The seminal work of fiction featuring eco-terrorism as a major focal point is Edward Abbey's 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, wherein a group of environmentalists disrupt various projects that are damaging to the environment.
[4] In contrast, Michael Crichton's 2004 novel State of Fear portrays eco-terrorists—in this case a group of environmentalists who seek to raise awareness about anthropogenic global warming by creating extreme weather events—in a negative light.
Examples include Paul Di Filippo's 1993 short story "Up the Lazy River" and Rebecca Ore's 1995 novel Gaia's Toys.
[6] In more recent years, eco-terrorist antagonists such as those in the 2018 superhero films Aquaman and Avengers: Infinity War have been portrayed as being right about the issues but wrong about the solutions.
The portrayal of eco-terrorist protagonists also shifted in the second half of the 2010s; whereas in earlier works such as the 2013 film Night Moves they would be motivated by idealism, later works such as the 2017 film First Reformed and the 2018 novel The Overstory have them motivated by the existential dread of perceiving human society as fundamentally unsustainable in relation to nature.