Sidebar V: The Other Influence Climate fiction

Sidebar V: The Other Influence

Climate fiction

Great fiction is often declared timeless and there are certainly timeless themes, fears and hope you can speak to. However, the stories that grab a hold of a culture's imagination and leave deep marks on that culture's mental landscape are those that speak to a certain time. They invoke and speak to the fears and hopes of that time and lay them out in the open for everyone to see. That's what Climate Fiction seeks to do and it's certainly speaking to modern fears. To be blunt on the matter, the hottest years on record are uniformly listed in the last decade. In 2018 alone Japan, Korea, much of Europe (including above the Arctic circle) and the Arabic world (including the Sahara Desert, recording temperatures of 124 F or 51.3C the highest temperature recorded in Africa). Canada has declared this a record summer and it stands as the hottest La Nina on human record. Before this, 2016 was declared the hottest year in record with 2017 coming in 3^rd. I point this out to show that frankly, yes to write of climate change is to write of something incredibly pertinent to our modern day lives and to society. Despite what some people would like to think.

That said Climate Fiction didn't spring from the aether fully formed. There were people experimenting with the ideas of climate change as narrative form or setting before the modern day. From Jules Vern distopian novel, Paris in the 20^th century to New Wave writer J.G. Ballard's books The Wind from Nowhere, The Drowned World and The Burning World (all written in the 1960s). These books did explore the effect of climate change on the world in some ways but for example, Paris in the 20^th Century focused more on the alienation of it's main character, a man who wanted to be a poet, living in a society that only valued science and business. JG Ballard's book often didn't explore the science and were more often in using climate change to explore the effects of disasters on communities and individuals or to examine psychological effects of disasters. The genre didn't really set itself apart or start gathering steam however until the 21^st century.

Today Climate Fiction is sometimes referred to as Cli-fi or eco-fiction. Cli-Fi was a term coined by Dan Bloom. Mr. Bloom is a native of Springfield Massachusetts, where he graduated Tufts University in Boston with a degree in literature. While he wrote a novel he never published it and instead when to work as a journalist where he had a varied career with a number of publications and positions. Two experiences combined to solidify the term in his head however, first seeing the honestly horrible film Day After Tomorrow. Second and likely more important the 2006 report released by The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which he read. Mr. Bloom would coin the term Cli-Fi in 2008. It would catch on when NPR did a 5 minute radio with writers about it. Mr. Bloom would also make a concentrated effort to push the term and encourage novels to be published in the new genre. Describing himself as a PR person, he contacts publishers to help writers get their stories published, encourages the writers to write stories featuring Climate Change. He also maintains and runs cli-fi.net, a website that focuses on the genre. He does all of this without payment or asking for recognition.

But what is Cli-Fi you're asking. Climate Fiction is made of stories, usually set in the near future where Climate Change and environmental neglect have caught up to humanity and industrialized civilization begins to fail. It often focuses on the poor and down trodden, those least able to shield themselves from the ravages of a new world. In books like The Water Knife for example we can see that the wealthy are retreating into arcologies while the poor are left to the mercy of an increasingly dry and merciless planet. As such there's often a dystopian tone to Climate Fiction novels and a tendencies to focus on people on the margins of society and civilization. This is much like Cyberpunk, however while in much of Cyberpunk, society is shown as corrupt but vital, in Climate Fiction there is often a sense of decay. That society may be in fact living on borrowed time that is rapidly running out. This is very well done in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and the following sequels. Course, Margaret Atwood also mixes in fears about pandemics but that is also common in Climate Fiction as the thought is the strain of dealing with a changing world leaves the door open for traditional human problems we thought we had banished to come creeping back in. Climate Fiction can also take place in the current day however, examining how the current changes in our climate can and are impacting people living today and the role that social and government action, or inaction plays in that. These stories will often have a scientist protagonist as they research the effects of climate change. Although that shouldn't be considered a hard or fast rule as there are also plenty of books that buck that trend.

Climate Fiction is also a call to action. Many of the writers are hoping to spur people to act on the facts of Climate Change to aide in mitigating or avoiding the worse damages. Because to be honest, a good story is often much better at planting an idea in people's head then a dry recitation of facts. That's not to say scientific fact has no place in Climate Fiction, but it is buttressed by the addition of narrative and characters to ensure that it's lodged into the memories and thoughts of the reader. This isn't the first time that the environmental movement has used fiction to help communicate it's goals and beliefs to the greater public and it won't be the last. Hopefully, we'll look back at books like The Water Knife in 50 years and discuss how such books helped avert the future written in those pages or at least the worst of it.

So at long last, next week, we'll tackle Solarpunk itself. I'll try to show what it's derived from it's parent genre and why I've staked Cyberpunk and Climate Fiction as such and we'll discuss... What the hell is Solarpunk anyways?

Keep Reading.