July 27, 2014, by Brigitte Nerlich
Climate fiction: The anticipation and exploration of plausible futures
A few days ago Paul Collins asked me whether an emerging fictional genre, namely climate fiction or cli-fi, could help engage people with climate change. I had to confess that I had come across this new genre but had not thought about it in depth. This type of ignorance and confusion has never prevented me from writing blog posts in the past! So what I’ll do today is explore the contours of my gap in knowledge of all things cli-fi. Lots has been written about this genre already, in particular on blogs, in magazine, such as Time Magazine and in newspaper, such as the Washington Post or the Financial Times. But it doesn’t seem to have attracted sustained scholarly attention yet (nothing on google scholar), although I think this will change as growing interest in cli-fi will converge with interests in environmental humanities, ecocriticism, literary fiction studies, and so on.
However, I wondered what a new angle on this phenomenon could be, an angle that was more ‘me’… Recently, quite a few posts on this blog have been devoted to responsible research and innovation, and quite a few more are in prospect. Part of this new way of looking at science and technology assessment (plus risk assessment plus public engagement plus the exploration of ethical, social and legal issues) is ‘anticipatory governance’. According to the World Future Society this new type of governance merges “foresight with policy” and is intended “to reduce a people’s susceptibility to future contingencies (aka ‘wild cards’ or ‘black swans’)” (the concept is partially inspired by work on nanotechnology governance by David Guston).
This made me think a bit more about ‘anticipation’, so difficult to achieve in real life, so easy to read about in fiction – and I chose this as my angle for this post.
In the following, I’ll briefly point towards what cli-fi might be and where readers can find more information; I shall then talk about anticipation literature as a (French) sub-genre of science fiction and then get back to anticipatory governance and the question of public engagement with climate change – a question, I should say from the outset, I will not be able to answer. I should also stress that I am no sci-fi or cli-fi expert, so I would like to hear from people who are!
Cli-fi
Cli-fi or climate (change) fiction, a new genre of fiction related to but quite different from science fiction, began to emerge about a decade ago, around 2005 and is gradually gathering speed, growing in popularity and attracting attention especially during periods of extreme weather, such as heat waves and floods. The genre spans novels, games, films and more. Modern cli-fi novels have links to older work, for example J. G. Ballard’s 1962 Drowned World or Frank Herbert’s 1965 epic Dune.
As Wikipedia points out, “]c]li-fi novels and films are often set in either the present or the near or distant future, but they can also be set in the past. Many cli-fi works raise awareness about the major threats that climate change and global warming present to life on Earth…The term ‘cli-fi’ was popularized by climate activist Danny Bloom and Wired reporter Scott Thill.”
Classics are Michael Crichton’s State of Fear published in 2004 and Paolo Bacigalupi’s Windup Girl published in 2009, but everybody will have their own views on what belongs on a cli-fi list or not. The former novel engages in a critique of climate change science and scientists (or rather eco-terrorists), whereas the latter accepts climate science’s premises, which seems to be the case in many cli-fi novels.
Quite a few belong to the post-apocalyptic genre, imagining, anticipating and exploring a future after a climatic apocalypse. Such explorations link back to older Russian writing, according to the sci-fi expert Csicsery-Ronay who is quoted in a blog post: “The Russians… had a category, late 19th century, early 20th century, called the ‘If-This-Goes-On Fiction,’ kind of a warning,’ he says, ‘a particular kind of dystopian fiction, that if a certain trend goes on, and we don’t stop, then this is what’s going to happen.’” This seems to be a characteristic of many recent cli-fi novels.
Anticipation, expectations and visions of the future
Similarly, in a 2012 article for the New York Times James Gunn, founding director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas, points out that: “Science fiction writers aren’t in the prediction business; they’re in the speculation business, using ‘hasn’t happened’ or ‘hasn’t happened yet’ to create entertaining scenarios that may or may not anticipate future realities. They’re wrong more often than they’re right — maybe 9 to 1 — but in the anticipation business, that’s a pretty good ratio.”
This quote made me think a bit more about ‘anticipation’. This is the stuff we are concerned with all the time, be it as a scientist working on an IPCC report, be it as a policy maker having to make decisions about the future, be it as a social scientist engaged in stimulating responsible research and innovation. Anticipation, forecasting, foresight, prediction, simulation, modelling, speculation, fiction – the boundaries are rather fluid and all entail a hefty dose of imagination – perhaps more controlled in modelling, perhaps less controlled in science fiction, including climate fiction.
Anticipation seems to be a particular sub-genre of science fiction, a topic discussed mainly by French scholars. The term ‘anticipation’ was, apparently used as a general term for science fiction before the term ‘science fiction’ was introduced in 1929. However, today anticipation novels typically deal with the exploration of a sub-type of (sci-fi) futures, namely credible, probably and plausible futures. The anticipation genre emerged from a confluence of other genres such as imaginary voyages, utopian and dystopian fiction and adventure stories. And, of course, Jules Verne’s work belongs to this genre.
As one French blog post points out, “Le genre ‘Climate Fiction’ proposé par Dan Bloom correspond à de l’anticipation climatique, c’est à dire une spéculation romancée des enjeux et changements climatiques attendus à l’aube de ce nouveau millénaire, ainsi que la discussion de leurs impacts sur l’environnement et nos sociétés.” (The genre ‘Climate Fiction’ proposed by Dan Bloom corresponds to climate anticipation, that is, a fictionalised speculation about issues regarding climate change expected at the dawn of this new millennium, and the discussion of their impacts on the environment and our societies.”)
