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CONCLUSION

The end of the last decade, which saw the publication of McEwan’s Solar (2009),31 the performance of Waters’s The Contingency Plan (2010),92 and the 10:10 initiative by the Guardian newspaper (2010), paved the way in this decade for climate change to emerge as an important and urgent topic for writers, playwrights, and poets. Literary scholars have responded with an increase in the number of analyses of such literary texts. These ecocritical analyses are partly responsible for an emerging canon of climate change fiction. In addition, some of these ecocritical studies of climate change literature suggest that it plays a role in teaching us how to live with climate change, while others have attempted to maintain an objective stance by teasing out the complex representational challenges that climate change poses. The problem of complexity underpins the burgeoning field of climate change criticism, which is centered on the idea that climate change is a slippery concept posing not just a literary but an existentialist challenge. However, this review of climate change fiction, drama, and poetry suggests that literature is concerned not just with climate change’s representational and existentialist challenges but with its emotional and psychological dilemmas. Climate change fiction and drama, with their preoccupations with parenthood, and climate change poetry, with its dominant tone of lament, all circulate around the problem of the legacy of environmental degradation that humans today are handing on to species of tomorrow— human and nonhuman. It is this emotional concern with the future and its increasing prevalence in climate change literature that deserves closer scrutiny in literary studies as it continues its engagement with the global crisis of climate change.

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ECOHISTORICISM

Two opposing tendencies may also be discerned in ecocritical studies of the representation of climate in historical texts, a brand of ecocritical scholarship that has become more common since we identified it in 2011 as a fruitful area of investigation into literature and climate change (Ref 1, p. 195).

 Scholars have followed Wood’s 2008 suggestion for developing an ‘ecohistoricism’ 177 with a call for greater interdisciplinary collaboration between ecocritics and environmental historians.165 ‘Ecohistoricist’ studies of climate change are concerned with the literary depiction of climate through history.

They fall into the two broad camps discernible in contemporary studies of climate change literature—what could generally be called the prescriptive and the descriptive. There are, first, readings of historical literary texts as potentially educative documents for us living in a time of climate change. For example, Bartels178 and Beckett179 suggest that the ideas of William Morris and James Joyce respectively could provide modern readers with clues as to how to live with and understand climate change.

 In contrast, there are investigations of texts centered on the way they help reveal the cultural context of key moments in climate history. Kwiatkowska’s survey of medieval witchcraft literature,180 along with Jonsson’s examination of 18th-century naturalist Pers Kalm’s travel journal,181 shed light on milestones in the early modern understanding of climate as a global phenomenon.

 Meanwhile, Carroll’s 182 and Johns-Putra’s 183 studies of early 19th-century British literature show how texts written at the time of the Arctic ice-melt of 1818 were part of broader debates about the extent to which humans could affect climate.

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THE STATE OF PLAY IN 2011

In 2011, we set out to show that climate change had begun to register in the cultural imagination. Because of the paucity of climate change drama and poetry at the point, we focused on fiction. We took account of early science fiction that considered climatic concerns generally. We then charted climate change fiction from the first climate change novel in the 1970s through the 1980s and 1990s, mainly in science fiction.

We also noted that climate change appeared as a theme in some political thrillers in the 1990s and first decade of this century. We demonstrated a recent emergence of climate changerelated novels by ‘serious’ or ‘literary’ authors, who tend to be published by well-known presses and receive mainstream media attention.

In discussing literary studies or literary criticism, as distinct from literature per se, we dealt with recent engagements with climate change in literary or critical theory. We noted, in contrast, an apparent lack of such interest in those branches of literary studies that deal more directly with literary texts and less with literary concepts.

We suggested that it was the time when ecocriticism took seriously the relationship between climate change and literature as a worthwhile topic of study, whether historical or contemporary. We proposed that a historically oriented ecocriticism, what one might call an ecohistoricism, could contribute much to such a venture.

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In the last 5 years, climate change has emerged as a dominant theme in literature and, correspondingly, in literary studies. Its popularity in fiction has given rise to the term cli-fi, or climate change fiction, and speculation that this constitutes a distinctive literary genre. In theater, the appearance of several big-name productions from 2009 to 2011 has inspired an increase in climate change plays. There has been a growing trend, too, of climate change poetry, thanks to the rise of ecopoetry (poetry that exhibits ecological awareness and engages with the world’s current state of environmental degradation) and the launch of some key climate change poetry initiatives in the media. This prevalence of climate change literature has brought about a greater engagement with climate change in literary studies, notably the environmentally oriented branch of literary studies called ecocriticism. The increasing number of ecocritical analyses of climate change literature, particularly novels, is helping to shape a canon of climate change fiction. In a separate development, there has been greater interest in the phenomenon of climate change in literary or critical theory (the branch of literary studies concerned with literary concepts and philosophies rather than with literary texts). This development—centered on the study of climate change as a philosophical or existentialist problem—is sometimes termed climate change criticism or critical climate change.

