''How to miss several boats: Amitav Ghosh on climate change in literature'' - a blog post by GP Wayne in the UK

How to miss several boats: Amitav Ghosh on climate change in literature

a blog post by GP Wayne in the UK on October 30, 2016

 

https://gpwayne.wordpress.com/2016/10/30/how-to-miss-several-boats-amitav-ghosh-on-climate-change-in-literature/#comment-3534

tags: Guardian, Amitav Ghosh, novels, Literature, science fiction, sci-fi, cli-fi

It’s hard to summarise the gish-gallop that is Amitav Ghosh’s rather self-serving and thoroughly specious October 28 oped in the Guardian, but this quote seems to provide sufficient material to work with (with my emphasis added):

It is a simple fact that climate change has a much smaller presence in contemporary literary fiction than it does even in public discussion…Indeed, it could even be said that fiction that deals with climate change is almost by definition not of the kind that is taken seriously: the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction.

Amitav Ghosh OPED: where is the serious literary fiction about climate change?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/28/amitav-ghosh-where-is-the-fiction-about-climate-change-?CMP=share_btn_fb

So, to sum up; if it’s sci-fi, it’s not serious? Not taken seriously by whom? My first reaction to this elitist nonsense is anglo-saxon in origin. Best move on…
 *****
The comments under the article are well-informed (considerably better informed, actually) and many focus on the self-inflicted nature of Ghosh’s dilemma: an obsession with the validity of genres, and a casual disrespect for the work of so many authors whose work he dismisses because he thinks their work isn’t ‘literary fiction’, while berating authors he admires but who he claims have not contributed to cli-fi, or not contributed enough.
It is absolutely the case that many authors have, for a long time now, explored the human condition in climate-related dystopian settings; it seems very unfortunate that ‘popular fiction’ does not, in Ghosh’s view, appear to count – and this despite the plain fact that if one wishes to reach people, popular fiction remains a more cogent vehicle for mass dissemination than literary fiction. By the same token, to complain that ‘literary fiction’ fails to acknowledge the serious nature of the problem is an attempt to suborn literature – art itself actually – in the service of a single agenda, and no matter how well-meaning, history suggests that the value and integrity of art is frequently perverted by the deliberate inclusion of gross polemic no matter how cunning the disguise. When art is reduced to the status of a mere conveyance for a political or social agenda, it is diminished in all but the most skilled hands.
Then there is the issue of story telling in such a context. The climate has no voice or volition. A novel cannot be ‘about’ climate change; the climate is an environment in which people’s stories are revealed. That their stories are shaped by their environment should be a given, but since climate change hasn’t delivered its payload yet, stories must necessarily be set in the future – and future fiction of any kind – literate or not – will be consigned to the indignity of inadequate categorisation, a function of markets, not literature. We can call it future fiction, sci-fi, cli-fi or whatever, but the genre does no great service to the work.
A failure to understand that the novel will always transcend the genres into which it gets stuffed like so many supermarket pre-packs in a trolley is also a failure to acknowledge the value and quality of popular novels. It is, however, a fine platform on which to build the kind of snobbery and disdain that is so often itself characterised as elitist.

In a discussion group I follow, a friend and supporter of Ghosh wrote that “The Guardian commenters are probably after Ghosh because he has been very sceptical of the liberal-leftist agenda that defines them… ”
I think it’s very unfortunate that he thinks the criticism is the product of an agenda – like climate change deniers, there’s a pervasive sense of victimhood and a whiff of conspiracy here. Such defensiveness is usually a sign of a weak argument that has to be shored up by ascribing motive – a practice I’ve always regarded as facile. It’s actually a bizarre kind of ad hominem attack: dismiss the criticism by throwing the critics under a bus big enough to seat them all at once. And that said, reading lightly between the lines of a statement Ghosh makes himself, it appears there might be some projection going on here:

“I have been preoccupied with climate change for a long time, but it is true of my own work as well, that this subject figures only obliquely in my fiction.”

Perhaps Ghosh’s time would be better spent putting his own house in order rather than camouflage his own sense of failure by blaming everyone else?

*****

I have to add a different perspective to this discussion. I don’t think the issue is genre, method, means or technique: the issue is constituency.

Over the years, I’ve come to identify the audience that is at once both the most important, and the hardest to reach. To employ a rather convenient generalisation myself, I would call this latent audience the ‘general public’. It is the woman in a supermarket queue with two infants in tow. It is the plumber who only reads the sports pages. It’s the Trump voters and the Brexiteers: we can call them deplorables, but that’s just another way of dismissing their concerns while failing to address their sense of betrayal, disenfranchisement and a profound incomprehension about how this came about.

The small subset of readers who wade through what AS Byatt wittily referred to as her ‘difficult novels, that only academics will read’ (I’m paraphrasing but the the gist is accurate) are not the people we should be trying to reach. They are numerically tiny (as denoted by sales of literary fiction), and in all events we are likely to end up preaching to the converted.

If there is a communication problem, it’s origins are in education and the broad inability to understand risk management on long-term scales. Those who confuse climate science with ideology are not those who will pick up the latest Man-Booker tome, so literature of any kind is not a vehicle they will willingly travel in.

The problem as I see it is the right-wing media working so assiduously to convince the public that climate change isn’t real, isn’t as much of a problem as scientists claim, that it’s a front for a political, social or economic agenda, or any combination of the above.

This is the target audience – those taken in by demagoguery and willing to ignore the inevitable cognitive dissonance it creates, and Ghosh et. al. will never speak to their issues while they regard them from an ivory tower so lofty they can’t see the ground on which their tower is built, nor reach the very people whose future they claim to care so much about. Climate change affects us all, not just people who read ‘literary fiction’.

"I'm a cli-fi missionary.''

"I'm a cli-fi missionary.''

"We are a world now divided bitterly over climate change issues. Novels and movies can serve to wake people up in ways that politics and ideology cannot."

"I believe if the world does not wake up soon about the pressing climate change issues we face now, future generations of humans will be 'doomed, doomed' — within 500 years. I can see that far ahead. Will 'cli-fi' save the planet? No way. But at least it might help prepare us for what's coming in future centuries. I like to think long term."

"I'm not worried about the next 100 or 200 years. It's the kids born 30 generations from now that I'm worried about. I have a deep wellspring of empathy for  future generations. I care about the world then. Today, no problem, life is wonderful. We'll be okay. It's people living in the year 2500 A.D. that I am thinking about. That's what cli-fi means for me."

''I never set out to make money. I only wanted to make a difference. Now as I reach 70, I am seeing a little success along those lines. ''
''I'm still as poor as a churchmouse, and I don't own a house or car or anything. I ride a bicycle to get around. I rent everything, my home, my computer, my telephone. I'm not interested in fame or fortune and I am not making a single penny from this cli-fi work. I living on borrowed time, as I coast toward the end of my life on planet Earth, as I've got a stent in my heart-attacked heart keeping the blood flowing through my placque-caked arteries. ''

''I wake up every morning full of optimisim and hope. It's my DNA. I go to sleep at night depressed and blue. That's also my DNA. We are living in very troubled – and troubling – times. But I am at peace with life. Life is good. Except for this climate change problem.''

The "cli-fi" name came to me as I was thinking of ways to raise awareness of novels and movies about climate change issues. I toyed with using such terms as "climafic" or "climfic" or "clific," for the longer term of "climate fiction." But I wanted an even shorter term that could fit easily into newspaper and magazine headlines. So using the rhyming sounds of ''sci-fi,'' I decided to go with the short, simple to say and simple to write "cli-fi".