Anticipation shares certain semantic and conceptual properties with ‘expectation’ and thus perhaps might and should become a concern for the sociology of expectations. This type of sociology examines how anticipated or envisioned futures (hopes, fears, uncertainties) are used to shape and manipulate the present. I have not seen sociology of expectation scholars engage with anticipation yet and certainly not with anticipation fiction and cli-fi. However, I found one Science and Technology Studies course at Cornell devoted to ‘anticipation’. It asks for example: “How are society and subjectivities reoriented in anticipating these impending futures?” These are questions that sci-fi and cli-fi literatures address. And these are also issues that cli-fi scholars and Science and Technology or STS scholars could try to examine together (with science fiction scholars and so on).
Engagement?
So, why is cli-fi important and should be studied more? First, it attests to the vitality of sci-fi as it gives birth to a new genre which, according to Dan Bloom, rather then looking “outward at the stars and the cosmos, … looks inward, at our warming planet, this third rock from the sun, a planet in trouble” and tries to anticipate, imagine and, to some extent, prevent its future. Second, its growth attests to a growing concern amongst ‘ordinary’ people (‘publics’), readers, gamers about climate change, at least a growing curiosity.
Bloom claims that cli-fi is “where data meets emotions”. It might be that cli-fi brings modelling from the laboratory bench (imagine rows of supercomputers) to people’s bedside (imaging reading a cli-fi novel in bed). However, unlike scientific climate modellers, writers and readers of cli-fi novels are ‘allowed’, indeed it is their task, to extrapolate from modelling certain scientific futures to imaging, exploring and testing out political futures. This means that cli-fi novels provide a space for engaging in and with climate science as well as climate politics, albeit in a fictional way.
This brings us to the question that Paul posed. Can cli-fi be useful for public engagement with climate change (and thus contribute perhaps to anticipatory governance, responsible innovation etc.)? It certainly ‘engages’ a growing community of readers, it seems. However, this community is still quite a niche community. I don’t know how ‘engaged’ readers within this community (or out in the wider world) become with issues of climate change after reading cli-fi novels or watching cli-fi films…. Of course, one should not forget that cli-fi novels of the State of Fear type might also lead to disengagement with climate change and that lots of people read things just for fun and entertainment and not for ‘education’ and/or ‘engagement’.
There must be some research out there on these topics. If anybody knows about cli-fi (or nature fiction) readership and public engagement let me know. I just found one research project using digital methods which looks quite intriguing, but it doesn’t deal with the engagement issue.
Image: John Martin, The Deluge, 1834 Wikipedia
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Correction: after some feedback from Dan Bloom and others I deleted the clause where I said that cli-fi was a genre or sub-genre of science fiction.
Additions:
In 2012 Judith Curry published a post on cli-fi and climate scientists
For those interested in cli-fi please consult Clifibooks.com, which is nearly a year old and has built an online library of over 150 books in this genre and about 40 more books in another newer “shelf” of other environmental literature. See also Goodreads for an expanding list of books.
Since the publication of this post clifi has attracted some more attention in The New York Times. And there will be more I am sure.
And, finally, Margaret Atwood will be speaking about creative writing and science at Arizona State University in November, a University to which my co-director on the Making Science Public programme, Sujatha Raman, has just gone for a year. Atwood’s visit will mark the launch of the Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative.
People who want to stay in tune with developments might want join the Cli-fi Central Facebook group maintained by Paul Collins: https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/320538704765997/.
ADDITIONS 19 FEBRUARY 2015
Dan Bloom has alerted me to a new website and research resource: cli-fi.net
Ted Howell has alerted me to a series of student blog posts. He is teaching an English Literature class at Temple University on Cli-Fi. They have a course blog: http://sites.temple.edu/clifi. His aim was to situate the genre within larger discussions about science fiction’s anticipatory bent and the impact of apocalyptic fictions.
Professor Nervlich, a very very good essay on the emerging genre of cli fi, and I hope your post gets lots of traction in social media and even THE CONVERSATION website where you might repost it as an academic article there since you have posting privileges there. One note: there are lots of misunderstands about cli fi, and the most important one I want to point out here and hope you can correct this in future blog posts: CLI FI is not part of sci fi at all, and it is not even a sub genre of sci fi. It is an independent separate genre of its own for literature and cinema. Although in some ways, cli fi and sci fi are joined at the hip and brainstem, they are separate genres, and cli fi was never a sub genre of sci fi. It is important to stress this. Other than than that, great essay. Mr Paul Collins deserves a lot of credit for helping to set this essay up and his CLI FI CENTRAL group at FACEBOOK has over 150 members now,many of them from the academic community worldwide, and also including cli fi novelists and media people researching the issue. Google “Paul Collins CLI FI CENTRAL FACEBOOK” on the Facebook interface and you can find it. it’s a private group for now, but membership is open to all worldwide in any language. Your essay was posted there tonight. so BRAVO. You might want to know also and google too the WASHINGTON POST recently ran an oped on cli fi genre, and the New York Times is set to run a different oped on cli fi any day now, The genre is growing by leaps and bounds, and Hollywood is watching it too. TIME magazine had a big feature on cli fi in its May 19 issue, I have full text behind paywall if you want to read it, just email me. In addition, Professor, a major international literary award called the CLI-FI LITERARY AWARDS IN HONOR OF NEVIL SHUTE (in honor of the power of his 1957 novel ON THE BEACH to reframe the intl discussion on nuclear war and nuclear winter) and this award has already launched in 2014 with preliminary novels getting the nod, and the awards, dubbed THE NEVILS will officially launch in 2020 with a book commite and jury and with an annual prize of $202,000 the first year and $202,100 the second year in 2021 and so on for the next 100 years. THE NEVILS are getting funding and backing from a major Califonria venture capital firm, details soon. Meanwhie just google THE NEVILS to see info. AND….the annual CLI FI MOVIE AWARDS will launch in March 2015, called ThE CLIFFIES, and they will honor and spotlight the best in CLI FI movies each year, hosted at a small liberal arts college in the Midest of the USA, with the awards ceremony run by students and professors there, and with awards given out for best achievement in CLI FI MOVIES in these categories: best director, best screenplay, best adapted screenplay (see SNOWPIERCER for example), best actor, best actress, best cinematography, best production design and of course BEST CLI FI MOVIE of the year. In the running will be NOAH, SNOWPIERCER, INTO THE STORY, GODZILLA, INTERSTELLAR by Christopher Nolan coming in the fall, and more. CLI FI is happening. It’s a genre on its own now. Your good essay here helps promote it in a positive, academic way and it will remain a classic of early cli fi essays from academe. Merci beaucoup for la anticipation of this anticipation climatique genre…. !
