Just before the Canada Postal strike halted mail dead in its tracks, I got a box full of books; pre-release copies of the anthology that Lynn Hutchinson Lee and I have been nurturing along from our idea three years ago when we pitched it to Exile Editions.
I cracked open the box, like it was Christmas, and cuddled a book, so beautiful!
Ever since we had both had climate fiction stories appear in Exile Edition’s CLI-FI: Tales of Climate Change, Lynn and I had been discussing the possibility of collaborating on something. We liked the idea of something hopeful and Exile’s publisher agreed on the lure of something optimistic. We pitched the concept and Portal was born.
Writers, mostly Canadian, but also from the United States and around the world, submitted to us. We whittled down some 245 submissions to thirty-five stellar short stories and flash fiction that reflected the theme of the anthology: hope in the face of ecological adversity.
This was a labour of love, grounded in optimism and hope: to create a collection of optimistic dystopian short stories that celebrate the spirit of humanity in a changing world. As one reader said, “We definitely need more optimism and hope to offset the bombardment of negativity that is running rampant these days.”
Here’s how Exile represents the anthology on the back jacket:
Hopeful dystopias are so much more than an apparent oxymoron: they are in some fundamental way the spearhead of the future – and ironically often a celebration of human spirit by shining a light through the darkness of disaster. In Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia, award-winning authors of speculative fiction Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Nina Munteanu present a collection that explores strange new terrains and startling social constructs, quiet morphing landscapes, dark and terrifying warnings, lush newly-told folk and fairy tales.
Exile further add about the contributors:
This is a fascinating collection of all-new, modern-day speculative storytelling, with insightful “Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia” featuring Agata Antonow, Sarah Christina Brown, Mary Burns, K.R. Byggdin, Petra Chambers, Katie Conrad, M.L.D. Curelas, Matthew Freeman, R. Haven, Liam Hogan, Cornelia Hoogland, Vanessa Hua, Jerri Jerreat, Zilla Jones, Katherine Koller, Erin MacNair, Melanie Marttila, Bruce Meyer, Isabella Mori, E. Martin Nolan, Avery Parkinson, Ursula Pflug, Marisca Pichette, Shana Ross, Lynne Sargent, Karen Schauber, Holly Schofield, Anneliese Schultz, Gin Sexsmith, Sara C. Walker, Jade Wallace, and Melissa Yuan-Innes. These authors show us that now, more than ever, our world urgently needs stories about hope.
You can order pre-release copies at 15% discount on the Exile Editions Portal sales page.
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Every year, near Christmas, 
Margaret Atwood is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature as well as the Booker Prize (several times) and the Governor General’s Award. Animals and the environment feature in many of her books, particularly her speculative fiction, which reflects a strong view on environmental issues.
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“The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries From a Secret World” (Greystone Books) by Peter Wohlleben. In The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben shares his deep love of woods and forests and explains the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in the woodland and the amazing scientific processes behind the wonders of which we are blissfully unaware. Much like human families, tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, and support them as they grow, sharing nutrients with those who are sick or struggling and creating an ecosystem that mitigates the impact of extremes of heat and cold for the whole group. As a result of such interactions, trees in a family or community are protected and can live to be very old. In contrast, solitary trees, like street kids, have a tough time of it and in most cases die much earlier than those in a group. Drawing on groundbreaking new discoveries, Wohlleben presents the science behind the secret and previously unknown life of trees and their communication abilities; he describes how these discoveries have informed his own practices in the forest around him. As he says, a happy forest is a healthy forest, and he believes that eco-friendly practices not only are economically sustainable but also benefit the health of our planet and the mental and physical health of all who live on Earth.
“Weeds: In Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants” (Ecco) by Richard Mabey. “They’re better for you than you think,” says Atwood. “They hold the waste spaces of the world in place, and you can eat some of them.” Ever since the first human settlements 10,000 years ago, weeds have dogged our footsteps. They are there as the punishment of ‘thorns and thistles’ in Genesis and , two millennia later, as a symbol of Flanders Field. They are civilisations’ familiars, invading farmland and building-sites, war-zones and flower-beds across the globe. Yet living so intimately with us, they have been a blessing too. Weeds were the first crops, the first medicines. Burdock was the inspiration for Velcro. Cow parsley has become the fashionable adornment of Spring weddings. Weaving together the insights of botanists, gardeners, artists and poets with his own life-long fascination, Richard Mabey examines how we have tried to define them, explain their persistence, and draw moral lessons from them. One persons weed is another’s wild beauty.
“Birds and People” (Jonathan Cape) by Mark Cocker. “Vast, historical, contemporary, many-levelled,” says Atwood. “We’ve been inseparable from birds for millenniums. They’re crucial to our imaginative life and our human heritage, and part of our economic realities.” Vast in both scope and scale, the book draws upon Mark Cocker’s forty years of observing and thinking about birds. Part natural history and part cultural study, it describes and maps the entire spectrum of our engagements with birds, drawing in themes of history, literature, art, cuisine, language, lore, politics and the environment. In the end, this is a book as much about us as it is about birds.
will fare in a shifting political wind, these books offer diverse insight, a fresh and needed perspective and critical connection with our natural world–and each other through it.