''And the short term caught on worldwide, beginning on April 20, 2013 when an American radio show did a five-minute radio segment about "cli-fi." That was the beginning of its global outreach and popularity among academics, literary critics, journalists and headline writers.''

Editor's note: “Cli-fi” in 2013 received an honorable mention by the Macquarie Dictionary as an important new word. 

Read more at "The Cli-Fi Report" at www.Cli-Fi.Net. 

TC Boyle, The Author Who Predicted Earth’s Bleak Future Is Back, This Time With a Cli-Fi titled THE TERRANAUTS

The Author Who Predicted Earth’s Bleak Future Is Back With Another 'Cli-Fi' !

Written by

Jim Poyser for MOTHERBOARD

On October 26, 2016



http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-author-who-predicted-earths-bleak-future-is-back



EXCERPTS from Q and A

Jim: Here in Indiana, the land of climate denial where I live, when I talk about climate change, people mostly just want to talk about recycling.

Tom: As you well know we are doomed because we are caught in this capitalist wheel. All industrial society is built on producing product and buying the product. This is why I wrote Drop City (Viking; 2003): Could we go back to a simpler way of life?
Of course eventually we will, catastrophically, when the whole system collapses and the population is vastly reduced.
In my personal life and in talking with you and other people, I am a nice guy, and I’m joyful, I love to tell jokes and so on and I have a great sustaining group of close friends, and wonderful children, but in my heart I am more depressed than Samuel Beckett. Because I see the human condition and how preposterous it is, and how there are no answers to our existence, and science and religion are really equally voodoo, and we complicate this with rushing to the destruction of everything.

How do you deal with the reality of our potential demise?

I make art and try to explore it. In one sense I make light of it, in the other sense I’m trying to engage the reader to understand this and feel the way I do. It’s hard to walk out to the street and see life and embrace life when at the same time you know what the catastrophic problems are.
We all want. We have our wants. We all dominate. We all collect and aggregate that’s part of our DNA and hardwiring. When voters are polled in California, overwhelmingly they want to preserve green space and have nature. People give lip service to this. However if the price of gas goes up five cents, we will throw all environmental concerns out the window because we want to pay less for gas.
We are doomed. The only way out of it is to stop consuming and tear all this shit down. It’s not going to happen.
However, I will be optimistic. When I was a boy, there were no limits whatsoever. No one had any idea about packaging and recycling. Everything was into the trash and the landfill, including batteries and whatever poisonous materials. Now, at least, elementary school kids are learning about the earth and its ecosystems and recycling. If I have any optimism it is that there is greater awareness and our having this conversation demonstrates this to a degree. We are both influential; as teachers maybe we have an effect in the long run.
In the pessimistic view, though, there are way too many of us and we are already seeing climate dislocations; at least a third of the countries of the world are ruled by gangs whose only idea is to take your living and material possessions and destroy and annihilate everybody else; it is just going to get worse.
My plan, personally, is I’m going to die.

It’s easy to experience guilt about our own personal impact. Do you have any advice for us who are struggling with it?

My advice is the standard advice I’ve been giving for the last twenty years or more. If you are an environmentalist, go directly out into the yard, bury yourself in the compost pile, then shoot yourself in the head.
You and I feel this guilt. If I light a fire up in the mountain in the woodstove I’m destroying the earth. If I go to the supermarket—I very rarely eat any meat but my wife is a carnivore—and buy her meat, I feel guilty. And as Ty Tierwater says, just farting is contributing methane gas to climate change.
It becomes a kind of hatred of our own species and a kind of self-hatred if you take it too far.
I’m trying to find a balance in my own life between despair and ecstasy; between pessimism over what our species is heading toward and optimism about the beauty and creativity of our species.


Jim Poyser is a climate educator based in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he is executive director of Earth Charter Indiana. For more on Boyle, visit his website and follow him on Twitter.

UK cli-fi news: Graham Wayne has a cli-fi novel published now and available via Amazon

UK cli-fi news:

 

Graham Wayne has a cli-fi novel published now and available via Amazon. It's a novel set in a near future world that could become our world tomorrow if we are not careful. Graham lives in Devon, England and spends as much of his time as he can writing, principally about the science and sociology of climate change.

Recently he's been concentrating on novels and his first one, published in August, is titled ''Cities of Refuge'' and is a gripping read of what tomorrow (the near future, that is) might bring. It deserves a wide readership worldwide, because the issues are global.
 
I am also looking forward to his next novel, ''Life Below Decks,'' which he says on his blog is set to published in December 2016.

BOOK DETAILS:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01JWFQDJK/ref=cm_cr_ryp_prd_ttl_sol_0

  

''I admit it, ''Silent Running'' is my all-time favorite movie, but I never expected to feel I was living it.''

A letter from a reader in NY state who is interested in cli fi nvoels. She writes:

 

"Dear Sir, Have you ever seen the Universal film "Silent Running" from 1970 or 71? ...[March 1972 IMDB says] ...Stars Bruce Dern with great soundtrack by Peter Schickele including vocals by Joan Baez. It was my favorite film as a kid, still is as I worry about Nature as I've known it coming to an end.

The movie doesn't mention climate per se -- I am not sure that the story goes into what exactly has happened -- but all the elements of ecological disaster are there, including human beings' short-sightedness and isolation from each other as well as the larger world. And it deals with the philosophical problem of eco-actvism: Is it okay to sacrifice people to save the ecosystem, or what's left of it?

The movie even depicts corporate sponsorship of the orbiting Domes that house what's left of the ecosystem along with what I think are terrific special effects showing the technological sophistication of a spiritually impoverished civilization.

The hero's memory of how things used to be on earth pits him against colleagues who have no memory of food being anything other than a brightly colored synthetic cube. I can relate as I get older.

I admit it, ''Silent Running'' is my all-time favorite movie, but I never expected to feel I was living it.

Could this movie interest the young people of today -- those who read cli-fi?

Sincerely,

Maria...

Age 52

Ithaca, NY

"It's good to see a concerted pushback in the West against Amitav Ghosh's outdated and ivory tower prejudice against genre novels."

"It's good to see a concerted pushback in the West against Amitav Ghosh's outdated and ivory tower prejudice against genre novels."

When Amitav Ghosh's PR team asked the Guardian newspaper in the UK to publish an excerpt on literary matters from his new essay collection titled THE GREAT DERANGEMENT, the PR people and the publishers (University of Chicago Press) probably thought this was a great PR boost, but in fact it backfired. Over 225 comments came in in the first 24 hours and most of them were negative and anti-Ghosh. Why? Because in the excerpt the Guardian published, Ghosh came across as an elistist VIP holier than thou writer of "serious mainstream fiction" and he called genre novels in the sci fi and cli fi and spec fic camp as low rent, gutter, outhouse genres. This did not go over well with Guardian readers.




Here's one comment to start off with:


A commenter said "It's good to see a concerted pushback in the West against Amitav Ghosh's outdated and ivory tower prejudice against genre novels."


Lproven added:

''Do not forget that this is the writer who won Britain's premiere and most prestigious award for science fiction, the Arthur C Clarke Aware, for his novel "The Calcutta Chromosome". The paperback edition did not even mention the award on the cover.
He is bigoted and prejudiced against SF, as can be shown by his intentional limitation to exclude the type of books he is actually writing about (and indeed writing):
"literary novelists writing in English"
He then cites several authors of award-winning SF.
Yet he loftily ignores superb novels such as Kim Stanley Robinson's "Science in the Capital" trilogy: "Forty Signs of Rain", "Fifty Degrees Below" and "Sixty Days and Counting".''
Dave said: ''The Water Knife''_, by Paolo Bacigalupi, is a novel about climate change and water rights in the American west. I enjoyed it so much I went and read the nonfiction history of western water, _Cadillac Desert_.''

