''JARGON WATCH'' -- above -- appeared in Wired magazine a few years ago with this definition by Jonathan Keats
see also
"What can we do about climate change?"
https://cli-fi-books.blogspot.tw/2017/09/what-can-we-do-about-climate-change-is.html
UPDATED LIST, see below and scroll down to see and also SEE ALSO:
A cli-fi listicle for 2017, tentative and expanding it as we speak:
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-cli-fi-listicle-for-2017/
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First of all, here's wishing all my readers here ''a sweet year'' ("zis yor"). Best wishes to everyone reading this blog post for a ''gut, gezunt yor,'' that is to say "A good and healthy year" in the Yiddish language of my grandparents from eastern Europe who made their home in America.
Now to the blog post at hand: A listicle of cli-fi novels past and present (and future).
When Livia Albeck-Ripka, a James Reston Reporting Fellow from Australia and now a reporter for The New York Times, contacted me the other day, asking for a listicle of current cli-fi novels (and earlier ones as well), I looked in my files and came up with this tentative listicle. As comments come in, I will add more titles and authors to the list.
I was not able to consult all my files, but here is my first stab at this listicle, which will soon appear in a prestigious newspaper in America. Feel free, of course, to add to the list, as this is in no way a final or official list. But just to whet your appetite, post-Harvey and post-Irma, here's what I found in my files.
The History of Bees, by Maja Lunde
Barbara Kingsolver, "Flight Behavior"
"South Pole Station" by Ashley Shelby
"0dds Against Tomorrow" by Nathaniel Rich
"New York 2140" by Kim Stanley Robinson
Paolo Bacigalupi, "The Water Knife"
Claire Vaye Watkins "Gold Fame Citrus"
"Ice" by Laline Paul
Meg Little Reilly, "We Are Unprepared"
"The Lamentations of Zeno" by Ilja Trojanow (''EisTau'' in German_
''Clade'', by James Bradley
''Anchor Point,'' by Alice Robinson
''Solar,'' by Ian McEwan
"MaddAddam Trilogy, by Margaret Atwood
"Memory of Water" by Emmi Itaranta
''The Rapture'' by Liz Jensen
''The Uninvited'' by Liz Jensen
The Bone Clock by David Mitchell
And more: (in English and French)
Bacigalupi (Paolo), The Water Knife, éditions Au diable vauvert, 2016.
Ballard (J.G.), Le Monde englouti, éditions Denoël, 2007.
Sécheresse, éditions Denoël, 2007.
Salut l’Amérique, éditions Denoël, 1981.
Barnes (John), La Mère des tempêtes, éditions Robert Laffont, 1998.
Boyle (T.C), Un ami de la terre, Grasset, 2001.
Buckell (Tobias), Arctic Rising (en anglais), St. Martins Press, 2012.
Itaranta (Emmi), Memory of Water (traduit du finnois en anglais), HarperCollins, 2015.
Kingsolver (Barbara), Dans la lumière, éditions Payot & Rivages, 2013.
Laughter (Jim), Polar City Red, Deadly Niche Press, 2012.
Ligny (Jean-Marc), Aqua™, éditions de l’Atalante, 2006.
Exodes, éditions de l’Atalante, 2012.
Semences, éditions de l’Atalante, 2015.
Little Reilly (Meg), We Are Unprepared(en anglais), Mira Books, 2016.
MacDonald (Hamish), Finitude (en anglais), Hamish MacDonald (Ed), 2008.
Quero (Yann), Le Procès de l’Homme Blanc, éditions Arkuiris, 2005.
L’Avenir ne sera plus ce qu’il était, éditions Arkuiris, 2010.
Le Réchauffement climatique et après… (anthologie collective), éditions Arkuiris, 2014.
Robinson (Kim Stanley), Les Quarante Signes de la pluie, Les Presses de la Cité, 2006.
Cinquante degrés au-dessous de zéro, Les Presses de la Cité, 2007.
Soixante jours et après, Les Presses de la Cité, 2008.
New York 2140 (en anglais), Orbit, 2017.
