This is a global portal for all novels and movies about climate change and "The Virus," with news links and opeds from blogs to videos to Wikipedia to Twitter to news links and Facebook Groups. See this portal, the only such cli-fi sci-fi portal on the internet. MEDIA inquiries are okay at this point in time, and personal comments may be sent to the editor at danbloom ATMARK gmail DOT com
The publishing industry warms up to the cli-fi genre, as sci-fi writers get in on the stories, too
by Dan Bloom, staff writer, with agencies
Cli-fi is not your grandfather’s sci-fi. It’s a new subgenre of sci-fi, very new, and in this summer of 2018, it’s on more and more people’s minds. Especially publishing people in London, New York and Sydney. Cli-fi novels have arrived.
Hollywood producers are snapping up film options for cli-fi novels now, and directors are lining up for the greenlight, a good cast, and compelling story to tell. Cli-fi movies won’t replace sci-fi movies, because sci-fi has its place in our culture, too. But move over, sci-fi, because here comes cli-fi.
“In popular films about climate disasters, there’s typically a frenzied scenario in which a group of scientific experts with furrowed brows monitor changes in Earth’s activities just before rushing to warn the entire world of impending upheaval by way of an unprecedented cataclysmic weather event,” writes Kenya Foy. “In the background, everyday citizens go on about their daily duties in complete oblivion — that is, until a tsunami of melted ice cap water sweeps through the populated area, engulfing everything in sight and permanently altering life on Earth as we know it.’’
However, she adds: “In real life, scientists, environmental experts and climate change organizations continue doing the tireless work of making sure that these terrifying “cli-fi” apocalyptic movie plots remain onscreen and don’t actually unfold outside of big-budget movie sets, where they stand to obliterate far more than their box office competitors.”
In Manhattan and London and Sydney, publishers like Morgan Entrekin and Jamie Byng and Julianne Brand are thinking cli-fi now. They’ve heard the term and they’re looking for authors and their agents to come in with good stories. Stories to turn into powerful novels and to later adapt as Hollywood movies.
Literary agents like Nicole Aragi and Elizabeth Sheinkman are actively seeking out cli-fi novels to turn into literary fiction and genre categories, with Hollywood film options always in mind.
What turned the tide? The summer of 2018 worldwide, from the USA to Canada to Europe, with its wildfires and floods and heatwaves, along with constant media coverage of the link between climate change and these deadly and catastrophic events, helped turned the tide.
The news coverage woke everyone up. Even the climate denialists are waking up. David Wells-Wallace and Nat Rich, writing compelling journalism about climate change impacts events, also helped put the cli-fi genre into play.
The next 100 years will be the Age of Cli-Fi. Books, shorts stories, novels, poems, art projects, operas, musicals, pop songs, university classes and online forums worldwide will focus our attention on the power of cli-fi to move people with emotions. Government statistics and scientific charts are important, but they are often boring. Cli-fi storytelling goes for the heart and the mind, and the results will surprise future generations.
Publishers now understand this and are seeking out content to fill their bookshelves and complete their marketing plans. Literary agents are in on the game, too, as our PR people and, believe it or not, book reviewers and the New York Times Book Review on Sundays, so ably edited by Brown alum Pamela Paul and her staff of literature lovers.
The entrance to the former Auschwitz death camp. Photograph: Alik Kęplicz/AP
Heather Morris’s The Tattooist of Auschwitz, the story of how Slovakian Jew Lali Sokolov fell in love with a girl he was tattooing at the concentration camp, has been one of the year’s bestselling novels. Its cover proclaims that it is “based on the powerful true story of love and survival”; inside, its publisher notes that “every reasonable attempt to verify the facts against available documentation has been made”. But a detailed broadside from the Auschwitz Memorial has disputed this, claiming that “the book contains numerous errors and information inconsistent with the facts, as well as exaggerations, misinterpretations and understatements”.
The report from Wanda Witek-Malicka of the Auschwitz Memorial Research Centre lays out concerns that the book’s claims of factual authenticity will lead readers to treat it as “a source of knowledge and imagination about the reality of life” in the camp.
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Morris has previously spoken of how Sokolov began to tell her his story at the age of 87, after the death of his wife Gita Furman. She initially wrote his story as a screenplay, then launched a Kickstarter to raise funds to self-publish it as a book, before finding a publisher. The novel has gone on to top charts around the world, with almost 400,000 copies sold in the UK alone.
“Ninety-five per cent of it is as it happened; researched and confirmed,” Morris told the Guardian earlier this year. “What has been fictionalised is where I’ve put Lale and Gita into events where really they weren’t. They weren’t together when the American planes flew over the camps, for example. Lale was on his own at that point. I put him and Gita together for dramatic licence.”
