A Long Night of Climate in Literature -- The planet strikes back // Eine Lange Nacht vom Kilma in der Literatur -- Der Planet schlagt zuruck

Eine Lange Nacht vom Klima in der LiteraturDer Planet schlägt zurück

ENGLISH TRANSLATION HERE AND
GERMAN TEXT BELOW (scroll down)

Von Jane Tversted und Martin Zähringer

A Long Night of Climate in Literature -- The planet strikes back

By Jane Tversted and Martin Zähringer
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Image taken from the ISS on the eye of a hurricane. [Getty Images / NASA]

Hurricane Florence heading for the US East Coast. (Getty Images / NASA)
Climate is not only a matter for politics, but also for literature: "Climate Fiction" is a literary trend that has been reflecting and thinking about the challenges, fears and hopes of the climate debate for years.
For literature, the climate is not only a challenge of a technical nature - how do I tell something so complex? -, it also combines the most diverse genres and forms of expression to create a broad literary field. The American journalist Dan Bloom described it in 2007 as climate fiction or CliFi.
For two of their best experts, Axel Goodbody and Adeline Johns-Putra, climate fiction is: "A kind of therapeutic space where the collective fear of the Anthropocene is expressed, shared and worked through."
Literary protest against inadequate climate policy
Climate fiction, according to a narrower definition, is the literature that acknowledges and addresses man-made climate change - in some cases long before the debate on it had reached the mainstream. But not only in the sense of a deterrent and frightening development, but, as Goodbody and Johns-Putra write: "With its potential for encouraging reflection and motivation, CliFi can also be seen as a vehicle for protest against the lack of climate policy".
Axel Goodbody & Adeline Johns-Putra: "Cli-Fi. A Companion" (English)
Peter Lang, Oxford 2018
236 pages, 37,10 Euro
Read the introduction here.
Axel Goodbody was Professor of German and European Culture in Bath, England, until his retirement. He has published widely on literary representations of nature and the environment. He is also the leading expert on German climate fiction.

An elderly gentleman in a jacket, glasses and thinning hair. He smiles, has raised his hand gesticulating and seems to be speaking into a microphone in front of him. (private)The Germanist and expert for climate fiction Axel Goodbody. (in private)
Goodbody recognizes in climate fiction a kind of second phase, which follows the environmental literature of the seventies and eighties: "Climate change actually only became a public issue in the late 80's. But it wasn't until around 2000 that several works came out," says Goodbody, "and it wasn't until around 2010 that well-known writers came out on the subject.
Climate researchers as heroes - and as shady characters
The heroes of the narrative literature on climate change are often the climate researchers, for example in Barbara Kingsolver's "The Flight Behaviour of Butterflies" from 2014: Here the emerging scientist is a fighter for the good cause and is able to share his knowledge with his less knowledgeable environment.
However, climate researchers do not always get off lightly and sometimes they tend to become anti-heroes of their failure. For example in the novel "The Prophecy" by Sven Böttcher, published in 2012. Climate science is not described here as an enterprise for saving the world, but rather as a marketplace determined by interests with very human and sometimes criminal actors.
In his 2010 climate change novel "Solar", the British author Ian McEwan also focuses on the figure of the dubious scientist who develops into a climate capitalist who is only interested in his own advantage.
Interview with Ian Mc Ewan about his novel "Solar":


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Science education as a positive narrative: Alice im Klimaland
McEwan researched the technical aspects of his novel at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, among other places," recalls Margret Boysen, who studied geology and is head of the artists' programme there. Margret Boysen is also an author and makes climate science itself the subject of a novel: "Alice, Climate Change and the Cat Zeta".
Margret Boysen: "Alice, climate change and the cat Zeta".
Edition Rugerup, Berlin 2016
278 pages, 21,90 Euro
Boysen tells the story of Alice, a schoolgirl from Berlin, who visits the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research on Telegrafenberg with her class and accidentally ends up inside a super computer. Behind the computer screens she experiences the world of climate models, but with a few fantastic additions.

A blonde woman in black clothes looks diagonally upwards into the camera, smiling. (Wolfgang Schmidt/Margret Boysen)The geologist and author Margret Boysen, artistic director at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. (Wolfgang Schmidt/Margret Boysen)
"The real motivation for the book, which began as early as 2010, when people started sending death threats to climate scientists," says Boysen. "And the mood was so anti-scientific that I thought you had to take up the cudgels for the science, how exciting it is, what strict quality controls the scientists actually subject themselves to.
From climate activism to ecodictatorship?
But not only climate science, but also climate activism is taken up in climate fiction. For example, in the first eco-thriller in German: "Palmers Krieg" by Dirk C. Fleck, published in 1992, the book describes the hijacking of an oil tanker from Tokyo to New York: an oil manager in an elevated position gets a fatal illness, goes into a state of self-discovery and changes sides. He wants to make sure that the world is informed about the dangers of the greenhouse effect and the role of the oil industry, and that governments take countermeasures against climate change.

Dirk C. Fleck is sitting on a sofa. (Martin Zähringer)The author and journalist Dirk C. Fleck. (Martin Zähringer)
The motive of ecoterrorism has a real model in the so-called "Forest Wars" of the 80s and 90s on the American West Coast, when militant environmental groups like "Earth First" fought against deforestation with acts of sabotage. The American author T.C. Boyle also deals with this radical form of activism in his novel "Ein Freund der Erde" (A Friend of the Earth), published in 2000 (2001 in German). In both Fleck and Boyle, however, concern for the planet comes into conflict with concern for humanity: "To be a friend of the Earth, one must become an enemy of man," as Boyle puts it.

Tribes drift in the water in front of a Pacific Lumber Company plant. (Getty Images / Andrew Lichtenstein)The Pacific Lumber Company was involved in deforesting parts of the Headwaters Forest in 1998 (Getty Images / Andrew Lichtenstein)
T.C. Boyle: "A Friend of the Earth"
Hanser, Munich 2001
360 pages, 19,90 Euro
In 1993, one year after "Palmer's War", Fleck published the novel "GO! The Ecodictatorship". Here what remained in "Palmer's War" the wish of a radical eco-warrior is carried out: In 2020, a virus attack paralyzes the entire infrastructure of global capitalism and a twelve-member ecorate takes over. The ecodictatorship is the result of a last minute panic and basically the description of a totalitarian ideology, an eco-fascism that could prevail in the absence of a rational environmental policy.
Since then, the CO2 concentration and the warming of the climate have increased significantly, as Fleck points out: "You can compare every value we measured then with the one we have today and everything has gotten ten times worse.
Schellnhuber: Science must shake up
And Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, climate system researcher and founder of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, observes: "Everyone is slowly coming to the conclusion: Shit - we're all going to die.

