Rethinking Cli-Fi ---- How Two Indonesian Volcanic Eruptions
Shaped Modern Culture
In October 2016, a writer wrote a very long and controversial feature in the Guardian asking a very simple question: where is the fiction about climate change? In the years since, merely typing in “climate change fiction” brings up several helpful lists, some going into the hundreds (thanks, Goodreads), that answer his question. There is now even a neologism, coined by literary theorist Dan Bloom, dubbed ''cli-fi,'' popularly applied to this sudden phenomenon. This “boom” in fiction that examines the most important issue of the Holocene could be due to the recent acclaim towards speculative fiction writers, such as Margaret Atwood and David Mitchell, as well as a re-reading of old apocalypses – Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, or even Martin Amis’ London Fields from 1989. Yet Ghosh’s enquiry could have been answered by another question – first of all, where is the fiction about climate?
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