“I’m not a fan of fiction that’s totally hopeless,” says Jeff VanderMeer, author of Annihilation, in an interview with The Atlantic, animated in the video above. “You find ways of documenting the world as it is, [with its] beauty, and you wind up redefining utopia and dystopia.” VanderMeer goes on to explain how, in writing fiction about climate change and environmental crises, he hopes to “push us out of our complacency.”

“We can’t live the way we live now,” he says, “but there are ways in which we can live in a useful and interesting and comforting and satisfying way within what’s happening.”