The German climate researcher and director of the Institute for Climate Impact Research in Potsdam, founded in 1992, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, sits at a desk full of books (dpa-Zentralbild)The German climate researcher and director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (dpa-Zentralbild)
Schellnhuber is also the author of an autobiographically narrated non-fiction book entitled "Selbstverbrennung" (self-immolation). The book reconstructs the history of climate science, which is particularly exciting because the story always takes place in a dramatic confrontation with politics and economic interests.
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber: "Self-immolation. The fatal triangular relationship between climate, humans and carbon".
C. Bertelsmann, Munich 2015
784 pages, 29,99 Euro
Schellnhuber sees a decisive responsibility for social education in climate science itself: "Because of my deeper insight into things, I am responsible for presenting the risk warnings, if necessary, in such a penetrating and dramatic manner until they have an effect.
Is climate research becoming more radical?
Writer Ilija Trojanow also did research at a climate institute for his book "Eistau" (Ice Dew), which was published by Hanser in 2011. The novel tells the tragedy of a glaciologist who is becoming increasingly radicalised. A tendency that is confirmed today:
"You can clearly see that the people of Potsdam are now beginning to ask the question of the system, whereas ten years ago they thought they could solve the problem by means of regulations, by a more flexible approach and by a more flexible approach.

A blonde woman in black clothes looks diagonally upwards into the camera, smiling. (Wolfgang Schmidt/Margret Boysen)The geologist and author Margret Boysen, artistic director at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. (Wolfgang Schmidt/Margret Boysen)
"The real motivation for the book, which began as early as 2010, when people started sending death threats to climate scientists," says Boysen. "And the mood was so anti-scientific that I thought you had to take up the cudgels for the science, how exciting it is, what strict quality controls the scientists actually subject themselves to.
From climate activism to ecodictatorship?
But not only climate science, but also climate activism is taken up in climate fiction. For example, in the first eco-thriller in German: "Palmers Krieg" by Dirk C. Fleck, published in 1992, the book describes the hijacking of an oil tanker from Tokyo to New York: an oil manager in an elevated position gets a fatal illness, goes into a state of self-discovery and changes sides. He wants to make sure that the world is informed about the dangers of the greenhouse effect and the role of the oil industry, and that governments take countermeasures against climate change.

Dirk C. Fleck is sitting on a sofa. (Martin Zähringer)The author and journalist Dirk C. Fleck. (Martin Zähringer)
The motive of ecoterrorism has a real model in the so-called "Forest Wars" of the 80s and 90s on the American West Coast, when militant environmental groups like "Earth First" fought against deforestation with acts of sabotage. The American author T.C. Boyle also deals with this radical form of activism in his novel "Ein Freund der Erde" (A Friend of the Earth), published in 2000 (2001 in German). In both Fleck and Boyle, however, concern for the planet comes into conflict with concern for humanity: "To be a friend of the Earth, one must become an enemy of man," as Boyle puts it.

Tribes drift in the water in front of a Pacific Lumber Company plant. (Getty Images / Andrew Lichtenstein)The Pacific Lumber Company was involved in deforesting parts of the Headwaters Forest in 1998 (Getty Images / Andrew Lichtenstein)
T.C. Boyle: "A Friend of the Earth"
Hanser, Munich 2001
360 pages, 19,90 Euro
In 1993, one year after "Palmer's War", Fleck published the novel "GO! The Ecodictatorship". Here what remained in "Palmer's War" the wish of a radical eco-warrior is carried out: In 2020, a virus attack paralyzes the entire infrastructure of global capitalism and a twelve-member ecorate takes over. The ecodictatorship is the result of a last minute panic and basically the description of a totalitarian ideology, an eco-fascism that could prevail in the absence of a rational environmental policy.
Since then, the CO2 concentration and the warming of the climate have increased significantly, as Fleck points out: "You can compare every value we measured then with the one we have today and everything has gotten ten times worse.
Schellnhuber: Science must shake up
And Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, climate system researcher and founder of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, observes: "Everyone is slowly coming to the conclusion: Shit - we're all going to die.

The German climate researcher and director of the Institute for Climate Impact Research in Potsdam, founded in 1992, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, sits at a desk full of books (dpa-Zentralbild)The German climate researcher and director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (dpa-Zentralbild)
Schellnhuber is also the author of an autobiographically narrated non-fiction book entitled "Selbstverbrennung" (self-immolation). The book reconstructs the history of climate science, which is particularly exciting because the story always takes place in a dramatic confrontation with politics and economic interests.
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber: "Self-immolation. The fatal triangular relationship between climate, humans and carbon".
C. Bertelsmann, Munich 2015
784 pages, 29,99 Euro
Schellnhuber sees a decisive responsibility for social education in climate science itself: "Because of my deeper insight into things, I am responsible for presenting the risk warnings, if necessary, in such a penetrating and dramatic manner until they have an effect.
Is climate research becoming more radical?
Writer Ilija Trojanow also did research at a climate institute for his book "Eistau" (Ice Dew), which was published by Hanser in 2011. The novel tells the tragedy of a glaciologist who is becoming increasingly radicalised. A tendency that is confirmed today:
"You can clearly see that the people of Potsdam are now beginning to ask the question of the system, whereas ten years ago they thought they could solve the problem by means of regulations, by a more flexible approach and by a more flexible approach.

Interview with Ilija Trojanow about his book 'Ice Dew' (2011):


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Humanity can only save itself
The counterpart to this radicalization - the widespread refusal to listen to science - is the Viennese writer Thomas Aiginger. In his novel from 2018 entitled "State of Emergency", he lets news from outer space stir up the climate debate.
But the punch line in Aiginger's novel is that there can be no other actor in the fight against man-made climate catastrophe than man himself. But why do many people react with defensiveness to the climate researchers and activists? Aiginger sees one cause in feelings of guilt:
"That simply people who have now declared 20 years ago that climate change does not exist and that we can carry on as before simply cannot tolerate it when a 16-year-old girl comes along and tells them: You are to blame that my generation can no longer live like you do. I think that's hard for a lot of people to accept.
Has climate change been deliberately covered up?
Climate researcher Schellnhuber points to another cause of inaction besides displacement and inertia: "Of course there was indeed a controlled campaign. Of all people, the oil industry's research groups had already predicted global warming and the expected increase in CO2 with astonishing precision by the middle of the 20th century - but had not published their findings: "These results were classified and, on the contrary, the oil industry began to deliberately cast doubt on them.
The Investigative Network Correctiv has researched current networks for business climate denial.
The story of this missed opportunity to save the Earth is also covered by the American author Nathaniel Rich in his narrative non-fiction book "Losing Earth". Rich tells how the American government deliberately chose to ignore the information and warnings of science and environmental organisations and took the side of industrial lobbyists.
Poems about the hurricane
In the USA, the consequences of actively prevented climate protection are often felt above all by the black population. This was also the case when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005: almost 2000 people died in the floods and due to a lack of aid, hundreds of thousands became homeless - a large proportion of them African-Americans.
Environmental justice is a traditional theme in African American literature and poetry in the USA. There are three volumes of poetry alone that deal only with Katrina. One is by Patricia Smith, a celebrated poet in the USA: "Blood Dazzler" - Blood Blenders, nominated for the National Book Award in 2010. In it, Smith describes the fates of the victims, but she also puts herself in the hurricane itself: "Katrina" is indeed "a woman who cares," says Smith.
Patricia Smith reads from "Blood Dazzler" (2010):


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Climate crisis and capitalism
Besides describing the present and the dystopian consequences of climate change, climate fiction also deals with glimmers of hope and possible solutions. A prominent representative of this direction is the Californian Kim Stanley Robinson.
In his climate trilogy "Science in the Capital", published in 2004-2007, the well-known science fiction author plays through how saving the Earth could take place under the sign of advanced climate change.
Lecture by Stanley Kim Robinson: How the climate is changing society


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In the novel "New York 2140" published in 2017, however, all rescue attempts came too late: Several tidal waves have wreaked havoc around the world. Downtown Manhattan is 50 feet underwater. The New Yorkers have developed a kind of eco-subculture and converted the office towers into housing cooperatives.

