A few years ago, under pen name Clara Hume, I wrote a novel about climate change. Back then I didn’t know just how many other novels out there had the same topic. Confused by the fact that climate change was such a taboo subject in many places, I was inspired to create a story about a small group of family and friends in the future and show their survival, hope, tragedy, and adaption to a new world. I thought that by creating a fictional scenario, with people and places that were very real, I could get through to readers about something powerful that is happening around us. This story is Back to the Garden–published in the fall of 2012, first as an ebook and later as a print title.
I began researching other similar titles and published an article at BCRainforest.com, in December 2013, about climate change novels. After a lot of feedback and interest I opened the site Cli-Fi Books in August 2013 (when I also updated the article). Fact was, back then, there were only a few news articles about climate change novels, but no one place that curated these books. The articles always mentioned the same handful of books, regurgitating the same idea and authors as the previous articles had. But, the more I researched, the more I understood that there were a lot of climate-themed novels; some went back decades and weren’t necessarily about human-caused climate change as we now know it. Older novels, by authors such as JG Ballard, recognized that human impact might affect our climate patterns, but the stories coming out back in the 1960s and earlier were more about the what-ifs than the what-is’s. Many novels about human-caused climate change, as we now know it, were also newly emerging, just like mine. Wanting to provide in-depth resources, I added several features to the site, including a book database (listing nearly 200 novels back then, nearly 300 now), a YA/teen shelf, interviews with authors, and guest posts by academics in the field. There was more to this phenomenon than met the eye; it was deeper than the simple promotion of the “climate fiction” label, which has the unfortunate side effect of being the same term used by skeptics and deniers to describe climate change as fiction, or a hoax. There was more to understand about these novels than was being realized; these novels, as a collection, told a story that became bigger than a shiny new fruit ripe for media to pluck one day and forget the next.
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow broke the repetitive cycle of tired reporting on the subject and freshly introduced these novels with an in-depth article at Dissent Magazine. I had known the article was coming because she had requested a preview copy of my book, read it, and included it in her article. While I didn’t agree that these novels were necessarily brand new, as she suggested, it is true that not enough research had gone into finding them. Tuhus-Dubrow said that in 2005 Robert Macfarlane complained in The Guardian that novelists were being slow to take up the subject of global warming. Yet, as Gregers Andersen wrote in a short essay summarizing his doctoral work, even though there was an increasing amount of climate change novels, several had already been around for decades: “The history of cli-fi seems to begin in 1977 with the novel Heat, by the American author Arthur Herzog, and has since been expanded by a wide range of short stories, novels and movies.”
Tuhus-Dubrow brought up some excellent points about climate change novels: “The fundamental story of climate change is simple. Human behavior provoked a change in the weather, unleashing, among other effects, dangerous storms. This story should sound familiar. It’s one of the oldest narratives in the human repository. The tale of Noah’s ark is just one variation on the ancient flood myth, in which a deity annihilates the human race for its sins. Of course, to primitive people, fierce weather must have demanded explanation, and human wickedness supplied a readily available answer. Their more enlightened descendants knew better. They identified other causes: pressure systems and cold fronts and the like. They knew that human actions could not influence the weather. But now we know even better. The details diverge from the classical apocalyptic narrative. God as the intermediary is absent.”
Paul Collins, environmental lawyer from the UK–who runs a Facebook group dedicated to climate fiction, and who moderates our community discussion group dealing with these books–recently sent me a link to a good BBC Radio segment called The 19th-Century Greens, which compares current environmental authors to earlier ones like Wordsworth and Blake. One of the points made in the radio show relates to Tuhus-Dubrow’s above. In the 19th century, eco-minded authors often saw nature as a divine and necessary religious place, where mankind still had dominion and was above nature. Nature was God’s gift to men; nature served us. Today’s authors might not see it this way; yet there is a necessary (perhaps spiritual but not religious) sanctuary that nature provides. God the intermediary, therefore, is often absent from modern greens’ views of nature. When God appears in the modern climate novel, it is sadly often contradictory to nature, born out of ideology instead of science, and such a novel will dictate that climate change is a hoax. Today’s authors may also elevate nature to be equal to our own place in the world. We understand more now that ecological webs are a balancing act, and one species cannot take too much without unbalancing this act (humankind is not above nature). Modern technology also takes us out of nature, and it is a quiet rare holiday that may get us back into nature. Authors who write about climate change might often be online promoting their books and art rather than celebrating nature and getting off the screen. Perhaps it’s my own perception, but the 19th century greens really loved being outdoors, having discussions outdoors, writing outdoors, celebrating nature. I am still appreciative of this lifestyle, despite time spent online. But I love the idea of having tangible, wonderful tree- and sun-filled discussions outside rather than the cold blue of the internet. In the summer I sit outside for hours in the cedar yard, snapping beans, talking to my mom or sister on the phone, sipping wine under the sun, listening to birds, weeding my garden, and feeling alive.
