(Il)legal Bodies: Activism, Climate Fictions, Climate Culling

When the non-violent environmental protest group Extinction Rebellion (XR) was created in late 2018, I was completing a Masters in Research in Science Fiction Literature. Although initially nervous, I understood the urgent need to non-violently protest the lack of governmental action on the climate and ecological crisis (as it has since become known). In November 2018, I took a copy of Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods with me to London, where I was joined by thousands of fellow activists on the streets around the Houses of Parliament and Downing Street, many dressed as animals, with banners and flags protesting the sixth mass extinction and ongoing anthropogenic climate-related genocides across the globe.