Thanks for this David!
Minor point: "Silent Spring" is not a work of fiction in any sense of the word; the short first chapter "Fable for Tomorrow," is, as its title suggests, a fable (of a "town that does not actually exist"). That chapter is obviously a literary device that establishes the stakes up front and in an accessible and compressed manner, but I wouldn't use it to classify the rest of the book as even "creative nonfiction." The book is otherwise a work of reportage, probably *the* model for popular contemporary climate/science journalists such as Elizabeth Kolbert who rely on a combination of first-person observations, interviews, and syntheses of scientific papers and policy documents.
Unfortunately, it's still deeply relevant 50 years later...
Take care all,
Ryan
"To get a comparative sense of where we currently stand its useful to
contrast today?s environmental politics with the political impact of
Rachel Carson?s ?Silent Spring? published in 1962. As is well known this
was an account of an imaginary community afflicted by environmental
calamity. Although a fiction the narrative drew on detailed evidence
from events that had already actually happened in a number of separate
incidents. Carson had simply and brilliantly drawn these threads
together into a worst-case scenario."