'Literature and art are confronted with particular challenges by the idea of the Anthropocene. Old forms of representation are experiencing drastic new pressures and being tasked with daunting new responsibilities. How might a novel or poem possibly account for our authorship of global scale environmental change across millenia - let alone shape the nature of that change?'
To produce fictional work with any merit or validity in the light of this challenge seems impossible: where, for a start, is there space to engage with concepts as seemingly banal as entertainment, where is there space for humour - is irony a form of representation that the Anthropocene renders meaningless? What could be the Swiftean 'modest proposal' for climate change when we are already eating the children of the poor and relishing every mouthful... An appetiser for our funeral feast on the whole of nature, ourselves.