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CLIMATE CHANGE IN LITERATURE

Fiction

The novel is a ubiquitous literary form and the dominant one of our age. It should come as no surprise, then, that climate change fiction far outstrips poetic and dramatic engagements with climate change. Indeed, climate change fiction has been labeled cli-fi and identified as a genre of fiction in its own right.2–4 However, in considering cli-fi as genre, one must consider the slippery character of literature—which is, after all, a human endeavor subject to human foibles—and thus one must remember that genre is fluid in nature. Many texts straddle generic boundaries, and genres themselves evolve over time. It is probably more accurate to identify climate change as a topic found in many genres, for example, science fiction, dystopia (themselves two genres given to much cross-fertilization), fantasy, thriller, even romance, as well as fiction that is not easily identifiable with a given genre, for example, the social or psychological character studies favored by mainstream authors such as Maggie Gee, Barbara Kingsolver, and Ian McEwan.

In other words, climate change fiction names an important new category of contemporary literature and a remarkable recent literary and publishing phenomenon, although it is not necessarily a genre. Just how prevalent is the phenomenon of climate change fiction? Trexler puts the figure at 150 or more.5 However, this includes what he terms the ‘considerable archive of climate change fiction’ (Ref 5, p. 8), that is, novels that are about climatic change phenomena generally. I would prefer to define climate change fiction as fiction concerned with anthropogenic climate change or global warming as we now understand it; with such a definition, the number may, of course, be lower but this is countered by the fact that it is still growing, and has grown since Trexler made his estimate.


Indeed, Trexler and I implicitly assumed such a definition in 2011 when we identified Arthur Herzog’s Heat (1977)6 as the first climate change novel and the point at which ‘the history of climate change fiction begins in earnest’ (Ref 1, p. 187). With this as a starting point, we identified about 30 novels, most notably, science fiction such as George Turner’s The Sea and the Summer (1987),7 Kim Stanley Robinson’s ‘Science in the Capital’ trilogy (2004, 2005, 2007)8–10 and Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl (2011),11 with lesser known texts including Robert Silverberg’s Hot Sky at Midnight (1994),12 Bruce Sterling’s Heavy Weather (1994),13 and Norman Spinrad’s Greenhouse Summer (1999).14 We also noted other genre fiction such as thrillers Portent (1993) by James Herbert,15 State of Fear (2004) by Michael Crichton,16 Arctic Drift (2008) by Clive Cussler,17 and Ultimatum (2009) by Matthew Glass.18 We then identified an emerging trend of what might be called highbrow or literary climate change fiction, starting with Gee’s The Ice People (1998)19 and The Flood (2004),20 Doris Lessing’s Mara and Dann (1999)21 and The Story of General Dann and Mara’s Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog (2005),22 and T. C. Boyle’s A Friend of the Earth (2000),23 and becoming a noticeable phenomenon in this century with Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2003)24 and The Year of the Flood (2009),25 Will Self’s The Book of Dave (2006),26 Sarah Hall’s The Carhullan Army (2007),27 Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods (2007),28 and John Wray’s Lowboy (2009).29

We also considered the attention being paid to climatic concerns in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006),30 although I would note here that the book never names the cause of its climate catastrophe and therefore does not deal with anthropogenic climate change per se: one could label it a climate change novel in effect if not in intent.

Our review culminated with the then recent publication of Ian McEwan’s Solar (2010).31 In this updated review, I will focus on mainstream fiction—novels that have been well received in critical and/or popular terms—rather than enumerate more obscure instances and vanity publications. This is because of the sheer number of climate change novels now extant. Indeed, this is common practice in literary studies, which cannot account for the vast majority of novels constantly published worldwide and must perform some kind of selection on the basis of value, whether that value is perceived to be intrinsic (due to literary merit) or extrinsic (due to sociocultural influence). What is most striking in any discussion of climate change fiction is the considerable increase over the past 5 years.


