Through the Portal Anthology Gets Stellar Review

The recently released Through the Portal ecofiction anthology that I co-edited with Lynn Hutchinson Lee and published by Exile Editions, received a wonderful in-depth review by author Lisa Timpf in The Seaboard Review. Here are some highlights of Timpf’s review of this anthology of hopeful dystopian short stories, flash fiction and poetry:  

 

"Mermaids, arborists, and pollinators are among the characters to be found in Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia. Edited by Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Nina Munteanu, this eco-fiction collection gathers over thirty stories that fall under the general umbrella of hopeful dystopias…

 

Through the Portal offers intriguing and imaginative glimpses into the future. As [one of its short stories] “A Fence Made of Names” suggests, we often don’t appreciate what we have until we lose it. By showing us what we stand to lose, these stories offer a reason to increase our actions to preserve the planet…

While many of the tales hint at dark times ahead, it was refreshing to find so many that offered a ray of hope despite that. Whether it’s finding the will to live another day, returning to a better relationship with the land and the Earth, or taking steps to improve the world in even a small way, these stories affirm humanity’s potential for resilience in challenging times.

Will ingenuity, love, and respect for the earth help us work through whatever changes might lie ahead? Through the Portal offers hope that these qualities, if not enough in and of themselves, will help us find our way."

--Lisa Timpf, The Seaboard Review, Jan 13, 2025

 

Go to The Seaboard Review for the full review of Through the Portal. The review is worth reading in its entirety.

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.

‘Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia’ Anthology Releases December 31

 

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.

 

Nina Munteanu’s “Robin’s Last Song” in Metastellar Magazine

My short story Robin’s Last Song was republished recently in the superlative online magazine Metastellar. The story had first been published in 2021 in Issue 128 of Apex Magazine. An earlier version of the story called Out of the Silence appeared in the literary magazine subTerrain Magazine Issue 85 in 2020. 

 

I raced up the stairs to the auditorium then quieted my breath and listened at the door, heart thumping like a bird trying to escape. Professor Gopnik was ten minutes into his lecture; I could hear his commanding voice: “… estimates that the entire number of birds have been reduced by a third in five decades—I mean common birds like the robins, sparrows, warblers, and even starlings…”

He was talking about Rosenberg’s paper in Science. The study shocked the scientific community; but I had already observed the decline of the house sparrow around my aunt and uncle’s house near the Old Mill. And the robin—my namesake, whose song heralded spring for me—had grown quiet.

I imagined Gopnik waving the journal at the class in his typical showman style. He had a habit of wandering the stage like an evangelist, fixing each student with intense blue eyes as if challenging them to believe. I thought him an over-confident condescending prig. But for someone who looked as young as the students he was teaching, Gopnik was brilliant. And what he was doing was so important. I wanted so badly to work under him as a grad student. But he terrified me.

 

The Story Behind the Story

 

It all began with my discovery of an emerging bioacoustic tool, soundscape ecology, that measures biodiversity and ecosystem functionality. I’d just read the disturbing 2019 Science article by Rosenberg and team who determined that our slow violence of habitat degradation and toxic pollution has reduced the world’s bird population by a third in just five decades. I was devastated; I could not imagine a world without the comforting sound of birds. What would it be like if all the birds disappeared?

 

Already primed with research into genetic engineering for the sequel to my 2020 eco-novel, A Diary in the Age of Water, my muse (often delightfully unruly) played with notions of the potential implication of gene hacking in ecological calamity and how this might touch on our precious birds: when nature “is forced out of her natural state and squeezed and moulded;” her secrets “reveal themselves more readily under the vexations of art than when they go their own way.”

 

Robin’s Last Songis a realizable work of fiction in which science and technology are both instigators of disaster and purveyors of salvation. Today, gene-editing, proteomics, and DNA origami—to name just a few—promise many things from increased longevity in humans to giant disease-resistant crops. Will synthetic biology control and redesign Nature to suit hubris or serve evolution? What is our moral imperative and who are the casualties? As Francis Bacon expressed in Novum Organum, science does not make that decision. We do. 

 

 

You can read an Interview on Writing Robin’s Last Song that Alberta author Simon Rose did with me recently.

 

I also recently sat down with Rebecca E. Treasure of Apex Magazine for a conversation about story, ecology, and the future. Here’s how it begins:

 

Apex Magazine: The Way of Water in Little Blue Marble is such a powerful piece touching on water scarcity and friendship, a dry future and the potential for technology to overtake natural ecology. Robin’s Last Songexplores extinction, human fallibility, friendship, and again, that conflict between technology and nature. Do you think we’re heading toward the kind of dystopia shown in these stories?...

 

For more about bird declines around the world see my articles: “What if the Birds All Die?”

and “Birds are Vanishing.”

 

“Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds. The early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.”—Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

 

Read my other stories in Metastellar here: Nina Munteanu in Metastellar Speculative Fiction and Beyond. 

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.

Nina Munteanu’s Short Story “Natural Selection” features in Eagle Literary Magazine Issue #1

Illustration by Ionut Banuta

Sarah reached the summit, panting for breath, and grinned at her prize. She’d just caught the sun trembling over the horizon, before it dipped out of sight and left a glowing sky under pewter clouds. She glanced behind her, where the towers of Icaria blazed like embers catching fire. Struck by their beauty, Sarah admired their smooth, clean surfaces. 

When she looked back toward the path, the sanguine images burnt into her eyes.
Which way should she go? The deer path she’d followed now diverged into two smaller ones. She shifted her mind to veemeld with her AI, DEX. Which way should we go, DEX? 

Her AI answered in her head: Sarah, shouldn’t you be returning inside? It’s dangerous to stay out this long. Statistics are now against you for getting caught— 

Just a few more minutes, DEX. How about to the right?

“Natural Selection” tells the story of Sarah, an unruly veemeld who can speak to the machine world that runs Icaria. Given her immunity to the environmental disease ravaging the enclosed city, Sarah—at least her genetic material—is sought after by the Ecologist government in a bid to maintain order and reshape humanity through “selection”; but Sarah fraternizes with unsavory friends and her truant behaviour poses a great risk to her freedom and survival.

“Natural Selection” first appeared in 2013 in my short story collection of the same name by Pixl Press. The story returns in Issue #1 of Eagle Literary Magazine,Pan European Science Fiction & Fantasy Collection (Summer 2019; Nexus Project) edited by Mugur Cornilă and featuring the impeccable artwork of Ionuț Bănuță.

In the 2013 Pixl Press short story collection my introduction describes the theme that embraces the nine stories in the collection:

How do we define today a concept that Darwin originated 200 years ago in a time without bio-engineering, nano-technology, chaos theory, quantum mechanics and the internet? We live in an exciting era of complicated change, where science based on the limitation of traditional biology is being challenged and stretched by pioneers into areas some scientists might call heretical. Endosymbiosis, synchronicity, autopoiesis & self-organization, morphic resonance, Gaia Hypothesis and planetary intelligence. Some of these might more aptly be described through the language of meta physics. But should they be so confined? It comes down to language and how we communicate.

Illustration by Ionut Banuta

Is it possible for an individual to evolve in one’s own lifetime? To become more than oneself? And then pass on one’s personal experience irrevocably to others—laterally and vertically?

On the vertical argument, the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamark developed a theory of biological evolution in the early 19th century considered so ridiculous that it spawned a name: Lamarkism. His notion — that acquired traits could be passed along to offspring—was ridiculed for over two hundred years. Until he was proven right. Evolutionary biologists at Tel Aviv University in Israel showed that all sorts of cellular machinery — an intelligence of sorts — played a vital role in how DNA sequences were inherited. When researchers inserted foreign genes into the DNA of lab animals and plants, something strange happened. The genes worked at first; then they were “silenced”. Generation after generation. The host cells had tagged the foreign genes with an “off switch” that made the gene inoperable. And although the new gene was passed onto offspring, so was the off switch. It was Larmarkism in action: the parent’s experience had influenced its offspring’s inheritance. Evolutionists gave it a new name. They called it soft inheritance [also known as epigenetics].

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is the movement of genetic material between organisms other than by vertical transmission of DNA from parent to offspring. Jumping genes (transposons) are mobile segments of DNA that may pick up a gene and insert it into a plastic or chromosome. Pieces of DNA move from one locus to another of a genome without parent-to-offspring by horizontal transposon transfer (HTT). Epigenetics describes the modification of DNA expression through DNA methylation—and results in “Lamarkism.” Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance is the new black: genes and environments interacting. Where do we end and where does environment begin? Researchers have proven the significant role of environmental feedback through HGT in evolutionary success. Researchers showed that up to 20% of a bdelloid rotifer’s genome is made of foreign genes that they stole from the environment through horizontal gene transfer and gene conversion. This compares to about 1% for humans and a fifth for tardigrades.
—excerpts from “A Diary in the Age of Water” due for release in 2020 by Inanna Publications.

As for passing on one’s experience and acquisitions to others laterally, education in all its facets surely provides a mechanism. This may run the gamut from wise mentors, spiritual leaders, storytellers, courageous heroes to our kindergarten teacher.  Who’s to say that these too are not irrevocable? This relies, after all, on how we learn, and how we “remember”.

Evolution is choice. It is a choice made on many levels, from the intuitive mind to the intelligent cell. The controversial British botanist Rupert Sheldrake proposed that the physical forms we take on are not necessarily contained inside our genes, which he suggested may be more analogous to transistors tuned in to the proper frequencies for translating invisible information into visible form. According to Sheldrake’s morphic resonance, any form always looks alike because it ‘remembers’ its form through repetition and that any new form having similar characteristics will use the pattern of already existing forms as a guide for its appearance.  This notion is conveyed through other phenomena, which truly lie in the realm of metaphysics and lateral evolution; concepts like bilocation, psychic telegraphing, telekinesis and manifestation. Critics condemn these as crazy notions. Or is it just limited vision again? Our future cannot be foretold in our present language; that has yet to be written. Shakespeare knew this…

There are more things in heaven and earth , Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy—Shakespeare

Each story in the “Natural Selection” short story collection reflects a perspective on what it means to be human and evolve in a world that is rapidly changing technologically and environmentally. How we relate to our rapidly changing fractal environments—from our cells to our ecosystems, our planet and ultimately our universe—will determine our path and our destiny and those we touch in some way.

My friend Heidi Lampietti, publisher of Redjack Books, expressed it eloquently, “For me, one of the most important themes that came through in the collection is the incredible difficulty, complexity, and importance of making conscious choices — and how these choices, large and small, impact our survival, either as individual humans, as a community, a species, or a world.”

 

“Natural Selection” also features the sprawling semi-underground AI-run city of Icaria (a post-industrial plague Toronto) that was first introduced in my novel “Darwin’s Paradox” and is a character itself. Sarah is a “gifted” and troubled misfit—not in sync with the rest of the population. Yet her choices—and how she is treated by her community— will influence an entire species and world.

Nina is a Canadian scientist and novelist. She worked for 25 years as an environmental consultant in the field of aquatic ecology and limnology, publishing papers and technical reports on water quality and impacts to aquatic systems. Nina has written over a dozen eco-fiction, science fiction and fantasy novels. An award-winning short story writer, and essayist, Nina currently lives in Toronto where she teaches writing at the University of Toronto and George Brown College. Her non-fiction book “Water Is...”—a scientific study and personal journey as limnologist, mother, teacher and environ- mentalist—was picked by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times as 2016 ‘The Year in Reading’. Nina’s most recent novel “A Diary in the Age of Water”— about four generations of women and their relationship to water in a rapidly changing world—will be released in 2020 by Inanna Publications. www.NinaMunteanu.ca; www.NinaMunteanu.me