Kjell Vowles reviews BLA / BLUE .....in Swedish..... a cli-fi novel from Norway by Maja Lunde, part 2 of her Climate Quartet

​Kjell Vowles reviews BLA / BLUE .....in Swedish..... a cli-fi novel from Norway by Maja Lunde, part 2 of her Climate Quartet

"We just experienced growth, never resisted." The words are Signes, when she was in a laconic way sums up his generation. Signe is one of two personas in Maja Lunde's 2017  novel "Blue". 

Signe belongs 1950's generation, which has lived in parallel with the so-called large acceleration. After 1950, almost all curves risen, ranging from carbon emissions to water use has increased and with the help of fossil fuels, the global economy has doubled over again. The material wealth has increased, but at the same time, species have died out at a pace that makes people look like the most bloodthirsty beast. Natural habitat destruction and global warming raises the sea and put ecosystems under pressure. But so prolongs, we live by faith in the eternal economic growth, the God we worship, hoping to avoid having to face opposition from a finite planet. We believe that growth will save us from the longer heat waves, heavier downpours and intense hurricanes. Excuse me, the last words are my own, but it is easy to be caught up in Signes fury over the state of affairs. Signe himself has invited the opposition. She has been an activist all his life. Despite the split the family so she stood on her father's side in the protests against burying the river in Western Norway, where she grew up, while the mother was among those who wanted to exploit. During the protests, she met Magnus, who would be the love of her life but was later betrayed her ideals. Now they have not seen for decades, but alone in a sailboat, she's coming to him. She will sail from Norway to France to demand accountability for the betrayal that she means not only affected her, but all future generations. Those who will face the resistance Signe Magnus themselves have never experienced. One of them is David, the book's second narrator. He is 25 years old and lives with her six year old daughter Lou in a refugee camp in northern France in 2041. Southern Europe has been hit by a five-year drought, the crops have not materialized, and the limits to water the countries of the north are closed. David's wife disappeared with their baby as they fled the flames in his hometown. Now the experience of David and daughter a slow boredom in the camp. Everything is about to queue and wait, partly because the rest of the family will get there but also to get food, water and the opportunity to shower. At the same time they carry on a hopeless hope to go on to some place where there is still rain clouds in the sky. "Blue" is the second installment in what will be a climate quartet. The first part, "THE HISTORY OF BEES ," was an unexpected success in 2015 and sold more than 500,000 copies. Although there worked Maja Lunde parallel stories in different time periods, in order to weave together the generations that create warming with those who suffer the worst consequences. There are several intricate personal accounts in the books, and in the "Blue", the primary focus Signe receiving a depth worthy of the world's oceans.It is a privilege to hear her thoughts about love, morality and a troubled world. To follow David's and Lou's suffering is more anguished. You can feel the widespread hopelessness in the camp, and how in the end, the wait itself that makes people hold to the hope, because life loses its meaning on the day you stop waiting. It is also noticeable that Maja Lunde has done his research, the account had seemed credible even though she claimed that it was about a contemporary refugee camps. In English often called ''climate fiction'' and films with the climate theme for "cli-fi" access, climate fiction, and mostly it is about post-apocalyptic future books with a climate dispute. What distinguishes Maja Lunde books from many others in the genre, and what certainly is part of the key to the success of the author, is that she manages to bring the stories closer to man as an individual. By depicting the present, at least partly, she shows how we are living today, both are involved in creating the climate crisis while we can see the first effects. It is also easier to relate to people who live in a world that is still similar to ours, and the story of Signe's addition of environmental activism is also about class, love, rural, and parental relationships. Questions that we can associate with and who in turn will be influenced by a warmer world.

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***"Curious, empathetic, compassionate: What we should be as human beings."***

THE ''Cli-Fi ''REPORT:
100 academic and  media links:
http://cli-fi.net

Trending: '' Cli-Fi''

Trending: '' Cli-Fi''

....... just about everywhere, the sub-genre of   Climate Fiction aka Cli-Fi is now fully emerged. Heck, it even has its own Wikipedia article. Click here, here, and especially here [for a recurring column devoted to the topic] for some great articles explaining the subgenre with lists of titles. And my favorite resource for emerging genres, click here for the Goodreads crowdsourced list of titles tagged Cli-Fi by readers themselves.

from blogger BECKY in Australia

Jen Monnier profiles William Liggett's cli-fi novel ''WATERMELON SNOW''

Scienceline.org

http://scienceline.org/2018/07/running-out-of-daylight/

And in taking on this subject, Liggett established himself as the latest practitioner of a booming literary genre: climate fiction, or cli-fi, which focuses on ...

