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Chapter 8 - Climate Fictions: Future-Making Technologies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 August 2021

By
Matt Bell
Edited by
Jeffrey Cohen  and
Stephanie Foote
Jeffrey Cohen
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
Stephanie Foote
Affiliation:
West Virginia University
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Summary

Climate fiction (or cli-fi) is a still-emerging but broad and diverse category of fiction that addresses the challenges of climate change and its impacts on human and nonhuman life, in the present and in the future, on Earth and in more fantastical settings. This chapter offers an inclusive definition of this increasingly urgent genre, aiming to capture what's currently being published and to suggest other possibilities available to future cli-fi writers. Additionally, it sets out to expand the history of the genre, drawing on the work of Adam Trexler and Adeline Johns-Putra before offering a taxonomy of cli-fi's various contemporary forms, with examples from literary fiction, hard and soft sci-fi, eco-fabulism, afrofuturism, solarpunk, indigenous futurism, uncivilized writing, and other related subgenres

Keywords

climate fictioneco-fabulismafrofuturismafricanfuturismsolarpunkclimate changeindigenous futurismuncivilized writingscience fictionsci-fi
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Environmental Humanities , pp. 100 - 113
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Adams, John Joseph and Lavalle, Victor, editors, A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers (New York: One World, 2019).Google Scholar
Anders, Charlie Jane, The City in the Middle of the Night (New York: Tor Books, 2019).Google Scholar
Ballard, J.G., The Drowned World, 50th anniversary edition (New York: Liveright, 2012).Google Scholar
Burke, Sue, Semiosis (New York: Tor Books, 2019).Google Scholar
Ghosh, Amitav, The Hungry Tide, reprint edition (New York: Mariner Books, 2006).Google Scholar
Hamid, Mohsin, Exit West, reprint edition (New York: Riverhead, 2018).Google Scholar
Le Guin, Ursula K., The Word for World Is Forest, second edition (New York: Tor Books, 2010).Google Scholar
Okorafor, Nnedi, Who Fears Death? (New York: DAW, 2010).Google Scholar
Stalcup, Erin, Every Living Species (Boston: Gold Wake Press Collective, 2017).Google Scholar
Watkins, Claire Vaye, Gold Fame Citrus, reprint edition (New York: Riverhead Books, 2016).Google Scholar
Wray, John, Lowboy (New York: Picador, 2010).Google Scholar
Yuknavitch, Lidia, The Book of Joan (New York: Harper, 2017).Google Scholar

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