Abstract
Science and literature were in two different fields until the early 1990s. However, when science advanced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, literature also responded to it. Stories on scientific information and how science would change life on earth emerged. In the early part of the twentieth century, writers started writing on how anthropogenic activities alter the natural world. This writing evolved into fictional forms. This paper attempts to trace this progress in the literature and elucidates how climate fiction emerged as a new genre of literature. Using a few novels as examples, this paper further explains how climate change issues are represented in these fictions.
Keywords: eco criticism, science fiction, climate fiction, cli-fi, climate novel
Nature and Literature
Nature has always been an inspiring source for humans. In the primordial days, humans feared nature. However, as their understanding of nature improvised, humans looked at it as a source of inspiration. Right from Stone Age paintings to modern films, one can see nature’s myriad forms being represented in one way or another.
Nature represented in art and literary forms of ancient civilizations prove that yester year’s humans have always had a great understating of nature. The best example could be Tamil’s Sangam Literature. Even during this period, the Tamils have divided the landscape into five regions based on the ecosystem of that region and they called it ‘thinai’. These five landscapes are Kurinji (hills), Mullai (forest), Marutham (agriculture lands), Neithal (seashore) and Palai (arid land). These landscapes were named after the keystone plant species of that landscape.
Nature has always been portrayed in English literature all through the years. Nature was dealt with in all its glory during the Romantic Era. During this period, Nature was considered as an immaculate and a sacred source of resilience and regeneration. Writers appreciated the beauty of nature and they stressed the urgent need to reunite with it and be part of its sublimity and grandeur.
Writing about the Environment
Even after the romantic period nature has been considered mostly as a thing of beauty. Conversely, it was Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) that redefined how writers looked at the natural world. Neither did she romanticize nature nor did she appreciate its aesthetics. But she talked about the kind of negative impact humans had on Nature. Though not a fiction, her book was compared with great novels for the kind of impact it had on its readers.
More than her concern for Nature and the kind of ethical stand she took, the book’s success was because of her lucid writing on scientific facts. In simple terms, Carson took science to all. Even the general population was able to understand what she intended to convey to them through her writings.
The book’s success resulted in the ban of DDT and the implementation of stringent norms regulating the use of pesticides and more importantly, it ignited the environmental movement globally. It was around this time, writers started writing about the relationship between humans and nature, not aesthetically but critically. Science, till then, was not part of literature. As more and more writings on nature gained attention and prominence, they were grouped as nature writing or green writing. In the United States, the study of green writing was labelled as Eco Criticism and Cheryll Glotfelty of Cornell University was responsible for this.
Eco-criticism has thus got established itself and grew as a variety of literature. However, it was too broad and not precisely defined. But one salient feature that connected all the works that were grouped under this field has been the physical environment and literature. The physical environment was inclusive of human and non-human components. This has been a major shift from the earlier forms of literary expressions which always had humans as the centre or at the top. The inclusion of non-human beings in the space which was considered as a human-centered resulted in viewing the world in a new discernment. Consequently, a new point of discussion was on how humans’ influence and impact the other counterparts that share the natural world. Extinction of species, global warming, greenhouse effects, became topics of discussion and as a result, stories based on these themes emerged.
Sci-Fi’s and Cli-Fi’s
Like the science fiction of the 18th century, these novels talked about how anthropogenic activities will influence the ecosystem in the future but they were not futuristic fantasies. If the same logic is applied to present-day climate fictions then it would be easy for anyone to understand that things that are said in these stories might be today’s fantasies but, in the future, they might turn out to be realities.
This kind of futuristic theme combined with science made it difficult to classify these novels under a genre. Science fiction also faced similar issues. For some, science fiction is a story that is “compatible with current scientific knowledge and it communicates this knowledge to its readers” (McLeod, 171). In a similar way, when eco-criticism developed into a subject and when writers started writing stories that talked about dystopian societies as a result of the human abuse of nature, it was difficult to group these stories under an umbrella. It was under these circumstances, climate fictions emerged.
It cannot be denied that both science fictions and climate fictions have more than one thing in common. Both are futuristic, they talk about science and cover a variety of themes. Therefore, it is convenient to even consider climate fiction as a subsidiary of science fiction.
Climate Fiction — A Few Foretastes
Writers from almost all major nations have made their contribution to this field of literature. One of the prominent campaigners, in this attempt, is Michael Crichton. His book State of Fear (2004) is more like a scientific treatise. He starts his book with a disclaimer that it is an imaginary tale, but the scientific data, used in the book by the characters are real.
On the whole Crichton’s novel, despite qualifying as climate fiction, advocates against global warming. At the same time, there are also other writers, who believe in global warming and talk about its impact on the globe. The finest example is Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour (2012). She, in her novel, talks in detail about how Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) unexpectedly change their migratory path and shift their location to Southern Appalachia. The author has declared these at the end of the novel as a certainty.
McEwan’s Solar (2010) is yet another Climate fiction that details the life of a Nobel Prize-winning Physicist Michael Beard, who is a self-centered, adulterous, and self-indulgent person. Throughout the story the author has given his readers scientific information on climate change, melting of icebergs, and running out of fossil fuels.
Several other novels deal global warming and climate change like Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, Lauren Groff’s short story collection Florida (2018), Rita Indiana’s Tentacle (2015), Nathaniel Rich’s Odds Against Tomorrow (2013), Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140. Apart from these, there are Barkskins (2016) by Annie Proulx, Aurora (2015) by Kim Stanley Robinson, The Swan Book (1997) by Alexis Wright have made their presence felt.
One of the latest developments in climate novels is the emergence of novels that aim at the younger generation. The Carbon Diaries 2015 by Saci Lloyd is an eco-thriller for teenagers.
It is of literary interest to note that climate fiction is slowly but steadily getting established itself as a new kind of literary form. It is a known fact that global weather patterns are changing and that results in unpredictable flood and drought. Extinction of species is hastened. Under these circumstances, the novels that discuss these themes play a major role in educating the general public on issues related to climate change.
Works Cited
- Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Houghton Mifflin Company. 1962.
- DeMott, Nick. “A Brief History of Ecocriticism: Where Literature and the Environment Cross Paths”. Medium.
- Dobson, Andrew. “The fiction of climate change.” https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/fiction-of-climate-change/
- Dunn, R. In retrospect: Silent Spring. Nature 485, 578-579. 2012.
- Emerging Technology. “When science fiction inspires real technology”. MIT Technology Review.
- Fairchild, Mary. The “Ultimate List of Animals Mentioned in the Bible”. Learn religions.
- Griswold, Eliza. “How ‘Silent Spring’ Ignited the Environmental Movement.” The New Yorker.
- James, Edward, & Mendlesohn, Farah. The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. 2003.
- Johns-Putra, Adeline. ‘Care and Gender in a Climate-Changed Future: Maggie Gee’s The Ice People’. Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction, edited by Gerry Canavan and Kim Stanley Robinson, Wesleyan UP, 2014, pp. 127-42.
- Kingsolver, Barbara. Flight Behavior. A Novel. London: Faber & Faber, 2012.
- McEwan, I. Solar. London: Vintage Books. 2010.