Cli-fi: Climate change, global warming and the birth of a new genre
Global warming and climate change are topics being widely spoken about today and with its effects clearly evident on the planet. But did you know that authors in the past have written fictionalised accounts of the effects of climate change on humans which has become a whole new genre since the turn of the millenium? Read on to know more about Cli-Fi.
Contrary to popular belief, climate change isn’t a new-ish topic of discussion. It’s being spoken about for centuries now, yet it’s something the world at large knows very little about. Scientists have been studying the greenhouse effect since the early 19th century. The term and the genre, Climate Fiction or Cli-Fi was officially coined in the late 2000s. The literary movement called Cli-Fi (like Sci-Fi) is any fictional work written about the effects of climate change and global warming. The unfortunate part, the reality in the fiction in today’s day and age.
Svante Arrheniussome, a Swedish chemist deduced in 1896 that man-made innovations and technology were contributing to the warming of the planet. Global warming was coined by oceanographer Wallace Smith Broecker in 1975. Writers have had their own takes on what might ultimately happen to our planet due to global warming alongside the real conversations that have been happening about how to curtail the effects on the planet and how one can leave a better tomorrow for posterity.
Some books that explore the concept of Cli-Fi:
Jules Verne’s 1889 novel The Purchase of the North Pole imagines climate change due to tilting of Earth’s axis. British author J. G. Ballard’s dystopian works too deal with climate-related natural disasters like hurricane-force winds, melted ice caps and rising sea levels, droughts due to disruption of the precipitation cycle. State of Fear written by Michael Crichton in 2004 is a techno-thriller with a scientific opinion on climate change. That’s not all, Margaret Atwood too has explored the subject in her dystopian trilogy that comprises titles namely, 2003’s Oryx and Crake, 2009’s The Year of the Flood and 2013’s MaddAddam.