Rubin (Edward), The Heatstroke Line (en anglais), Sunbury Press Inc., 2015.
Silverberg (Robert), Ciel brûlant de minuit, édition Robert Laffont, 1995.
Spinrad (Norman), Bleu comme une orange, Flammarion, 2004.
Sterling (Bruce), Gros temps, éditions Denoël, 1997.
Schätzing (Frank), The Swarm: A Novel of the Deep (traduit de l’allemand en anglais),
Hodder Paperbacks, 2007.
Trojanow (Ilija), The Lamentations of Zeno (traduit de l’allemand en anglais), Verso, 2016.
Trudel (Jean-Louis), Les Marées à venir, Vermillon, coll. Parole vivante, n°81, 2009.
Tuomainen (Antti), La Dernière pluie, Pocket, 2015.
Vandermeer (Jeff), Annihilation, éditions Au diable vauvert, 2016.
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[also suggested by Bill Junior via Facebook post]:
I Am Legend by Matheson, Richard 1954 (disease)
The Drought JG Ballard 1964
Make Room, Make Room! Harry Harrison 1966
The Sheep Look Up John Brunner 1972
Vaneglory George Turner 1983
The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985
This Is the Way the World Ends James K Morrow 1986
Drowning Towers George Turner 1987
The Sea and Summer George Turner 1987
Earth David Brin 1990
The Destiny Makers George Turner 1992
Mother of Storms John Barnes 1994
Genetic Soldier George Turner 1994
Operation Elbow Room: An Interplanetary Ecofiction Joseph J Phillips 1995
Antarctica Kim Stanley Robinson 1997
A Friend of the Earth TC Boyle 2000
MacAddam Trilogy Margaret Atwood 2000...
===============
[Liz Jensen suggested these novels to add to the list:]
You are probably being deluged with suggestions for more titles but here are some off the top of my head:
Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler
Exit West, Mohsin Hamid
The Shore, Sara Taylor
The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigdupi
The Lorax, Dr Seuss
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
The Drowned World, JG Ballard
The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View of the Future, Naomi Oreskes
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with contributions by Joseph Cohn, Joe Cotton, Binayak Das, Sarah Dixon, Daniel Hall, Majel Haugh, Chris Holdsworth, Lucas Janssen, Todd Jarvis, Catherine Jones, Nazli Koseoglu, Jennifer LaForce, Tran Thi Kim Lien, Ilaria Meggetto, Emma J. Myatt, Usha Nair, Kai Olson-Sawyer, Ralph Pentland, Annie Percik, Clay Reynolds, Philip Ridgers, Ben Ruddell, John Sayer, John Simaika, Roanne Van Voorst, David Zetland.
Edited by David Zetland, with a Foreword by Henk Ovink.
"What can we to do about climate change?"
ReplyDeleteAn Oped
Whenever the media gets worried about hurricanes and floods and heatwaves and methane bombs in the Arctic, editors trot out the usual headline: "What can we to do about climate change?"
And for their news stories, they go to the usual climate change experts and scientists and weather bloggers and quote them for paragraphs and paragraphs about the usual scientific and technological answers.
But not once do the reporters ever venture into the real answer of "cli-fi" novels and movies, where emotional resonance matters more than charts and statistics.
And yet, if you want to know the truth, to answer the question "What can we do about climate change?", the answer is to forget listening to the so-called "experts" drone on and on about this chart and this statistic -- boring! boring! -- and instead tell readers that one very important thing we can do about climate change is to encourage more and more novelists to write cli-fi novels and cli-fi movie scripts over the next 100 years, and to nurture these authors and to nurture this rising new literary genre.
That's what we can really do about climate change. All the rest is pissing in the wind.
The "experts" know nothing, although they are of course not "know-nothings." They are very capable and intelligent people, but they are just wasting our time. The key lies with "cli-fi" novels and movies.
The media needs to wake up about this and stop interviewing the wrong people (scientists and weather forecasters). Start interviewing novelists and literary agents and publishing executives instead. And start interviewing literary critics like Pamela Paul and Michiko Kakutani and James Bradley instead.