A group of international scholars discuss the emergence of the ''cli-fi'' genre as a genre

Foyles Bookstore display 2014, UK

re cli-fi.net

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre_criticism

Some of the comments in the Genre Chatroom included:

A #genre that has emerged in recent years and seems to be getting a lot of public traction is #clifi. It is interesting for many reasons.

Thus, the #genre is both a form of social action in the tradition of Carolyn Miller and artworks in their own right.

At the same time it is interesting that the public imagination is so engaged by climate change that there is room for a full #genre on it.

Interestingly, this turns #clifi into a rhetorico-literary #genre. Novels with a defined purpose.

I'm not sure of the purpose...some of it, I'm sure just seizes on the latest trope. Does that count as purpose?

Thus, #clifi can be seen as one attempt to adress the issue through other channels. If narratives are good for one thing, it's impact.

Despite the depth of the scientific agreement on climate change, the impact is far behind.

The existence of #clifi demonstrates one weakness of #ScienceCommunication: That it loses power against political and economic interests.

Interesting. Thanks for introducing me to the term.


NOTES:

 In the rhetorical tradition of genre criticism, Carolyn R. Miller's work on the socio-cultural approach to genre theory has been influential. Again in her 1984 journal article, Miller argues that “rhetorical criticism has not provided firm guidance on what constitutes a genre” and that a “rhetorically sound definition of genre must be centered not on the substance or the form of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish”.^[9] Later, when Miller and Shepherd engaged the socio-cultural approach to genre criticism in “Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog” (2004), they exposed some of the difficulties of applying genre theory to new media. In their analysis, Miller and Shepherd examine the extent to which the weblog might constitute a genre in light of its interaction with current social and cultural trends.