Abstract
In 2008, Dan Bloom coined the term “cli-fi;” since then, study of this genre has become increasingly popular. The appeal of examining fiction in terms of its focus on human-made climate change is unsurprising given our growing awareness of the ways that our actions are impacting the planet and given the increase in speculative fiction about the possible end results of unchecked human activity. In this essay, I analyse two very different novels that have been consistently characterised as cli-fi, Margaret Atwood’s 2003 Oryx and Crake and Ian McEwan’s 2010 Solar in terms of what they can teach us about climate change and how they might nudge us to different actions as well as the ways that both highlight the tensions between art and science.
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Notes
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For example, I was approached by three scientists to work with them on a National Sciences Foundation grant to help them incorporate works of climate fiction in their science courses as a way of engaging with the empathetic imagination enabled via the study of fiction. Our work can be found here: https://serc.carleton.edu/integrate/teaching_materials/climate_fact/index.html.
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In 2015, the Department of Defense authored a report detailing the ways that climate change constitutes a military threat to the US. (http://archive.defense.gov/pubs/150724-congressional-report-on-national-implications-of-climate-change.pdf?source=govdelivery, accessed 1 December 2018).
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Atwood introduced the term “cli-fi” when she tweeted it to her 500,000 followers in 2012.
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Barbara Kingsolver, however, has an undergraduate degree in biology and a graduate degree in ecology and evolutionary biology.
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For more on my examinations of Atwood’s aesthetics and the role of art in her works, see The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals, and Gender in the Age of Terror (2015), “Vegans, Zombies, and Eco-Apocalypse: McCarthy’s The Road and Atwood’s Year of the Flood” (2014); “‘This is Border Country’: Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing and Postcolonial Identity” (2012).
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In April of 2017, the EPA scrubbed climate science data from its website (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/04/28/epa-website-removes-climate-science-site-from-public-view-after-two-decades/?utm_term=.90dd507ffd77, accessed 1 December 2018).
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Wright, L. (2019). Cli-Fi: Environmental Literature for the Anthropocene. In: Baumbach, S., Neumann, B. (eds) New Approaches to the Twenty-First-Century Anglophone Novel. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32598-5_6
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