Climate fiction

Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake series is an often cited dystopian novel in ecocriticism.

The term "cli-fi" first came into use on April 20, 2013 when NPR did a five-minute radio segment by Angela Evancie on Weekend Edition Saturday[5] to describe novels and movies that deal with human-induced climate change, and historically, there have been any number of literary works that dealt with climate change in earlier times as well. Dan Bloom has been an influential figure in the development of "cli-fi" as a distinct genre.[6]

Jules Verne's 1889 novel The Purchase of the North Pole imagines climate change due to tilting of Earth's axis. In his posthumous Paris in the Twentieth Century, written in 1883 and set during the 1960s, the titular city experiences a sudden drop in temperature, which lasts for three years.[7] Several well-known dystopian works by British author J. G. Ballard deal with climate-related natural disasters: In The Wind from Nowhere (1961), civilization is reduced by persistent hurricane-force winds, and The Drowned World (1962) describes a future of melted ice-caps and rising sea-levels caused by solar radiation.[8] In The Burning World (1964, later called The Drought) his climate catastrophe is human-made, a drought due to disruption of the precipitation cycle by industrial pollution.[9]

As scientific knowledge of the effects of fossil fuel consumption and resulting increase in atmospheric CO
2 concentrations entered the public and political arena as "global warming",[10] fiction about the problems of human-induced global warming began to appear. Susan M. Gaines's Carbon Dreams was an early example of a literary novel that "tells a story about the devastatingly serious issue of human-induced climate change," set in the 1980s and published before the term "cli-fi" was coined.[11] Michael Crichton's State of Fear (2004), a techno-thriller portrays climate change as "a vast pseudo-scientific hoax" and is critical of scientific opinion on climate change.[12]

Margaret Atwood explored the subject in her dystopian trilogy Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013).[13] In Oryx and Crake Atwood presents a world where "social inequality, genetic technology and catastrophic climate change, has finally culminated in some apocalyptic event".[14] The novel's protagonist, Jimmy, lives in a "world split between corporate compounds", gated communities that have grown into city-states and pleeblands, which are "unsafe, populous and polluted" urban areas where the working classes live.[15]

Cultural critic Josephine Livingston at The New Republic: "From Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation to Nathaniel Rich's Odds Against Tomorrow, the last decade has seen such a steep rise in sophisticated 'cli-fi' that some literary publications now devote whole verticals to it. With such various and fertile imaginations at work on the same topic, whether in fiction or nonfiction, the challenge facing the environmental writer now is standing out from the crowd (not to mention the headlines)."

The popular science-fiction novelist Kim Stanley Robinson focused on the theme in his Science in the Capital trilogy, which is set in the near future and includes Forty Signs of Rain (2004), Fifty Degrees Below (2005), and Sixty Days and Counting (2007). Robert K. J. Killheffer in his review for Fantasy & Science Fiction said "Forty Signs of Rain is a fascinating depiction of the workings of science and politics, and an urgent call to readers to confront the threat of climate change."[16] Robinson's climate-themed novel, titled New York 2140, was published in March 2017.[17] It gives a complex portrait of a coastal city that is partly underwater and yet has successfully adapted to climate change in its culture and ecology.

Kim Stanley Robinson's science fiction works frequently include society's response to climate change.

Ian McEwan's Solar (2010) follows the story of a physicist who discovers a way to fight climate change after managing to derive power from artificial photosynthesis.[18] The Stone Gods (2007) by Jeanette Winterson is set on the fictional planet Orbus, a world very like Earth, running out of resources and suffering from the severe effects of climate change. Inhabitants of Orbus hope to take advantage of possibilities offered by a newly discovered planet, Planet Blue, which appears perfect for human life.[19]

Barbara Kingsolver's novel, Flight Behavior (2012), employs environmental themes and highlights the potential effects of global warming on the monarch butterfly.[20]

Devolution of a Species by M.E. Ellington focuses on the Gaia hypothesis, and describes the Earth as a single living organism fighting back against humankind.[21]

Other authors who have used this subject matter include:

• British author J. G. Ballard used the setting of apocalyptic climate changes in his first science fiction novels. In The Wind from Nowhere (1961) civilisation is reduced by persistent hurricane-force winds. The Drowned World (1962) describes a future of melted ice-caps and rising sea-levels, caused by solar radiation, creating a landscape mirroring the collective unconscious desires of the main characters. In The Burning World (1964) a surrealistic psychological landscape is formed by drought due to industrial pollution disrupting the precipitation cycle.
• Mother of Storms (1994) by John Barnes describes a catastrophic, rapid climate and weather change brought on by a nuclear explosion releasing clathrate compounds from the ocean floor, based on the clathrate gun hypothesis.
• The Carbon Diaries: 2015 by Saci Lloyd is set in a future where power is scarce and the UK has just begun carbon rationing. The story is told in diary form by Laura Brown, a teenager living in London in the aftermath of the Great Storm.
• Far North (2009) by Marcel Theroux, in which the world is largely uninhabitable due to climate change. However, the novel implies that scientists got it wrong and that it was our actions combating global warming that irrevocably altered the climate.
• Arctic Drift (2008) by Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler. A thriller involving attempts to reverse global warming, a possible war between the United States and Canada, and "a mysterious silvery mineral traced to a long-ago expedition in search of the fabled Northwest Passage."[22]
• Fallen Angels (1991) by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn. Set in North America in the "near future", a radical technophobic green movement dramatically cuts greenhouse gas emissions, only to find that manmade global warming was staving off a new ice age.
• Forty Signs of Rain (2004), Fifty Degrees Below (2005), and Sixty Days and Counting (2007) comprise the Science in the Capital series, a hard science fiction trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. Set primarily in Washington, D.C., abrupt climate change causes weather disasters in the US capitol and flooding of the fictional island nation of Khembalung. Main characters are American scientists, politicians, and Buddhist monks.[23][24]
• Solar (2010) by Ian McEwan follows the story of a physicist who discovers a way to fight climate change after managing to derive power from artificial photosynthesis.[25]
• State of Fear (2004) a techno-thriller by Michael Crichton concerning a group of eco-terrorists attempting to create "natural" disasters to convince the public of the dangers of global warming. The book is critical of the Scientific opinion on climate change and accusing its proponents of using fear tactics.
• The Stone Gods (2007) by Jeanette Winterson. This novel opens on the planet Orbus, a world very like Earth, running out of resources and suffering from the severe effects of climate change. Inhabitants of Orbus hope to take advantage of possibilities offered by a newly discovered planet, Planet Blue, which appears perfect for human life.[26]