At the back of the book, Morris thanks two researchers for “their brilliant investigative skills in researching ‘facts’ to ensure history and memory waltzed perfectly in step”.
But according to the Auschwitz Memorial’s magazine, Memoria, numerous historical details of the camp are wrong. Witek-Malicka’s fact-checking, which runs to more than seven pages, takes issue with a range of storylines, from the route taken to the camp (“the transport could not have travelled through Ostrava and Pszczyna … [Morris] probably used the modern online search engine of railway connections”), to Morris’s account of the murder of prisoners in a bus being used as a gas chamber, which “does not find confirmation in any sources”.
Paweł Sawicki, editor-in-chief of Memoria, said it was first prompted to look into the novel when it was asked to double-check the camp number of Gisela Fuhrmannova, Sokolov’s wife, who also went by the name Gita Furman.
Ludwig ‘Lali’ Eisenberg (who changed his last name to Solokov) and Gita Furman, born Gisela Fuhrmannova, with their son. Photograph: Echo publishing “We were really surprised to find out that the number given in the book is not correct. It is a very basic but a crucial detail in the story,” Sawicki told the Guardian. “We have also had some information from our guides that visitors have been asking about the history of the tattooist. Some even received this book as a thank-you gift … So we become interested in the story itself and the further we got into the details, the more surprised we were to discover how [many] historical mistakes – small and big – about the reality of Auschwitz were there.”
Because the book is presented as “based on a true story”, and most readers “do not have enough knowledge to distinguish facts and fictions here”, the Memorial decided to lay out the history behind the novel.
Witek-Malicka said that it would have been impossible for Sokolov to get penicillin for Furman, who was infected with typhus, in January 1943: “This antibiotic became widely accessible only after the war.” She also disputed a scene where Auschwitz physician Josef Mengele is shown sterilising a man: “Dr Mengele did not conduct sterilisation experiments on men, but performed experiments on twins and dwarves.”
While Morris’s novel says two crematoriums were blown up during a revolt by Sonderkommando prisoners, Witek-Malicka says only one was partially burned down, adding that a scene where female prisoners deliver gunpowder to the prisoners by carrying it under their fingernails had no historical basis.
A major point of concern raised in the report “is the sexual relationship described in the book between the head of the camp SS-Obersturmführer Johann Schwarzhuber and the Jewish female prisoner Cilka”. In practice, the report says, “the possibility of maintaining such a long relationship … and according to the book, a semi-explicit relationship between a Jewish female prisoner and a high-ranking member of the SS hierarchy was non-existent”. The Auschwitz Memorial is not the firstto flag concerns about the novel. Literary sleuth and blogger Dan Bloom first blogged about the untruthfulness of the novel in a September 22 post at cli-fi-books.blogspot.com
Later on November 8, alerted by Bloom's stready stream of tweets and emails sounding the alarm, an article in the New York Times in November pointed out that the number that Morris says was tattooed on Furman was 34902, but that Furman herself testified that her number was 4562.
Blogger Lisa Hill highlighted errors in the novel back June. After being alerted by Bloom in September she refused to print his comments in her comments section and deleted his comments sounding the alarm but she did write this on her blog at the end:
P.S. 22/9/18 -- ''I have been contacted today [September 22] by a journalist [Dan Bloom] in who says he has proof that there are serious doubts about the veracity of this book. I will provide further details about that if and when I can. I cannot print Dan's comments for fear of a libel suit which I cannot afford to chance, so sorry Dan.''
Sokolov’s son Gary told the New York Times that it bothered him his father’s name had been misspelled “Lale”, rather than “Lali” in the novel.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum concluded that the novel is “an impression about Auschwitz inspired by authentic events, almost without any value as a document”.
“The nature of human memory, especially where the events recalled occurred over 70 years ago, requires confrontation with other sources. From today’s perspective, we can only regret that no specialist in the area of camp matters was invited to work on the book,” the report ends. “Given the number of factual errors, therefore, this book cannot be recommended as a valuable title for persons who want to explore and understand the history of KL Auschwitz.”
When approached by the Guardian, Morris declined further comment.
She told the Australian, which first covered the report: “I have written a story of the Holocaust, not the story of the Holocaust. I have written Lale’s story.” In November, she told the New York Times: “The book does not claim to be an academic historical piece of non-fiction, I’ll leave that to the academics and historians.”