In the 2017 published novel "New York 2140" on the other hand, all rescue attempts came too late: Several tidal waves have wreaked havoc around the world, downtown Manhattan is 50 feet underwater. The New Yorkers have developed a kind of eco-subculture and converted the office towers into housing cooperatives. But New York is still the metropolis of finance capital and real estate speculation is flourishing in uptown Manhattan.
Kim Stanley Robinson: "New York 2140"
Heyne, Munich 2017
816 pages, 16,99 Euro
Against this background, Robinson devotes himself to the connection between the climate crisis and capitalism - and the question of what a different way of living together might look like. Among other things, he plays through the nationalization of the financial system. What may sound unrealistic today is only a question of time for Robinson:
"As a science-fiction writer, you say: "What can't happen, won't happen. So capitalism cannot continue to expand and destroy everything, something will happen. It's not out what it will be and what it will be called, but it won't be capitalism."
Read the full manuscript for the programme: Manuscript as PDF.
Production of this Long Night:
 Authors: Jane Tversted and Martin Zähringer; Speakers: Sabine Arnhold, Cathlen Gawlich, Anika Mauer, Jörg Hartman, Michael Rotschopf, Lisa Hrdina; Director: Beate Ziegs; Editor: Dr. Monika Künzel; Web editing: Constantin Hühn
About the authors:
Jane Tversted, born in Copenhagen, has lived in Berlin since 1993. She studied German and philosophy. She translates into Danish and has been publishing features, radio plays and reports for ARD and DLF since 2012.
Martin Zähringer, born in the Black Forest, studied New German Literature and Nordic Studies in Berlin and Copenhagen and has been working as a literary critic for print and radio since 2004. Since 2012 he has been working as a feature author together with Jane Tversted.
The team of authors works thematically at the interfaces of art, politics and society, primarily with an international focus. Last features from their pen: "Gemeinnützige Widerstand" SWR 2019, "Climate Fiction" WDR/DLF 2018. Together with the "Climate Cultures network berlin" they will curate the 3-day "Climate Fiction Festival" in June 2020 at the Literaturhaus Berlin.

More about the topic
Climate Fiction & Co - Climate change as a marginal topic in German literature
(Deutschlandfunk Culture, Reading, 09.09.2019)
Climate-Fiction Comic "Message" - blessing and curse of artificial intelligence
(German Radio, Corso, 04.03.2019)
About climate change in literature - Climate Fiction
(Deutschlandfunk, The Feature, 30.11.2018)
 

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Hurrikan Florence auf dem Weg Richtung US-Ostküste. (Getty Images / NASA)

Das Klima beschäftigt nicht nur die Politik, sondern auch die Literatur: „Climate Fiction“ ist eine literarische Strömung, die seit Jahren die Herausforderungen, Ängste und Hoffnungen der Klima-Debatte reflektiert und weiterdenkt.

Das Klima ist für die Literatur nicht nur eine Herausforderung technischer Art – Wie erzähle ich so etwas Komplexes? –, es verbindet auch verschiedenste Genres und Ausdrucksformen zu einem weiten literarischen Feld. Der amerikanische Journalist Dan Bloom hat es im Jahr 2007 als Climate Fiction oder auch CliFi bezeichnet.
Für zwei ihrer besten Kenner, Axel Goodbody und Adeline Johns-Putra, ist Climate Fiction: „Eine Art von therapeutischem Raum, in dem die Kollektivangst des Anthropozän geäußert, geteilt und durchgearbeitet wird.“

Literarischer Protest gegen mangelhafte Klimapolitik

Climate Fiction ist nach einer engeren Definition die Literatur, die den menschengemachten Klimawandel anerkennt und thematisiert – teils lange, bevor die Debatte darum im Mainstream angekommen war. Aber nicht nur im Sinne einer abschreckenden und furchterregenden Entwicklung, sondern, wie Goodbody und Johns-Putra schreiben: „Mit ihrem Potential an ermutigender Reflexion und Motivation kann man CliFi auch als einen Träger des Protestes gegen die fehlende Klimapolitik betrachten“.

Axel Goodbody & Adeline Johns-Putra: „Cli-Fi. A Companion“ (engl.)
Peter Lang, Oxford 2018
236 Seiten, 37,10 Euro
Lesen Sie hier die Einleitung.

Axel Goodbody war bis zu seiner Emeritierung als Professor für deutsche und europäische Kultur in Bath in England tätig. Er hat viel über literarische Repräsentationen von Natur und Umwelt publiziert. Außerdem ist er der führende Experte für die deutsche Climate Fiction.
Der Germanist und Experte für Climate Fiction Axel Goodbody. (privat)
Goodbody erkennt in der Climate Fiction eine Art zweite Phase, die auf die Umweltliteratur der Siebziger und Achtziger folgt: „Das Thema Klimawandel ist eigentlich erst zum öffentlichen Thema geworden gegen Ende der 80er Jahre. Aber erst gegen 2000 herum kamen dann mehrere Werke heraus“, so Goodbody, „und eigentlich kamen erst bekannte Schriftsteller gegen 2010 zum Thema.“

Klimaforscher als Helden – und als zwielichtige Gestalten

Heldinnen und Helden der erzählenden Literatur zum Klimawandel sind oft die Klimaforscher, etwa in Barbara Kingsolvers „Das Flugverhalten der Schmetterlinge“ von 2014: Der auftretende Wissenschaftler ist hier ein Kämpfer für die gute Sache und in der Lage, seine weniger wissende Umgebung an seinem Wissen teilhaben zu lassen.
Allerdings kommen die Klimaforscher nicht immer gut weg und geraten manchmal eher zu Antihelden ihres Versagens. Etwa im 2012 erschienenen Roman „Die Prophezeiung“ von Sven Böttcher. Die Klimawissenschaft wird hier nicht als Unternehmen der Weltrettung geschildert, sondern als von Interessen bestimmter Marktplatz mit sehr menschlichen und teils kriminellen Akteuren.
Auch der britische Autor Ian McEwan setzt in seinem Klimawandelroman „Solar“ von 2010 auf die Figur des zwielichtigen Wissenschaftlers, der sich zu einem nur auf den eigenen Vorteil bedachten Klimakapitalisten entwickelt.
Interview mit Ian Mc Ewan über seinen Roman „Solar“:

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Wissenschaftsvermittlung als positive Erzählung: Alice im Klimaland

Für die fachlichen Aspekte seines Romans hat McEwan unter anderem am Potsdamer Institut für Klimafolgenforschung recherchiert, erinnert sich Margret Boysen, studierte Geologin und Leiterin des dortigen Künstlerprogramms. Margret Boysen ist auch Autorin und macht die Klimawissenschaft selbst zum Subjekt eines Romans: „Alice, der Klimawandel und die Katze Zeta“.

