Taking the concept of the Anthropocene seriously has changed environmental writing. The Anthropocene concept shifts understanding of the environment from a primal nature to a second nature permeated by human activity. Recognizing new patterns in the atmosphere, distribution of species, water temperature, weather patterns, and even the stability of the earth’s crust, authors tell new stories. Narrative structures as basic as Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey have changed. A contrast between two environments is vital to the hero’s journey, and a transformation of the hero occurs with the passage between them. A familiar domestic world contrasts with a dangerous forest or labyrinthine subterranean zone; the differences between home and the wilderness or another foreign terrain then require the hero to redefine himself. In the Anthropocene, however, nearby and distant lands all reveal the touch of the human hand, and the hero’s prospects for transformation are not triggered by contact with otherworldliness. Instead, the hero of the prototypical genre of the Anthropocene (climate fiction) discovers within himself a latent barbarism together with a counterintuitive sense of awe.