Cli-fi: Too Close To Home
The world is burning. The world is drying up. The seas are rising. Famine is coming. Let’s read about it.
A growing sub-trend in the dystopian genre is cli-fi. Imaginings of futures with drought, plague, mass migration, rising sea levels, and sometimes just unspecified uninhabitable environments.
Rather than the sandbox we usually play in where dystopias are presented as societal extremes, these texts feel more prescient. A glimpse not of another world, but of the scenery on the road ahead. Sometimes the authors appear to be shouting a warning through art. Other times it feels like a nihilistic expression, resigned to the relentlessness of it all.
So personally, with climate anxiety a big part of the way I view the world, why would I still want to read books like this? I think the answer has two parts. Firstly, art can help us access our feelings about a thing. By reading about climate catastrophes perhaps we can process the complexity of the topic and the inevitable impact it will have on our lives. Secondly, like the Ghost of Christmas Future in Dickens, the image might shock me into some action. We are currently like the proverbial frogs in the water that’s slowly heating up, not realising (or acknowledging) that it’s boiling. Unlike the frog, we have the power to act, if we choose.
Three recent cli-fi favourites:
The High House - Jessie Greengrass
'Crisis slid from distant threat to imminent probability and we tuned it out like static.'
^ That’s a way better way to say what I just wrote re: the frog. Lol.
As the blurb says, “The High House explores how we get used to change that once seemed unthinkable”. Caro has a holiday home that has been turned into an ark for when the time comes. And the time, it’s a coming. If you’ve ever harboured a survivalist fantasy about how you’d be fine if some sort of disaster befell you, then this novel will quickly dispel you of that notion. Big action scenes are paired with moving descriptions of the nature that is so much at risk.
The Parable of the Sower - Octavia E. Butler
Set in a post-climate ravaged society, this classic follows Laura Olimina as she navigates an unwelcoming landscape while hiding a secret gift. The depiction of the fight for food, resources and safety makes you feel like you’ve lived the experience by the end of it. The undertones of corporate feudalism also made me shudder. Who is most to gain from the climate crises? The megacorps of course.
Under The Blue - Oana Aristede
Ecofiction at its finest, Aristede weaves a gripping tale around the themes of environmental destruction, pandemics and AI. This novel was published before ChatGPT was a feature of every news story, but so deftly articulates the push and pull between human and machine, you’d think the author a time traveller too.
The title refers to the relentless heat of this particular climate catastrophe, and the writing so evocative I felt I had to take off a jumper while reading it in winter This book deserves a lot of attention. Though provoking without ever wandering into the realm of preachy, you can tell Aristede is someone who cares a lot about the planet.
What do you think about cli-fi or ecofiction? Is it something you read and why? Let me know!
