Like many aging North American baby boomers, I grew up in what I felt was a sweet time among very sweet people, and I never once thought about global warming or climate change until I reached my 60s.

Then it hit me: we are doomed, doomed — unless we mend our ways, fix our carbon dioxide emissions rates and start living a less plush and hectic life that depends on burning tons of fossil fuel worldwide on a 24/7 basis.

So I want to be a dedicated climate activist. I came up with a term that I borrowed from the sci fi literary genre and I dubbed it “cli fi” for climate fiction. Novels and movies that can serve as wake up calls about the very troubling climate issues our descendants will face 100 to 300 years from now. Or, as some see it, novels and movies that could be created by climate skeptics that deny there is anything to worry about it. Cli fi, as I see it, is an equal-opportunity cultural prism. All points of view are welcome, just as with sci fi.

So it’s out there now. Go to Google or Wikipedia and see how far the emerging genre of cli fi has come in the space of just a few years. Will its ascension into the literary and cultural world make any difference? I hope so. I’m from the generation that grew up wanting to make a difference.

I was born in 1949 and I plan to die in 2032, if the stent in my ticker holds up and keep my blood flowing. I had a heart attack when I was 60 and it wasn’t a pretty picture. But what I learned from 8 days in the ICU was to keep going, to never give up and to push the cli fi meme up the hill as far as I can before to take a time out and go the next level.

That’s why I wanted to be a climate activist when I retire. But now I can’t retire, I’m committed to the cli fi idea and I’m going to do everything I can as a PR man to try to make sure everyone hears of this term before I croak. I’ve got 20 years or so.

And it’s not just me. There’s a growing cli fi community worldwide now, mostly in English-speaking countries but also in Norway, Sweden, Italy and Spain. We are writers, readers, editors, book agents, publishers — climate activists, too.

Have you read a good cli fi novel recently? You will, soon. Seen a good cli fi movie recently? You will, soon.

Look, there’s not much time to get out act together and take the big steps we need to take to take back our planet from the damage we have done and are still doing — right now as you read this. You don’t have to be a climate activist to know what the score is. We are losing our precious Earth to forces beyond the scope of our imagination. Where sci fi once went, cli fi is now heading.

Global warming is not a hoax and it’s not a joke. Sure, there are many different points of view on the issues involved, and I am open to all points of view. I sup with climate denilaists and climate sketics, to each his or her own ideas. But my main community of “friemds” online and in the real world is with the growing cli fi community worldwide.

When I die, I don’t want any laurels or plaudits. I didn’t come with the cli fi term for fun or profit. I never copyrighted it and I do not own the term. I did not even coin it, since all I did was borrow the sci fi term and create a new rhyming sound for a new kind of cultural prism.

All I want from my next few years on this planet is to have the time to tweet as much as I can about cli fi and invite as many people as I can to join the global cli fi community. You don’t have to be a writer to join the group or to get the message. We are all climate activists now, or on the way to becoming ones.

Won’t you join me?

————–
About Author
Dan Bloom is a freelance writer who blogs
at CLI FI CENTRAL.

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We should have seen this coming, but I must admit, I didn’t. Not at first and not for a long time. But now I have seen the light, and I realize that the selfie has been hijacked, co-opted, taken hostage — choose your term — the corporate PR hacks who run American culture.

Yes, the humble, lovable selfie has been hijacked by the corporate suits who do their best to ruin most of what’s good in the spontaneous culture of youth and Australian slang terms As you know, the “selfie” term emanated from Down Under where people like to put an “ie” sound after things they like, such as barbie for barbecue grill and selfie for a self-photographed cellphone photo.

As the conventional wisdom goes, and I’m quoting from a public relatiosn brochure here: “PR is not a passive discipline and you don’t need to wait for something to happen before you publicize it. You can actively create PR opportunities that will get your company noticed.”

