Fire and Water Must Live Together a Novella, with an Afterword Addressing Its Critical Framework by Robert Todd Gabbard B. Desi
Fire and water must live together a novella, with an afterword addressing its critical framework by Robert Todd Gabbard B. Design, University of Florida, 2000 M. Architecture, University of Florida, 2004 A THESIS submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree MASTER OF ARTS Department of English College of Arts and Sciences KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY Manhattan, Kansas 2018 Approved by: Major Professor Dr. Katherine Karlin, Ph.D., M.F.A. Copyright © Robert Todd Gabbard 2018 Abstract By the year 2037, climate change has destabilized the world’s ecology, politics, and culture. Hawaii has seceded from the United States, instituting the Cultural Reaffirmation, which champions a sustainable, traditional way of life. Eenie is an astronomer on the Big Island of Hawaii. In order to keep the observatory on Mauna Kea operational, she must appease the newly independent island nation by reenacting a mythical sled race between Poliahu, the Hawaiian snow goddess of Maunakea, and Pele, the fierce goddess of lava, personified by a rival geoscientist from Maunaloa’s volcanic laboratory. Once an Olympic contender in the women’s luge, Eenie has won this race twice before. This year, though, the greenhouse effect has caught up with her; there is no snow on Maunakea. Without it, she cannot prevail, and if she doesn’t, the priests of Hawaii’s Cultural Reaffirmation will pull the telescopes down from their most sacred mountain. Eenie struggles against nature’s increasing wrath, gods, monsters, pigs, and political rivals, though her biggest struggle is within herself. Fire and water must live together takes place in an ecodystopic future, though its story pulls from Hawaiian myth.
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