Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn is a murder mystery set in a future where society as we know it has collapsed due to climate change. As the two main characters investigate the crime, their journey reveals more details about what life is like after the collapse. This makes for both a suspenseful murder mystery and a fascinating exploration of what life might be like after a major societal collapse caused by climate change.
The new year’s finally here! You may have already celebrated with some of your favorite New Year’s Eve traditions: counting down to midnight, drinking champaign, making resolutions for the new year. Now that 2019 is in full swing, I invite you to join me in one of my favorite year-end traditions: looking back at the best examples of the past year of climate fiction.
The term climate fiction, or cli-fi for short, refers to any books, films, and TV series related to human-caused climate change.
Cli-fi used to be a small enough genre that it didn’t take much time or effort to read and watch all of the major cli-fi titles. Nowadays, though, there are so many released each year that it’s hard to keep up with them all.
In honor of this growing trend, I’ve decided to post a list of what I consider to be the best cli-fi titles of 2016 and 2017. Since this is my first year posting such a list, I couldn’t resist sneaking in a title from 2015 that’s one of my all-time favorites.
Start your new year off right by checking out these thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking works of clli-fi. Let me know in the comments if I missed any good ones!
Climate fiction (cli-fi) is a broad genre that includes all fiction that references the climate in some significant way. Most cli-fi explores human-caused climate change and its impact on humanity and the Earth in the present or future.
Telling stories about climate change helps us understand this big, impersonal, long-term trend in more immediate and personal ways. Charts and graphs are great when we want to understand the details of the science, but storytelling really helps us make sense of it all as human beings. It allows us to experience climate change through the eyes of deeply human characters with complex hopes, dreams, and fears that may speak to our own feelings about the realities of climate change. A good cli-fi story entertains us while also helping us figure out what climate change means for us as individuals, communities, and human societies.
Cli-fi is growing in popularity because the consequences of climate change are becoming more obvious and serious with each passing day. More authors are writing cli-fi, and more readers are looking for it. In honor of this growing trend, here are a few fun facts about cli-fi.