A spokesperson for her publisher told the Guardian on Friday: “The Tattooist of Auschwitz is a novel based on the personal recollections and experiences of one man. It is not, and has never claimed to be, an official history. If it inspires people to engage with the terrible events of the Holocaust more deeply, then it will have achieved everything that Lale himself wished for.”
But Sawicki took issue with Morris’s response. “Can ‘a story’ be told without paying attention to the reality of the story? If this would be a complete fictional story, we could say that the author does not know much about the history of Auschwitz. This book, however, tells a story of a real person, his real tragic experiences, and this puts much more responsibility on a person who tells this story to the world,” he said. “The number of different errors in the book – not only in simple basic facts but also in the depiction of the reality of Auschwitz – can sometimes create more confusion than understanding. It turns a real story into an interpretation – very moving and emotional – that however blurs the authenticity of this true experience. We believe that the survivor’s story deserved better.”
Yes, you read right: Neal Shusterman’s newcli-fi novelfor Young Adults (YA genre) is not your grandfather's sci-fi, and his longtime publisher Simon and Schuster Children’s Publishing company is letting the cat out of the bag in October 2018
“Dry” explores what would happen if the United States
ran out of water. Sound familiar? Droughts in
California, Colorado. Capetown in South Africa
running out of water now as we speak?
Cli-fi is in the air, and now it’s on the ground, too,
where future droughts will get worse and worse over time.
So Shusterman’s novel, which he co-wrote with his son Jarrod
for young readers as a both a wake up call
and warning, is a good example of YA cli-fi,
a new literary subgenre for young people.
The book, a dystopian climate change story
that also contains hope and the promise
of a better world, was co-written with his son Jarrod
and it follows Alyssa, a teenage girl living in
California during an extreme drought, which
everyone in the book calls “the flow crisis,”
and then “the Tap-Out.”
“That’s what the media’s been calling the drought,
ever since people got tired of hearing the word ‘drought,'”
Alyssa explains in the novel. “Kind of like the way
‘global warming’ became ‘climate change,’ and ‘war’
became ‘conflict.’ But now they’ve got a new catchphrase.
OCTOBER 10, 2018 --- GERMANY -- As alarm bells over global warming ring louder, authors are increasingly turning to climate change fiction to dramatise the catastrophic effects of droughts, hurricanes and floods -- and inspire action.
"It is difficult for us to notice these things in our day-to-day lives," she told AFP.
But with climate fiction, "you can imagine being a person whom flood or drought displaces, and with that imaginative stance can come radical empathy."
For Norwegian novelist Maja Lunde it started with a documentary about colony collapse disorder, the mysterious die-off of bees that has sparked international concern.
"I had an epiphany: this is what I want to write about," Lunde told AFP.
"The History of Bees", which conjures up a world without bees where humans have to hand-pollinate trees, became a global bestseller, selling over 1 million copies worldwide and translated into more than 30 languages rlound the globe.
Sensing that she "wasn't done yet with this topic", Lunde has set out to write a quartet of climate change novels. The second book, "Blue" deals with a shortage of water and was published in Norway last year.
Lunde discussed her novels at the October 2018 Frankfurt book fair, the world's largest publishing event where cli-fi is expected to feature prominently.
"People are caring about climate change more and more... and authors write about what makes them scared."
The latest UN IPCC climate report, which warned that drastic changes were needed to prevent Earth from hurtling towards an unlivable rise in temperature, showed that the situation was "getting worse", Lunde said.
"But we can still do a lot," she added. "We can all do something. I absolutely think that climate change fiction can change minds."
'The age of cli-fi'
American climate activist and literary PR blogger Dan Bloom, credited with coining the term "cli-fi" in 2010, described the genre as a literary cousin of sci-fi, but less escapist and "based on reality and real science".
The earliest examples of cli-fi date back decades with Britishh sci-fi writer J.G. Ballard's 1962 novel "The Drowned World", where melting ice caps have partially submerged an abandoned London, considered a classic of the genre.
But Bloom, 70, said cli-fi was "made for the 21st Century".
"Here we are: floods, heatwaves, water shortages, climate refugees," he told AFP, "I didn't invent cli-fi. Cli-fi invented itself."
This year's unusually hot summer, when extreme wildfires ravaged parts of Europe and California, has made the public even more aware of climate events linked to global warming, Bloom said, fuelling "a hunger to read cli-fi novels".
But like any good novel, he stressed, cli-fi stories should at their core "be good storytelling, full of emotion and memorable characters."
Barbara Kingsolver's "Flight Behaviour" (2012), about the sudden arrival of huge flocks of monarch butterflies in a Tennessee forest, and Margaret Atwood's dystopian MaddAddam trilogy count among the must-reads of the genre.
