Imagining Fates And Solutions

Climate fiction is imagining a future beyond the climate crisis

Bernadette McBride, October 11, 2019 (The Conversation via Quartz)

“,,,[With global emissions reaching record levels, the past four years the four hottest on record, coral reefs dying, and sea levels rising, we] are headed towards a future that is hard to contemplate…[But] a literary phenomenon has grown over the past decade or two which seeks to help us imagine the impacts of climate change…[Cli-Fi deals with climate science and seeks] to engage the reader in a way that the statistics of scientists cannot…[It is probably best known for novels] set in the future, depicting a world where advanced climate change has wreaked irreversible damage upon our planet…[Examples are Oryx and Crake (2003), The Water Knife (2015), the film The Day After Tomorrow (2004), Tentacle (2015), and the] short film White (2011)…

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…[But we must] at least try to imagine a fairer world for all, rather than only visions of doom…[The rarer utopian form of cli-fi imagines] future worlds where humanity has responded to climate change in a more timely and resourceful manner…[Novels like The Dispossessed (1974), the Science in the Capital trilogy, and New York 2140 (2017)] conjure up futures where human and non-human lives have been adapted, where ways of living have been reimagined in the face of environmental disaster. Scientists, and policy makers—and indeed the public—can look to these works as a source of hope and inspiration…” click here for more

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