---------------------------------------------------

BUT while many comments at the Guardian oped took issues with Dr Ghosh's ivory tower bias bias against cli fi and sci fi and other "gutter" genres of the literary "outhouse" as he calls them, I also received this defense of Dr Ghosh from an Indian academic living in Europe for many years"

He said, taking Dr Ghosh's side and defending his Guardian oped:

"I did not see that genre prejudice everyone at the Guardian is accusing Dr Ghosh of. Actually, I think he argued in favour of genre novels, but said that they too did not really come to grips with climate change. I tend to agree with that. There are exceptions, but mostly genre uses a dystopian scenario to shock and thrill, and sometimes even suggests the inevitability of such dystopia. As someone who has been teaching the sci-fi, genre, gothic fiction for years – because I took and take them seriously – I am now becoming a bit worried about the ways in which they actually obfuscate serious matters, and allow students/readers to avoid thinking about them. Of course, there are exceptions. As Michael Moorcock, himself a genre writer, concedes too – when he expresses his hatred of Tolkien-type genre writing.

''The Guardian commenters are probably after Ghosh because he has been very sceptical of the liberal-leftist agenda that defines them… ''

----------------------------------------------


D3 said: ''Some good points, yes - but it depends on a narrow definition of 'literary'. Kim Stanley Robinson has spent most of his career writing novels about climate change. He probably reaches many more readers than the 'lit-fict' genre.''


Leviathan said: "Such a long article from someone who clearly can't see outside of the ghetto of Literary Fiction, meanwhile publishers put the vast number of novels set in a future affected by climate change into the category of Science Fiction. Open your eyes and make some effort."


NonetooClever said: ''Well, the sub-genre of cli-fi, as it's known, is making steady headway at the margins of our culture. There'a a new magazine called ''Into the Ruins'' which features stories about post-industrial life and climate change scenarios. It is worth checking out.''


Another comment wrote that Ghosh wrote: "the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction. It is as though in the literary imagination climate change were somehow akin to extraterrestrials or interplanetary travel."
'Relegate'? Interesting insight into Ghosh's view of science fiction, especially when we're regularly sending probes to other planets. Of course SF, which has long been a literature set on exploring contemporary trends, has amassed a substantial body of work on climate change, some of it going back to before the current thinking on the subject, when the possibility of a new Ice Age was still being discussed, most memorably in Arthur C Clarke's "The Forgotten Enemy" (1949).
But moving to contemporary views of climate change, we see it featured in books like David Brin's Earth (1990), Bruce Sterling's Heavy Weather (1994) and Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 (2012), the Science in the Capital trilogy (2004, 2005, 2007) and arguably Green Mars (1994). In contemporary works by other SF authors, climate change is simply part of the accepted background, but then SF/F has always been a literature accepting of change.''


Julie wrote: ''Scifi is one of the few genres where really big issues can be explored on a more personal level- with the exception of survival which is pretty stock in much fiction.''


And Congenial said:
''I was going to say, I can think of a number of novels that deal both explicitly and implicitly with climate change. You have mentioned them all here. I would also add in Baxter's Proxima and John Christopher's works such as the Death of Grass and the World in Winter. We could also at a stretch include Frank Herbert's Dune novels but as that is non terrestrial perhaps that one is questionable.
As others here say, this oped analysis says more about the conceits of the author Ghosh and the somewhat myopic view of what constitutes literature.''



Among the many [225+] comments, this one was also upvoted: "J G Ballard is the first name that springs to my mind when thinking of writers who write presciently of climate change, particularly The Drowned World and The Burning World. Literary fiction may simply be the wrong genre, but in science fiction it's not exactly an unusual theme. Strange use of the word 'relegate' there, as though science fiction is somehow an unworthy genre."

This was backed up by another comment reading: "Absolutely. That the artic!e ignores Ballard's 1960s climate fiction seems extraordinary -- and Ballard isn't even a ghettoised sci-fi writer, he's about as literary mainstream as they come. Not that Ballard's fiction was about climate-change as a human-inspired phenomenon (any more than 'High Rise' was about class warfare), but that hardly disqualifies it...''


A commenter named Hawfish then wrote: "Yes, Ghosh is pretty sneering about science fiction, which is apparently a generic outhouse surrounding the manor house of literary fiction. He seems to have forgotten that aristocrats living in manors are rarely the first to see the future coming, especially when they don't pay attention to what's going on in the outhouses. Ghosh seems to have completely missed David Brin's 'Earth' and Paolo Bacigalupi's ''The Windup Girl'', as well as the Ballard novels mentioned here above.''


Doctor Liberty replied: ''Pretty much all of Bacigalupi's stuff deals with climate change, read them this year. Also read Peter F Hamilton's first trilogy which is set in an England that's mostly underwater. I'm not even looking for climate change related fiction but I can't seem to avoid it!''


MattAndrews said: ''I think the problem is amplified by limiting the field to the somewhat arbitrary constraints of what is regarded as literary fiction. Given that climate change is a nightmare whose worst episodes are yet to come, the genre of cli-fi (see cli-fi.net = speculative fiction that is focused on climate change) is where the action is... and there is some marvellous work happening in that field.''
Linda Ellis added: ''By definition a story that deals with extrapolation of current events or "what if" ideas is Science Fiction .
It is intellectual snobbery on Ghosh's part to consider such work as being relegated to some second division. Some of the most interesting writing is going on in this genre and if Ghosh wouldn't read it because of the label then Ghosh is the loser.''






This led GreatCChulu to comment re where Ghosh wrote in his ''inane oped'' that
''the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction''
and

''it arises out of the peculiar forms of resistance that climate change presents to what is now regarded as serious fiction.''

''And therein lies the problem with this Ghosh article," GreatC continued. "The problem isn't the cultural impact climate change or its effect on the literary zeitgeist, it is the application of such a hackneyed and reductionist literary view. Arguably, Cormac Mac Carthy and Margaret Atwood's dystopic speculative fiction as evidenced in "the Road" Oryx and Crake" and Margaret Atwood's excellent accompanying novels fit the citeria to be classed as science fiction. Please try and accept this. I hope the realisation doesn't make you choke on your cornflakes.
Some of the acknowledged greatest "serious fiction" writers of the canon have engaged in writing speculative fiction.; H.G. Wells; Trollope; Orwell; Huxley; Vonnegut; etc. etc. etc. and I think that writers such as Jo0hn Wyndham or P.K. Dick (and many others)could easily rank aside them. The problem isn't the engagement of "serious fiction writers", it is the lack of engagement by certain critics with "serious fiction writing" that strays beyond their general understanding or the limited world view of the themes and tropes that "serious fiction writing" should possess.''


Fliz added:
''Yes, the damaged environment--and the wealthy's adaptations to it-- are frequently mentioned in Atwood's Oryx and Crake.
Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, with its Ice 9, is another strong example of post apocalyptic fiction on the environment.''
Snowwalling wrote: "Sadly Dr Ghosh who lives in the VIP elite mansion of "literary" fiction, as opposed to those outhouse gutter low rent genres of "illiterary" fiction like sci-fi and spec fiction and clifi and ecofiction which he so loathes from his mansion in Broolyn, sadly Amitavji is proscriptive about what kinds of fictions novelists in the West can deploy to talk about climate change issues. For him, "it's my way or the highway. " He is so wrong. JG BALLARD started the ball rolling in the 1960s. Wake up Dr Ghosh. Do you homework. Genre fiction rocks and can dance circles around so called literary fiction.''
ChatRob followed with this: ''Damn right. Snowwalling, You beat me to it with Ballard, he was ahead of nearly everybody on climate change. And lots of other stuff too. When you look at the world at the moment Super Cannes and Cocaine Nights don't seem too far removed from current reality.''