"They can serve to help make readers more conscious of what's at stake as the world warms degree by degree. These novels can be wake-up calls, a cri de coeur."
OCTOBER 10, 2018 --- GERMANY -- As alarm bells over global warming ring louder, authors are increasingly turning to climate change fiction to dramatise the catastrophic effects of droughts, hurricanes and floods -- and inspire action.
"It is difficult for us to notice these things in our day-to-day lives," she told AFP.
But with climate fiction, "you can imagine being a person whom flood or drought displaces, and with that imaginative stance can come radical empathy."
For Norwegian novelist Maja Lunde it started with a documentary about colony collapse disorder, the mysterious die-off of bees that has sparked international concern.
"I had an epiphany: this is what I want to write about," Lunde told AFP.
"The History of Bees", which conjures up a world without bees where humans have to hand-pollinate trees, became a global bestseller, selling over 1 million copies worldwide and translated into more than 30 languages rlound the globe.
Sensing that she "wasn't done yet with this topic", Lunde has set out to write a quartet of climate change novels. The second book, "Blue" deals with a shortage of water and was published in Norway last year.
Lunde discussed her novels at the October 2018 Frankfurt book fair, the world's largest publishing event where cli-fi is expected to feature prominently.
"People are caring about climate change more and more... and authors write about what makes them scared."
The latest UN IPCC climate report, which warned that drastic changes were needed to prevent Earth from hurtling towards an unlivable rise in temperature, showed that the situation was "getting worse", Lunde said.
"But we can still do a lot," she added. "We can all do something. I absolutely think that climate change fiction can change minds."
'The age of cli-fi'
American climate activist and literary PR blogger Dan Bloom, credited with coining the term "cli-fi" in 2010, described the genre as a literary cousin of sci-fi, but less escapist and "based on reality and real science".
The earliest examples of cli-fi date back decades with Britishh sci-fi writer J.G. Ballard's 1962 novel "The Drowned World", where melting ice caps have partially submerged an abandoned London, considered a classic of the genre.
But Bloom, 70, said cli-fi was "made for the 21st Century".
"Here we are: floods, heatwaves, water shortages, climate refugees," he told AFP, "I didn't invent cli-fi. Cli-fi invented itself."
This year's unusually hot summer, when extreme wildfires ravaged parts of Europe and California, has made the public even more aware of climate events linked to global warming, Bloom said, fuelling "a hunger to read cli-fi novels".
But like any good novel, he stressed, cli-fi stories should at their core "be good storytelling, full of emotion and memorable characters."
Barbara Kingsolver's "Flight Behaviour" (2012), about the sudden arrival of huge flocks of monarch butterflies in a Tennessee forest, and Margaret Atwood's dystopian MaddAddam trilogy count among the must-reads of the genre.
"They can serve to help make readers more conscious of what's at stake as the world warms degree by degree. These novels can be wake-up calls, a cri de coeur."
Amy Brady, literary critic who writes a monthly ''cli-fi trends'' column in Chicago, and now a newsletter editor here, writes:
It's been a rough summer here in 2018 in the United States, Canada and in Europe, too.. The western USA states have suffered intense heat and wildfires, while here in the mid-Atlantic rainfall has been as high as 300% of normal. During these times I feel very lucky to have found a community of people who care so deeply about climate change and its multifarious effects on the planet. Thank you.
Speaking of like-minded individuals, we have a TON of new subscribers this month. So it's a good time, I think, to remind folks what this newsletter is all about. Roughly a year and a half ago, I launched a monthly column at the Chicago Review of Books called "Burning Worlds." It's dedicated to exploring how contemporary writers are thinking about ''cli-fi'' and climate change. This newsletter expands that cli-fi trends project by looking at how artists working in all kinds of mediums (painting, music, theater, literature, etc) are looking at the issue. Incredibly, this issue marks the seventh "Burning Worlds" newsletter, and readership has grown exponentially thanks to your efforts to spread the word.
So please - keep it up! If you have friends or colleagues who would enjoy this newsletter, send them this link so they can subscribe, too.
This month I have for you an interview with Danielle Nelisse, an immigration attorney, private investigator, and--painter! Her "Wildfires" series, which was inspired by nine wildfires that surrounded her California art studio in May 2014, is on view at the U.S. Embassy in Bahrain through July 2020. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.
Until September! -- Amy Brady
INTERVIEW WITH PAINTER DANIELLE BONITA
Amy:What inspired the "Wildfires" series?