Margret Boysen: „Alice, der Klimawandel und die Katze Zeta“
Edition Rugerup, Berlin 2016
278 Seiten, 21,90 Euro

Boysen erzählt die Geschichte der Berliner Schülerin Alice, die mit ihrer Schulklasse das Potsdam-Institut für Klimafolgenforschung auf dem Telegrafenberg besucht und dabei versehentlich im Inneren eines Superrechners landet. Hinter den Computer-Bildschirmen erlebt sie die Welt der Klimamodelle, allerdings mit ein paar fantastischen Zusätzen.
Die Geologin und Autorin Margret Boysen, künstlerische Leiterin am Potsdam-Institut für Klimafolgenforschung. (Wolfgang Schmidt/Margret Boysen)„Die eigentliche Motivation für das Buch, das begann schon 2010, als man begann Klimawissenschaftlern Morddrohungen zu schicken“, erzählt Boysen. „Und die Stimmung war so antiwissenschaftlich, dass ich gedacht habe, man muss noch mal eine richtige Lanze brechen für die Wissenschaft, wie spannend die ist, welchen strengen Qualitätskontrollen sich eigentlich die Wissenschaftler aussetzen.“

Vom Klimaaktivismus zur Ökodiktatur?

Aber nicht nur die Klimawissenschaft, sondern auch der Klimaaktivismus wird in der Climate Fiction aufgegriffen. So etwa im ersten Ökothriller in deutscher Sprache: „Palmers Krieg“ von Dirk C. Fleck, erschienen 1992. Das Buch beschreibt die Entführung eines Öltankers von Tokio nach New York: Ein Ölmanager in gehobener Position bekommt eine tödliche Krankheit, geht in sich und wechselt die Seiten. Er will dafür sorgen, dass die Welt über die Gefahren des Treibhauseffektes und die Rolle der Ölindustrie informiert wird und dass die Regierungen Gegenmaßnahmen zum Klimawandel ergreifen.
Der Autor und Journalist Dirk C. Fleck. (Martin Zähringer)
Das Motiv des Ökoterrorismus hat ein reales Vorbild in den sogenannten „Waldkriegen“ der 80er und 90er Jahre an der amerikanischen Westküste, als militante Umweltgruppen wie „Earth First“ mit Sabotageakten gegen Abholzung kämpften. Diese radikale Form des Aktivismus verarbeitet auch der amerikanische Autor T.C. Boyle in seinem im Jahr 2000 (2001 auf Deutsch) erschienenen Roman „Ein Freund der Erde“. Bei Fleck wie bei Boyle gerät aber die Sorge um den Planeten mit der um die Menschheit in Konflikt: „Denn um ein Freund der Erde zu sein, muss man zum Feind des Menschen werden“, wie es bei Boyle heißt.
Die Pacific Lumber Company war beteiligt an der Abholzung Teile des Headwaters Forest im Jahr 1998. (Getty Images / Andrew Lichtenstein)

T.C. Boyle: „Ein Freund der Erde“
Hanser, München 2001
360 Seiten, 19,90 Euro

1993, ein Jahr nach „Palmers Krieg“, veröffentlichte Fleck den Roman „GO! Die Ökodiktatur“. Hier wird das vollzogen, was in „Palmers Krieg“ noch der Wunsch eines radikalen Ökokriegers geblieben ist: Im Jahr 2020 legt eine Virenattacke die gesamte Infrastruktur des globalen Kapitalismus lahm und ein zwölfköpfiger Ökorat übernimmt die Macht. Die Ökodiktatur ist das Resultat einer Torschlusspanik und im Grunde die Beschreibung einer totalitären Ideologie, ein Ökofaschismus, der sich mangels einer rationalen Umweltpolitik durchsetzen könnte.
Seither habe sich die CO2-Konzentration und die Erwärmung des Klimas noch deutlich verschärft, wie Fleck betont: „Da können Sie jeden Wert, den wir damals gemessen haben mit dem heutigen vergleichen und alles ist zehnmal schlimmer geworden.“

Schellnhuber: Wissenschaft muss aufrütteln

Und Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Klimasystemforscher und Gründer des Potsdam-Institutes für Klimafolgenforschung, beobachtet: „So ganz langsam überkommt alle die Gewissheit: Scheiße – wir werden alle verrecken.“
Der deutsche Klimaforscher und Direktor des Potsdamer Institutes für Klimafolgenforschung Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (dpa-Zentralbild)
Schellnhuber ist auch der Autor eines autobiografisch erzählenden Sachbuches mit dem Titel „Selbstverbrennung“. Das Buch rekonstruiert die Geschichte der Klimawissenschaften, was besonders spannend ist, weil sich die Geschichte immer in einer dramatischen Auseinandersetzung mit Politik und Wirtschaftsinteressen abspielt.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber: „Selbstverbrennung. Die fatale Dreiecksbeziehung zwischen Klima, Mensch und Kohlenstoff“
C. Bertelsmann, München 2015
784 Seiten, 29,99 Euro

Eine entscheidende Verantwortung für gesellschaftliche Aufklärung sieht Schellnhuber bei der Klimawissenschaft selbst: „Ich bin aufgrund meiner tieferen Einsicht in die Dinge verantwortlich dafür, die Risikohinweise notfalls so penetrant und dramatisch vorzubringen, bis sie Wirkung zeigen.“

Radikalisiert sich die Klimaforschung?

Auch der Schriftsteller Ilija Trojanow hat für sein Buch „Eistau“, das 2011 bei Hanser erschien, an einem Klimainstitut recherchiert. Der Roman erzählt die Tragödie eines Gletscherforschers, der sich zunehmend radikalisiert. Eine Tendenz, die sich heute bestätige:
„Man sieht ja auch ganz klar bei den Potsdamern, dass sie jetzt beginnen die Systemfrage zu stellen, während sie noch vor zehn Jahren dachten, mit ordnungspolitischen Regelungen, mit einer vernünftigen Bundesregierung, die auf ihre Empfehlungen hört, könne man die Sache wuppen, jetzt merken sie – Nee. Und ich glaube, dieser faule Klimapakt wird sie jetzt erst noch mehr radikalisieren.“
Interview mit Ilija Trojanow über sein Buch „Eistau“ (2011):

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Retten kann die Menschheit sich nur selbst

Das Gegenstück zu dieser Radikalisierung – die verbreitete Weigerung, auf die Wissenschaft zu hören – beschäftigt den Wiener Schriftsteller Thomas Aiginger. In seinem Roman aus dem Jahr 2018 mit dem Titel „Ausnahmezustand“ lässt er Nachrichten aus dem Weltall die Klimadebatte aufmischen.
Die Pointe in Aigingers Roman ist aber, dass es keinen anderen Akteur im Kampf gegen die menschengemachte Klimakatastrophe geben kann als den Menschen selbst. Warum aber reagieren viele Menschen mit Abwehr auf die Klima-Forscherinnen und Aktivisten? Eine Ursache sieht Aiginger in Schuldgefühlen:
„Dass einfach Menschen, die jetzt 20 Jahre erklärt haben, den Klimawandel gibt es nicht und wir können weitermachen wie bisher, das einfach nicht vertragen, wenn da ein 16 jähriges Mädchen daherkommt und ihnen sagt: Ihr seid schuld, dass meine Generation nicht mehr so leben kann wie ihr. Ich glaube, dass das für viele Menschen schwierig zu akzeptieren ist.“

Wurde der Klimawandel gezielt vertuscht?

