Zoje Stage is the author of Something of a Calling, an eco-horror/thriller mash-up out this week from Blackstone Publishing. Below, she discusses what drew her to writing from animal perspectives.
I keep encountering people who admit they’ve become hypersensitive about animals—a mixture of all-consuming love for their own pets, and near-despair for the fate of wildlife as humans gradually consume every inch of the planet.
It’s a nightmare for those of us who are receptive to such things, this nearly palpable misery inflicted on all the creatures who share this earth with us.
This is the aspect of eco-horror that most interests me—its relevance to the precarious existence of all lifeforms. And the intersection of how we live and how they die.
The Anthropocene is, at its core, the age of eco-horror. And it didn’t need to be this way.
Homo sapiens have big brains and heaps of creativity, and we can individually and collectively problem-solve. Except that our civilization’s governing philosophy is about money and profit, not compassion or coexistence—and this applies to us and the flora and fauna.
The recent erasure of Wyland’s gorgeous whale mural in Dallas is apt symbolism. Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that the powers that be destroyed something beautiful—something that made us observe and feel, and filled us with wonder—to put in its place what is effectively an advertisement for a multi-billion dollar “non-profit” sports organization.
Human priorities often feel like a horror show.
I think a number of us are increasingly susceptible to anthropomorphizing—perhaps accelerated by the proliferation of cute animal videos on social media. But aspects of doing so are correct: many species have complex social structures; they have families, and mourn their losses. And they can feel fear.
This is part of what led me to write animal-centric POVs in Something of a Calling—if you make even a tiny effort to imagine what the world seems like through animals’ eyes, you might wish we were using our tremendous brains for more reciprocal purposes. “Who dies the richest” is an ideology with no fundamental value. And it isn’t sustainable.
The Anthropocene is a real-life horror. And there’s no guarantee of anything, or anyone, being alive at the end.
