A Year Without a Winter, Paperback

Today, weather extremes brought about by anthropogenic climate change pose relentless cognitive and imaginative challenges. Beyond news media, what are the cultural registers of this phenomenon? How can artistic and literary engagements with destabilizing natural patterns summon new planetary imaginaries--reorienting perspectives on humanity's position within the environment?

A Year Without a Winter brings together science fiction, history, visual art, and exploration. Inspired by the literary 'dare' that would give birth to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein amidst the aftermath of a massive volcanic eruption, and today, by the utopian architecture of Paolo Soleri and the Arizona desert, expeditions to Antarctica and Indonesia, this collection reframes the relationship among climate, crisis, and creation. The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, enveloped the globe in a cloud of ash, causing a climate crisis. By 1816, remembered as the 'year without a summer, ' the northern hemisphere was plunged into cold and darkness. Amidst unseasonal frosts, violent thunderstorms, and a general atmosphere of horror, Shelley began a work of science fiction that continues to shape attitudes to emerging science, technology, and environmental futures. Two hundred years later, in 2016, the hottest year on historical record, four renowned science fiction authors were invited to the experimental town of Arcosanti, Paolo Soleri's prototype for arcology, to respond to our present crisis. A Year Without a Winter presents their stories alongside critical essays, extracts from Shelley's masterpiece, and dispatches from expeditions to extreme geographies. Broad and ambitious in scope, this book is a collective thought experiment retracing an inverted path through narrative extremes.

A Year Without a Winter is edited by Dehlia Hannah in collaboration with science fiction editors Brenda Cooper, Joey Eschrich, and Cynthia Selin. The book includes a suite of commissioned stories by Tobias Buckell, Nancy Kress, Nnedi Okorafor, and Vandana Singh; essays by Dehlia Hannah, Gillen D'Arcy Wood, James Graham, Hilairy Hartnett, David Higgins, Nadim Samman, and Pablo Suarez; artwork by Julian Charri re and Karolina Sobecka; and literary excerpts by Mary Shelley and Lord Byron.

Dehlia Hannah is a philosopher and curator based in Copenhagen. She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University and is currently research curator for the Centre for Environmental Humanities at Aarhus University, Denmark. A Year Without a Winter was initiated at Arizona State University during her visiting assistant professorship with the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Art, Media, and Engineering. Her work examines ideas of climate change, nature, and environment through aesthetics and philosophy of science.

Brenda Cooper is the award-winning author of nine science fiction and fantasy books, a public speaker, and a futurist, as well as the Chief Information Officer for the City of Kirkland, Washington.

Joey Eschrich is the editor and program manager at the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University, and the coeditor of the science fiction collections Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities and Everything Change.

Cynthia Selin is the director of the Center for the Study of Futures at Arizona State University, where she is an associate professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Sustainability.