The brochure adds: “The launch of a new product, a move to new premises, the appointment of new staff, a large order or a milestone event —  these are all classic chances to publicize your business. But every other business is sending out the same type of press releases. So how do you make your story stand out?”

The answer is you get a famous baseball player to pretend to take a selfie with the president of the U.S., say Boston Red Sox cutie David Ortiz did the foul deed while visiting Barack Obama at the  White House — all the while with an endorsement deal with Samsung under his belt with an express wish from the Korean firm to “share images with fans.” Ahem. So that Ortiz-Obama selfie the other day was not a selfie at all, but more like what I would like to dub a ”PRfie” (and pronounced “pee-our-fee).

The Ortiz stunt was similar to the ”group selfie” Oscars host Ellen DeGeneres faked with her A-list celebrity pals that also went viral. And guess what?  DeGeneres also has a deal with Samsung. Has everyone sold out? Has no one no shame anymore? Has the selfie been co-opted to death now?

So I suggest that the media start calling these things for what they are: PRfies. And let the trendy word dictionaries like Urban Dictionary and Word Spy take note: Some selfies are not what they seem and they’ve been hijacked by the suits once again, for their own profit and glee.

“One of the most effective ways to get press coverage is to position your product as a PRfie, yes, disguised as an old-fashioned selfie,” says a friend of mine in the advertising business in a recent email. “But try to make sure that the media never picks up the ruse, or you’ll lose a lot of the buzz you generated.”

In this day and age, the PRfie has dethroned the selfie. It’s a real pity. The true selfie had such promise.

Cross-posted on the Vocabulary Improvement blog.

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It’s not sci fi, but it’s close. And a literature professor in Taipei is looking into it.

National Taiwan University professor Richard Chen wrote a newspaper column last July in a Taipei newspaper about the rise of ‘cli fi’ literature in the Western world, from Australia to Britain, and he’s now preparing an academic paper on the subject in English that will be presented at an international cross-cultural conference in Taiwan in early May.

In his newspaper column, Chen wrote a piece that was headlined “Not Just Science Fiction” and explained to Taiwanese readers that a new literary genre in the West called “cli fi” was gaining media attention in the pages of Britain’s Guardian and Financial Times newspapers as well as in the New Yorker magazine in the U.S.

Disclosure: I should note here that I have been involved as a public relations activist promoting the ”cli fi” genre in the English-speaking world, independent of Dr. Chen’s interest in the genre, and we had never met before his article appeared. I later contacted him, of course, and we are in email contact now on a regular basis.

Chen, who teaches urban fiction at NTU and gives his lectures in English, is writing an academic paper on ”cli fi” that will be the first such paper published in English in the greater China region.

Chen explained to his readers that he had not heard of the new genre before reading a Guardian newspaper story by British writer Rodge Glass last May.

”Cli fi, for me, is indeed too important to be ignored by readers in Taiwan and the rest of Asia,” Chen told me in a recent email. “It is already been boosted by such international writers as Margaret Atwood in Canada and Nathaniel Rich in America.”

Chen’s column was a full page article in the ”China Times Weekend” edition, with color reproductions of the covers of several of the cli fi novels he discussed, and his piece was later published in a Beijing blog as well, run by a well-known sci fi historian there.

The academic paper Chen is writing will be the first academic paper not only in Asia but in the world as well to focus on cli fi as an emerging literary genre and will review the history and literary background of the genre.

In his paper, he plans to demarcate the line between cli fi and traditional works of sci fi.

When I asked him what this might entail, he replied: “While cli fi is usually filled with apocalyptic and moral implications of climate catastrophes, sci fi is usually filled with the intention of exploring the possibilities of science and its relationship with humankind. Climate fiction is not only about global warming, but it appears to be also intended as a ‘global warning’ which can send messages to as many people as possible.”

While there have not been any ”cli fi” novels published yet in Taiwan or Japan or other Asian nations, Chen said he believes the genre still has to grow more in the West to become popular in Asia.