''Running out of daylight''

How a ''cli-f'' novelist has chosen optimism when writing about climate change

“You might say the environment itself was the antagonist,” William Liggett says of his cli-fi  novel set on Washington’s Blue Glacier. [Credit: Lowell Brady | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

By Jen Monnier | July 4, 2018
 
Tags: cli-fi, climate change, climate fiction

A couple of years ago, William Liggett strapped on his backpack, grabbed his audio recorder and headed up the Hoh River Trail in Washington State. With his brother-in-law, Stan, and Stan’s son, Matthew, alongside him, he pushed steadily upward. The goal: to plant his feet on the Blue Glacier for the first time in over 50 years.

He’d spent a lot of time on the glacier when he was much younger. Fresh out of high school, he landed a gig with the Blue Glacier Project, a geological research effort led by prominent glaciologist Ed LaChapelle. The job entailed three epic months scaling the glacier’s icy terrain and taking measurements to track its changing mass.

He had some dangerously close calls. “As a teenager, you take all kinds of risks,” he said of the venture. Once he slipped into a crevasse, a narrow crack in the ice. A fellow hiker held onto the rope he was attached to, and the young Liggett managed to climb out.

Remembering those close scrapes years later, Liggett realized the Blue Glacier was the perfect setting for an adventure novel and decided to hike it once more. As he climbed the Hoh River Trail, he described the green, mossy forest in his voice recorder — details he’d put in his novel.

The three hikers began in the morning and walked for hours. “The darn trail got steeper and steeper the higher you got,” he said. “We were all running out of gas and actually running out of daylight.”

His family dropped off while Liggett continued on his own for a couple more hours, racing dusk to the base of the glacier. It got so dim that he lost sight of the trail, and finally decided to bail out, responding perhaps more sensibly than his teenaged self would have. He found the trail and began his descent. Then he went home and wrote.

The cli-fi novel, “Watermelon Snow,” published in 2017, follows a band of Blue Glacier researchers who are struck by a strange illness unearthed by the melting glacier. It’s a prevalent fear in the real world as climate change melts Earth’s glaciers. And in taking on this subject, Liggett established himself as the latest practitioner of a booming literary genre: climate fiction, or cli-fi, which focuses on the challenges of coping with a changing climate.

“This new literary genre is now becoming part of our communal storytelling culture, imparting new ideas and insights about the future humanity might face not only in 10 years, but in 100 or 500 years as well,” wrote veteran journalist Dan Bloom, a Tufts 1971 lit major, who coined the term cli-fi, in a Medium post.

Bloom found Liggett while digging around online and reached out to interview him — one of over 100 cli-fi author interviews he’s conducted for his blog since 2011. Since then, the two have kept in touch as fellow promoters of a certain subgenre of cli-fi: One rooted in optimism.

“Cli-fi is for the hopeful,” Bloom, 70, says.

It’s certainly easy to find gloomy climate fiction, including works by famous authors such as Margaret Atwood’s “The Year of the Flood” and Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” For Bloom, titles like these can be entertaining, but they don’t provide the hope that optimistic narratives do.

Liggett kept bumping into doomsayer writers while researching his own book. “You almost think they’re trying to scare people about what the future’s going to be if they don’t take some action,” he said. “I just didn’t want my stories to be dark and dystopian like that.”

Instead, he focuses on solutions. “I have these characters who are really struggling in a changing environment,” he said. “But they’re really doing it in a way to try to accommodate to it, to understand it, to be able to help people cope.” The characters in “Watermelon Snow” include scientists who frequently lament having to race against rising global temperatures to conduct their research before the glacier is transformed. At the same time, they express their growing dedication to scientific research — for them, it’s an increasingly vital and fulfilling pursuit.

Focusing on the solutions — the ways people might effectively respond to a world altered by climate change — is to choose a side in a debate much bigger than Liggett’s book and even bigger than the cli-fi genre. The journalist David Wallace-Wells energized both sides when he veered away from optimism in his 2017 New York Magazine cover story “The Uninhabitable Earth.” His piece describes the worst-case scenarios of climate change: the disasters that may come in food production, ocean and air pollution and wars, to name a few. While some lauded Wallace-Wells’ approach, including Bloom, others called it too extreme and alarming, including a group of prominent careerist scientists who criticized it in an analysis published online.