Thanks for you detailed comments. This is my first forray into cli-fi, so I am still learning. I found an awful lot of information in online sources and it was almost impossible to put everything into the post. But I’ll but some more links in regarding the Washington Post article etc.
Oh and if you want to send me the Time article, please do!
Good article. It certainly highlights that cli-fi is a topic ripe for further academic research.
‘Researchers’ writing papers few ever read about a topic few ever read. Why bother? McDonalds not hiring?
David Reid is a strong cli fi booster based in Australia. Cli fi is borderless now, and while it has taken off first in the English speaking world, it is slowly getting picked up by media (and academics and cli fi novelists) in such countries as Norway, Finland, Germany, Italy, Spain and Brazil. In fact, after the TIME magazine article appeared on the TIME website May 19, two media sites in Brazil picked up the story and translated it into Portuguese for Brazilian readers. Several French blogs now track the rise of cli fi, and one of them is done by Guillaume in Nantes who goes by the Twitter handle of @tracquer and if you want to get his POV on cli fi in Frence media and academia, email him at guillmot@gmail.com – He is a scientist by day and a sci fi researcher by night. Cli fi tool
An enlightening and thoughtful article, Brigitte. Your article certainly takes the discussions around cli-fi forward in a new direction,. Thank you so much. Readers of this article can also join the discussions on Facebook’s cli-fi group, Cli-fi Central https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/320538704765997/
Great article, and I’m glad that you are enforcing the idea that cli-fi is not a sub-genre of sci-fi.
Another site that hasn’t been mentioned here and is unfortunately being left out in this discussion is Clifibooks.com, which is nearly a year old and has built an online library of over 150 books in this genre and about 40 more books in another newer “shelf” of other environmental literature. The site has a large searchable and sortable database, and for academics is a new survey as well as an article by Gregers Andersen, who is doing his dissertation in this very field. Another article is forthcoming by another student working on his PhD in the field. There is so much going on at Clifibooks right now, so I invite you to check it out.
Ah the last link in my post – nature fiction – links up to it! But I’ll make it more prominent
Thanks so much, Brigitte! There are several people around the world promoting this genre. Kudos for an inclusive article showing the wonderful work being done.
To add yet another link, there is a list of climate fiction books on Goodreads I started a while ago here:
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/36205.Cli_Fi_Climate_Change_Fiction
Right now 65 titles are on that list.
Thanks for that!
Yes, Mary Woodbury’s site is worth mentioning here for sure, she has worked hard over the past year to create an amazing archive of cli fi novels past and present. Of course, it was NOT left out in this initial essay, Dr Nerlick did put the link in, it was linked with a hot link in the final part of the essay. I was glad to see it there. I wonder who mentioned Mary’s site to Dr Nerlich for inclusion in this essay?
RE: “Another site that hasn’t been mentioned here and is unfortunately being left out in this discussion is…” [Corrected now, above]
Mary’s site was started in collaboration with Dan Bloom, who contacted her 18 months ago about her own climate novel and asked if he could review the book. She sent him a copy and he read it and loved it. That is how they met. Until then, Mary had never heard of the term cli fi and did know it was a new genre. After email chats back and forth, and with strong encouragement from Dan, who had a cli fi blog but didn’t know anything about setting up a readable blogsite since he cannot type very wll and has zero archival abilities, he suggested to Mary that she create a CLI FI website to archive such books, past and present, and with Mary’s well-developed IT skills and computer savvy, she set up CLI FI BOOKS and it has been a roaring success ever since. She is now branching out to include other kinds of environmental and even sci fi literature about climate issues, the environment, pollution, water isssus and ecology. Her site is something important to bookmark and make part of your research route.
Actually, not that these comments really belong here (I just wanted to let readers know of the site since it wasn’t mentioned), I need to set the record straight. I developed the site with my husband and wrote to Dan about the site being up only after I bought the domain and had already created it. I still have this email dated August 16 (about a week after I’d bought the domain). It has been an independent work effort, but of course not without learning more about the genre from Dan as well as other authors, students, scientists, media, etc.
Please contact me at info@clifibooks.com if you want to learn more about the site. I don’t want to mire down this wholly informative article with this sidetracked back-and-forth.
I read the Wind Up Girl a while back (more to do with ethics of gebetically modifying species, humans), and to be honest, enjoyed Avatar on the big screen despite trite green cliches (sucks on TV) and had an enjoyable romp with ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ and climate change didn’t cross my mind with the latter
Cli-fi will either tell an interesting sci-fi story, and sell, or it will be preachy and won’t.. Impact on changing the public, either way, minimal? do you remember books and films like Thors Hammer, or Armageddon, Deep impact.. did the public lobby had for satellite detection system of asteroids..
or we had ‘virus porn’ books and films.. starring Ebola a decade or so ago… the Dustin Hoffman was quite good (quite topical this week) was the pubic awareness raised a d action demanded?
fun stories, changing public behaviour, is just dreaming?
do people think this sort of subliminal nudging really works.. it smacks at desperate attempts of communications, without understanding at all why climate comms fail. Also very patronizing to the public, who can spot being preached at at a 200 paces, – following decade worth of marketing of every product or political fancy.