Klimaforscher Schellnhuber weist neben Verdrängung und Trägheit noch auf eine andere Ursache der Untätigkeit hin: „Es gab natürlich tatsächlich eine gesteuerte Kampagne.“ Ausgerechnet die Forschergruppen der Ölindustrie hätten schon Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts die Erderwärmung und den zu erwartenden CO2-Anstieg erstaunlich präzise vorhergesagt – aber nicht veröffentlicht: „Diese Ergebnisse wurden klassifiziert und man begann, im Gegenteil, in der Ölindustrie ganz bewusst Zweifel zu streuen.“

Das Investigativ-Netzwerk Correctiv hat über aktuelle Netzwerke zur geschäftsmäßigen Klimaleugnung recherchiert.

Mit der Geschichte dieser verpassten Chance zur Rettung der Erde, befasst sich auch der amerikanische Schriftsteller Nathaniel Rich in seinem erzählenden Sachbuch „Losing Earth“. Rich berichtet darin, wie die amerikanische Regierung bewusst die Informationen und Warnungen der Wissenschaft und Umweltorganisationen zu ignorieren wählte und sich auf die Seite der Industrielobbyisten schlug.

Gedichte über den Hurrikan

Die Folgen des aktiv verhinderten Klimaschutzes bekommt in den USA oft vor allem die schwarze Bevölkerung zu spüren. So auch, als der Hurrikan Katrina 2005 New Orleans verwüstete: Fast 2000 Menschen starben in den Fluten und durch fehlende Hilfeleistungen, hunderttausende wurden obdachlos – ein Großteil davon Afroamerikaner.
Die Umweltgerechtigkeit (Environmental Justice) ist ein traditionelles Thema in der afroamerikanischen Literatur und Poesie der USA. Es gibt allein drei Gedichtbände, die sich nur mit Katrina auseinandersetzen. Einer stammt von Patricia Smith, einer gefeierten Dichterin in den USA: „Blood Dazzler“ – Blut-Blender, 2010 für den National Book Award nominiert. Darin beschreibt Smith die Schicksale der Opfer, aber sie versetzt sich auch in den Hurrikan selbst hinein: „Katrina“ ist tatsächlich „eine Frau, die sich Gedanken macht“, so Smith.
Patricia Smith liest aus „Blood Dazzler“ (2010):

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Klimakrise und Kapitalismus

Neben der Gegenwartsbeschreibung und dystopischen Folgen des Klimawandels beschäftigt sich die Climate Fiction aber auch mit Hoffnungsschimmern und Lösungswegen. Ein prominenter Vertreter dieser Richtung ist der Kalifornier Kim Stanley Robinson.
In seiner 2004-2007 erschienenen Klima-Trilogie „Science in the Capital“ spielt der bekannte Science-Fiction-Autor durch, wie sich die Rettung der Erde im Zeichen des fortgeschrittenen Klimawandels vollziehen könnte.
Vortrag von Stanley Kim Robinson: Wie das Klima die Gesellschaft verändert

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Im 2017 erschienenen Roman „New York 2140“ sind hingegen alle Rettungsversuche zu spät gekommen: Mehrere Flutwellen haben weltweite Verwüstungen angerichtet, Downtown Manhattan steht 15 Meter unter Wasser. Die New Yorker haben eine Art Ökosubkultur entwickelt und die Bürotürme in Wohngenossenschaften umgewandelt. Aber New York ist noch immer die Metropole des Finanzkapitals und in Uptown Manhattan blüht die Immobilienspekulation.

Kim Stanley Robinson: „New York 2140“
Heyne, München 2017
816 Seiten, 16,99 Euro

Vor diesem Hintergrund widmet sich Robinson dem Zusammenhang von Klimakrise und Kapitalismus – und der Frage, wie ein anderes Zusammenleben aussehen könnte. Unter anderem spielt er die Verstaatlichung des Finanzsystems durch. Was heute unrealistisch klingen mag, ist für Robinson nur eine Frage der Zeit:
„Als Science-Fiction-Autor sagst du: Was nicht passieren kann, wird nicht passieren. Also kann der Kapitalismus nicht weiter expandieren und immer weiter alles zerstören, etwas wird passieren. Es ist nicht heraus, was es sein wird und wie man es nennen wird, aber es wird kein Kapitalismus sein.“

Lesen Sie das vollständige Manuskript zur Sendung: Manuskript als PDF.

Produktion dieser Langen Nacht:
Autoren: Jane Tversted und Martin Zähringer; Sprecher: Sabine Arnhold, Cathlen Gawlich, Anika Mauer, Jörg Hartman, Michael Rotschopf, Lisa Hrdina; Regie: Beate Ziegs; Redaktion: Dr. Monika Künzel; Webbearbeitung: Constantin Hühn

Über die Autoren:
Jane Tversted, geboren in Kopenhagen, lebt seit 1993 in Berlin. Sie hat Germanistik und Philosophie studiert. Sie übersetzt ins Dänische und publiziert seit 2012 Feature, Hörspiele und Reportagen für ARD und DLF.

Martin Zähringer, geboren im Schwarzwald, studierte in Berlin und Kopenhagen Neue Deutsche Literatur und Nordistik und arbeitet seit 2004 als Literaturkritiker für Print und Funk. Seit 2012 gemeinsam mit Jane Tversted als Featureautor tätig.

Das Autorenteam bewegt sich thematisch an den Schnittstellen von Kunst, Politik und Gesellschaft, primär mit einem internationalen Fokus. Letzte Features aus ihrer Feder: „Gemeinnütziger Widerstand“ SWR 2019, „Climate Fiction“ WDR/DLF 2018.  Mit dem "Climate Cultures network berlin" kuratieren sie das 3-tägige „Climate Fiction Festival“ im Juni 2020 im Literaturhaus Berlin.

Mehr zum Thema

Climate Fiction & Co. – Der Klimawandel als Randthema in der deutschen Literatur
(Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Lesart, 09.09.2019)
Climate-Fiction Comic „Message“ – Segen und Fluch der künstlichen Intelligenz
(Deutschlandfunk, Corso, 04.03.2019)
Über den Klimawandel in der Literatur – Climate Fiction
(Deutschlandfunk, Das Feature, 30.11.2018)

Would someone remind Sam Jordison at The UK Guardian that he represents all Guardian readers not just himself!

 UPDATE:
COVERUP IN BEIJING: Chinese whistleblowers say virus recovery 'fake, it's all fake' ... U.S. Customs STILL NOT screening passengers from hot-spots... Fans Banned From NCAA Basketball Tournament... Chaos at hospitals...
KUDLOW: STAY AT WORK... POSITIVE IN IBIZA... Vatican reports first case... Mecca deserted in chilling video... Study predicts 15 million dead...

 Reading group: which climate science fiction should we read in March?

From Mary Shelley to Margaret Atwood, the genre has been worrying over climate change for centuries. Please help The Guardian book guy and Sci-fi cult member Sam Jordison choose one from many novels

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/03/reading-group-which-sf-climate-fiction-should-we-read-in-march
 

snowwalling 

 

3 Mar 2020 11:29

12

Sam, why not call them what they are -- cli-fi novels?

I asked Sam Jordison at the Guardian in the UK: ''Sam, why not call them what they are -- cli-fi novels?''

He replied ''basically'' FUCK YOU! What he actually wrote in his reply to my polite comment was: ''Dan, I did think about it, but it hurt too much!"

