Yet thinking 'ecologically' means imagining progressive change beyond eco-apocalypse.

This chapter also examines Mitchell's short-story 'The Siphoners' (2011), and its account of a roving band of paraffin stealers in the post-energy dystopia of 2033, and Mitchell's novel, The Bone Clocks (2014), which portrays the brutal aftermath of global civilizational collapse in 2043 due to over-consumption. This includes Ghostwritten's (1999) depiction of simultaneous planetary crises, and the wave of infestations and infections that brings about Cloud Atlas's (2004) future dystopian narrative. This chapter examines David Mitchell's concern with eco-crisis and civilizational collapse across several works from his oeuvre, paying close attention to his speculative and global treatment of contemporary narratives of scarcity.

“‘Looking down time’s telescope at myself’: reincarnation and global futures in David Mitchell’s fictional worlds.” KronoScope: Journal for the Study of Time 17.2 (2017): 163-181.

The version uploaded here is the pre-peer-review manuscript the final published version is available at Harris-Birtill, Rose. These works draw on reincarnation in their structures and characterization as part of an ethical approach to the Anthropocene, using the temporal model of “reincarnation time” as a narrative strategy to demonstrate that a greater understanding of generational interdependence is urgently needed in order to challenge the linear “end of history” narrative of global capitalism. Drawing on the Buddhist philosophy of samsara, or the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, this paper identifies links between the author’s interest in reincarnation and its secular manifestation in the treatment of time in his fictions. 1969) as an alternative approach to linear temporality, whose spiralling cyclicality warns of the dangers of seeing past actions as separate from future consequences, and whose focus on human interconnection demonstrates the importance of collective, intergenerational action in the face of ecological crises. This essay explores the trope of reincarnation across the works of British author David Mitchell (b.

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell