The Anthropocene Unconscious

A scintillating work of boisterous melancholy. -- China Miéville, author of October
Mark Bould's provocation kicks off a thrill-ride roller coaster of ideas, speeding us from one savvy insight to another about culture in the era of climate change. An essential read for anyone wanting to better understand what we know and don't know about what comes next. -- Imre Szeman, author of On Petrocultures
If The Anthropocene Unconscious weren't so fun to read, it might be too terrifying to think about. This is a book people will be quoting for the next twenty years. -- Gerry Canavan, co-editor of Green Planets
Brilliant. A sharp, original, irreverent, and deadly serious exploration of climate's pervasive presence in all modern culture. Bould's critical elicitation of climate change across a wide range of genres, places and texts offers a novel methodology for reading, categorizing, and interpreting Anthropocene culture and the banal monstrosities of its attendant carbon capitalism. The result is a highly prescient critique of its root causes and a better means to fully realize the past, present and future effects of its unfolding catastrophes. -- Graeme Macdonald, University of Warwick
Bould's work is as impactful in the twenty-first century as Jacques Derrida's landmark thesis of nuclear culture was three decades ago. -- Anindita Banerjee, author of We Modern People
A vision from the future, a retrospective analysis of our present situation, a requiem for a world we have already lost. This is a deeply personal missive - and one that carries a powerful message: we conflate the fact and fiction of global destruction at our peril. -- John Gilbey * Times Higher Education *
[Bould] is particularly good on film and its qualities ... while [his] critical arguments are carefully made, he is clear that his method includes reading an awareness of the Anthropocene into the cultural gems he examines. -- Jon Turney * The Arts Desk *
Worthy and timely ... [The Anthropocene Unconscious] provide[s] us with a cultural critique that has the potential to reshape the way we think about all cultural forms, and the climate - literally - in which they are produced. -- Leila Sackur * It's Freezing in LA *
Ebullient ... meshing high-theory with casual lyricism ... Bould's eco-socialist commitments seem increasingly inescapable. -- Lola Seaton * New Statesman *
A swift, wide sweep ... the book's central argument is vital: our culture is submerged in climate catastrophe -- Oscar Rickett * i newspaper *
Climate change, to Bould, is always on the peripheries of art, even if we can't confront it face-on, even if we would like to forget it, even when we think we were safe -- Lauren Sneade * Economy, Land & Climate Insight *
Bould puts forward a compelling argument about what cultural criticism in the Anthropocene should be, and he does so with the hope of curtailing some of the slow violence and injustices of the many widely and unevenly distributed effects of climate change. -- Alison Sperling * Los Angeles Review of Books *
A clear call to action, an attempt to awaken us from our slumber. * Science Fiction Studies *