I have a new article out! “Unpaid Green: Voluntary Conservation Work in Speculative Fiction” can be read for free in the latest issue of Journey Planet. The whole issue’s free to read, which is nice – and it’s a special issue on workers’ rights in SFF.

So much of speculative fiction is imagining different ways to live, and that includes work. When we picture what work will be like in the future, for instance, what kind of things are we prioritising? What are we hoping for, and what are we critical of? Can we even picture a working future reliably? What about the growing influence of technology and AI, or of environmental change and resource management?

It’s a fascinating topic to explore, so when I saw the submissions call I thought “I have to come up with something for that!” And given that most of my creative work is near-future science fiction, generally related to climate or to the environment, it’s no surprise where my focus went.

There’s a lot of work to be done building ecological resilience into the systems around us. This might end up being the most important work of the lot, even. A lot of it’s done by volunteers. What does that say about how much we value their work? Something to think about. That’s what my article focuses on, anyway. Please take a look!