Speaking of cli-fi ....

Speaking of destruction, authors nowadays can’t help puzzling over how to address climate change in their stories. While some tackle it head on in a subgenre known as “cli-fi” (which tends toward the apocaplytic), literary fiction may require a lighter touch. In an interview with Electric Literature, Lauren Groff speaks about “using a scalpel, not a hammer” to address the subject. “Dread is useful,” she says. “Since it’s an outward projection, it can encompass the reality that nature is in fact robust, nature wants to thrive, and if humanity committed fully to trying to mitigate climate change, we could do so, and with some ease. Dread can have hope and movement in it, not ataxia and flight.” Her latest book of short stories, Florida, is an exercise in exactly this kind of dread, but she remains sensitive to the needs of readers dealing with “days in which the news hits like a 2-by-4 to the face.”