Reading Cli-Fi in J.G. Ballard's 1962 and 1966 novels: ''The Drowned World'' and ''The Crystal World''

Reading Cli-Fi in J.G. Ballard

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/berghahn/csurv/2013/00000025/00000002/art00002

Abstract:

J.G. Ballard's early novels The Drowned World (1962) and The Crystal World (1966) take a climatological approach to apocalyptic dystopia.

This has led survey studies of ''cli-fi'' novels and movies to identify these novels as founding texts of the genre.

 Yet Ballard wrote in an era before man-made global warming [AGW] had been identified by climate scientists, and his fiction is as much psychological and ontological as it is physiological.

Ballard both adheres to and deviates from the AGW narrative now accepted by contemporary climatology, working within and beyond the genre of post-apocalyptic fiction.

 This paper will assess the extent to which these dystopian narratives can be understood as cli-fi novels and explore the debt that more recent ''cli-fi'' may owe to Ballard.

Document Type: Research Article
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/cs.2013.250202
Publication date: 2013年6月1日

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/berghahn/csurv/2013/00000025/00000002/art00002