Shortly after I began Cli-Fi Books I realized that the boundaries of climate change novels were very gray, and that nature fiction, overall, was worth exploration. The subject of climate change cannot exist in a vacuum, nor can stories about it. Margaret Atwood, who writes novels with strong environmental themes, has called climate change “the everything change.” In the fall of 2013, I expanded the site to Eco-fiction.com. The term “eco-fiction” caught on in the 1970s, among other new green movements and events, like Earth Day. The biggest resource on eco-fiction is Jim Dwyer’s Where the Wild Books Are: A Field Guide to Eco-Fiction. Eco-fiction is ecologically oriented fiction, which may be nature-oriented (non-human oriented) or environmental-oriented (human impacts on nature). Genres of eco-fiction include–but are not limited to–pastoral, science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction, adventure, wilderness, western, literary fiction, and climate fiction. I wanted a broader, more neutral domain for these books, something that could branch out as well as take root. Though I catalog these books, I understand that they are too important to sit on shelves or be confined to sometimes limiting labels. The use of genre is casual at Eco-fiction.com, but still important. For instance, thousands of novels have eco-themes, but such categories are not available at big printers or distributors like Ingram and Amazon. Ingram happens to have a category for juvenile nature fiction but none for adults; does nature stop at a certain age? I also broadened the site to include films, songs, photography, and other artwork–even some notable non-fiction works–knowing full well that I would not be able to list every single piece of work under this broad umbrella of eco-fiction. I think Dwyer’s book lists 2,000 novels, and his book was published in 2010. It did not fully recognize the onslaught of climate change novels but did mention some.
Since that time I have been constantly amazed by the writing and other art in the field of eco-fiction, including the sub-category of climate fiction. Though the site is completely volunteer-run, with no pesky ads for revenue, I find exploring this literature completely rewarding. My favorite part of the site is that through it I am often contacted by authors, so I discover new books all the time. I also get a chance to interview and get to know authors and other artists. Every single one of them has completely drawn me in, has been also down-to-earth, friendly, and accessible. I’m always learning something new and getting confirmation that these authors are wonderful people, writing such thoughtful and provoking stories. The Google+ Community group associated with the site has grown to over 450 people in just six months, too, offering authors and other artists a chance to promote their work or just coalesce around the news of books, films, and other art with ecological themes.
We are writing the stories of our time. Like Tuhus-Dubrow said of these tales: “They refashion myths for our age, appropriating time-honored narratives to accord with our knowledge and our fears”. She also pointed out, “Climate change, and the emerging fiction addressing it, recalls other myths as well. The plane that is so central to Far North evokes Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and was punished with death for his hubris. The Garden of Eden [Back to the Garden] also comes to mind. Our ancestors were born into a climatic Eden: the Holocene, a geological age uncommonly hospitable to human life. Now we have entered what some scientists are calling the ‘Anthropocene’, a less congenial epoch in which human activity is the most influential force on earth. The products of our knowledge have evicted us from our climatic paradise—what several of these novels refer to nostalgically as the ‘old world’.”
It is a fascinating time to be a part of this history, to be an author in the Anthropocene. We can assume that our ancestors will read our stories–which will help document our times. Maybe future readers will wonder why we understood climate change but could not work together to curb it. Maybe our future audiences will, like the characters in Back to the Garden, mourn the old world but learn to get back to nature and hold it in the esteem it deserves. Maybe they will learn from our mistakes, or rue them for centuries to come. It is not known how we will impact others. Even though we are inspired to write about climate change, we also want to write our fiction like any other novel is written: the problem is narrated around time travel, romance, butterflies, dogs, tea-masters, bears, oil spills, humorous tales, what-have-you. Eco-fiction is a big bucket to dive into, and to pull from. I highly recommend readers to visit Eco-fiction.com and explore the tales within.