I think you have a point there. I know quite a few people who read and enjoy the books you mention but don’t go on to engage in deep thinking or acting on climate change. However, over time, a wave of such books may contribute to subtly shifting public perception, popular stereotypes etc. I am not sure, one will have to see and evaluate all this properly I suppose.
I think books / films reflect societies pre-conceptions, not leading, but following the themes of the day. then fashion moves on..
So if cli-fi takes off that would be an indicator of a shift in societies’ pre-conceptions/preoccupations perhaps. But of course there are feedbacks I suppose…
I was thinking about this some more and looked at a lecture (which I gave in the context of biotechnology rather than climate change a long time ago, around 2003) I gave some years ago where I claimed (and I think one can substantiate this claim at least in some instances that: Contrary to what one might expect, popular culture (including literature) does not (always) follow and reflect science, it leads and anticipates. Popular culture talks about space-rockets before there are space-rockets [good] – and clones before there are clones [bad]. So when science does these things for real, their image has already been formed – for good or ill.Before scientists do anything there is often a ready made public perception of how good or how bad it is going to be, derived from this social, literary and cultural precognition. A Nature editorial echoes (unintentially, as the lecture was not published) what I said in the lecture “Science fiction feeds on science. It also anticipates it. For good or ill, it articulates possibilities and fears: the notion of the super-weapon was commonplace in science fiction long before the Manhattan Project, and no debate about genetic technology seems complete without an appearance by Victor Frankenstein and his creature.” (Nature editorial 5 July, 2007). And see also: “…science fiction is not necessarily different from the technologies and the sciences it narrativizes, and in fact it creates the conditions for their possibility” (Thacker, The Science Fiction of Technoscience, 2001) Anyway, don’t know how that applies to climate change/science/fiction…
A series of books missing form the list is David Brin’s, Uplift wars.. deeply environmental and very successful, read them years ago..
Alien Species up lift other to intelligence, and protect planets environments for future uplifts.. Humans called a wolfling species, because they reached space without any patron’s or being uplifted.. dameged Erath ecology, etc. having to hide human caused extinctions of animals that could be uplifted in the future Orang-utans, whales)..
I enjoyed those books immensely, yet ended up up in a comment ‘fight’ with the David Brin at Collide a Scape, (Keith Kloor),years later, as he thinks there are evil climate deniers at work..
Brin wrote this article about climate deniers.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/02/11/836306/-Distinguishing-Climate-Deniers-From-Skeptics#
and Keith Kloor wrote a blog post, that Brin responded to, judith Curry, Tim Lambert (Delroid) Tom Fuller, Bart and other climate regulars in the comments,in on..
http://web.archive.org/web/20100822123711/http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/07/01/the-good-the-bad-the-ugly
great fiction, impact on the public ref climate change/environment?
‘may over time influence’, shows how desperately climate comm’s is failing, to having to even think this string to a bow, is needed/useful
yes. writers – tend to feed on what is in popular culture at the the time, and expand, explore and create fiction… I remember lots of ice age fiction, nuclear war fiction – Z for Zachariah, anybody and ‘On the Beach’
@Barry Woods, good points, and yes the key is climate communications, what works and what doesn’t work. Mark Trexler has a good website on this and there are a variety of academics in the UK, the USA and Australia (and other countries as well) debating the issue of what works and what doesn’t in terms of communicating the problem of just how tp influence and impact the public. Can novels do the trick? In some ways, yes. In other ways, no; novels are just entertainment and escape fiction marketing. Even a novel like ON THE BEACH in 1957 had limited impact at first and it is debatable if even over time it had much of an impact, same with UNCLE TOM’s CABIN in 1982. But all we can do, those of us who value the power of literature, if it has any power at all, is to hope that cli fi novels and cli fi movies might be able to add something to the debate and to public awareness of the issues at a gut level. and with the nudge of a moral imperative. However, it could be that novels and movies have no power in this distracted noisy culture of ours, with 500 tv channels and even more intent distractions, so maybe, Barry, there is no hope. I want to to hang on to hope and that is why i created the cli fi genre and the cli fi terms because words have power, too. But i agree with you too, and maybe it won’t be the Rapture that ushers in the Climapocalyse but what I now call The Rupture, perhaps in 300 to 1000 years when all hell breaks loose due to unspeakable impact events from AGW and so be it. In that sense, maybe cli fi novels and movies could help future generations prepare, prepare, both mentally and spiritually, for the End Times. When the human species disappears from the Earth, with massive die offs of say 25 billion billion, and all that remain are 200,000 desperate souls eking out a subsistence living in northern climes, Alaska and Canada and Russia and China (and Antartctica too) serving as what James Lovelock has famously called “breeding pairs in the Arctic” — human breeding pairs to keep those 200,00o souls in some kind of DNA march. So cli fi might have two futures: to try to stem and stop the Climapocalyse from coming — highly unlikely a mere book or movie can do that — as Margaret Atwood herself has also said — or the second future might be to help our descendants prepare for The Long Emergcy, as James Howard Kuntlser calls it, of the Great Interruption, as others have called it, or the RUPTURE, as I call it. One can hope, yes. but Barry, you are most likely right: with a divided political sphere now of climate denialists funded by the Oil people fighting against climate activist, maybe there is no hope at all and that leaves me feeling, well, hopeless. Walter Benjamin said it well, maybe: “Hope is for the hopeless.” SIGH Your thoughts, Barry, and others here?
and by the way James Lovelock said he got rather carried away about predicting that future.. (ref breeding pairs)
Guardian:
“Given that Lovelock predicted in 2006 that by this century’s end “billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable”, this new laissez-faire attitude to our environmental fate smells and sounds like of a screeching handbrake turn.