“I really think that fiction has a way of engaging people in a subject, and that just pure factual information may not have the same impact,” Liggett says. For readers put off by learning about climate science because it’s so highly politicized, climate fiction can be an in, he believes. Liggett writes with the hope that once people are engaged, they’ll continue to envision how climate change may play out and what solutions may be possible. Dystopian cli-fi could instead lead readers toward fatalism, he believes.

Some dated and shoddy research on nonfiction news articles on the subject backs up Liggett’s approach. A 2010 study published in the journal Psychological Science found that “dire messaging” in newspaper articles and editorials about climate change can cause some readers to become more skeptical of climate science and less likely to adopt sustainable behaviors. The study was not focussed on fiction novels or cli-fi novels, just nonfiction messaging. These effects are mitigated, however, when the message includes solutions.

“It’s not mystical. It’s not magical,” Liggett says. “It’s just real people coping with the real world as it’s changing.”

He’s not done with cli-fi. In fact, he’s now conducting research to dive into even more contentious terrain: “geoengineering,” efforts to use new technologies to slow global warming by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or reflecting sunlight before it can reach Earth.

“The thing people are really worried about is somebody going off and trying [geoengineering] without knowing what they’re doing,” he says. And that’s exactly what he plans for his story’s villain to do. True to his optimistic approach, Liggett is exploring geoengineering not as a terrifying dystopian possibility but as a potential solution — if it’s used carefully.

“I didn’t set out to save the planet by writing a novel,” he wrote on his blog. Short of saving the planet, he may be helping bridge the gap between climate skeptics and climate activists.

One reviewer of Liggett’s book, Rebecca McNutt, wrote on Goodreads.com that she’s “never been much of a fan of environmental-themed books,” nor “a supporter of everyone jumping on the trendy eco bandwagon.” She proceeds to commend the novel, giving it four out of five stars. At least for her, it seems, Liggett’s optimistic approach has worked exactly as he’d hoped.

Cli-Fi this week in the news via Google Search

Could cli-fi help inspire real climate change action?

ABC News-6 小時前

The genre — variously dubbed 'cli-fi', 'slow apocalypse' and Anthropocene fiction — has become a publishing phenomenon, with Margaret ...

A cli-fi térhódítása és a Tengeristen bosszúja

24.hu-21 小時前

A címben szereplő cli-fi kifejezés, a climate fiction találó rövidítése a sci-fi egy sajátos leágazására: azokat az írásokat – és filmeket, sorozatokat ...

Is China getting the 'cli-fi' it needs?

eco-business.com-2018年6月19日

It's hard to know if there are many Chinese fans of “cli-fi” movies—those rare films that take climate change as their subject matter. If there are ...

In 'First Reformed': A shepherd in wolf's clothing?

Yale Climate Connections-2018年6月27日

First Reformed also meets the second criterion for a good cli-fi movie: it's a solid piece of filmmaking. So say reviews offered by the Federalist, ...

The Word Made Fresh: Mystical Encounter and the New Weird Divine

E-Flux-2018年6月21日

A biologist enters mysterious territory on a mission to comprehend the incomprehensible. Together with three colleagues—an anthropologist, a psychologist, ...

13 Female 'Cli-Fi' Writers Who Are Inspiring A Better Future

EcoWatch-2018年3月8日

In fact, the burgeoning genre of cli-fi has already sparked new avenues. Take solarpunk, a sub-genre that ultimately conveys an optimistic view ...

An Interview with Kristen Simmons

Big Shiny Robot!-2018年6月25日

I didn't know there was such a thing as Cli-Fi (Climate Fiction). Fictional books that somehow or someway bring real climate change science to ...

Social Studies Texts Under Attack In Michigan

Signature Reads-2018年6月13日

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.

Can 'cli-fi' actually make a difference? A climate scientist's perspective

The Conversation AU-2017年9月5日

One way of potentially tapping into previously unreached audiences is via cli-fi, or climate-fiction. Cli-fi explores how the world may look in the ...

Scientist's take: 'Cli-fi' can make a difference

Yale Climate Connections-2017年11月8日

One way of potentially tapping into previously unreached audiences is via cli-fi, or climate-fiction. Cli-fi explores how the world may look in the ...