“Movies such as ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ and the new ‘Noah’ film by Hollywood director Darren Aronofsky and starring Russell Crowe resonate with Taiwanese audiences, so ‘cli fi’ novels will likely be written and published as the genre gains steam worldwide,” Chen said.

With climate change and global warming popular topics on Taiwanese TV shows and in newspaper editorials, the ”cli fi” genre might find a home in Taiwan, too, the professor believes. For now, Chen is an Asian pioneer in charting unknown territory in a mostly unknown genre. No academics in Japan or China are doing this yet.

So whether or not the new literary genre is well known, cli fi exists. And it’s here to stay.

See my ”Cli Fi Central” blog here:
http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

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There are a number of ways in which you can improve your reading skills. Some of these are technical – there are certain techniques that need to be trained if you want to be a more efficient reader. These techniques include training yourself to avoid bad habits such as sub-vocalization (silent speech as you read) so that you can learn to read more quickly. This article though is about a different set of skills – skills that are much less technical – they are really just practical ideas to get you reading more and understanding and learning from what you read.

1. Read for enjoyment

Okay, this one should be self-evident. If you want to read better, start out by reading things that you are positively interested in. The very simple insight here is that if you are interested in what you are reading then your brain will take in the content of what you are reading. More than that, the more interested you are in the content, the more quickly you read, the more you can’t wait to get to the next idea, the next sentence or the next page. Before you know it, you have finished the book. Job done!

2. Don’t just read – read then speak or read then write

Sometimes people find reading difficult because it is such a solitary activity – it’s almost invariably something you do by yourself. If you spend too much time reading, it gives you less time for more “communicative” activities such as speaking to other people. Here’s an idea: talk to other people about what you are reading: there are book clubs galore out there after all. The insight is that if you share what you read by speaking or writing about it, then reading becomes much less of a chore. I’d add that, speaking as a language teacher, reading then speaking and/or writing will speed up your vocabulary learning no end – it makes a passive skill more active.

3. Think about what you have read

Why does reading often go wrong? Well, quite frequently people read “numbly” – the process becomes too automatic, the eyes are moving but the brain isn’t engaged. The symptoms of this are that you get to the end of the page and you have no idea about what you have just read. If this happens, then nothing much has been achieved. Is there a solution? I think so. It can be as simple as asking yourself the question “What have I just read?” at the end of each page or chapter, or perhaps “Do I agree with that?”. These are questions anyone can ask and answer – you don’t always need a language teacher to help you!

4. Think about where and when you read

One way reading has changed is that there are now much more media out there: for example different varieties of e-readers now make it possible to read almost wherever we go. This, for me, is a “good thing”. However, it does pose a challenge to the reader: you are much more likely to lose concentration if you are browsing the net on your mobile phone on the train during your daily commute. The idea here is just that if you want to take in what you read, it is much best to find somewhere quiet first.

5. Use pictures and headings to help you

Another way technology is changing reading habits is that a huge proportion of texts are now in multimedia formats – you don’t just get words, you get pictures or other forms of media too. If you want to understand what you are reading take a look at the pictures first – they’ll give you a good overview of what the text is about. A related idea is to take time to notice and read the headings – that’s what they’re there for! A little word of warning though: newspaper headlines can be very difficult to decipher – they tend to have their own grammar and often make use of highly idiomatic language.

6. Don’t always read in the same way and give yourself breaks

Good habits are good, right? Well, yes, but if you do the same thing all the time it does tend to become boring. So the suggestion here is to do different things as you read – read in different ways and keep your mind stimulated. My personal advice is to find a number of different things to read and vary between them. For instance, you might want to read a novel in bed at night and the newspaper on the way into work in the morning. All I’d suggest is that you choose reading activities that suit you as an individual and make them part your daily routine.