Indeed, earlier this year he admitted to MSNBC in an interview reported around the world with somewhat mocking headlines along the lines of “Doom-monger recants”, that he had been “extrapolating too far” in reaching such a conclusion and had made a “mistake” in claiming to know with such certainty what will happen to the climate.”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jun/15/james-lovelock-interview-gaia-theory
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2012/jun/15/james-lovelock-fracking-greens-climate
“Today Dr Lovelock implied that he had over-stated the certainty of catastrophe at the time.
“There’s a lot of climate change deniers who are not just paid servants of the oil industry as they’re demonised as being – they’re sensible scientists,” he said.
“There’s no great certainty about what the future is going to be so legislation based on green pressure to say ‘in 2050 the temperature will be so much’ is not really very good science at all.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17988492
“But in an interview with msnbc.com, he admitted: ‘I made a mistake.’
He said: ‘The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing,’ he told ‘We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear cut, but it hasn’t happened.
‘The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world.
‘[The temperature] has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising – carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.’ – Lovelock 2012
Question, do you really belive in the big oil conspiracy, when the running joke among every single sceptic is, the Exxon cheque must be still in the post, when called a denialist’ by someone like yourself.. Perhaps as you know so much about it, you can remind them to send a cheque?
so please what does a ‘climate denialist’ actually deny? not the science as Amelia Sharman’s research has shown.
Barry that MSNBC interview was a mere set up to promote his new book and DR Lovelock never said AGW is not happeneing he merely said that the CLimapocalypse won’t happen in 2100 like he said earlier, he merely moved the goalposts back and said the shite will hit fan and the Rupture will begin in maybne 500 to 1000 year or even 3500 more years but he said it is coming and we need to be prepared. He never said AGW is not happening. That MSNBC interview was just hype for his book. And it sure made headlines and the climate denialsit camp ate it all up. You too , I see. SIGH…so if you are not interested in CLI FI what are you doing at this website blog? Are you just another troll from the WUWT camp? I see you guys all over the Web, DOT EARTH at the NYTIMES, too. What’s your reason for commenting here? Can explain.
Barry and Dan, you come to climate fiction from very different (and passionate) perspectives. Its great to hear about them. Now you both know each other and what each other stands up for. Both your comments are interesting and contribute to thinking about cli-fi. However, I would not like to see these comments turn into a rather polarised discussion though, which will end in frustration, I believe, for you both and the readers.
May I ask you again to define what a climate denialist is. As Anthony Watts does not deny AGW, that earth has warmed, CO2 is a GHG, CO2 has risen, man contributes, and etc,etc. You seem to believe in a an activists cliche of the man and sceptics (most are lukewarmers really, including Anthony).
you seem to misunderstand most sceptics.. as in they do not deny AGW either, and that goes for Anthony Watts, Jo Nova and Steve Mcintyre, key individuals identified in Amelia Shamans research..
I have been commenting civilly on this blog for years, and have been invited by Dr Warren Pearce to contribute an article, for you to come in and comment and call me a troll, I feel demonstrates the intolerance I have encountered amongst self identified ‘climate activists’, when encountering others with different opinions, opinions of which they just have a cliched view.
Additionally, the rUpture, has absolutely no scientific basis amongst established climate science, and would be embarrassing for UK climate scientists as would talk of 25 billion deaths, climapocalyspe,etc. Thus my comparison of talking about rUpture, ‘like’ an evangelisist taking about the rApture. (I read you very clearly and did not mix up the words)
Now I’m sure you could point to a few individuals that do deny climate change, equally I could point to Green and environmental activists that believe in all sorts of conspiracy theories, including illuminati and Chemtrails and are scared of catastrophic GW (person I have in mind is totally nice, a former green party spokesperson and parliamentary candidate, and my sister in law!) but they would be equally on the fringe, and not represent most environmentalist.. as the occasional fringe sceptic denies the earth has warmed.
There has been research that conduct of activists alienate public, whom they seek to influence:
http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/activists-have-image-problem-say-social.html
“The gist of these findings was replicated in another study with a sample of 140 US participants recruited online, and with the focus on an environmentalist rather than a feminist. This study also showed that participants were less inspired by the arguments of a more typical militant environmentalist, not just because of seeing him as having more negative stereotypical traits, but also because of not wanting to affiliate with him.”
perhaps you need to re-consider your approach?
Barry, can you refer me to Amelia Sherman’s research which shows that “climate denialists” don’t actually deny the science? i.e. the paper(s), posts on the Web, interview(s) from which you make that interpretation. Would have thought that denial of the science is largely what “climate denialists” do deny!
Do you really believe this?
“But i agree with you too, and maybe it won’t be the Rapture that ushers in the Climapocalyse but what I now call The Rupture, perhaps in 300 to 1000 years when all hell breaks loose due to unspeakable impact events from AGW and so be it.”
Because I could put you in touch with the Head of Climate Impacts at the UK Met Office….
and what is a ‘climate denialist’ be be very specific.
My thoughts? ….
do you really believe what you wrote above?, because I am certain that UK climate scientists do not…
do you not realise you come across like an anti-science irrational evangelist predicting the Rapture….
When do you think the human species is going to die of, and why? population is expected to peak by 2050, (~10billion) so where from science does this 25 billion come from…
Dan Bloom:
“When the human species disappears from the Earth, with massive die offs of say 25 billion billion, and all that remain are 200,000 desperate souls eking out a subsistence living in northern climes, Alaska and Canada and Russia and China (and Antartctica too) serving as what James Lovelock has famously called “breeding pairs in the Arctic” — human breeding pairs to keep those 200,00o souls in some kind of DNA march. So cli fi might have two futures: to try to stem and stop the Climapocalyse from coming “
Barry, read again. I did not say RAPTURE, I said Rupture. Read it again.