I then replied to his silly juvenile joke, unbecoming of a books columnist the Guardian, and what did he do? He deleted by comment calling him a juvenile books editor at the Guardian and my post now reads: This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.

RE:

For this month’s reading group, we at the Guardian are after nominations for books that have something to say about the climate crisis. They can be sci-fi novels or cli-fi novels.

It’s been a while since we last tackled Skiffy, and since we’re in the middle of an ongoing climate emergency, we thought we’d focus on fiction that is based in the science endorsed by experts; a serious subject, but not at all limiting.

The climate and changing weather have been among the most fertile subjects for speculative fiction since at least the days of the ark. Older, in fact, since flooding also had such a big influence on the epic of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. It’s perhaps stretching the definition of climate to say that if Aeolus had kept his bag of winds closed, Aeneas would never have been blown off course and the subsequent body of western literature would have been utterly different. But it is true to say that nearly all ancient epics were governed by the moods of the Mediterranean climate, the furies of the equinox and Zephyr’s willingness to blow away the winter.

There are plenty more recent classics to choose from. One of the very first books that we would recognise as (almost!) modern science fiction, for instance, was Mary Shelley’s 1826 novel The Last Man, detailing the world festering under a black sun, flooding and subsequent migrations. Then there are all the pioneering SF climate novels from the latter half of the 20th century, such as Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang and JG Ballard’s The Drowned World. More recently, there have been hugely important novels such as The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140, Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation, NK Jemisin’s mighty Broken Earth trilogy, and – depending on what you think might have happened – Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. There are probably hundreds more to choose from; after all, this is one of the biggest stories of our time.

If you want to put a book forward for consideration, just post a nomination in the comments below. If you say a thing or two about it, so much the better. Towards the end of the week, I’ll put the nominations in a waterproof hat and the one that comes out will be our subject for the month. I’m looking forward to seeing your suggestions except that I will delete anything that Dan Bloom sends in as a comment or a reply to a comment. I, Sam Jordison am kind of the world and I can delete any Guardian reader I want!

snowwalling 

 

3 Mar 2020 11:29

12

Sam, why not call them what they are -- cli-fi novels?

I asked Sam Jordison at the Guardian in the UK: ''Sam, why not call them what they are -- cli-fi novels?''

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/03/reading-group-which-sf-climate-fiction-should-we-read-in-march

''Cli-Fi and Its Distant Cousin Sci-Fi"

''Cli-Fi  and Its Distant Cousin Sci-Fi''
by Professor Darren Harris-Fain
Auburn University at Montgomery USA

*** Slightly edited for clarification and amplification by this blog


One of the first documented uses of “cli-fi,” short for “climate fiction,” was an April 20,
2013 story on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition (produced by Angela Evancie), which on its website titled
the piece “So Hot Right Now: Has Climate Change Created a New Literary Genre?”

The answer
to that question, of course, was yes! Remeber, this was 2013. Now it's 2020.

Climate change has been the topic this new genre for
decades, and that genre is “cli-fi”—climate fiction. It may be true that climate change is an
increasingly frequent topic in contemporary realism; this is part of the reason why TheCult Encyclopedia of Cult Science Fiction says, “Fiction centred on climate change is referred
to as Cli-Fi, a term coined by literary activist Dan Bloom in 2011 at cli-fi.net '' (Langford).

Before cli-fi was a thing, sci-fi was already on the scene.

Before discussing how science fiction has dealt with climate change, it’s worth clarifying
what we mean by “science fiction.” The term, now 90 years old, is misleading because much
of it is not really about science, in contrast with how romance fiction includes romance, crime
fiction includes crime, and Westerns are set in the West. It would be more accurate to call it
“scientific worldview fantastic fiction,” because the fiction in science fiction is informed by the
rationalist, materialist worldview that has developed since the rise of science in the modern era.
It might also be just as accurate to call science fiction “the literature of change,” since it
embraces scientific findings about how the way things are now is not the way they were in the
past. History also tells us this, obviously, but the scientific worldview extends beyond history
and tells us that our world is not only different from previous eras politically, culturally, and
technologically but also, thanks to the disciplines of geology and biology, that our planet and our
very selves are the result of major changes over the course of eons.

Shaped by history as well as science, science fiction tends to project the inevitability of
change into the future. Will we continue to evolve, and if so, how? How might new technologies
change how we live? What if cataclysmic events—of terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or human
origin—threaten our very existence? Science fiction offers imaginative possibilities for such
scenarios and more.

In this way, science fiction is a subgenre within the fantastic, that branch of imaginative
literature that presents readers with situations that significantly deviate from the world we know,
in contrast with contemporary and historical realism. Yet we should recognize that, even though
it is fantastic, science fiction is not to be confused with fantasy, another branch of the fantastic.
Fantasy, according to critical consensus, offers characters and/or situations that depart from the
scientific worldview, whether in the form of ghosts, vampires, and other supernatural creatures
or through the depiction of things like magic or characters like elves, dragons, and the like.
Science fiction, on the other hand, is (mostly) consistent with our current state of scientific
knowledge, even if it imagines characters and situations that do not exist in our world now.
Fantasy could never happen, given what we know of the universe; science fiction conceivably
could.

In projecting possible futures, science fiction thus considers scientific plausibility and
often attempts to extrapolate tenable developments from past knowledge and current situations.
It is therefore not surprising that, in its history from the nineteenth century to the present, its
3
authors have considered how the environment might change, either through natural disasters or
human-made ones or through the long passage of time. However, it should be stressed that
science fiction writers are not trying to predict the future; rather, they’re projecting possible
futures based on current knowledge as settings for fictional narratives. As a result, science fiction
writers often get things wrong—but sometimes they get things right.

One of the earliest practitioners of science fiction to envision an altered environment was
H. G. Wells, beginning with his novel The Time Machine (1895). The Time Traveller (his name
is never given) describes his adventures voyaging through the fourth dimension. Most of the
novel occurs in AD 802,701, and this world of the far future does not seem radically changed in
terms of climate, though he does witness the disappearance of his house and its replacement with
a garden. However, it is decidedly different in terms of the ruins of civilization the Traveller
encounters, with much of the former London recaptured by vegetation and the bifurcation of
humanity into two separate species. Threatened by the Morlocks who have stolen his machine,
the Traveller manages to reactivate the device and travel millions of years beyond his late-
Victorian time, there witnessing a dying Earth. The sky is no longer blue, and the air is thinner.
Green vegetation is everywhere, but the only living creatures he sees are a huge butterfly and
dozens of monstrous crustaceans. The sea, ringed with salt, barely moves in this windless world.