Sphicntr added: ''Like it or not scifi is niche fiction. Not a reflection on scifi itself merely the reality of modern media.''


Efrigg noted:
''Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Green Planet' is a novel covering the practice of science and the effects of climate change... highly recommended
It is also the most optimistic book I've ever read - even in the face of catastrophic weather induced by climate change, the protagonist meets each challenge with ingenuity, compassion and resolve. Also his trilogy beginning with 40 Days of Rain.''
Mark Palmer wrote: ''What an utterly inane, pointless article.''

​Another commenter wrote: "I Have to say I thought this Ghosh oped was windy and a bit dull, especially from the author of the splendid non-fiction In an Antique Land​.''

Ken Fine added: ''With a few exceptions, the literary mind doesn't 'do' science very well. We can see the worst examples of this in what happens when film scriptwriters attempt to tackle climate change - Waterworld and The Day After Tomorrow being the most egregious efforts.
''That said, I was impressed by The Road. We aren't told what the cataclysmic event was in the film, but an asteroid strike is the most likely explanation, given the environmental depiction. This would have caused huge climatic upheaval, including a global shut down of photosynthesis. A supervolcano eruption is another possible explanation.''


Frost and Dire added: ''It's in science fiction. I know that's not a genre that most literary writers and critics would deign to consider, but it's still there.

Sgt Fix said: ''re where Ghosh writes:  ''the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction.''

"Relegate" to science fiction? Hmm, no literary bias there by the author at all.
Pat Lux added: ''Julie Bertagna’s award-winning EXODUS series has introduced many young adults to the consequences of climate change. ''


Another commenter added: "And Liz Jensen, RAPTURE, which Dr Ghosh to his credit does mention in his essay book, along with Barbarar Kingsolver's Flight Behaviour.''


OccM said:
''If writing of climate change is to relegate a work to science fiction, does that make the Man Booker Prize equivalent to the Rumbleows Cup?
As others have stated the lower leagues have been writing informed and eloquent stories centred around environmental disaster and climate change for quite some time. To the pile I'll add John Brunner's "The Sheep Look Up" and "Stand on Zanzibar", part of his so called "Club of Rome" quartet named for the think tank of the same name.
I like your characterisation of 'realist' fiction as a 19th-century stentorian patriarch disinheriting and exiling those family members who deign to broach his taboos. It's precisely this sense of starched collars, approved haircuts and coverings for the piano legs that bedevil literature and literary criticism. Dare to write of certain subjects in certain ways and they'll write to the TLS and say 'Ugh...' Those stern letters and reproaches do have consequences for editors and for writers. How many ideas and drafts have been rejected by the risk-averse managers of bottom lines for fear of the reaction and subsequent 'relegation' to the pulping installation? Better for all to call it genre where it might sell.
It is interesting that you mention poetry's ability to disregard the boundaries of acceptability. Is it that poetry is rarely about what looks good on a table in Waterstones, or what star rating it'll get in the Guardian, or what will make the shortlists of the annual prizes? Or is it that poetry has always been able to take time to look around itself and take in a landscape for the sake of itself, while literary fiction tends to have its mind on the minds of others? No time to stand and stare, too much time caring about the constraints of a narrative or character development.
To answer your challenge: A crisis of imagination? Definitely not. A crisis of culture? Perhaps, but one that's been going on for a long time and that encompasses a much larger range of subjects than solely climate change.
Maybe literary fiction will end up like Paddy McAloon's broken-hearted lover, seeking the meaning and solace found in the sweet but excessive September rain so much, it ends up drowning in it.''
OccM then added:
''Another couple of strands of thought.
Does literature has an intimacy problem. Those cultural movements of the past that may have been more at home to the topic of climate change, such as the Romantic movement and Sturm und Drang, were either far more visual or were on stage. Recitation is at the heart of poetry and fairy-tales and children's stories where one is more likely to encounter tornadoes in one's path and where realism can take a hike. Part of what a novel is, is an intimate experience the reader has alone with the book. A retreat from the real, the weather and any notion of change. Perhaps climate change is something to be performed rather than read?
Then again maybe it's a matter of class. Notions of hierarchy inveigled their way into this article in an uncoded manner. Literature is exclusive. The boundaries are hard. The rules apply to everyone, but doubly-so to genre, the punishment being ostracism from the bookshop's main sequence, but for those safe within the walls of the literary, they can be bent and raise only a knowing smirk. As long as one's indulgences are seemly and infrequent. Climate change has the whiff of science. It has its own exclusive rules known to those privy to the arcane conceits of the scientific method. Woe betide those who assume knowledge that cannot be tested and evidenced. The arguments rage, the temperatures rise and storms threaten to consume the blithe and unresearched.
There. Are. Graphs.
Clearly writing about climate change is declasse and fraught with hazard. Take it seriously enough for your protagonist to gaze at the clouds a paragraph too long and the ostrakons with your name on will be flung.
You can tell it's a Friday. I'm taking Guardian opinion pieces too seriously.''


Fergus Brown replied to Dr Ghosh: ''Err... David Mitchell also springs to mind,with Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks, and John Brunner in the early 70's; The Sheep Look Up, etc.
The main problem is that the environment, the world of a story, is generally the context, not the subject, with Ballard et al providing rare exceptions.
Writing a narrative set in any future world affected by climate change is not so difficult, but making that world the main focus is much harder.''


Another commenter added: ''When Dr Ghosh starts off his cockamamie oped this way, you know he did not do his homework, since every major newspaper or book review in the UK and USA has reviewed climate-themed novels in the scifi and clifi genres: "It is a simple fact that climate change has a much smaller presence in contemporary literary fiction than it does even in public discussion. As proof of this, we need only glance through the pages of literary journals and book reviews. When the subject of climate change occurs, it is almost always in relation to nonfiction; novels and short stories are very rarely to be glimpsed within this horizon. Indeed, it could even be said that fiction that deals with climate change is almost by definition not of the kind that is taken seriously: the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction. It is as though in the literary imagination climate change were somehow akin to extraterrestrials or interplanetary travel.'' Amitavji, my friend, the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), Slate, Salon, Grist, Inverse and even the New York Times has taken note of genre novels about climate since at least 2013, including NPR the USA radio network, and in the UK the BBC and the Guardian itself has published articles, opeds, and reviews about climate-themed novels and movies since 2013 as well. Who are you kidding, sir? Please come down to Earth and deal with what it, not with what you think is. Because as you can see from the many comments here, you are so so wrong about this. PLEASE, SIR, WAKE UP! You are hurting your own cause.''


Pagey noted: ''What a snobbish piece.''


Dr Teeth added: ''A contemporary dose of CC fiction is provided by the final part of "the Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell. It's very scary, realistic vision.''




Icoomenter said re where Ghosh wrote: 
''When I try to think of writers whose imaginative work has communicated a more specific sense of the accelerating changes in our environment, I find myself at a loss''
So Dr Ghosh, Maybe then do some research? That's what I do.
And maybe be a little more open to the imaginations of writers you haven't already heard of, but who are in the minds of so many better-read posters than you, here?''
CaptainSmith wrote: "Maybe such apocalyptic fiction depends on a time and place. I'm thinking of the 1950s and 1960s when there were a number of science fiction novels about a nuclear war or disaster, some of which were made into movies (e.g., On the Beach). Since then there have been novels about virulent disease that escapes (e.g., Andromeda Strain). Is Ghosh saying global climate change is missing from recent scifi, or is he limiting his remarks to his sense of "literary" fiction?"


