What to Read Now: Four Climate Fiction Novels

2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 8-8
Author(s):  
Amy Brady
Keyword(s):  
Climate Fiction

The Mom and the Many: Animal Subplots and Vulnerable Characters in Ducks, Newburyport

Genre ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-292
Author(s):  
Ben De Bruyn
Keyword(s):  
Animal Cruelty ◽  
Geological Environment ◽  
Species Extinction ◽  
Industrial Labor ◽  
Climate Fiction ◽  
The Many ◽  
Forms Of Violence

This article examines Lucy Ellmann's encyclopedic novel Ducks, Newburyport (2019) in the context of debates on modernist legacies, animal characters, and climate fiction. It pays particular attention to the text's signature strategy of including anecdotes about nonhuman creatures exposed to distinct forms of violence, anecdotes that reveal the concerns of the human narrator and her daughter but also highlight other animals, their unfamiliar phenomenologies, and their cautious cross-species partnerships. More specifically, the article tracks individual animals across the novel's pages and reconstructs their semiautonomous subplots as they unfold in a world characterized by animal cruelty, species extinction, and industrial labor. By forcing us to consider the perspectives of creatures like Jim, Mishipeshu, Audrey, and Gracia, Ellmann's narrative reminds us that the climate emergency does not just destabilize a shared geological environment but also endangers multiple and heterogeneous biological worlds.

scholarly journals Climate Fiction and the Ethics of Existentialism

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-178
Author(s):  
Jens Kramshøj Flinker
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Narrative Ethics ◽  
Ethical Standards ◽  
Reading Practice ◽  
Ethical System ◽  
Positive Side ◽  
Climate Fiction ◽  
Better Than

        The purpose of this article is twofold: Existentialism as a philosophical discipline and ethical reference point seems to be a rare guest in ecocriticism. Based on an analysis of Lyra Koli's climate fiction Allting Växer (2018) this article argues that existentialism has something to offer to the ecocritical field. I make use of an econarratological approach, drawing on James Phelan's narrative ethics. Thus, I emphasize the article's second purpose, as narrative ethics is about reconstructing narratives own ethical standards rather than the reader bringing a prefabricated ethical system to the narrative. This reading practice can help to question the idea that some ethical and philosophical standards are better than others within ecocriticism—by encouraging scholars in ecocriticism to relate to what existentialism has to do with climate change in this specific case. In continuation of my analysis, I argue that Allting Växer is pointing at a positive side of existentialist concepts such as anxiety or anguish, that is, that there is a reflecting and changing potential in these moods or experiences. This existentialist framework contrasts with the interpretation of "Anthropocene disorder" (Timothy Clark) as the only outcome when confronting the complexity of the Anthropocene.

Climate Fiction and the World Literary System

2020 ◽  
pp. 51-74
Author(s):  
Andrew Milner ◽  
J.R. Burgmann
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Perceived Vulnerability ◽  
System P ◽  
Green Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Climate Fiction ◽  
Literary System ◽  
Structural Determinant

The chapter opens with a discussion of two early instances of global warming cli-fi, Arthur Herzog’s Heat and George Turner’s The Sea and Summer, and argues that both are more or less oblivious to the wider world beyond their respective national frontiers. It proceeds to elaborate an account of the place of SF in the world literary system, understood in Wallerstein and Moretti’s terms as comprising a core, semi-periphery and periphery. This model is then applied more specifically to cli-fi, distinguishing between structural and conjunctural determinants of the evolution of the sub-genre. The main structural determinant, it argues, will be the world SF system. But this may be either countered or reinforced by one or more of three main conjunctural factors: the degree of perceived vulnerability to extreme climate change of any particular national political economy; the salience of Green politics within any particular national polity; and the salience of climate change within broader environmentalist discussions in any particular national culture. The chapter concludes with critical accounts of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Science in the Capital trilogy, Frank Schätzing’s Der Schwarm, Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy and Antti Tuomainen’s Parantaja.

A Short Pre-History of Climate Fiction

Extrapolation ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Milner ◽  
J. R. Burgmann
Keyword(s):  
History Of ◽  
Climate Fiction

Environmental Literature as Persuasion: An Experimental Test of the Effects of Reading Climate Fiction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Matthew Schneider-Mayerson ◽  
Abel Gustafson ◽  
Anthony Leiserowitz ◽  
Matthew H. Goldberg ◽  
Seth A. Rosenthal ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Test ◽  
Environmental Literature ◽  
Climate Fiction

scholarly journals The Great Displacement: Reading Migration Fiction at the End of the World

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben De Bruyn
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
First Century ◽  
Margaret Drabble ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Climate Fiction

This paper examines how contemporary works of fiction and nonfiction reflect on anticipated cases of climate dislocation. Building on existing research about migrant agency, climate fiction, and human rights, it traces the contours of climate migration discourse before analyzing how three twenty-first-century novels enable us to reimagine the “great displacement” beyond simplistic militarized and humanitarian frames. Zooming in on stories by Mohsin Hamid, John Lanchester, and Margaret Drabble that envision hypothetical calamities while responding to present-day refugee “crises”, this paper explains how these texts interrogate apocalyptic narratives by demilitarizing borderscapes, exploring survivalist mindsets, and interrogating shallow appeals to empathy.

scholarly journals Climate Fiction in Nordic Landscapes

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (01) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Lykke Guanio-Uluru
Keyword(s):  
Climate Fiction

scholarly journals Climate Fiction and the Crisis of Imagination

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-119
Author(s):  
Chiara Xausa
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
Environmental Humanities ◽  
Indigenous Australian ◽  
Environmental Racism ◽  
Slow Violence ◽  
Climate Fiction ◽  
Climate Crisis

This article analyses the representation of environmental crisis and climate crisis in Carpentaria (2006) and The Swan Book (2013) by Indigenous Australian writer Alexis Wright. Building upon the groundbreaking work of environmental humanities scholars such as Heise (2008), Clark (2015), Trexler (2015) and Ghosh (2016), who have emphasised the main challenges faced by authors of climate fiction, it considers the novels as an entry point to address the climate-related crisis of culture – while acknowledging the problematic aspects of reading Indigenous texts as antidotes to the 'great derangement’ – and the danger of a singular Anthropocene narrative that silences the ‘unevenly universal’ (Nixon, 2011) responsibilities and vulnerabilities to environmental harm. Exploring themes such as environmental racism, ecological imperialism, and the slow violence of climate change, it suggests that Alexis Wright’s novels are of utmost importance for global conversations about the Anthropocene and its literary representations, as they bring the unevenness of environmental and climate crisis to visibility.

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