This may have to do with the publicity that surrounded the appearance of McEwan’s novel as one of the best known authors thus far to attempt climate change fiction.32–34 Since then, there have appeared about 20 or so climate change novels that have gained significant critical and public attention. Many of these may be categorized as dystopian (broadly definable as the depiction of a negative or undesirable future, as opposed to the utopian depiction of positive and desirable futures) or postapocalyptic (broadly definable as the depiction of a future created by an apocalyptic event). Obviously, there are overlaps between the two, as many postapocalyptic futures are also negative and therefore dystopian, but the postapocalyptic tends to focus on the immediate effect of catastrophe. Recent dystopian and/or postapocalyptic climate change narratives include:




James Miller’s Sunshine State (2010),35 Robert Edric’s Salvage (2010),36 Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars (2012),37 Nathanial Rich’s Odds against Tomorrow (2013),38 Jane Rawson’s A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists (2013),39 and Karl Taro Greenfeld’s The Subprimes (2015).40 In such grim futuristic scenarios, climate refugeeism becomes an obvious theme. This is the case in Things We Didn’t See Coming (2009) by Steven Amsterdam,41 Lighthouse Island (2013) by Paulette Jiles,42 The Swan Book (2013) by Alexis Wright,43 Shackleton’s Man Goes South (2013) by Tony White,44 California (2014) by Edan Lepucki,45 and On Such a Full Sea (2014) by Chang-Rae Lee.46 Mention must be made too of Atwood’s MaddAdam (2013),47 the muchawaited final installment in a dystopian series that includes Oryx and Crake24 and The Year of the Flood25 and is now commonly known as the MaddAdam trilogy, and The Collapse of Western Civilisation (2014), a scientifically accurate work of science fiction by historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.48


Other notable science fiction novels set in future climate-changed worlds include The Peripheral (2014) by steampunk writer William Gibson49 and follow-up novels by Bacigalupi.50,51 Again, there is overlap between science fiction, dystopia and the postapocalyptic, with the emphasis in science fiction being on an imaginary but internally consistent world characterized by its scientific and technological processes. A small number of recent climate change novels are set in the present: such texts include J. M. Ledgard’s Submergence (2011)52 and Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior (2012).53 Ledgard’s work could be characterized as postmodern

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CLIMATE CHANGE IN LITERARY STUDIES ]


Ecocriticism and the Canon of Climate Change Literature The relative lack of engagement with climate change literature in the field of ecocriticism that was previously noted (Ref 1, p. 189) is no longer the case. Analyses of literature, especially fiction, in the context of climate change have proliferated. Climate change now appears as a major strand in the regular meetings of ecocritical scholarly societies, such as the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) in the United States, the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment in the UK and Ireland (ASLE-UKI), and the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and Environment (EASLCE). In the section that follows, I discuss ecocritical analyses of climate change novels, setting out their arguments and themes. As this discussion shows, although ecocritical studies of climate change literature serve a primarily analytical function, they also have a selective effect. As I have already indicated, judgments are inevitably made in literary studies about which texts bear closer scrutiny and analysis and, in this way, literary corpuses—or what are called canons in literary studies—are created. For better or worse, a canon of climate change literature, particularly climate change fiction, is now developing, with the novels of Gee, Kingsolver, McCarthy, McEwan, and Robinson emerging as key texts. Trexler’s Anthropocene Fictions is the first book-length study of climate change fiction.5 It surveys a large number of climate change novels and aims to investigate their over-riding themes; even so, it necessarily restricts itself to close analysis of a select number of texts, including Crichton’s State of Fear, 16 McEwan’s Solar, 31 Glass’s Ultimatum, 18 Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl, 11 Herzog’s Heat, 2 Robinson’s trilogy,8–10 Turner’s The Sea and the Summer, 7 Self’s The Book of Dave, 26 and Gee’s The Flood. 20 Trexler argues that climate change has transformed our day-to-day experiences; in order adequately to represent these transformations, the contemporary novel has had to adapt existing formal conventions. Drawing on the deconstructive insights of Clark (detailed below), Trexler calls, too, for a new way of critiquing such novels, namely, an


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incorporation of Science and Technology Studies (STS) into ecocriticism and the development of what he labels ‘economic criticism,’ a criticism that draws on the many ‘senses of eco’ and attends to the myriad dimensions of modern life (Ref 5, p. 26). Other studies also consider climate change fiction as a reflection of the contemporary response to climate change; for example, Borm offers a relatively straightforward account of McEwan’s Solar31 as a satire of the different sides of the climate change debate.128 However, most scholars, like Trexler, propose that contemporary understandings of climate change, far from being simply about debate, comprise a complex and peculiarly modern world-view. Squire129 and Stark,130 for instance, read McCarthy’s The Road30 as expressing an anxiety with, respectively, death and vision, anxieties that both argue are endemic to society in a time of climate change.