6 climate fiction books that could maybe save the earth (if you read them)
SYFY WIRE (blog)-2017年11月8日

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Climate Horror is the Most important Fiction of our Times, writes David Agranoff

Climate Horror is the Most important Fiction of our Times

An essay by David Agranoff

There was a time in the United States when the threat of nuclear war was so great that school children
ran drills much like fire drills to prepare for an atomic attack. It is hard to express to the young just how
close the human race came to mutual destruction during historical events like the Cuba missile crisis. It
doesn’t seem rational that 2 powerful nations would stockpile so many weapons that they could wipe
out their species many times over but that happened.

During the 1950s and 1960s many works of science fiction and horror were devoted to exploring the “what
if” involved in atomic warfare. Many of these novels including On the Beach by Neil Shute, and Alas
Babylon by Pat Frank are considered classics beyond the genre and are even taught in schools decades
later. These novels serve as warnings and there are many beyond the most known classics, a wide
variety of authors tackled the subject. Poplar films like Dr. Strangelove and Planet of the Apes also
tackled these issues during that era.

It was one thing for scientists or military figures to explain the destructive power of these weapons; it
was a whole other thing to have authors and filmmaker’s explore life after global nuclear conflict. In
1983 this came to head when the most popular TV movie of the year, The Day After, became the water
cooler talk of the nation. It is said that then U.S. President Ronald Regan was so moved by the experience of
watching it and the conversation started that it pushed him to make more serious efforts at
de-nuclearization.

In 2018 we face a similar crisis. Unlike nuclear weapons global climate change is already harming people
and threatens life on a global scale. Beyond the horror faced by two cities in Japan the effect of nuclear
warfare is mostly theory. The horror of global climate change has already begun and like a snowball
going downhill it is gathering strength. The avalanche is coming.

The horror writes itself, speaking as a person who has studied and written about environmental issues
since the mid-1990s I can tell you many writers were trying to warn about global climate change as far
back as the 1980s long before it became the cause of the former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.

The science is there, the temperatures continue to rise along with the global seal levels, species die out,
and the wildfire seasons are almost year round. Climate change denial is more than ideologically
unfortunate, it has become dangerous to future generations. It is something I think about every day, I
wish this crisis was as obvious to people now as it was for the children climbing under desks to drill for
nuclear attacks.

It is easy to convince someone that being shot is a bad thing, but convincing them not to eat cancer
causing food they find delicious is a hard thing. It is the difference from convincing someone that
nuclear war is a threat compared to the slow pace of global climate change. Both are destructive but
one is sneaky. I choose to write an ecological horror novel because there is no issue of greater
importance to our species than maintaining the sustainability of the one and only planet that sustains our lives. There are hundreds of important social issues but without a planet to live on what does it
matter?

In my recently released novel Ring of Fire I tried to imagine all the worst case environmental disasters I
could think of and brought them raining down on the city I call home, San Diego. In the novel a massive
wildfire breaks out at the same time that large numbers of people realize they are in a cancer cluster. As
the fire grows to surround the city the people trapped realize that the air they breathe and the water
they drink are not safe. Cut off from a functioning eco-system the people lose their grip on sanity.

Without spoiling the book it goes in a science fiction direction and the cli-fi connections become clear
later in the book. I am a horror writer, and this book is in fact one of my worst nightmares come to life. It is a case of exaggerating to clarify my positions and fears.

Ring of Fire took years of research, and it was one of the hardest novels for me to write, but I was on a
mission. It is a mission I am calling on all writers of speculative and horror fiction to take. We need all hands on deck, every creative mind that can should writing about global climate change. You don’t need to be a genre author, certainly any writer raising children in this world should be thinking about these issues.

Now more than ever genre authors NEED to embrace the sub-genres of CLI-FI and ecological horror.

More importantly, academics and critics need to embrace these works of speculative fiction as worthy
of study and importance. We need a ''Day After'' moment with climate-change fiction when readers
gather around the watercooler to discuss CLI-FI and shudder at the ideas we have brought to them. We
need the novels to become classics so the political leaders in this country feel compelled to read them,
or at least know enough about them that we push the needle.

As fans if we read a good environmental novel we have to spread the word. We don’t want a future
where people fondly look back at the role storytellers played in saving the future. If we don’t want the
ice poles this planet to disappear for the first time since 33 million B.C.E. We don’t want the ultra-violet
rays cooking our children. We don’t want a future where they never know the magic of books. If we let it
happen, then every written word of our civilization will have been for nothing.

If you are a writer, the CLI-FI movement needs you. If you are reader,  CLI-FI is a movement that needs you.


-- David Agranoff
Twitter: @Dagranoffauthor
6/28/2018

AUTHOR BIO: David Agranoff is the author of 6 novels and 2 short story collections.

