Melanie Marttila on Sustainability
- nina.sfgirl
- Jun 15
- 9 min read
hosted by Nina Munteanu
June 15 2026 - 10
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The Sustainability thread is a thematic series of articles, curated by Canadian SF author Nina Munteanu and sponsored by Reality Skimming Press. Pieces in the series appear twice a month. Query Nina Munteanu about appearing on the thread at nina.sfgirl@gmail.com
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Interview with Author Melanie Marttila
My guest today is Canadian short speculative fiction author and poet Melanie Marttila. Her debut poetry collection, The Art of Floating, was published in 2024 by Latitude 46.
Nina: · How would you define sustainability and what do you consider the key components to be sustained?
Melanie: In simple terms, sustainability is living within your means. This concept can be applied to individuals, families, communities, and projected outward to encompass Earth itself.
As responsible humans, we need to invest in protecting our environment and its biodiversity, ensure equity, health, education, and human rights for all people, everywhere, and develop economic systems that do not depend on the depletion of non-renewable resources like oil.
In reality, what most of us can do amounts to harm reduction.
Nina: What does the phrase of our thread title "Sustainability Before Ambition" mean to you and how does it affect you : how you live, what your write?
Melanie: “Sustainability before ambition” is the theme of my life, right now. Prompted by the complication of perimenopause, I sought confirmation as an autistic at 51. Five years into my journey, I understand the toll continual masking has taken on my energy, executive function, sleep … in short, my life. I’m accommodated to work from home, which is a gift. Last year, I was fortunate to find a local, neurodivergent-affirming therapist, and I’m working with her to design a life that flows with my body/brain and not against it.
For years, I fell prey to the productivity trap, working a fulltime job and writing as many as 500,000 words a year (between my blog, poetry, short fiction, and novel drafts). It was unsustainable and I burned out. Worse, most of those many, many words were unpublishable. After my diagnosis, and a couple of work-related burnouts, I’ve been forced to slow down, listen to my body/brain, and try to find a way to live in harmony with my neurodivergence.
Now, at 56, I’m facing workforce adjustment (i.e., layoff) and I’m trying to see it as the gift I didn’t know I needed. The future is still uncertain (WFA is a drawn-out process in my workplace), but I’m practicing self-compassion.
In my writing itself, sustainability tends to be subtle rather than overt. I’ve realized post-confirmation that most of my protagonists are autistic, like I am (write what you know, eh?). Because I’ve spent most of my life unaware and high masking, exhaustion becomes the main way the body signals the brain that the current situation is unsustainable.
I am more consciously writing autistic or neurodivergent characters now, but they are unaware and unsuspecting of their neurodivergence, unable to figure out why they feel like aliens in their own lives and why the things others seem to accomplish so easily are so demanding and exhausting for them, even though they continue to rise to the challenge and excel, again and again.
The lesson is that you can’t have both ambition (rapid rise, hustle, productivity) and sustainability (rest, self-compassion, paced achievement) and that sustainability is the only path forward.
The philosophy of sustainability informs the rest of my life. I do what I can with what I have in the moment, and it is enough. We recycle and compost. We have a small garden. All our appliances are energy efficient. But there are still many aspects of life where we have not been able to make sustainable changes.
We still use natural gas to heat our home because the incentives available to us in northeastern Ontario to convert to other energy sources are not within our means. We still have a gas car, though we intend to get an EV in the future.
I support charities and causes I believe in, but my efforts are more in the way of “slacktivism,” because spoons.
Finally, I apply the theme of sustainability over ambition to my creative community. I am a member of seven writing organizations and have served on the boards of two. I support my fellow writers by cheering on their accomplishments, sharing what I can online, writing reviews, and supporting several Kickstarter campaigns that help writerly friends publish.
Again, it’s a matter of doing what I can with what I have.
Nina: In your community, what do you see as the major barriers and facilitators of sustainable living? What do you think are the major barriers and facilitators for organizations and nations?