Thanks Dan
I can see now that the change of that one vowel totally alters the sense of your visions. So glad the massive deaths will be a result of Rupture, not Rapture. What a relief. Phew.
For a moment there I thought we were in trouble. (qv)
(and if you don’t know, yes I am a Brit and yes I do do irony)
Rupture is as meaningless (scientifically) as Rapture. Which is my point.
i did not misread you. I made a comparison
I think part of the problem is really that there is a strong denial about climate change, not just by those who flat-out don’t believe it’s happening but by those who do believe but are finding it hard to adjust lifestyles to try to mitigate it, whether because they don’t want to give up standards or because it’s not even practical to (i.e. someone lives in a rural community who needs to drive to work because there’s no public transportation or it’s too far to walk, bike). A lot of people I know who claim to be environmentalists live in huge houses, drive SUVs, and, yes, are in a state of denial.
Another problem is that we are no longer living in the days of Nevil Shute or Flannery O’Connor or Harriet Beecher Stowe; nowadays we have the internet and are connected so globally that the information about climate change is coming to us from every which way. It doesn’t take a futuristic novel to show us the effects of climate change. We can see it on the news today and every day. It is already devastating, and the illustrations are there, and they are frightening and saddening. The worst of worst life experiences are already happening around the world due to social injustice and environmental destruction, which ruins our place, our homes, our commons. I mean, I wrote a climate change novel between 2009-2012, and it had some pretty dismal and bleak descriptions and violent acts, yet I feel that my words weren’t as impacting as the pictures I see on the news.
That’s not to say that a novel or film about climate change can’t make a difference (I am hopeful too, and already have been very moved and inspired by the books I’ve been reading and the authors I’ve been talking with), but it’s just a different world where wake-up calls are there every single day and if we aren’t blind to them, we feel powerless. I so hope that literature and arts can do that one thing that other messaging may not be able to, and that is to illustrate where we’re heading in a way that everyone will stop, watch, listen, think, and change.
I also agree with you about a wave of books making a difference, and think that it might not take just one big well-promoted novel or film to prompt us forward and mark a new milestone in the history of humans doing 180s but that the continuous impact of the many novels and pieces of art with climate change themes that have been coming out for decades will together move us slowly toward a better understanding of what’s going on in the world, and be more like an alarm you have to quit hitting the snooze button on rather than a siren that makes you jump out of bed. I think this snooze analogy is already happening–though it is a combination of artistic effort and data working hand-in-hand.
One example of this is that T.V. series “Years of Living Dangerously,” which is technically non-fiction, but uses creative media in illustrating the already existent problems with climate change. I think it was the first episode that showed Reverend Catherine Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian climate scientists helping congregations of deniers begin to be able to reconcile their faith with science. That kind of work, to me, is just so extraordinary.
No one book is likely to drive public action on climate change like Uncle Tom’s Cabin did on slavery. Slavery was viscerally repugnant in a way climate change is not. But each climate change novel nudges public sentiment. Once that sentiment reaches a critical mass, then social and political leaders can harness it and drive it forward. It happened with the vote for women, desegregation, and environmentalism, and it’s currently happening for marriage equality.
Combating global warming will require systemic changes just as these other movements did. We’re not engaging in a mild form of denialism so much as instinctively and correctly realizing that individual efforts are not effective. Until everyone, including corporations, has an incentive to account for climate change, action at scale can’t occur. People need to feel that they are not going to be taken advantage of by free riders. They need a level playing field to reinforce that we are all making the same sacrifices. A carbon tax would create that level playing field. To get a carbon tax, we have to put leadership in place that can bring it about. That’s where the consciousness-raising comes in: when it comes time to vote. people will lean towards those who advocate this sort of systemic changes. Cli-fi novels help people imagine what might happen if we don’t make these changes.
Ray, well said. By the way, dear readers here, Ray has a cli fi novel of his own that is out now at Amazon and he runs a very good blog on climate issues and speaks his mind like he does here above. BRAVO, Raymond Welch. Well said!
@Barry Woods, just to make sure who you are and of course, all POV welcome in the comments section, but your ID on Twitter says you are
@BarryJWoods who opines often on ”Lukewarmist’ thoughts on the politics, policies, economics & science of Climate Change (Man Made) and are an occasional guest author @WattsUpWithThat which is a climate denialist blog run by Anthony Watts. What on Earth are you doing blogging at WUWT website. Again, freedom of speech all welcome here, but can you explain to everyone how just you mean by calling yourself a lukewarmist and why you follow Anthony Watts’ blogsite which is one of the most rightwing climate denialists blogs on the Earth and he is not even a scientist he is just a weather man. Can you explain your affiliation and why you don’t tell us earlier who you are. of course, i am sure you are a fine gentleman and all that, but you are really not interested in cli fi at all, tell the truth. Can do? I am all ears, gentleman to genlteman, and I am sure Mary Woodbury will be reading your response here too. DISH!
I have no “affiliation” LOL
I read his blog and have submitted an article or 2. Warren has suggested I submot an article here. Am I then “affiliate” with Nottingham
Your tone and rhetoric implies your see something that is not there..
I’ve also submitted an article to the Open University Narratives project, led by ‘leftwingers” That includes articles by George Marshall, of Rising Tide, Earth First rasinforedt foundation and Greenpeace fame.
As for telling “us” . I’ve been commenting here for for years! Do I have to give a biography to anybody knew that comes along. You seem to be implying that I have received “us” ( just you) in some way, and I would normally expect an apology for silly insinuations like that.
Can’t type straight when irritated
Excellent article, Brigitte, with a lot of informative links, many thanks, you certainly did a remarkable piece of research into something that is still very new and very much of a moving feast. I came across this genre only after I had written my latest novel (published in May), not realizing at all that my book could fall into that genre. Dan Bloom of course played a major part in revealing the genre to me, in all its forms and shapes (I interviewed him on my blog) and I’m both grateful to him and amazed by his dynamism!