His animal rights and ecologically themed short story collection Screams from a Dying World was nominated for the 2009 Wonderland bizarro fiction award for best collection.

Screams was recently re-issued with 3 new stories by Grand Mal press.

Most his novels have been published by the cult horror publisher Deadite
Press and include The Vegan Revolution…with Zombies, Boot Boys of the Wolf Reich, Flesh Trade (co- written with Edward R. Morris) Punk Rock Ghost Story and the CLI-FI novel Ring of Fire.

https://www.amazon.com/Ring-Fire-David-Agranoff/dp/1621052729

Insta: Count.Agranoff

Facebook: Facebook.com/Dagranoffauthor

Blog: Davidagranoff.blogspot.com

Ring of Fire is available now:

https://www.amazon.com/Ring-Fire-David-
Agranoff/dp/1621052729/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1530285908&sr=8-
1&keywords=ring+of+fire+david+agranoff

David Agranoff’s Favorite Post-Nuclear war novels:

Swan Song by Robert McCammon
Boy and His Dog by Harlan Ellison
The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett
Alas Babylon by Pat Frank

David Agranoff’s favorite CLI-FI and eco-horror novels:

The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner
The Bridge by John Skipp and Craig Spector
Demons by John Shirley
The Drowned World by JG Ballard
Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer
Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargil
Lost Girl by Adam Nevill
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Immobility by Brian Evenson

Will it take awards and honors for 'First Reformed'-- starring Ethan Hawke -- to influence public understanding of and concern for climate change? Is this a cli-fi movie worth remembering?

Listen to film critic Michael Svoboda.

''First Reformed,'' a powerful 'cli-fi' movie by Paul Schrader, unequivocally meets the first criterion for a good ''cli-fi'' movie: it addresses climate change clearly and directly, the Yale Climate Communications columnist says in his review of the film.

Svoboda adds: ''In an important early scene, viewers see, taped to a wall, a chart documenting the increase in average global temperature. On the computer screen of a laptop resting on a desk below the chart, they can see a video looping through a color-coded chronicle of that data mapped over the globe. And then they hear the main character, Pastor Ernst Toller (played by actor Ethan Hawke) discussing the consequences of those rising temperatures – sea-level rise, droughts, heat waves, extreme precipitation events, declining food production – with Michael, the husband of one of his parishioners and a parolee who had served time in a Canadian prison for his eco-activism.''

Writing in the Washington Post newspaper, film critic Ann Hornaday described ''First Reformed'' as “a mesmerizing, austere drama of one man’s apocalyptic crisis of faith”; it “feels like the movie Paul Schrader was put on this planet to make.”

That's a thumbs-up!

''First Reformed'' also meets the second criterion for a good cli-fi movie: it’s a solid piece of filmmaking. So say reviews offered by dozens of websites and newspapers nationwide. And so says Professor Svoboda here.

But for ''climate change communicators'' there is a third criterion for a good cli-fi movie, according to Svoboda: ''Does it promote effective public engagement with climate change?''

YCC enlisted the aid of Leslie 

​​

Davenport, a practicing psychotherapist and climate activist who has served on several Red Cross Disaster Mental Health Teams. Davenport agreed to see the movie and then respond to questions via e-mail. (“Wow,” was how she summed up her reaction in the e-mail she sent immediately

​​

after seeing it.)

EARTHSHIPS -- a three part cli-fi series by Bonnie Jane Hall in Austin, Texas

EARTHSHIPS  -- a three part cli-fi series by Bonnie Jane Hall in Austin, Texas

Recently I spoke via email with Texas novelist Bonnie Jane Hall about a series of cli-fi novels she is writing in a trilogy called "Earthships." Each novel has its own subtitle, she explained. I asked her ten questions.
What will the third novel in your cli-fi series titled "Earthships" be about?

“For 11,700 years, the age called the Holocene, the average annual global temperature has not varied up or down by more than one degree Celsius, Bonnie said. "A drastic temperature change can take from one to three years in the new age of our planet, the Anthropocene. To succeed, agriculture needs not just warm seasons, but stable and predictable climate.”

That's a quote from Jan Zalasie.

