![]() ![]() ![]() The novel speaks, I think, to those back-to-nature idealists who would welcome the collapse of society as we know it, as an opportunity to apply their skills in horticulture and foraging in order to construct a new, more sustainable way of life. The scenario is a dystopian collapse of American society (for reasons not explained but readily imagined), amidst which a pair of sisters make a go of surviving in their isolated forest homestead through gathering and growing their own food. That’s a shame, because it’s both superbly written and a provocative response to the uber-problem of sustainability. On the strength of Pringle’s review, I always meant to read Into the Forest, but never got hold of a copy till nearly twenty years later. (I would tentatively add to this list Frank Herbert and Philip Dick.) Stewart, Ray Bradbury, and Kim Stanley Robinson which yearns for some kind of a pastoral utopia either in California or in California transposed to Mars. Hegland is a West Coast author and Pringle positioned her novel in a subgenre of science fiction he calls ‘California SF’ – work by Californians like Ursula Le Guin, George R. ![]() I first heard about Jean Hegland’s novel Into the Forest in an Interzone review by David Pringle in 1998, two years after the book was published. ![]()
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