Vokker said: ''There is serious literature about a world after the climate disaster; for instance Dirk C. Fleck "Go! Die Öko-Diktatur" written in the year of 1993 anticipating not only catastrophic climate change but also the dying of many many refugees in the Mediterranean.''


John 99 said
''Publishing Houses focus on what sells. If they thought they could flog it they would be encouraging authors to go there.
I have yet to meet an American that believes in climate change. Most people seem to be more interested on history based drama, real life, sex and horror. All of that will be catered for by climate change but we haven't got there yet.
It will change give it 30 years or so.''


Snow added: ''I like Amitav Ghosh, and the sections of his essay book about politics and history are brilliant. It's just the literary stuff where he for some reason he did not do his homework, or could not bring himself to do it. When the book was released in Indian is June, over 100 Indian PR writers and journalists praised the book and not one writer challenged Ghosh on his bias against sci fi and other genres. But I knew that when the book was released in the USA and the Uk in October, readers and critics would respond and tell Dr Ghosh he is plain wrong about the literarry stuff. And as the comments here today, 100+ so far, they show how strongly people feel and I hope Dr Ghosh will pay attention to what the comments here has been saying. He cannot change his book. But he can change his tune when he gives radio and print and TV interviews in the future, starting tomorrow. He say: "I was wrong about my genre bias, and the good readers of the Guardian have made me aware of this." He is a man of humility and I am sure he can do this. He is on our side. He just did not do his homework on the literary stuff. The other two-thirds of his book is brilliant.''
And finally, SOS said :
''The real question is why Prof. Ghosh hasn't tackled Climate Change. The answer, obviously, would be that he'd have to write convincingly about the sort of highly educated White people he meets everyday. Why? Because people like them make the decisions which existentially affect the 'subaltern' he believes the is speaking for.
A highly educated Professor of the right colour is welcome to be a 'native informant' and depict people from his part of the world as without agency or rationality, but once he tries the same trick on the white people who went to the same Ivy League Colleges as himself, the thing breaks down. We are prepared to believe that Dr. Bannerjee, the head of the Sundarbans' Forest Office, is a horrible hypocrite who directly sanctions the killing of very poor fishermen. We don't believe Dr. Bannister, the head of Global Oil's Louisiana office receives orders from Donald Trump to deliberately destroy the livelihoods of Afro-American fishermen in the bayou, so that they lose their right to vote, by causing an oil leak.
Human beings are, generally, willing to believe absurd lies about far away places. They may even get a thrill from the suggestion that there is a vast conspiracy going on under their very noses. What they reject is illiterate lies about things they are familiar with.
Climate Change affects everybody. No rational person would choose to communicate anything valuable they have to contribute to the common information set though a costly and inappropriate channel. Literary fiction is costly and inappropriate. Arundhati Roy first wrote a screenplay, which was made into a Tv film nobody saw, for which she received an award because in India nobody watching a movie means it must be high brow. She didn't write another screenplay coz the same thing would happen. She then starred in a movie- an Indian remake of Mister Johnson- but it was ludicrously bad more especially coz Piers Brosnan starred in the genuine article. Once again, hardly anyone saw the film so Roy gave up on film. She then wrote a 'return of Orestes' ultra-feminist novel which nobody in India read- though a large number of people bought the book and even believed they had read it because they thought it was about the struggles of a prostitute- but which gave her a 'bully pulpit' because Indians hate literature but love the idea that they can make big bucks by selling some shite to the West. Roy wasn't stupid. She saw that literary fiction doesn't change anything. So she gave it up and went in for a sort of fact based journalism. However, the intellectuals looked askance at her for mentioning facts and trying to use proper arguments. So she gave that up and went in for fact free attitudinizing. This was popular. At last, she had got an Indian readership! But, her influence was negative. If she wrote scathingly of some scheme of Narendra Modi's, people rang their brokers (I was one) to demand shares in the venture. She has contributed to the wide-spread perception that Left-Liberal politics is gestural and 'anti national'. It is like Gandhian pi-jaw or muddle headed Tagorean lyricism.
Science Fiction eagerly embraced themes of man-made disaster. Hollywood eagerly embraced these themes. It is routine to see them portrayed on TV series. Literary Fiction may well have gone down the same road. No one knows because no one cares if it did.''

Amitav Ghosh's recent anti-sci fi oped in the UK Guardian did not go over well with Guardian readers.

When Amitav Ghosh's PR team asked the Guardian newspaper in the UK to publish an excerpt on literary matters from his new essay collection titled THE GREAT DERANGEMENT, the PR people and the publishers (University of Chicago Press) probably thought this was a great PR boost, but in fact it backfired. Over 225 comments came in in the first 24 hours and most of them were negative and anti-Ghosh. Why? Because in the excerpt the Guardian published, Ghosh came across as an elistist VIP holier than thou writer of "serious mainstream fiction" and he called genre novels in the sci fi and cli fi and spec fic camp as low rent, gutter, outhouse genres. This did not go over well with Guardian readers.

Among the many [225+] comments, this one was upvoted the most: "J G Ballard is the first name that springs to my mind when thinking of writers who write presciently of climate change, particularly The Drowned World and The Burning World. Literary fiction may simply be the wrong genre, but in science fiction it's not exactly an unusual theme. Strange use of the word 'relegate' there, as though science fiction is somehow an unworthy genre."
==================

BUT While many comments at the Guardian oped took issues with Dr Ghosh's ivory tower bias bias against cli fi and sci fi and other "gutter" genres of the literary "outhouse" as he calls them, I also received this defense of Dr Ghosh from an Indian academic living in Europe for many years"

He said, taking Dr Ghosh's side and defending his Guardian oped:

"I did not see that genre prejudice everyone at the Guardian is accusing Dr Ghosh of. Actually, I think he argued in favour of genre novels, but said that they too did not really come to grips with climate change. I tend to agree with that. There are exceptions, but mostly genre uses a dystopian scenario to shock and thrill, and sometimes even suggests the inevitability of such dystopia. As someone who has been teaching the sci-fi, genre, gothic fiction for years – because I took and take them seriously – I am now becoming a bit worried about the ways in which they actually obfuscate serious matters, and allow students/readers to avoid thinking about them. Of course, there are exceptions. As Michael Moorcock, himself a genre writer, concedes too – when he expresses his hatred of Tolkien-type genre writing.