Melanie: When I was in university, I developed an interest in permaculture, but I learned that our bylaws prohibit owning livestock in the city, which is ironic because the land my street is on (I call it my street, because my grandfather owned the land and Marttila Drive is named after him) was a farm before my grandfather bought it. The city has grown up around us, though, and we’re firmly in the urban space now.
Also, I live on a chunk of Precambrian shield, and fencing the yard would be prohibitively expansive.
While I recycle, I know that a lot of what I recycle ends up in the landfill, largely due to the cost and relative value of the various recycling contracts the city can negotiate. They have a toxic waste depot for batteries, fluorescent and LED lightbulbs, paint, and other toxins. They have an electronic waste area, but I worry about what happens to it. I know there are still places in the world where people poison themselves incinerating old electronics that are not refurbished or otherwise recycled.
We could not convert to green energy even with the current incentives. It would be beyond our means. The most accessible option here in northeastern Ontario would be to get a heat pump, but it would still be a natural gas system.
Electric vehicles are finally coming down in price and charging stations are now accessible enough that travel from Sudbury to Toronto or Ottawa would be possible. Canada is so big that EVs have to be able to travel long distances between charging stations. The infrastructure to support the adoption of greener alternatives has been slow in coming.
I’m disturbed by the ongoing political addiction to oil. We do not need another pipeline. We do not need to drill for oil in the ocean. We do not need to extract all the things from the land. We need to be working with our Indigenous peoples to find sustainable solutions for land management, forest fire prevention, and the protection of wildlife. Again, progress on these fronts is far too slow.
I know we can’t switch to green energy on a dime, but I think about the COVID 19 pandemic (now endemic) and how quickly the nation moved to impose lockdowns and develop vaccines and create financial support measures for individuals and businesses within months. The climate crisis is no less dire, but we can’t seem to get our collective ducks in a row to take meaningful and timely action.
And don’t get me started on what’s happening south of the border.
Nina: Do you think it is possible to achieve sustainability within a capitalist system? Explain.
Melanie: No. Capitalism, by its nature, stifles sustainability in favour of hustle culture and the almighty profit margin.
But the problem has deeper roots. Patriarchy is the real source of most of our societal ills. Patriarchy fosters competition and conflict, producing systems like capitalism, fundamental religious fervour, any -ism that others and dehumanizes, and the fascist politicians that have been coming into ascendance for centuries.
None of what we’re seeing today is new, but it seems that we’re just learning how to deal with it.
The ousting of Viktor Orban is instructive. The people voted him out after taking steps to ensure the election could not be fixed.
We will have to wait to see if the US takes the cue. I found it intriguing that King Charles III, when he visited the US, was careful to mention the Magna Carta, a document that firmly frames the monarchy as the servant of the people, a message that obviously zoomed over Trump’s head.
It will be interesting to see what happens in the coming months.
Nina: Do you think it is possible to achieve sustainability everywhere? If so, why. If not, why. And if the latter case, how should one prioritize?
Melanie: I think it is possible to achieve sustainability everywhere, but it will not be possible for every country to change at the same time. No one can be forced into becoming sustainable. We have to let each country change. It has to be organic, or it won’t work in the long term.
Less developed countries will have the advantage. They can build in sustainable practices as they develop.
Countries that have already started down the road toward sustainability will also have an easier time of it, but societal change takes time and political will. Many European countries are at varying stages of this journey.
The countries that are the most economically and industrially developed will have the hardest time. They will have to build infrastructure to support sustainability. Governments will have to pass laws and make difficult decisions that will likely be economically difficult in the short-term. These countries, including Canada, will take the longest.
Finally, I would say that the US and other countries that have fascists in power who are actively trying to dismantle green energy and sustainable infrastructure will take the longest of all.
China, interestingly, for such a populous country, is making great strides in EV manufacturing. I don’t know how they’re doing overall vis a vis sustainability, but it is an example of what can be accomplished when the political will propels change.
Maybe all hope isn’t lost.
