“Editorial 2.1”

by Amanda Weiss

Dear Reader,

Welcome to HIVEMIND Volume 2 Issue 1: The Anthropocene. Our third issue explores the Anthropocene, our current geological age and the era in which humans are the dominant force impacting the environment.

We began the process of creating this issue by reaching out to our editorial board for a list of reading recommendations. Our student editors then read several of these recommended works, examining speculative ecofiction that ranged from solarpunk and terraforming tales to ecohorror and climate change fiction. Our student editors were inspired by two works in particular: Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation by editors A.C. Wise and Phoebe Wagner and The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. After this initial stage of research, students then recommended stories that they felt connected well to our theme.

Our fiction section features three short stories, a poem, and an AR game. A.T. Greenblatt’s protagonist searches for the path to an impossible ocean while processing loss; Chloe N. Clark’s poem laments pollution while yearning for hope; Kenji Miyazawa’s two tales reflect his fascination with the spiritual and environmental world. We are also proud to present our first AR game, an ecohorror fantasy written by K.C. Mead-Brewer and designed by Natalie Mueller. Our non-fiction section features interviews with several of this issues’ authors, including Greenblatt, Mead-Brewer, Clark, and Mueller.

Our editorial team for this issue included Emerson Barrett, undergraduate in History, Science, and Technology, and Max Butterfield, undergraduate in Aerospace Engineering. We also welcomed back Natalie Mueller, Computer Science graduate student, as contributor. Zhujun Wu, undergraduate in Biochemistry, and Allen Wang, graduate in Electrical Engineering, also produced original translations of Japanese works. Special thanks to IAC’s Women in Science and Technology Partnership and the Institute for People and Technology for their support of this issue.

Happy reading!

Amanda Weiss, editor

Emerson Barrett, assistant editor

Max Butterfield, assistant editor


About the Editorial Team

Amanda Weiss is Assistant Professor of Japanese at Georgia Institute of Technology, where she teaches courses on Japanese media and society and leads a Vertically Integrated Project in East Asian Media. She is currently completing two book manuscripts: an anthology on New Asian Fantasy with co-editors Ploi Pirapokin and Silvia Park and a monograph on collective memory in East Asian war cinema. Dr. Weiss is a 2018 graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop and her favorite authors include Kelly Link, Ken Liu, Neil Gaiman, N. K. Jemisin, Carol Emshwiller, and Ted Chiang.

Emerson Barrett is an undergraduate student majoring in History, Technology, Society at Georgia Tech, with a concentration in Global Studies. She has always been an avid reader of all things fantasy and science-fiction, developing her love for stories at a young age by listening to audiobooks with her father on her way to school and reading the Harry Potter books with her mother every night before bed. Emerson enjoys reading and writing short stories in her spare time, and attended the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference in 2018. Her favorite authors of all time are Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

Max Butterfield completed his bachelor’s in Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech in December 2022, with a focus on aircraft design. He has had an interest in speculative fiction since being introduced to Star Wars at an early age, especially from an engineering perspective on how fictional technology works. He also enjoys speculative fictions like Doctor Who, Dungeons & Dragons, and The Walking Dead.

Non-Fiction, Volume 2 Issue 1

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