==================================

''The Guardian commenters are probably after Ghosh because he has been very sceptical of the liberal-leftist agenda that defines them… ''

Absolutely. That the Ghosh excerpt from his book article ignores Ballard's 1960s climate fiction seems extraordinary - and Ballard isn't even a ghettoised sci-fi writer, he's about as literary mainstream as they come.
Not that Ballard's fiction was about climate-change as a human-inspired phenomenon (any more than High Rise was about class warfare), but that hardly disqualifies it...
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Hawkfish     fifth  18h ago   

   
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Yes, he's pretty sneering about science fiction, which is apparently a generic outhouse surrounding the manor house of literary fiction. He seems to have forgotten that aristocrats living in manors are rarely the first to see the future coming, especially when they don't pay attention to what's going on in the outhouses.
He seems to have completely missed David Brin's Earth and Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, as well as the Ballard novels you mentioned.
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DoctorLiberty     Hawkfish  18h ago   

   
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Pretty much all of Bacigalupi's stuff deals with climate change, read them this year. Also read Peter F Hamilton's first trilogy which is set in an England that's mostly underwater. I'm not even looking for climate change related fiction but I can't seem to avoid it!
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MattAndrews   20h ago   

   
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I think the problem is amplified by limiting the field to the somewhat arbitrary constraints of what is regarded as literary fiction. Given that climate change is a nightmare whose worst episodes are yet to come, the genre of cli-fi (speculative fiction that is focused on climate change) is where the action is... and there is some marvellous work happening in that field.
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DoctorLiberty     MattAndrews  18h ago   

   
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"I want to read SF but I don't want to do anything so crass as reading SF."
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ReallyThink     MattAndrews  17h ago   

   
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Sure yeah worst episodes are yet to come... just like global cooling (70s), acid rain(80s), ozone layer depletion(90s) and various other fictions that we seem to have survived ok.
Did I miss the article in the Guardian this week covering... "According to an investigation by David Rose for the Mail on Sunday, the Centre for Climate Change Economics (CCCEP)at the London School of Economics (LSE) has snaffled £9 million in UK government grants by claiming credit for studies it had not funded and for papers published by rival academics." ??
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peccadillo     ReallyThink  17h ago   

   
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Do you really think that acid rain and ozone layer depletion are fictions? The reason we have survived them is that reasonable people accepted the evidence for them and enacted legislation to reduce the emissions which cause them. Unfortunately, reason seems to have gone out of the window as far as climate change is concerned, because the action required to get it under control sounds the death knell for fossil fuels. For crude financial benefit, some extremely influential lobbyists are determined to prevent that event, regardless of the cost to humanity.
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Linda Ellis   18h ago   

   
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By definition a story that deals with extrapolation of current events or "what if" ideas is Science Fiction .
It is intellectual snobbery to consider such work as being relegated to some second division. Some of the most interesting writing is going on in this genre and if you wouldn't read it because of the label then you are the loser.
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WalkerRN   19h ago   

   
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Isn't most of the stuff written by Deniers fiction?
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CriticallyPrompt     WalkerRN  18h ago   

   
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No; the opposite.
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JulesBywaterLees     CriticallyPrompt  17h ago   

   
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oh, you mean it is supposed to be parody?
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Paul F. Getty   15h ago   

   
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Remember that global warming is all but ignored in the mainstream media, except by the Guardian. It just isn't on people's minds, including writers. The fossil fuel industry has worked hard to keep it that way.
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newellalan     Paul F. Getty  14h ago   

   
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And the 1%, their media and politicians have worked hard to avoid the verboten discussion of human numbers that fuel many environmental ills. The 1% need an eternal increase in consumers. The only part of life they can see is the bottom line--and it is driving the 99% over an environmental cliff.
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peggyschuyler     Paul F. Getty  12h ago   

   
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really? i come across it a lot. it bores me now, mostly, because i think that the ship has sailed. all those ridiculous, tiny measures proposed while keeping the economy aka capitalism going.
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GreatCthulhu   15h ago   

   
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the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction
and

it arises out of the peculiar forms of resistance that climate change presents to what is now regarded as serious fiction.
And therein lies the problem with this article. The problem isn't the cultural impact climate change or its effect on the literary zeitgeist, it is the application of such a hackneyed and reductionist literary view. Arguably, Cormac Mac Carthy and Margaret Atwood's dystopic speculative fiction as evidenced in "the Road" Oryx and Crake" and Margaret Atwood's excellent accompanying novels fit the citeria to be classed as science fiction. Please try and accept this. I hope the realisation doesn't make you choke on your cornflakes.
Some of the acknowledged greatest "serious fiction" writers of the canon have engaged in writing speculative fiction.; H.G. Wells; Trollope; Orwell; Huxley; Vonnegut; etc. etc. etc. and I think that writers such as Jo0hn Wyndham or P.K. Dick (and many others)could easily rank aside them. The problem isn't the engagement of "serious fiction writers", it is the lack of engagement by certain critics with "serious fiction writing" that strays beyond their general understanding or the limited world view of the themes and tropes that "serious fiction writing" should possess.
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GreatCthulhu     GreatCthulhu  15h ago   

   
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Sorry about all the typos. I was sad and angry!
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JamesValencia     GreatCthulhu  14h ago   

   
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To cheer you up a little: I liked the piece. I didn't see what you did, obviously, in particular I didn't see the division in genre you're hinting at there, since the piece covers a very wide range of fiction going from period drama to sci-fi.
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Fliz4b     GreatCthulhu  13h ago   

   
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Yes, the damaged environment--and the wealthy's adaptations to it-- are frequently mentioned in Atwood's Oryx and Crake.
Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, with its Ice 9, is another strong example of post apocalyptic fiction on the environment.
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DWGism   18h ago   

   
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"the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction. It is as though in the literary imagination climate change were somehow akin to extraterrestrials or interplanetary travel."
'Relegate'? Interesting insight into the author's view of science fiction, especially when we're regularly sending probes to other planets. Of course SF, which has long been a literature set on exploring contemporary trends, has amassed a substantial body of work on climate change, some of it going back to before the current thinking on the subject, when the possibility of a new Ice Age was still being discussed, most memorably in Arthur C Clarke's "The Forgotten Enemy" (1949).
But moving to contemporary views of climate change, we see it featured in books like David Brin's Earth (1990), Bruce Sterling's Heavy Weather (1994) and Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 (2012), the Science in the Capital trilogy (2004, 2005, 2007) and arguably Green Mars (1994). In contemporary works by other SF authors, climate change is simply part of the accepted background, but then SF/F has always been a literature accepting of change.
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JulesBywaterLees     DWGism  17h ago   

   
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Scifi is one of the few genres where really big issues can be explored on a more personal level- with the exception of survival which is pretty stock in much fiction.
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congenialAnimal     DWGism  17h ago   

   
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I was going to say, I can think of a number of novels that deal both explicitly and implicitly with climate change. You have mentioned them all here. I would also add in Baxter's Proxima and John Christopher's works such as the Death of Grass and the World in Winter. We could also at a stretch include Frank Herbert's Dune novels but as that is non terrestrial perhaps that one is questionable.
As you say, this analysis says more about the conceits of the author and the somewhat myopic view of what constitutes literature.
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catch18   13h ago   

   
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I am reminded of the 1968 Mel Brooks film "The Producers". The play being produced was: "Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden.
In the play, Roger De Bris (the director) says in despair: "The whole third act has got to go. The Germans are losing the war!"
I bring this up facetiously. But we are in the third act as to our time on this planet. And we are losing the war. Every time I bring the subject up of climate change, no one and I do mean no one, wants to talk about it. Sorry about the loose connection with Mel Brooks but it seemed apt - IMHO. And if people won't even talk about the subject it's easy to figure they don't want to read fiction on it.
Our time of waiting for the end of the third act will not be so long.
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snowwalling   19h ago   

   
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Sadly Dr Ghosh who lives in the VIP elite mansion of "literary" fiction, as opposed to those outhouse gutter low rent genres of "illiterary" fiction like sci-fi and spec fiction and clifi and ecofiction which he so loathes from his mansion in Broolyn, sadly Amitavji is proscriptive about what kinds of fictions novelists in the West can deploy to talk about climate change issues. For him, "it's my way or the highway. " He is so wrong. JG BALLARD started the ball rolling in the 1960s. Wake up Dr Ghosh. Do you homework. Genre fiction rocks and can dance circles around so called literary fiction.
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leonzos     snowwalling  18h ago   

