Although much of literature is about imaginary worlds, what people are able to imagine tends to evolve over time as the world changes, new technologies arise, and societies move and shift in location and attitude. One of the newest trends in fiction has been named “cli-fi” – “climate fiction” just like sci-fi is “science fiction.” The increasing concern over climate change and what that may do to the future of humanity (and the rest of the living things on Earth) is giving writers as well as scientists something to think about, talk about, and write about. Dan Bloom, who coined the name for this trend, has created a website where these books and articles are featured. We asked Dan about his writing, and about this new genre.

7S: How do you define the term “climate fiction,” and what makes a book part of this category?

DB: “Cli fi” can be seen as either a subgenre of sci fi, or as an entirely new literary genre, too. And cli fi can take place in the present, the near future, the distant future, and even the near past and the distant past. A Hollywood movie director is currently making a cli fi film about the Flood over 5000 years ago, starring Russell Crowe as Noah. A movie or a book becomes part of the cli fi category when it has a climate theme, but it is important to also emphasize that not all cli fi novels or movies support the idea of human-caused global warming. If an author or film director wants to go in a different direction, and create a novel or a movie that says that human-caused global warming is not happening at all, that is okay, too. Cli fi is genre that is open to all points of view.

Cli fi novels or short stories can take place in a dystopia, or a utopia, or just be presented as page-turner, entertaining, escapist climate thrillers. In fact, I now see three sub-categories of cli fi emerging in popular culture: cli fi lite (paperback or Kindle thrillers); cli fi dark (dystopian stories about climate chaos and what it might do to the human species); and cli fi deep (which are novels or movies that are written in a very literary and philosophical style, such as Cormac McCarthy’s 2007 novel titled “The Road,” which also became a movie.

7S: You started using the term cli-fi in 2007, but concern about the environment dates back for decades before that date. Is this really a new genre of literature, or just one that’s newly popular?

DB: Cli fi is just a popular new buzzword, and while it might be used by publishers as a marketing tool, and by bookstores as a shelving label, some media critics now see it also as what might be called “a critical prism” with which to view pop culture works with climate themes, be they comics or graphic novels or movies or novels. It’s just a new term for an old focus, and I assume that because of its rhyming similarity to the sci fi term, it’s catching on now.

7S: Many of the recent cli-fi books have been set in “Mad Max” style dystopias, where people are fighting over diminishing resources. Are there any books that paint a more hopeful picture of the future?
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DB: Good question, and yes, as explained above, cli fi novels can be utopian and hopeful in their presentation. A climate thriller by Jim Laughter titled “Polar City Red” is set in 2075 and starts off painting a very dark picture of a dystopia in a norther region where climate refugees find shelter in a so-called “polar city” settlement, and have to fend off marauders and scavengers on the outside who want their food, their fuel and their women. But the novel ends on a note of hope, with the last chapter showing the main characters propped up with optimism for the future.

7S: You’ve been writing about climate issues for blogs, newspapers, and magazines for a long time, and started the “Polar Cities Project” as well. Have you written any cli-fi books yourself?

DB: I am not a novelist or a short story writer. I wish I knew how to create characters and dialogue and a gripping plot, but I have no ear for dialogue and I have no idea how to write a novel. So I see myself merely as a public relations promoter and popularizer of the polar cities meme and the cli fi meme as well. I don’t make any money from this work, and I don’t want to. This is now my life’s work, and I prefer to work in the background and let the novelists shine.

7S: What books do you recommend for people who want to discover this new category of literature?

DB: There are so many good cli fi novels published in the last ten years. I recommend Nathaniel Rich’s “Odds Against Tomorrow” and Barbara Kingsolver’s “Flight Behavior.” Margaret Atwood’s trilogy that ends now with a new cli fi novel titled “MaddAddam” is a very good read. Amazon has already created a cli fi category in its search window, and Wikipedia has a cli fi entry that lists over a dozen cli fi novels, past and present.