• The Sea and Summer [Drowning Towers] (1987), by George Turner, Australia
• The Crystal World (1988), by J. G. Ballard, UK
• The Ice People (1998) and The Flood (2004), Magee Gee, US
• Earth (1990), David Brin, US
• Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998), Octavia E. Butler, US
• A Friend of the Earth (2000), T.C. Boyle, US
• Floodland (2001) and Aurora (2011), Marcus Sedgwick, US
• Exodus (2002) and sequels, Julie Bertagna, US
• Flood (2008) and Ark (2009), Stephen Baxter, US
• The Windup Girl (2009), Ship Breaker (2010), The Drowned Cities (2012), The Water Knife (2015) and Tool of War (2017), Paolo Bacigalupi, US
• Empire Builders (2011), Ben Bova, US
• 2312 (2012), Kim Stanley Robinson, US
• Odds Against Tomorrow (2013), Nathaniel Rich, US
• The Bone Clocks (2014), David Mitchell, UK
• Memory of Water (2015), Emmi Itäranta, Finland
• Gold Fame Citrus (2015), Claire Vaye Watkins, US
• American War (2017), Omar El Akkad, US
• The Water Cure (2018), Sophie Mackintosh, UK
• The Overstory (2018), Richard Powers, US
• The Last Children of Tokyo (The Emissary) (2018), Yoko Tawada, Germany/Japan
• The Ministry for the Future (2020), by Kim Stanley Robinson
• A Children's Bible (2020) by Lydia Millet

• The authors of the Climate Fiction Writers League[27]

• Welcome to the Greenhouse (2011) US edited by Gordon Van Gelder
• Loosed Upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction (2015) US edited by John Joseph Adams
• Drowned Worlds (2016) UK edited by Jonathan Strahan
• Possible Solutions (2017) US by Helen Phillips – Many of the short stories concern climate change.

Many journalists, literary critics, and scholars and have speculated about the potential influence of climate fiction on the beliefs of its readers. To date, three empirical studies have examined this question.

A controlled experiment found that reading climate fiction short stories "had small but significant positive effects on several important beliefs and attitudes about global warming – observed immediately after participants read the stories," though "these effects diminished to statistical nonsignificance after a one-month interval." However, the authors note that "the effects of a single exposure in an artificial setting may represent a lower bound of the real-world effects. Reading climate fiction in the real world often involves multiple exposures and longer narratives," such as novels, "which may result in larger and longer-lasting impacts."[28]

A survey of readers found that readers of climate fiction "are younger, more liberal, and more concerned about climate change than nonreaders," and that climate fiction "reminds concerned readers of the severity of climate change while impelling them to imagine environmental futures and consider the impact of climate change on human and nonhuman life. However, the actions that resulted from readers' heightened consciousness reveal that awareness is only as valuable as the cultural messages about possible actions to take that are in circulation. Moreover, the responses of some readers suggest that works of climate fiction might lead some people to associate climate change with intensely negative emotions, which could prove counterproductive to efforts at environmental engagement or persuasion."[29]

Finally, an empirical study focused on the popular novel The Water Knife found that cautionary climate fiction set in a dystopic future can be effective at educating readers about climate injustice and leading readers to empathize with the victims of climate change, including environmental migrants. However, its results suggest that dystopic climate narratives might lead to support for reactionary responses to climate change. Based on this result, it cautioned that "not all climate fiction is progressive," despite the hopes of many authors, critics, and readers.[30]

• Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
• Global warming in popular culture
• Media coverage of climate change
• Public opinion on climate change
• Utopian and dystopian fiction

• Gerry Canavan and Kim Stanley Robinson. Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction. Wesleyan University Press, 2014
• Andrew Milner and J.R. Burgmann. Science Fiction and Climate Change: A Sociological Approach. Liverpool University Press, 2020.
• Antonia Mehnert. Climate Change Fictions: Representations of Global Warming in American Literature. Palgrave MacMillan, 2016.
• Matthew Schneider-Mayerson. "Climate Change Fiction." In American Literature in Transition, 2000–2010, edited by Rachel Greenwald Smith. Cambridge University Press, 2017.
• Adam Trexler. Anthropocene Fictions: The Novel in a Time of Climate Change. University of Virginia Press, 2015.
• Shelley Streeby. Imagining the Future in a Time of Climate Change. University of California Press, 2018.

• Cli-Fi in American Studies: A Research Bibliography
• Climate Fiction in English: Oxford Research Encyclopedia
• Burning Worlds Column in the Chicago Review of Books
• Climate Change Dystopia, discusses current popularity of climate change dystopia.