Nina: Do you feel that authors can play a role in encouraging a sustainable lifestyle? Do any particular writing genres play a more substantial role in establishing a narrative of sustainability?
Melanie: Authors, particularly speculative fiction (and subgenres cli-fi and solarpunk) authors, can model a sustainable lifestyle as a solution to the plot or story problem, or by presenting sustainable living as the normal world against which the plot or story problem plays out.
Examples of the first kind of story include Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, in which Lauren Olamina develops a new philosophy (Earthseed) that prioritizes adaptation, community building, and cultivating the land. In The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk a post-apocalyptic California is divided between a brutal, non-sustainable technocracy and a peaceful, sustainable community. Sue Burke’s Semiosis takes the theme to a new planet, Pax, where instead of trying to dominate the environment with technology, the colonial survivors learn to communicate and cooperate with the existing ecosystem (sentient plants).
Examples of the second type of novel include Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild-Built, which takes place in a a post-industrial world that has successfully transitioned to sustainable living. The Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow is set in a future where climate change is no longer debated but an accepted reality that society is mitigating through massive, cooperative efforts. Susan Kaye Quinn’s Halfway to Better, a collection of short solarpunk stories, features a future where humanity has moved to "greenbelts" to live in harmony with nature and has stopped using fossil fuels.
We’ve discovered that reading stimulates the same areas of the brain as if the reader were doing the things they’re reading about. This may be the reason for the glut of articles a few years ago, indicating that reading increased empathy.
Regardless of the root cause, reading speculative fiction, and cli-fi or solarpunk stories in particular, changes lives. I’ve seen it, and I’ve experienced it.
Nina: How was sustainability achieved (or not achieved) in a world that you (or another author) created? Was it inspired from a real example?
Melanie: In my short story “The Beekeeper” (in The Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia), sustainability was not achieved and the survivors of the climate crisis struggle to survive. The eponymous character is the antagonist of the story and a member of a functionally immortal species that has chosen to find a way to help the survivors of humanity adapt to the antipathetic world they’ve created.
They release a virus which kills most of the remaining humans, but those who develop an immunity to it are suitable for gene editing into members of the Beekeeper’s species.
At one point, the protagonist asks if the world is dying, and the Beekeeper answers, “This world will go on until the sun swallows it. It’s a survivor. It’s our job now to adapt to the world as humans have left it to us, to replenish life that will thrive in this environment.”
To me, the story is a parable. Those who survive the climate crisis will be forced to change if they want to keep on living, and the longer we wait, the more challenging and extreme those changes will be.
Footnotes:
Slacktivism is a portmanteau of slacker and activism and refers to supporting political and social causes through low-effort internet activities.
Spoon Theory was invented by Christine Miserandino, who has Lupus, and used physical spoons as an analogy for the expenditure of daily energy. This analogy has been adopted by other people with invisible disabilities, including neurodivergents.
BIO: Melanie Marttila (she/her) is an #ActuallyAutistic author-in-progress, writing poetry and tales of hope in the face of adversity. Her poetry has appeared in The /tƐmz/ Review, Polar Starlight, Sulphur, and her debut poetry collection, The Art of Floating, was published in 2024 by Latitude 46. Her short fiction has appeared in SuperCanucks, Through the Portal, and Pulp Literature. She is a settler writing in Sudbury, or ‘N’Swakamok, on Robinson-Huron Treaty territory, home of the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek and the Wahnapitae First Nation, in the house where three generations of her family have lived, on the street that bears her surname, with her spouse and their dog, Torvi.
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Nina Munteanu is an Canadian ecologist, author, editor and writing coach, notably but not exclusively in the realm of Speculative Fiction (SF/F). In addition to nine published novels, Munteanu has written short stories, articles and non-fiction books, which have been translated into several languages throughout the world. Munteanu is a member of SF Canada.
Nina Munteanu on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ninamunteanu/
Nina Munteanu Writing Coach. https://ninamunteanu.me/
Nina Munteanu (Wikipedia). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Munteanu
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