An important trend in this regard is the suggestion by several studies that contemporary society’s attitude to climate change is part of the increasingly dominant concept of risk. In this, they follow Beck’s identification131 of modern society as a ‘risk society’ (that is, as highly attuned to and organized in its potential response to the hazards and insecurities that might affect the individual) and Heise’s influential application132 of Beck’s theory to literary criticism; most notably, Heise suggests that the concept of risk contributes to an increasingly global rather than local view of place.




Thus, Mayer reads Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior53 and Robinson’s trilogy8–10 as ‘risk narratives,’ whose focus is on anticipating the risks of climate change rather than on its catastrophic aftermath.133 Goodbody further proposes that novels such as Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour53 and Trojanow’s EisTau59 shed light on public attitudes to climate change risk and skepticism.134 Mehnert suggests that Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming41 is an example of a ‘riskscape,’ that is, a view refracted through the lens of risk.135 Elsewhere, Mehnert reads Fleck’s Maeva!62 as reflecting the kind of ‘ecocosmopolitan’ worldview theorized by Heise.136 Some studies suggest that, in depicting contemporary social and cultural responses to climate change, climate change fiction brings important— and sometimes neglected—perspectives to the fore. Markley argues that Robinson’s trilogy8–10 ‘asks us to take seriously the potential of science … to foster new, expansive visions of humankind’s coimplication in the natural world.’ 137


In addition, there are studies that propose that some climate change novels contribute to a fuller understanding of climate change by highlighting often marginalized points of view, such as postcolonial (Maxwell)138 and gendered (JohnsPutra)139 perspectives. Not all analyses of climate change fiction are positive in their evaluations. Some posit that a number of climate change novels ultimately preserve the political status quo that has so far proved ineffective in dealing with climate change. Hamming140 and Kilgore,141 while applauding Robinson’s trilogy for confronting issues of race and gender, suggest that the novels could go further in challenging the bias in contemporary climate change scenarios toward white, male privilege.


Garrard makes a much stronger critique of Solar, 31 arguing that McEwan implicitly defends the very Enlightenment values he should be satirizing, since they have led to humans’ environmentally destructive habits.142 Notably, this critique is a follow-up to Garrard’s initially positive, prepublication review of Solar, a novel that he anticipated as a chance to explore whether or not humans have evolved sufficiently to do something about climate change.143 The idea that the contemporary novel, in engaging with climate change, has itself undergone profound formal and generic innovation is a theme not just in Trexler’s analysis but in several other studies that deal with the generic experiments that occur in climate fiction. Clarke’s analysis of J. G. Ballard’s The Drowned World144 and The Crystal World145 as fore-runners of climate change fiction, and as influential in their distinctive use of dystopia, is particularly relevant here.146 Robinson’s adaptation of utopian and dystopian genres to accommodate the theme of climate change in his trilogy8–10 is discussed by Prettyman,147 JohnsPutra,148 and Cho149; Cho also provides a thoughtful account of Robinson’s distinctive handling of novelistic time and space.



 In addition to utopian and dystopian traditions, climate change fiction draws on apocalyptic expectations; Wheeler’s analysis of novels about the ‘Anthropocene era,’ such as Gee’s The Ice People19 and The Flood, 20 discusses these novels’ debt to religious eschatological writings.150 Ecocritical accounts of climate change have tended to focus on fiction to the detriment of drama and poetry. The main exception is Hudson,151 who provides a comprehensive survey of climate change theater. Also of note is Solnick,152 who briefly mentions The Contingency Plan92 and Earthquakes in London94 as representations of the pessimism that can result from society’s inability to act on climate change, and Woolley153 who references Ten Billion101 before going on to discuss filmic representations of climate change. In addition, this relative lack

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CONCLUSION

The end of the last decade, which saw the publication of McEwan’s Solar (2009),31 the performance of Waters’s The Contingency Plan (2010),92 and the 10:10 initiative by the Guardian newspaper (2010), paved the way in this decade for climate change to emerge as an important and urgent topic for writers, playwrights, and poets. Literary scholars have responded with an increase in the number of analyses of such literary texts. These ecocritical analyses are partly responsible for an emerging canon of climate change fiction. In addition, some of these ecocritical studies of climate change literature suggest that it plays a role in teaching us how to live with climate change, while others have attempted to maintain an objective stance by teasing out the complex representational challenges that climate change poses. The problem of complexity underpins the burgeoning field of climate change criticism, which is centered on the idea that climate change is a slippery concept posing not just a literary but an existentialist challenge. However, this review of climate change fiction, drama, and poetry suggests that literature is concerned not just with climate change’s representational and existentialist challenges but with its emotional and psychological dilemmas. Climate change fiction and drama, with their preoccupations with parenthood, and climate change poetry, with