHER's The Death of Grass (1956; vt No Blade of Grass), in which a blight affecting grass species destroys most of the world's crops. Early magazine sf stories which focus on mankind's future ecological problems include Damon KNIGHT's "Natural State" (1954; vt Masters of Evolution 1959) and C.M. KORNBLUTH's "Shark Ship" (1958).Ecocatastrophe stories picked up considerable impetus in the 1960s from a number of nonfictional warnings that things could only get worse as a result of OVERPOPULATION and POLLUTION. The alarmist Paul Ehrlich (1932-), author of The Population Bomb (1968), used a quasidocumentary fictional framework for a brief summary of his predictions in "Ecocatastrophe" (1969). The greenhouse effect was later added to the list, followed by the decay of the ozone layer, leading to such extreme ecocatastrophe stories as Ecodeath (1972) by William Jon WATKINS and E.V. (Gene) SNYDER, The Nitrogen Fix (1980) by Hal Clement and Nature's End (1986) by Whitley STRIEBER and James Kunetka, and such all-inclusive ones as David BRIN's Earth (1990). Many ecocatastrophe stories are notable for their bitter irony - most sf writers who use the theme seem to feel that we will get no more than we deserve if we destroy our environment and poison ourselves - but even writers who are neither angry nor despairing tend to accept that an ongoing ecological crisis will be one of the most obvious features of the NEAR FUTURE.Intensification of ecological awareness helped to lend a new subtlety and sophistication to the disaster story, which spawned a new subspecies dealing with the delicate aesthetics of corrosive changes in mankind's physiological and psychological relationship with the environment. Gerald HEARD's "The Great Fog" (1944) is an early example; others are The Year of the Cloud (1970) by Theodore L. THOMAS and Kate WILHELM, George Alec EFFINGER's "And Us, Too, I Guess" (1973) and George TURNER's The Sea and Summer (1987; vt Drowning Towers). The most detailed exploration of such possibilities has been carried out by J.G. BALLARD in such novels as The Wind from Nowhere (1962), The Drowned World (1962), The Burning World (1964; vt The Drought) and THE CRYSTAL WORLD (1966).Stories concerned with the ecology of alien worlds have recently tended to take on a strong element of mysticism. In the real world the word "ecology" has acquired quasicharismatic status, encouraged by vulgarizations of the "Gaia hypothesis" enunciated by James Lovelock (1919-); this points out that the ecosphere has certain built-in homeostatic mechanisms and that evolving earthly life created the atmospheric environment in which it now exists. For many people "ecology" has come to symbolize a lost sense of harmony with the world at large, and various commune movements have tried to make ecological awareness an antidote to alienation. The word "symbiosis" (PARASITISM AND SYMBIOSIS) is often invoked in this context. In sf, ecological mysticism is very obvious in such parables as Robert F. YOUNG's The Last Yggdrasil (1959 as "To Fell a Tree"; exp 1982), such evocations of the Eden myth as Mark CLIFTON's Eight Keys to Eden (1960) and such curious biological allegories as Jacqueline LICHTENBERG's Dushau (1985) and its sequels. It is central to the mystical ritualization of water relations featured in Robert A. HEINLEIN's STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND (1961) and Frank HERBERT's DUNE (1965). In Piers ANTHONY's Omnivore (1968) ecological relationships themselves are transformed into a mystical pattern. This mysticism is evident also in many stories set on Earth, including Frank Herbert's The Green Brain (1966), Hilbert SCHENCK's At the Eye of the Ocean (1980), Norman SPINRAD's Songs from the Stars (1980), Somtow Sucharitkul's (S.P. SOMTOW) Starship and Haiku (1984) and Scott Russell SANDERS's Terrarium (1985).Two anthologies featuring ecocatastrophe stories are Saving Worlds (anth 1973; vt The Wounded Planet) ed Roger ELWOOD and Virginia KIDD, and The Ruins of Earth (anth 1971) ed Thomas M. DISCH. BS