   
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Genre fiction rocks and can dance circles around so called literary fiction.
Both is the very weather
(not either)
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chatrobinson     snowwalling  18h ago   

   
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Damn right. Snowwalling, You beat me to it with Ballard, he was ahead of nearly everybody on climate change. And lots of other stuff too. When you look at the world at the moment Super Cannes and Cocaine Nights don't seem too far removed from current reality.
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TheSphincter     snowwalling  16h ago   

   
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Like it or not scifi is niche fiction. Not a reflection on scifi itself merely the reality of modern media.
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EGriff   20h ago   

   
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Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Green Planet' is a novel covering the practice of science and the effects of climate change... highly recommended
It is also the most optimistic book I've ever read - even in the face of catastrophic weather induced by climate change, the protagonist meets each challenge with ingenuity, compassion and resolve.
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PhiKappa     EGriff  17h ago   

   
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Also his trilogy beginning with 40 Days of Rain.
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Levitation32   17h ago   

   
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Such a long article from someone who clearly can't see outside of the ghetto of Literary Fiction, meanwhile publishers put the vast number of novels set in a future affected by climate change into the category of Science Fiction. Open your eyes and make some effort
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camulan     Levitation32  17h ago   

   
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Totally agree. I just looked at the title and thought "what?"
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Mark Palmer   15h ago   

   
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What an utterly inane, pointless article.
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JamesValencia     Mark Palmer  14h ago   

   
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Really ? Glad you liked it too.
I was quite a read, but most interesting I thought. Lots of thoughts about fiction through the ages, and concluding with some convincing and novel thoughts about why fiction doesn't deal with this impending doom much.
We appreciative readers need to make a noise here BTL :)
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unclestinky     JamesValencia  11h ago   

   
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Have to say I thought it windy and a bit dull, especially from the author of the splendid non-fiction In an Antique Land
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Fossilised   17h ago   

   
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The Grapes of Wrath?
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Erik Frederiksen   13h ago   

   
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A facebook post about a cute pet will get orders of magnitude more "likes' than a post about global warming.
People are definitely avoiding this subject. The subject won't avoid them.
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KenFine   18h ago   

   
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With a few exceptions, the literary mind doesn't 'do' science very well. We can see the worst examples of this in what happens when film scriptwriters attempt to tackle climate change - Waterworld and The Day After Tomorrow being the most egregious efforts.
That said, I was impressed by The Road. We aren't told what the cataclysmic event was in the film, but an asteroid strike is the most likely explanation, given the environmental depiction. This would have caused huge climatic upheaval, including a global shut down of photosynthesis. A supervolcano eruption is another possible explanation.
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JulesBywaterLees     KenFine  17h ago   

   
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I think there is a line where the old man mentions that we could see it coming but did nothing about it - a bit of a cover all.
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Pagey     KenFine  15h ago   

   
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It was clear to me it was nuclear war in the film.
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JohnHughes     Pagey  14h ago   

   
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It's pretty clear that it doesn't matter -- the problem is the loss of society, not the reasons for the loss.
In Brin's "The Postman" society is destroyed by survivalists -- leading to the death of most people. Death by irony.
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FrostAndFire   18h ago   

   
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It's in science fiction. I know that's not a genre that most literary writers and critics would deign to consider, but it's still there.
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sbw7     FrostAndFire  17h ago   

   
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Also, as he points out in the article, when a writer does make climate change part of the novel, it gets classified as SF anyway.
So the problem lies with literary criticism, not authors, books, or readers. Which is why I don't think its a problem worth bothering with.
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VincentVenger   18h ago   

   
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I refer the panel to Dark Mountain Projects and their writing manifesto. They produce a volume of essays and poetry every quarter I believe. Writing from China, I hope to submit to the forthcoming issues.
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loopine   18h ago   

   
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Almost all modern novels focus on close interpersonal relationships. Climate change doesn't impact much on these and they don't have much impact on climate change. In the few movies about climate change it always reverts to the same cliches, a chase, a father rescuing a child.
One of the few really good books about environmental catastrophy is The Death of Grass. I wont do a spoiler.
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aoidh     loopine  17h ago   

   
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I think this goes to the heart of the problem. It seems to prove difficult to explore this immense issue through anything other than a human-interest synecdoche - which inevitably becomes about the human interest first and foremost and not about the issue. In addition, climate change itself can only be framed as collective agency, but fiction thrives in the representation of individual agency.
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peccadillo     loopine  17h ago   

   
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A saga that spans several generations should lend itself nicely to this topic. Wish I had the ability to write it.
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loopine     peccadillo  17h ago   

   
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You would need more than a few generations. There is a form of women's novel, the one about three women in different times or places and how they are the same or different. This form could be applied on a wider timescale than usual.
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sergeantfox   16h ago   

   
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the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction.
"Relegate" to science fiction? Hmm, no literary bias there by the author at all.
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GreatCthulhu     sergeantfox  15h ago   

   
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I wouldn't give him tenure in MY English Department with mid-twentieth century prejudices like that!
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JohnHughes     GreatCthulhu  14h ago   

   
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Yes but, GreatCthulu, Miskatonic University is so dank at this time of year.
And as the sea level rises you're going to have some problems with the Deep Ones...
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zavaell   16h ago   

   
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Mankind is in collective denial about climate change, nobody wants to emerge from their cozy cocoon (those in wealthier countries). You only have to look at BBC Question Time to get a sense of the 'unimportance' of climate change - on the BBC's part because they dare not annoy a denialist government, ont eh audience's part because the subject is rarely aired in populist media and, in particular, because David Dimbleby quashes the subject if it ever arises. He finds it 'boring'.
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loopine     zavaell  16h ago   

   
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BBB current affairs are obsessed with with Westminister Parish politics and party leadership issues, much like trainspotters and football fans follow their respective obsessions.
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ID130524   18h ago   

   
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Good points-but depends on a narrow definition of 'literary'. Kim Stanley Robinson has spent most of his career writing novels about climate change. He probably reaches many more readers than the 'lit-fict' genre.
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PatLux   20h ago   

   
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Julie Bertagna’s award-winning EXODUS series has introduced many young adults to the consequences of climate change. Ask for her novels at your public library. Use the libraries or lose them.
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snowwalling     PatLux  18h ago   

   
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And Liz Jensen, RAPTURE, which Dr Ghosh does mention in his essay book.
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Duxk   13h ago   

   
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The Daily Mail?
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coplani   18h ago   

   
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There is so much misinformation going around today.
I believe climate change is real, simply because of the number of vehicles on the roads and that number is increasing by the day. The scientific evidence is clear.
Burning of fossil fuels will continue as there is no alternative at this time.
Consider for example the hype around electric vehicles being spouted today....
Here’s the thing about Electric Vehicles...
Electricity needs to be generated, fossil fuels don’t.
Car batteries need to be charged, Conventional engines don’t.
Vehicle engines are big...Just as Diesel engines replaced Steam engines size was the same.
Consider millions of electric cars on the roads , The electricity must be generated by something and that generator is an engine...a steam engine. So an engine is required to generate electricity to charge batteries to drive electric vehicles.
What size of engine is required to drive a million electric engines, or charge batteries to drive electric vehicles.?...Ans...a huge engine powered by...fossil fules or nuclear etc.
We don’t get something for nothing.
The efficiency is no better large scale or small scale when it comes to engines...A million small engines can only be replaced by one almighty big engine or engines powered by you know what....fossil fuels or nuclear and the losses wasted in electicity distribution is also huge. Waste heat is also huge.
Musk hype will go down in history...$Billions spent on electrric vehicles and "Man on mars"....Never before in the history of man has there been so much hype...Mars is uninabitable fullstop....There are vast area here on Earth that at present are uninhabitable and would it not be more sensible to attempt to make those places here on Earth habitable.??
Politicians are drawn into this hype as the money swirling around is huge...But it will not solve climate change.
As far as I can see, there is only one hope and that is carbon capture....But no politician is interested in this idea...Instead they chase after the hype that electric vehicles will be the answer to everything.
Electric cars today are just a rich man's toy to play with, but is useless on a grand scale.
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Noiseformind     coplani  18h ago   

   
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... brought to you by The Automakers Association.

