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The Stone Gods (novel)

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The Stone Gods
First edition
AuthorJeanette Winterson
PublisherHamish Hamilton
Publication date
2007
Pages224
ISBN0-241-14395-0

The Stone Gods is a 2007 novel by Jeanette Winterson.[1][2] The novel is a post-apocalyptic, postmodern, dystopic love story with themes of corporate government control, the harshness of war, artificial intelligence and technology. The novel is self-referential as characters make intertextual references while certain characters’ story arcs repeat. [3] The novel aims mainly to warn against history's tendency to repeat itself, as well as humanity's inability to learn from past mistakes. [4]

A novel in four parts

  • "Planet Blue" – set in a futuristic past, where humanity's destruction of its own homeworld, Orbus, seems to be fixed when they come across and terraform another viable planet.
  • "Easter Island" – set in the 18th century, a time when Easter Island's inhabitants destroyed many of the moai statues (and the last tree) on their island.
  • "Post-3War" – set in "Tech City" after World War III, with Billie educating Spike, the Robo sapiens.
  • "Wreck City" – set in the same setting, although moved to a derelict trash city where those abandoned by the corporate-controlled society struggle to live.

Reception

Ursula Le Guin, while criticizing exposition and sentimentality, thought the novel a worthwhile and cautionary tale.[5]

Andrew Milner, a literary critic and author of Science Fiction and Climate Change, notes that this book is an early example of 'doomer' climate fiction.[6]

References

  1. ^ Cokal, Susann (30 March 2008). "She, Robot". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 July 2016.
  2. ^ "The Stone Gods Book Review". Retrieved 13 July 2016.
  3. ^ Jennings, Hope (1 October 2010). ""A Repeating World": Redeeming the Past and Future in the Utopian Dystopia of Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods". Interdisciplinary Humanities. 27 (2): 132–146.
  4. ^ GradeSaver. "The Stone Gods Summary | GradeSaver". www.gradesaver.com. Retrieved 23 October 2023.
  5. ^ Guin, Ursula K. Le (22 September 2007). "Review: The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson". The Guardian.
  6. ^ Knibbs, Kate (17 February 2020). "The Hottest New Literary Genre Is 'Doomer Lit'". Wired. Retrieved 28 April 2020.


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