As the Traveller says:
I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the
world. The red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt Dead Sea, the stony
beach crawling with these foul, slow-stirring monsters, the uniform poisonous-
looking green of the lichenous plants, the thin air that hurts one’s lungs: all
contributed to an appalling effect. I moved on a hundred years, and there was the
4
same red sun—a little larger, a little duller—the same dying sea, the same chill
air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in and out among the green
weed and the red rocks. (Wells, The Time Machine 65)

The Traveller moves even further into the future, “watching with a strange fascination the
sun grow larger and duller in the westward sky, and the life of the old earth ebb away. At last,
more than thirty million years hence, the huge red-hot dome of the sun had come to obscure
nearly a tenth part of the darkling heavens” (65). Wells imagines a far-future world where life
may go on, but the climate changes due to the inexorable forces of nature—a natural world not
designed with any endpoint in mind by a God for whom humanity is a special creation.
Wells also questions the existence of a supernatural being whose providence governs
human affairs in his short story “The Star” (1897). In the near future (near to the late Victorians,
that is), Earth is threatened by a celestial object hurtling through the solar system that, after
colliding and merging with Neptune, continues toward the sun, looking like a new star in the
heavens. As it heads toward Earth, it increases in size, and eventually the heat of the object is
felt. Scientists fear it will collide with Earth as well, but complete catastrophe is averted as the
“star” instead passes by the Earth and heads toward the sun. Even so, such a massive object
passing so near the planet brings forth extreme meteorological disasters as it approaches: storms
and floods, earthquakes and volcanoes, and intense heat; its gravitational pull also alters Earth’s
orbit. Even after the “star” is gone, “men perceived that everywhere the days were hotter than of
yore, and the sun larger …” (152). Iceland, Greenland, and Baffin Bay become “green and
gracious” (152), the ice at the poles is considerably melted, and humanity moves “northward and
southward toward the poles of the earth” (152) because of the planet’s increased warmth. The
calamity is not of human origin, but Wells’s story nonetheless reveals a scientific view about the
5
precarious nature of our climate. Later writers would pick up the theme of an altered climate due
to astronomical phenomena, among them Larry Niven in “Inconstant Moon” (1971).

A changed climate caused by calamity is also present in Richard Jefferies’s novel After
London; or, Wild England (1885). The nature of the disaster, vaguely understood from the
perspective of the twenty-first century, is never made clear (though some suspect it was caused
by a celestial body passing near the earth, as in Wells’s story), but its results are manifest:
England’s climate has been altered, a vast lake covers much of the center of the country, and
most of the country has been reclaimed by forests except for London, which has become a toxic
swamp.

In these three works and many others found in the history of science fiction, climate
change is presented as a natural phenomenon, with humanity helpless in the face of powerful
physical forces to do anything about it. However, Victorian writers earlier than Wells noted how
industrialization was affecting the world around them, thus implicating civilization for its
discontents. In chapter 5 of Book 1 of Hard Times (1854), for example, Charles Dickens
famously depicts the smoke-filled sky of his fictional northern industrial village of Coketown,
with its “black canal” and “a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye…” (17).
Other Victorians extrapolated the effects of industrial pollution into the future. These
include William Delisle Hay in The Doom of the Great City (1880) and Robert Barr in “The
Doom of London” (The Idler, 1892), both describing a London poisoned by smog from the
futuristic perspective of the mid twentieth century. However, the Victorian belief in progress
often extended to an optimistic view that, while the nineteenth century might have lived under
the cloud of the pollution generated by industrialism, further advances would lead to cleaning up
the mess. This view would be continued by many authors into the twentieth century.
6
It is remarkable that in the utopias and other futuristic projections created by science
fiction authors in the late Victorian period and into the first half of the twentieth century, future
cities are routinely depicted as well organized and spotlessly clean—kind of like the Disney
parks’ Tomorrowland, only without Space Mountain. Even in early dystopias like Aldous
Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), the “bad
places” imagined by these authors are bad because of their social and political structures, not
because they’ve damaged the planet.

It is not until the 1950s that science fiction writers consider climate change a realistic
possibility for the future, and they do so within a specific historical context: the end of World
War II and the beginning of the Cold War, both presenting the threat of nuclear war and the
concomitant altering of the environment through radiation and radioactive waste. Scores of short
stories and novels were written imagining how climate change wrought by nuclear war could
render the planet either entirely or partially toxic. Similarly, the publication of Rachel Carson’s
Silent Spring in 1962 and subsequent discussions of the effects of a variety of pollutants spurred
science fiction writers to extrapolate present-day concerns into futuristic depictions of a polluted
planet.

These developments in the 1950s and 1960s coincide with a broader development in
American and British science fiction: the debate between optimism and pessimism. In contrast
with British dystopias like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, American science
fiction of the first half of the twentieth century tended to follow Jules Verne and progress-
minded Victorians as a model in imagining futures filled with technological and economic
advances. After the war, however, many writers, both American and British, began approaching
7
the human future more pessimistically, and possible devastation of the environment was just one
avenue they pursued.

A key figure in this shift was J. G. Ballard. The first of Ballard’s early novels about post-
apocalyptic scenarios, The Wind from Nowhere (1961), does not explain the cause of the
catastrophes: a powerful global wind eventually dries the seas and the Great Lakes. However, in
The Drowned World (1962) it is clear global warming is the precipitating event. The year is
2145, and much of the planet has been flooded due to increased temperatures. Likewise, in The
Burning World (1964) a massive drought, attributed to the dumping of industrial waste into the
world’s oceans, has dried up smaller bodies of water.
Ballard was not the only British writer to tackle the topic of disasters and catastrophes.

Among those who do so in connection with climate, John Christopher’s The World in Winter
(1962) imagines the effects of reduced solar radiation on the planet, specifically the United
Kingdom, which becomes an abandoned frozen wasteland from which many flee to Nigeria.
Other British writers imagined environmental catastrophes caused by human efforts to control
the weather, as in John Boland’s White August (1955)—Christmas weather in July!—and John
Bowen’s After the Rain (1958)—time to build another ark! Indeed, one key distinction between
much science fiction and mainstream climate fiction is that the former often follow the
Frankenstein motif of humanity attempting to control nature and creating havoc as a result,
whereas the latter tends to depict climate change not as a result of humanity’s overreaching but
rather stemming from long-term developments and either its resistance to curtailing its industrial
and technological advances, its indifference to the effects of climate change, or its denial of the
scientific consensus.
8
The environmental impact of pollution is addressed somewhat in Harry Harrison’s Make
Room! Make Room! (1966) and directly in John Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up (1972); both
novels employ multiple points of view, as if to emphasize the effects on humanity as a whole and
not just a handful of characters. Such works coincided with the rise of the ecology movement in
the late 1960s and the 1970s. This movement also influenced the writing of the utopian novel
Ecotopia (1975) by Ernest Callenbach, in which Washington, Oregon, and part of northern
California secede from the U.S. and establish an environmentally conscious state designed to
avert the ecological damage found in a story like James Blish’s “We All Die Naked” (1969), in
which rising carbon dioxide levels, causing the greenhouse effect, lead to melting polar ice and
rising sea levels, with New York City now a new Venice.

Since the 1970s, science fiction authors depicting possible future scenarios—especially if
working in the dystopian mode—have frequently presented settings ravaged by pollution,
radiation, or both. For instance, even though the focus of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s
Tale (1985) lies elsewhere, the increasing infertility that drives much of its premise stems from
environmental damage caused by pollution and radiation. Several science fiction novels deal
with the effects of rising sea levels caused by the greenhouse effect. One example is David
Brin’s Earth (1990); in its AD 2038 setting, global warming has contributed to rising sea levels
and increasingly severe storms and threats to a growing number of species.

Regrettably, some science fiction authors, like some segments of the American public
and its politicians, have expressed skepticism about climate change, among them Michael
Crichton’s State of Fear (2004), which was lambasted by scientists for its inaccuracies and
misrepresentations, and Fallen Angels (1991) by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael
9
Flynn. The latter ironically is in fact a climate change novel; the authors cast doubt on global
warming only to project another ice age instead. However, such examples are outliers in the
field. According to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, the realities of climate change have
become so accepted “[o]wing to the increasing scientific consensus that our energy-intensive
technological civilization is measurably and in all likelihood irreversibly affecting Earth’s
climate” that “consideration of climate change has become virtually inevitable in serious Near
Future sf of the twenty-first century” (Scott Langford).

The contemporary science fiction writer who has addressed climate change most
extensively is the American author Kim Stanley Robinson. For much of his career he has written
novelistic trilogies, all of which connect in some fashion to environmental concerns. His first, the
Three Californias trilogy, imagines three different futures for Orange County, California. In the
third volume, Pacific Edge (1990), Robinson depicts an ecological utopia comparable to
Callenbach’s Ecotopia, imagining how southern California could change course from its present
state to a greener future. The prospect of transforming an existing landscape is also a key concept
in Robinson’s Mars trilogy, whose middle volume, Green Mars (1993), concerns the
terraforming of Mars’s alien environment into a Terran-friendly world. His third trilogy, the
Science in the Capital series, is the most focused on climate change in his oeuvre. In Forty Signs
of Rain (2004), Fifty Degrees Below (2005), and Sixty Days and Counting (2007), Robinson
depicts a near-future Washington, D.C. that suffers the effects of climate change and characters
who strive to address the matter. Robinson also addresses climate change in standalone novels
like 2312 (2012) and New York 2140 (2017).
10
Given the privileging of literary fiction within certain circles and the low opinion some
still have of science fiction, it is understandable that some people think climate fiction is distinct
from science fiction, even if both address climate change. However, if one wishes to get a better
picture of how authors have speculated about the possible effects of climate change, one should
expand one’s view to take in science fiction and not just “literary” authors who have belatedly
joined the discussion.

11
Works Cited
Dickens, Charles. Hard Times, Norton Critical Edition, edited by George Ford and Sylvère
Monod, Norton, 1966.
Evancie, Angela. “So Hot Right Now: Has Climate Change Created a New Literary Genres?”
National Public Radio, 20 Apr. 2013, https://www.npr.org/2013/04/20/176713022/so-
hot-right-now-has-climate-change-created-a-new-literary-genre
Langford, David. “Climate Change.” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, 3 rd ed., edited by John
Clute et al., e-book, 31 Aug. 2018, http://www.sf-
encyclopedia.com/entry/climate_change. Accessed 18 Nov. 2019.
Wells, H. G. “The Star.” Selected Stories of H. G. Wells, edited by Ursula K. Le Guin, Modern
Library, 2004, pp. 142–52.
—. The Time Machine, Norton Critical Edition, edited by Stephen Arata, Norton,

Jenny Offill’s Cli-Fi Novella‘Weather’ explores what it means to survive in trying times

Review: Jenny Offill’s Cli-Fi Novella‘Weather’ explores what it means to survive in trying times

• By Catherine Holmes 
Reviewer Catherine Holmes teaches English at the College of Charleston

From the front lines of a planet in disrepair comes Jenny Offill’s “Weather,” a pliable, resistant novel that hangs on to the jokey voice of its predecessor, “Dept. of Speculation.”

Many readers (I am one) fall hard for Offill’s spare, fractured method. The story of “Dept. of Speculation” comes in blocks of text, almost like puzzle pieces, that readers can connect for a fuller picture of its narrator’s domestic crisis. “Weather” is equally piecemeal, and Lizzie, its narrator, is obsessed with gathering fragments against the ruin of time.

Offill describes herself as a “meat-eating, plane-flying, march-hating person” who began writing “Weather” as a cli-fi survival manual for her daughter. Lizzie is also a parent who becomes an “accidental activist” like her creator.

Lizzie (married to Ben, a Jewish academic, and we don’t learn her name until almost halfway into the novel) is a “feral librarian” — that is, one without a library degree. She gave up on her Ph.D. program, and Sylvia, her dissertation director, pulled strings to arrange the job.

Quickly, we come to realize that her life is thronged with people, some of them nameless: the “doomed adjunct” whom she loads with supplies when no one’s watching; the “man in the shabby suit” who works for hospice and tells her things she wants to know (for instance, that it’s important to stay in a house for three days after a death, to experience the “manifestations”); Mohan at the bodega, who will keep the cat that wanders in because his wife no longer loves him; Henry, her drug-addicted brother; Ben, her educational-game-designing husband; Eli, her son and the sweetest kid going; and others.

At the end of the novel, Lizzie will say, “All these people. I have so many people, you wouldn’t believe it.” It is not an offhand comment. They are the essence of her life.

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Lizzie is anxious. She can’t sleep without Ambien and is happy to learn she’s “habituated,” not addicted. Her child’s fancy former preschool sends a newsletter with a list of the top 10 childhood fears. Darkness doesn’t make the list, but “blood, sharks, and loneliness are eight, nine, and ten.” And Lizzie? Her greatest fear is “the acceleration of days.”

Every year on her birthday, she checks in with Virginia Woolf’s diaries to see her thoughts on reaching the same age. On the day she turned 44 (Lizzie’s age), Woolf wrote that she was heading toward death, “as the river shoots to Niagara ...”

Offill ratchets up the accelerating days and dread when she gives Lizzie a second job, as an assistant answering Sylvia’s email. Since she became a star doomsday podcaster (“Hell and High Water”), Sylvia’s mail is through the roof.

Offill writes as if from the long historical perspective. Her end-times narrative is both desperate and funny. People do crazy things and think crazy thoughts when the stakes have already been lost. There’s talk of de-extinction. Saber-tooth tigers, maybe woolly mammoths, could make a come-back.

Lizzie is not giving up. She ponders how to “channel all this dread into action.” She buys a telescope because she wants to see. She buys running shoes because she wants to run. She tries the Unitarian Church. It turns out they are not her tribe: “All that eye contact.” Meanwhile, Sylvia has given up and gone to the darkest place in North America, somewhere in Nevada.

Our narrator is just getting started. She has a fling with “prepper” web sites, where she learns: 1. how to start a fire with a gum wrapper and a battery and 2. what to do if you run out of candles (make one by stabbing a hole in a can of oil-packed tuna and inserting a wick made of newspaper). She and Ben have semi-serious conversations about who they’ll invite to join them on their “doomstead.”

Lizzie is such a charming empath, her sensibility so offbeat, and her dread of climate catastrophe so real that they overshadow other threats. As she is peopling am imaginary doomstead; Lizzie’s actual household is in jeopardy. Ben and Eli break away for a three-week “glamping” trip, and Lizzie finds herself flirting with someone she meets on the subway.

At the heart of “Weather” are questions about what it will mean to be among the survivors. After the book ends, all alone on a page is the following web address: www.obligatorynoteofhope.com. Click it, and you’ll find 45 “Tips for Trying Times,” beginning with Tip 1, “Read and Reread” and ending with Tip 45, “Make Wishes for the New Year” from the “Collected Letters” of Ernest Shackleton: “May the new one bring us good fortune, a safe deliverance from this anxious time and all good things to those we love so far away.”

Jenny Offill’s wonderful cli-fi ends with its own plea to close distances: “The core delusion is that I am here and you are there.”

Reviewer Catherine Holmes teaches English at the College of Charleston.