(puking...)
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WalkerRN     coplani  18h ago   

   
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Electricity is increasingly being produced by renewable energy sources.
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martinRmartin     coplani  17h ago   

   
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Large power stations are much more efficient than car ICEs .
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AcquaMinerali   16h ago   

   
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"where is the fiction about climate change?"
The environment section of the Guardian is a good place to look ...
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talkingAtTheSameTime     AcquaMinerali  16h ago   

   
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hardy har, you so witty.
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AcquaMinerali     talkingAtTheSameTime  16h ago   

   
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I'm here all week.
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talkingAtTheSameTime     AcquaMinerali  15h ago   

   
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mores the pity
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OccasionalNewsMedler   17h ago   

   
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If writing of climate change is to relegate a work to science fiction, does that make the Man Booker Prize equivalent to the Rumbleows Cup?
As others have stated the lower leagues have been writing informed and eloquent stories centred around environmental disaster and climate change for quite some time. To the pile I'll add John Brunner's "The Sheep Look Up" and "Stand on Zanzibar", part of his so called "Club of Rome" quartet named for the think tank of the same name.
I like your characterisation of 'realist' fiction as a 19th-century stentorian patriarch disinheriting and exiling those family members who deign to broach his taboos. It's precisely this sense of starched collars, approved haircuts and coverings for the piano legs that bedevil literature and literary criticism. Dare to write of certain subjects in certain ways and they'll write to the TLS and say 'Ugh...' Those stern letters and reproaches do have consequences for editors and for writers. How many ideas and drafts have been rejected by the risk-averse managers of bottom lines for fear of the reaction and subsequent 'relegation' to the pulping installation? Better for all to call it genre where it might sell.
It is interesting that you mention poetry's ability to disregard the boundaries of acceptability. Is it that poetry is rarely about what looks good on a table in Waterstones, or what star rating it'll get in the Guardian, or what will make the shortlists of the annual prizes? Or is it that poetry has always been able to take time to look around itself and take in a landscape for the sake of itself, while literary fiction tends to have its mind on the minds of others? No time to stand and stare, too much time caring about the constraints of a narrative or character development.
To answer your challenge: A crisis of imagination? Definitely not. A crisis of culture? Perhaps, but one that's been going on for a long time and that encompasses a much larger range of subjects than solely climate change.
Maybe literary fiction will end up like Paddy McAloon's broken-hearted lover, seeking the meaning and solace found in the sweet but excessive September rain so much, it ends up drowning in it.
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OccasionalNewsMedler     OccasionalNewsMedler  15h ago   

   
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Another couple of strands of thought.
Does literature has an intimacy problem. Those cultural movements of the past that may have been more at home to the topic of climate change, such as the Romantic movement and Sturm und Drang, were either far more visual or were on stage. Recitation is at the heart of poetry and fairy-tales and children's stories where one is more likely to encounter tornadoes in one's path and where realism can take a hike. Part of what a novel is, is an intimate experience the reader has alone with the book. A retreat from the real, the weather and any notion of change. Perhaps climate change is something to be performed rather than read?
Then again maybe it's a matter of class. Notions of hierarchy inveigled their way into this article in an uncoded manner. Literature is exclusive. The boundaries are hard. The rules apply to everyone, but doubly-so to genre, the punishment being ostracism from the bookshop's main sequence, but for those safe within the walls of the literary, they can be bent and raise only a knowing smirk. As long as one's indulgences are seemly and infrequent. Climate change has the whiff of science. It has its own exclusive rules known to those privy to the arcane conceits of the scientific method. Woe betide those who assume knowledge that cannot be tested and evidenced. The arguments rage, the temperatures rise and storms threaten to consume the blithe and unresearched.
There. Are. Graphs.
Clearly writing about climate change is declasse and fraught with hazard. Take it seriously enough for your protagonist to gaze at the clouds a paragraph too long and the ostrakons with your name on will be flung.
You can tell it's a Friday. I'm taking Guardian opinion pieces too seriously.
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NeverMindTheBollocks   17h ago   

   
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where is the fiction about climate change?
greenpeace.org has a huge stock of it that they keep adding to.
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WaitForPete     NeverMindTheBollocks  16h ago   

   
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Another one who can't tell the difference between scientific fact and things the can't comprehend
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Fergus Brown   17h ago   

   
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Err... David Mitchell also springs to mind,with Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks, and John Brunner in the early 70's; The Sheep Look Up, etc.
The main problem is that the environment, the world of a story, is generally the context, not the subject, with Ballard et al providing rare exceptions.
Writing a narrative set in any future world affected by climate change is not so difficult, but making that world the main focus is much harder.
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snowwalling   18h ago   

   
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When Dr Ghosh starts off his cockamamie oped this way, you know he did not do his homework, since every major newspaper or book review in the UK and USA has reviewed climate-themed novels in the scifi and clifi genres: "It is a simple fact that climate change has a much smaller presence in contemporary literary fiction than it does even in public discussion. As proof of this, we need only glance through the pages of literary journals and book reviews. When the subject of climate change occurs, it is almost always in relation to nonfiction; novels and short stories are very rarely to be glimpsed within this horizon. Indeed, it could even be said that fiction that deals with climate change is almost by definition not of the kind that is taken seriously: the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction. It is as though in the literary imagination climate change were somehow akin to extraterrestrials or interplanetary travel.'' Amitavji, my friend, the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), Slate, Salon, Grist, Inverse and even the New York Times has taken note of genre novels about climate since at least 2013, including NPR the USA radio network, and in the UK the BBC and the Guardian itself has published articles, opeds, and reviews about climate-themed novels and movies since 2013 as well. Who are you kidding, sir? Please come down to Earth and deal with what it, not with what you think is. Because as you can see from the many comments here, you are so so wrong about this. PLEASE, SIR, WAKE UP! You are hurting your own cause.
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sherpa_10     snowwalling  18h ago   

   
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Are you serious? He's saying exactly what you're saying. People discuss it when it shows up (as non-fiction or genre fiction) but there are very few works of contemporary literary fiction that deal with the matter.
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JohnHughes     sherpa_10  14h ago   

   
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Yes, when you define "contemporary literary fiction" as "not science fiction" you discover that it doesn't deal with the things that science fiction deals with.
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mcgravitas   14h ago   

   
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Where's the fiction anout climate change? It's coming out of the mouths of Conservatives, Republicans and other likeminded geniuses.
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Pagey   14h ago   

   
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What a snobbish piece.
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JamesValencia     Pagey  14h ago   

   
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Hi Pagey, long time no read, how's things ? I liked it myself, this piece. A bit long, of course, it was quite a read.
Have a wave from an old cif-before-the-fall person :).
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DrTeeth34   18h ago   

   
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A contemporary dose of CC fiction is provided by the final part of "the Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell. It's very scary, realistic vision.