''In my third book, which will be published next, the climate is so unstable that most food has to be grown in domes. Agriculture as humans have known it is flipped on its head. In 2040 AGI {Artificial General Intelligence} computers that understand what humans are and what they need to stay alive will take over agriculture.
AGI will design, fabricate and manage the massive domes containing the food which will help humans survive the climate.''
''America is in deep debt under a poorly designed socialistic system and has to make some changes in their non-profit health care program for human citizens and animals.''
''Laurel’s family grows with the addition of children and a couple of soldiers, friends of Sage, who move in to the city-farm. The demand for Earthships increases as the ocean floods more cities.''

Bonnie, you say that some 90 percent of the heat in the atmosphere is now in all the oceans, resulting in huge and powerful hurricanes, tornadoes and cyclones. We are fragile creatures living in a dangerous world where we must build our fortresses underground in the cool silent Earth. How did all the heat get into our oceans? Can you explain briefly?
''The oceans have always been like a sponge absorbing both heat, CO2 and other chemicals from the atmosphere. Then the oceans carry the heat into the bottom where it is very cold and over time brings it to the surface and releases it back into the atmosphere. This is a pattern that keeps the temperature stable on the planet, but CO2 is the more powerful thermostat now.''

Your first novel in the series appeared in 2017. What were some of the best reactions you heard from people who read the book?
Here are three:
“This is one of the best science-based fiction books I’ve ever read. The story in general is great and I literally couldn’t put it down.”

“Whether you believe in ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’ or not, the book certainly presents an interesting story and to what lengths we must go as keepers of the planet to preserve it.”

“The story is believable. It is already like walking in the sun in Arizona. This was a very good read.”
Bonnie spent the last 20 years studying the works of climatologists and other scientists before writing ''Earthships.'' How did she go about doing this research and where?
''I have always been interested in science. I learned about climate change through scientists such as James Hansen, Bill McKibben and Neil deGrasse Tyson. I became fascinated with the subject of climate change and have continued reading everything I can in addition to listening to lectures by scientists on YouTube. I also read magazines such as National Geographic.''

You once said that “hurricanes like Harvey, Irma and Maria were
enhanced if not caused by climate change. And you quoted scientist Neil
deGrasse Tyson, “50 inches of rain in Houston! This is a shot across the
bow.” Do you expect more tragic hurricanes, floods and heatwaves in the USA in the summer of 2018?

''I cannot say for sure about this summer, but I do believe over the next few years we will see an increase in major weather-related disasters because the oceans are warmer, there is more moisture in the air, methane is being released and CO2 is increasing.''

You said that “we are experiencing more intense killer
hurricanes, cyclones, flooding, fires and earthquakes due to global
warming and that the Gulf Stream has been on fire with 33 percent above normal highs
after averages never above 73 degrees,” according to MIT’s Noam Chomsky. Have you sent copies of your books to Dr Chomsky yet?

''No, I haven’t because this book is meant for lay persons who want to learn more about the climate through the vehicle of story.''

You also have said: ”The hottest year on record was 2016. This heat
enhances the intensity of weather-related events and the worst is yet to
come and sooner than we can imagine.”
Do you expect 2018 and 2019 to be even hotter? Tell me more.

''I do because on average there has been a slight increase every year for the last several years. Also, as I said earlier, there are many conditions triggering the rising temperatures.''

Your first novel in the series, ''Earthships: Growing Up in the Climate Shift,'' began in 2030. In what year will the series end in the third novel?

''Book 3 will end in 2045. I haven’t decided yet if Book 3 will be the last in the 'Earthships' series. I may not be able to complete the story in three books. I am as surprised as the reader in what happens to my characters. I just set the scene and place the characters there and see how it unfolds. The story evolves as I am writing it.''

You say: “Readers will gain many practical ideas for taking positive
action and survival skills as they face more intense climate catastrophes.” For example? Some ideas?
''They will learn the need for becoming preppers, that is storing what they need for the future. They will learn how to build greenhouses so they can grow their own food. They also learn about the importance of working together to survive. They learn about how to build Earthships. The book also covers how to prepare for this Anthropocene age.''

Maya Agger also reviewed book 2 on Amazon. What did she write?

“Another must read! Book 2 is just as great as the first, if not better! It brings together the importance of love, life, family and the power of working together. This book is fun and engaging, full of excitement, adventure and well-researched information just like the last one. I couldn’t put it down.”

Last question. Are you an optimist or a pessimist when it comes to runaway global warming and the future of humankind? Is the glass half empty or half full in your opinion?

''The glass is half full.''
Bonnie ended our interview with this note: "Dan, I really appreciate our common interest: 'Cli-fi' and how important it is to inform people about the dangers we face.'