The genre is obviously different from the usual science fiction fare that lately has sunk into high fantasy, something I’m personally not interested in. In a very real sense, cli-fi goes back to the roots of science fiction, as you so rightly point out – the French version, the famous “romans d’anticipation” that were the hallmark of Jules Verne’s work.
And now we have much stronger tools than Jules Verne (thanks to modern science) to better visualize the future, actually build up the most likely future, and if you’re a novelist, people that “brave new” world with characters like you and me, struggling to survive. And of course, a major aspect of that future is climate change – along with everything else that climate change brings along: the extinction of species, agricultural and food crises etc
Gregers Anderson of the University of Copenhagen has no doubt made the best effort so far in academia to define cli-fi and its major themes, my only criticism of his work (if it may be viewed as a critique, it really is more of a suggestion) being that to the 5 categories he has identified a sixth one should be added: books that do not go in one or the other direction (say last judgment vs. sphere) but actually contain elements of all 5 themes. In other words, a comprehensive category where all aspects are touched (if not wholly included).
The other aspect I’m uncomfortable with is the political one. True, emotional novels that are non-preachy (and good entertainment!) could make a difference and draw in more people to the cause of climate activists. Ideas have strength, they work through the news as you pointed out Brigitte, and work through all sorts of channels (movies, TV shows etc) as well as novels, short stories, poems etc. But I don’t like to see the literary quality of a book mixed up with its political effectiveness in terms of waking up climate change awareness. Literary quality needs to be separated from the climate change discussion. I hope that separation can be maintained because that is the only way the current interest in cli-fi can continue to grow. Cli-fi needs a focus on literary quality and that is something Dan Bloom sensed when he proposed his Nevils and other prizes for movies – brilliant move!
What is needed now is to better define what “literary quality” means in terms of cli-fi and I’m sure Brigitte that you have many suggestions to make in this regard!
How nice to hear from you Claude! And good to see that my old favourite Jules Verne gets a positive mention! (We should not forget that in Sans dessus dessous he sort of dabbled in cli-fi avant la lettre, at a bit of a stretch !). I agree that when art becomes preachy it will, in the end, turn people off, a boomerang effect recently explored in science communication. Art and literature should stick to what they do best: imagination and creativity (and exploration and extrapolation); if they don’t, they’ll loose credibility (and plausibility), I fear. To come back to Verne, his publisher’s motto for the Voyages Extraordinaires series was ‘éducation et récréation’ – but Verne managed somehow to combine the two without becoming preachy I believe.
Note to future reseachers: I just learned that RACHEL CARSON’s SILENT SPRING, 1962, started off with a cli fi fable, YES! the first chapter is NOT nonfiction — as the rest of the book is – but the first chapter is a cli fi short story published in 1962. Of course, she did not call it that, nor did the critics, but if you google SILENT SPRING CHAPTER ONE, you can read it. AMAZING!
I am not totally sure that one can call Carson’s fable a climate change story; rather an environmental threat story perhaps? Not sure. However, here is a bit more info on Silent Spring by me (more self-promotion) from a while back and a more recent blog post.
Thanks update. But that first chapter is a fiction piece, no? I didn’t know that.
oh yes it’s fiction
One point of clarification — not all cli fi novels are centered on the future. Two of the best — “Flight Behavior,” by Barbara Kingsolver and “A being Darkly Wise” by … well … me, take place in the present.
That made me smile, as my son tried to explain this to me yesterday… one lives and learns! He reads all these novels… I am slowly catching up…
These two books are why I always say that “cli-fi is not a subgenre of sci-fi”.
I’m always trying to explore others’ ideas though and recently heard from a sci-fi author about my first comment to this article that reinforced this idea. I have sort of come up with this draft of thought that goes further into this topic:
Climate fiction doesn’t have to be a subgenre of science fiction and should not be stated as such as a hard rule. Many works considered in the climate fiction genre do not fit into science fiction at all, so making the statement “cli-fi is a subgenre of sci-fi” is misleading. However, science fiction authors who write in the genre are free to categorize their works as cli-fi and as subgenres of science fiction. We just have to be careful of forcing a syllogism that states all cli-fi is a subgenre of sci-fi. This issue is controversial, however, since climate change is considered science, and science fiction deals with all science. So mine is just one opinion. I have, in the past, noted that science fiction deals with science that could be and climate fiction deals with science that is–both deal in speculations, however.
A friend of mine said this to me in passing and I wonder what others think about this: “If you are interested in Anticipatory science fiction there is an awful lot to choose from, but how about SF about anticipation? In that case you need the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. Short summary: psychologist develops model of human behavior that shows that his society is about to collapse and uses it to produce a plan to minimize the damage. The ethics of one man deciding/controlling the fate of billions gets discussed … in the third book. It is also interesting to note that a popular alternative term for Scifi is Speculative Fiction, which is pretty similar to Anticipatory Fiction.”
Thank you, Brigitte, for sparking this discussion through an insightful article. In “Don’t Even Think About It,” author George Marshall presents historical perspectives that reveal humans may be unable to face and meet subtle, relatively slow-to-develop threats like climate change. I agree with him due to my life experiences, e.g., as a former pro-cures biotech activist and through personal exposure to flash floods and wildfires near my home in Colorado Springs. The work of Psychologist Drew Westen at Emory U., I believe, also supports Mr. Marshall’s view. More recently, however, he contends in a five-member discussion on NY Times.com that cli-fi will cause readers who remain undecided re the causes of climate change to interpret Man’s role in causing it as fiction. I believe the reverse may be true…that clif-fi may be the only means of reaching minds otherwise closed or undecided to climate-related facts–through “suspension of disbelief” as associated with fiction. In fact, according to fascinating research by Dr. Westen, humans have a “universal” potential to rationalize unwanted or inconvenient truths to arrive at biased interpretations that conform with the ego, convenience, ambitions, or existing beliefs. In other words, our brains are certainly ‘wired’ to deny or distort unwanted facts [as Mr. Marshall suggests]. Considering the implications of climate change for future generations, nonetheless, it’s surely far more sensible to at least try to reach and inspire the public through fiction to reconsider its energy course through all possible means, including fiction, that simply to acknowledge our defeat at hands of human nature.
