Abstract

One of the seminal works of British New Wave Science fiction, J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World had a pioneering influence on early climate fiction novels and remains an important work in exploring climate change through fiction despite later developments of the genre. It is also the debut of the Ballardian hero – an exceptionally unheroic character type who may be defined by their self-obsession and detachment, often verging on the neurotic and the solipsistic. In the interest of re-reading Ballard in the Anthropocene from an ecocritical perspective, the paper attempts to make a connection between these defining traits of the Ballardian hero and the climate-changed world of the novel, arguing that the latter, by destabilising the Man/Nature dynamic, demands a restructuring of western hegemonic masculinity. The intention of this article is both to recognise unfamiliar faces of hegemonic masculinity in its relation with Nature and to invite more discussions of gender in reading climate fiction.