The chances are you won’t have heard of cli-fi. Not to be confused with sci-fi, this genre takes a fictional story and adds climate change. As Jane Davidson said, “if you think stories showing the effects of climate change are only futuristic fantasies, think again”.

The idea of cli-fi is to create relatable characters forced to deal with the consequences of global warming. It’s an issue that needs to be talked about; science reports and preaching hippies are not the way to engage the public. As George Marshall, author of Don’t Even Think About It, said: “we are story animals”.

Saci Lloyd wrote the first installation of her Carbon Diaries series in 2008 but it’s set right now in 2015. It’s about a family who are trying to manoeuvre through personal dramas in a time where the potential issues of climate change have actually happened. 

Lloyd wanted to write a “really funny book, in which I threw every disaster I could ever think of at it”, but here’s the crux of the story: all of the disasters were genuine events. She bypassed the green box of climate change, and refused to alienate the non-scientists because she is convinced our climate change story lies in the emotions and not the facts. 

Many cli-fi novels are aimed at children. No stranger to this genre is David Thorpe, who said that he likes writing for young adults as their minds are not fully developed and they ask questions. "They haven’t been tainted by ideological bias,” he said. Thorpe said he retells myths, but stays away from the current trend for harrowing stories. ”If we tell kids dystopian tales what are we doing to them? Narratives must have hope and we can choose to change the ending.”

The point of cli-fi is, in the words of Lloyd, is “having the balls to write a great story full of wicked, evil, messed up, complex characters who are just trying to work things out, with climate change in the background."

 

 

Photo: Courtesy of Hay Festival
Text: Francesca Donovan