7. Just read lots – forget your dictionary

There is no science behind this idea! My experience though as a teacher is that almost invariably the people who read best are the people who read most. There is a lot to be said for quality of reading, but quantity matters too. If you are aiming for quantity, I’d make one small suggestion: forget the dictionary sometimes – dictionaries are good but they do slow you down. The idea is to learn to guess at meanings and not look every word up. All this takes is a little confidence and texts that you enjoy and want to understand – which takes me neatly back to idea number 1: my very best advice is to learn to read for pleasure.

About the author

Dominic Cole is the author of DC IELTS a website for learners of English and anyone interested in the better use of language.

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When I began to popularize the term “cli fi” in 2013, after first coining it on a blog in 2008 as part of my PR work as a climate activist, I hoped it would be a good way to categorize the multiple offerings of fiction that dealt with climate change — and also to bring attention to the fact that our world climate is warming day by day, year by year, decade by decade.

It’s working and the term is catching on worldwide now. Both the New York Times newspaper and TIME magazine are poised to publish news articles about cli fi in the coming weeks.

I am popularizing cli fi mostly it seems to be a good way to alert novelists and short story writers that they can focus on climates the same that sci fi novels and movies made it more palpable to write about science.

I also believe that the term makes it easier for readers, librarians, book agents, store buyers, and publishers to find novels on these topics.

When Manhattan-born writer Nathaniel Rich wrote ”Odds against Tomorrow,” a cli fi novel about a
disaster prediction expert who forecasts the flooding of New York City by a Category 3 hurricane, the NPR radio network in North America did a long segment on the new genre of cli fi. This was a year ago. Now cli fi is gaining momentum in the media and among a growing global community of cli fi
writers and readers.

Cli- Fi has now entered our lexicon of genres. It has been picked up by Word Spy and Wired’s Jargon Watch.

Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, in an essay for ”Dissent” magazine in the summer of 2013, wrote that cli fi is basically when a writer uses fiction to bring climate change to life, or when a writer uses change to bring their fiction to life. She said it well.

And sci fi writers such as David Brin and Kim Stanley Robinson– and sci fi historians such as H. Bruce Franklin, Gerry Canavan and Andrew Milner — have told me that that they like the new term but that as they see it, cli fi is best seen as a subgenre of sci fi. And that’s okay, too.

There are novels, like Barbara Kingsolver’s ”Flight Behavior”, that deal with the change in migration habits of monarch butterflies as a result of f climate change, that simply tell the story of what happens to the species as our climate changes.

Read it if you haven’t read it yet.

Cli fi novels like Clare Hume’s ”Back to the Garden” or S.D. Crockett’s ”After the Snow” treat climate change as the actual apocalyptic event, revolving their stories around those who are left behind to cope with the aftereffects.

Cli fi novels are not always about the end of the world. Mindy McGinnis’s book, ”Not a Drop to Drink”, is based on the idea of a limited and coveted supply of potable water on the planet,
something that is a very real possibility, according to the United Nations at October 2013 Open the Water Summit. Her characters are living in a world where water is scarce, and protecting resources can mean life or death, sher says. And she told a magazine reporter recently that she is thrilled to have the designation of cli fi i to depend on when the media is classifying her book.

“My novel is based on a slow waning of resources, and the reaction of humans is what drives the plot,” McGinniss said. “I’d love to have my title touted as cli fi. It captures more thoroughly the
concept of the book.”

And she is working on a sequel to the novel now.

Fiction should, Nat Rich believes, reflect the most pressing questions of our time.

“Novels can ask the difficult, thorny questions: what are we supposed to make about all of this scary information? Do we ignore the bad news completely, tune it out? Do we live in denial? Do we become environmental activists?”

Rich wrote in a New York Times oped last year. “Or do we just worry about improving our own lot and not worry about anyone else? I tried to explore these questions (and others) as deeply as possible in ‘Odds against Tomorrow’.”

Mary Woodbury runs a webzine called ”Cli Fi Books” where she archives and categorizes climate
fiction books.

So whether or not the new literary genre is well known, cli fi exists. And it’s here to stay.

See my ”cli fi central” blog here:
http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

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