Danielle: My “Wildfires” series was first inspired in 2014 when nine wildfires simultaneously surrounded my art studio in Southern California. While I stood in my art studio creating the first “Wildfires” paintings on two canvases side-by-side, my family members checked in over the phone. I just kept painting. The sky became dark with charred ash.
The massive wildfires were fed for days by hot Santa Ana winds that blew in from the desert. To date I have completed nine wildfires paintings and luckily I haven’t been ordered to evacuate my art studio yet.
Amy: What led to the “Wildfires” series being shown at the US Embassy in Bahrain?
Danielle: When Justin Siberell was appointed as Ambassador by the President, he sought artwork from a California artist to exhibit at the U.S. Embassy in Manama, Bahrain. His staff contacted me and told me that he connected with my artwork because he is originally from California and as a former fire fighter he wanted to share his memory of the wildfires in California with the people of Bahrain.
Amy: What do you hope viewers will take away from “Wildfires”?
Danielle: I often use art to depict imagery associated with climate change. I feel that a majority of people are overwhelmed with emotions regarding the negative impact of climate change, and the fact that solutions are too complex to implement quickly or easily by any one person or any one government or any one country.
I know when people feel they are not free to express their emotions it compromises their emotional and physical health. By creating abstract paintings that address climate change, I invite viewers to vent their emotions about what is interpreted as a devastating and staggering problem for an international community to solve.
Amy: Many experts say that California’s wildfires are exacerbated by climate change. Do you think about climate change beyond what you paint in the studio?
Danielle: I worry a lot about the negative impacts of climate change. Living in Southern California I am exposed to the consequences of long term drought conditions and see lakes dry up, see mudslides take place after the fires, see lawns removed in favor of xeriscape landscapes, and see wildfires all year round.
These days wildfire firefighters are facing situations they have never encountered, such as a 100 foot wall of flames and triple digit heat for 25 consecutive days.
Eighty-nine large wildfires are currently burning in the United States, but I can’t help but notice that global warming has resulted in wildfires not only in California, but worldwide. Europe just suffered its deadliest fire season in more than a century.
According to Stanford University climate change scientist Noah Diffenbaugh, “We now have very strong evidence that global warming has already put a thumb on the scales, upping the odds of extremes like severe heat and heavy rainfall. We find that global warming has increased the odds of record-setting heat events over more than 80 percent of the planet.”
Amy: What role do you see art playing in our larger conversations about climate change and ecological disasters like wildfires?
Danielle: For about ten years or more, artists like me have been expressing our concern by creating artwork about climate change and ecological disasters. Making my “Wildfires” painting series allows me to release anxiety and express my emotions about climate change. I can only hope that if my art is in the right place at the right time it might provide an opportunity to impact policy makers by sparking productive conversations.
Just a few days ago, the United Nations officially recognized climate change as a cause for migration, outlining ways for countries to cope with communities that are displaced by natural disasters as well as "slow onset events" like drought, desertification, and rising seas. I believe that artists can help keep this issue at the forefront by constantly reminding the public that climate change needs our immediate attention.
Amy: What’s next for you?
Danielle: Within the next month I’m moving my art studio to the Hawaiian island of Maui. Rising temperatures, king tides, shifting precipitation patterns, warming and acidifying oceans and other climate change impacts are already affecting the islands in ways that will change them permanently. Given the rise in sea levels, it may be my last chance to experience and artistically record island life.
Danielle Nelisse is an Artist, Private Investigator, and Immigration Attorney. Growing up in the sixties in the gritty city of Detroit influenced Nelisse’s social values and she has a deep commitment to human rights issues like civil rights, equality and fairness. Nelisse has formal training in art, law, criminal investigation, and urban planning. Her experience as a private investigator specializing in homicide cases provides her with an informed perspective on human action, human interaction, and how economic and environmental factors influence human behavior. As an immigration attorney she has years of experience with the impact of climate change on her international clientele as they migrate. Her art is exhibited by museums, universities, and fortune 500 companies. You can contact her by visiting her website, www.daniellenelisse.com, by phone, (619) 379-5518, or via email at studio@daniellenelisse.com.
The Huffington Postinterviewed several cli-fi novelists and experts about the depiction of immigration in climate fiction. Reporter called KSR ''the godfather of cli-fi.''
Why New York 2140 is more timely than ever
To celebrate the paperback release of Kim Stanley Robinson's cli-fi novel New York 2140, Dr Michael Svoboda atYale Climate Connections takes a look at the science behind it -- and why the novel resonates so strongly with readers.
Australian ''cli-fi'' novelist James Bradley (Clade) turns to non-fiction with this beautifully written--but grief-filled--essay about the sorry state of our oceans and disappearing marine life.