Many thanks for your thoughtful comment. It addresses a difficult issue… I said at the end of the post that more research is needed into how and in how far cli-fi might engage readers with climate change issues. It all depends on the readers, their backgrounds, situations, geopolitical locations, experiences (of weather etc), memory, values and so on. I agree with George Marshall, that in some cases climate fiction may reinforce disengagement rather than trigger engagement (and vice versa) as well as polarisation. However, as I tried to argue in my replies to some comments it might be that perceptions will shift together with a greater readership of cli-fi and related novels, but only if they don’t over-preach, if they manage to be alarming without being alarmist and so on, and in general only if they speak to our imagination in subtle ways. But we need audience studies etc. to actually say something useful about all this!
Hello, Brigitte! It sounds as if you’ve considered the problems of cli-fi considerably from an author’s POV, and you’re right. It’s crucial to not overly preach but rather let story shape the message. This is especially true of cli-fi, which concerns a subject that’s so socially polarized. An even more difficult fence to tightrope–since as Drew Westen says it’s “universal” for humans to rationalize reality, even novels, into biased interpretations–is your warning that cli-fi should strive to “alarm without being alarmist.” In my view, climate change at its root–whether it’s caused [or worsened] by fossil fuel usage–is not a matter of worldview opinion but rather one of cause and effect. Therefore, cli-fi [via the vastness of its scope, which encompasses the past, present, and future on a global scale] offers unique literary benefits as a genre. I suggest this because unlike sci-fi, which can involve human impact on wholly fictional issues, cli-fi explores our actions and their potential effects specifically regarding the environment and Earth…which most readers should intuitively sense could be relevant to their lives and concerns. Cli-fi may also offer an added benefit by allowing readers to glimpse how issues [like energy, global warming, and climate change] can be spun by special interests into battlefields of worldview debate when [as I believe] they’re actually factual matters of cause and effect. In this respect, cli-fi may serve as a means of lessening worldview mistrust and division. I hope so.
George Marshall is a career activist with no psychological training as far as I’m aware (his words – what was his degree?), before he took off to the Rainforests and Greenpeace
He has been repeating his layman’s view of psychology about climate denial for a decade, and it has failed.
Just Maybe, it is polarised, because activists like Marshall created Halls of Shame, and put their political opponents into them (Lomborg, Soon, Lindzen and Stott, being early entries) and demonised their opponents with fossil funded smears.. George and Mark Lynas created a who’s who of deniers in 2003, Marshall created a Hall of Shame at Rising Tide (a group he founded) in 2002. Now, a decade later, Mark Lynas has said that the Halls of Shame were shameful, and stepped down form the advisory board of the Campaign Against Climate Change .. (George is still there, so is there Hall of Shame)
If George could acknowledge his own role, in the polarisation of the debate, perhaps he could move on.. but for him to pretend that the phrase ‘denier’ is problematic (his video – ‘How to speak to a Climate Denier’ and offer solutions, without acknowledging his prominent active role in creating that polarisation is utterly disingenuous.. especially when he is on the record recently as saying he prefer to use ‘denier’ over sceptic, as it ‘works’…
George Marshall did a degree in sociology. Then spent the rest of his life as a activist.. Rainforest foundation,Greenpeace, Earth First, Rising Tide,Coin,etc Not a neutral observer of opponents motivations, nor the general pblics. He thinks public in denial, if they say to him. We just think you are wrong. Look says George… Denial.. LOL
UK UPDATE: Hollywood’s Climate-Themed Movies Getting Own Awards Show dubbed “The Cliffies” http://shar.es/1nD3ZJ
[…] this conversation a colleague reminded us that anticipation is not the same as prediction (see also here). This made me think about the meanings of these words and in order to get to grips with them I […]
Professor Nerdich! A new academic links site on cli fi is up now at cli-fi.net administered by me. take a look and will add your blog link later on. — cheers, Danny
Thanks for making me aware of this new resource!
Hi Brigitte: I only just now found your post, so I thought I’d share that I’m currently teaching an English Literature class at Temple University on Cli-Fi. We have a course blog: http://sites.temple.edu/clifi. My aim was to situate the genre within larger discussions about science fiction’s anticipatory bent and the impact of apocalyptic fictions, so really only the second half of the course is “Cli-Fi” per se. To date my students have been posting reviews of each book in addition to news articles, etc. A step into the “sustained scholarly attention” that you mention has to date been scant.
Fantastic. I’ll have a look asap and might tweet it out if you don’t mind!
Just a quick note in response to this six-month-old thread: in a sense I think the reviews my students are posting begin to provide a good study of how a reading public (an audience, as you say) may respond to cli-fi works. All of my students are eager readers, but not all Literature majors, and chose to take a course in “Popular Fiction” — but they didn’t know it would be a class on cli-fi due to the fact that there are multiple sections of that course at our large university taught by different teachers, etc. Thus they come close, I’d argue, to approximating a “reading public” apart from the fact that they’re reading is enforced by what I’ve assigned. To date their reviews have been phenomenal and really illuminating, so I’m thrilled with how it’s going and eager to get into our “cli-fi proper” second half of the course.
Oh yes, and please do Tweet or post or spread far and wide! Thank you.
Dear Brigitte Nerlich, thanks for this article and for the quotes from my french blog !
Avec plaisir!