Thursday, December 31, 2015

Brian Merchant and Claire Evans at Vice Motherboard give a shout out to cli-fi in Year End Essay on "what the future fiction created in and released in 2015 said about humans today (LINK)

http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/what-the-future-fiction-of-2015-said-about-humans-today

We’re Feeling the Heat of Climate Change

In what is all but certain to be the hottest year ever recorded, the multiplexes ignored climate change—not a single major film put the planet’s biggest ecological crisis in its sights. But other media came through. In fact, “the biggest entertainment event of the year” (at least until Star Wars) imagines a future wracked by global warming—and forces the audience to play through it. The new Call of Duty game has players battling extreme weather as much as the terrorists.

Meanwhile, Paolo Bacigalupi’s novel ''TheWater Knife'' was a grimy, near-future noir about the intense, drought-struck, climate changed West. And Gold Fame Citrus another realist work of cli-fi also honed in on the epic drought scenario, focusing on the soon-to-be ruined Los Angeles. All of which could help us make sense of the continued effort to combat the phenomenon, which culminated in a crucial international conference in Paris this year.

Image: Descender, Image Comics

​What the Future Fiction of 2015 Said About Humans Today

Written by Brian Merchant



'We told a lot of stories about the future in 2015. More than usual, maybe. Big budget blockbusters, hefty, idea-rich novels, and epic, dystopian video games—there was complex, stirring speculative fiction dripping from every media faucet we’ve got. And, as per usual, it spoke volumes about our anxieties and aspirations right now.

[Brian has already taken a look at the top sci-fi films of the year, and below, he discusses those films with fiction co-editor Claire Evans, as well as what they saw in the wild, excellent stories we published this year on Terraform.]

http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/what-the-future-fiction-of-2015-said-about-humans-today

No comments: