CLIMATE CHANGE IN ANTHROPO-TEMPORAL QUASI-FANTASY AND NEW WEIRD FICTION PDF Free Download
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ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF ARTS, HUMANITIES, EDUCATION, AND SOCIAL
SCIENCES
CLIMATE CHANGE IN ANTHROPO-TEMPORAL QUASI-
FANTASY AND NEW WEIRD FICTION
THOMAS ANDREWS
A thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Anglia
Ruskin University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
September 2024
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my supervisors, Professor Sarah Annes Brown and Professor Eugene
Giddens, for their help, support, and guidance throughout this project. I have become a better
writer and teacher thanks to Sarah’s advice and feedback over the past five years.
I would also like to thank the faculty at ARU who provided me with guidance and feedback
during my Upgrade and my Annual Review meetings.
Thanks to the members of my PhD group who, with Sarah’s guidance and supervision, shared
valuable insights and feedback on my work. Special thanks to Eyal Soffer, Veronica Wilson, and
Kathleen Hughes.
Special thanks to my colleagues at the University of British Columbia and Kwantlen Polytechnic
University for their support during my program. I would like to extend special thanks to my good
friend Dr. Connor Byrne for his help, patience, and wisdom over the past five years.
Finally, I thank my Mum and Dad for their support not just during my PhD, but throughout my
academic career. Thanks to my wonderful wife Dana for her support, patience, and
encouragement. And thanks to my good friend Emily Lewis for her constant reassurance.
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ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY
ABSTRACT
FACULTY OF ARTS, HUMANITIES
AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
CLIMATE CHANGE IN ANTHROPO-TEMPORAL QUASI-FANTASY AND NEW
WEIRD FICTION
THOMAS ANDREWS
SEPTEMBER 2024
Ecocritics including Tim Clark, Amitav Ghosh, Erin James, and Marek Oziewicz have remarked
upon the challenges facing narrative when engaging with the climate crisis. In this project I offer
a detailed comparative analysis of the ways in which the SFF subgenres Cli-fi, Anthropo-
Temporal Quasi-Fantasy, and New Weird respond to the climate crisis. I argue that subtler,
indirect engagements with climate change can be particularly impactful. In Chapter One, I
introduce Timothy Morton’s theory of ‘Hyperobjects’ as well as the concept of defamiliarization.
Both are central to my emphasis on the effectiveness of indirection. I then briefly explain the
parameters for Anthropo-Temporal Quasi-Fantasy and New Weird fiction. In Chapter Two I seek
to demonstrate some shortcomings identifiable in cli-fi’s direct engagement with climate change.
While useful, cli-fi can over-fictionalize this legitimate existing threat for narrative purposes,
ultimately misrepresenting the climate crisis itself. In Chapter Three I introduce a subgenre
which I have named Anthropo-Temporal Quasi-Fantasy; its texts interweave elements of fantasy
throughout otherwise non-fantasy narratives. These texts, including novels by Anthony Doerr,
David Mitchell, and Emily St. John Mandel, utilize fantasy tools and expansive timescales to
depict the changing climate. Rather than engaging with the climate crisis effectively despite their
fantasy elements, these texts do so largely because of them, partly because they force the
reader to confront their own failure to identify climate change as the novels’ true focus. Finally, I
explore New Weird’s depiction of climate change through garbage and the pursuit of energy, as
well as this subgenre’s experimentation with characters’ states of consciousness and memory.
These New Weird texts, by China Miéville, Jeff VanderMeer, and Chris Beckett, move the
climate signposts from the reader’s unconscious to the forefront of their attention. Climate
change is undoubtedly omnipresent in twenty-first century life and its presence in twenty-first
century SFF literature therefore deserves attention and analysis. Anthropo-Temporal Quasi-
Fantasy and New Weird works draw on defamiliarizing fantasy components to provoke readers
to confront their complicity in the climate crisis.
Keywords:
Climate Change
Hyperobjects
New-Weird
Anthropo-Temporal Quasi-Fantasy
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1 - Introduction
Hyperobjects, Defamiliarization, and Indirection………………………………………………….......1
Chapter 2
Climate Fiction: Criteria and Limitations, and Contemporary Cli-fi Novels…………………….....24
- The Archetypal Contemporary Cli-fi Novel: Chris Beckett – America City (2017) 44
- Kim Stanley Robinson – Ministry for the Future (2020) 54
- Chris Beckett’s Two Tribes (2020) and Narrative Time in Cli-fi 67
Chapter 3
Indirect Engagement with Climate Change in Anthropo-Temporal Quasi-Fantasy Literature.....75
- Fantasy through Folklore 81
- Fantasy and Futurity – Climate Change in a Central ATQF Novel 103
- Pandemic and Climate Change in ATQF 113
Chapter 4
The Anthropocene in the New Weird: Climate Signposts and Unconsciousness………………129
- China Miéville’s Bas Lag World:
Perdido Street Station (2000) and The Scar (2002) 140
- Annihilation (2014) and Beneath the World, A Sea (2019) 151
- China Miéville – Railsea:
Industry, Trains, and Garbage in a Post-Anthropocene World 161
- Scarce Resources:
Language, Aliens, and Hosts in China Miéville’s Embassytown (2011) 166
Conclusion
Moving forward with Ecocriticism and SFF…………………………………...…………………….172
Works Cited…………………………………………………………………....................................179
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Chapter 1 – Hyperobjects, Defamiliarization, and Indirection
Introduction: Climate Change and Literature
It is a challenge to overstate the severity of the predicament in which humanity finds
itself with regards to the ongoing and worsening Anthropogenic climate change, and literature is
becoming increasingly important for its role in communicating information about the climate
crisis. Anthropogenic climate change is an omnipresent and looming threat in the early twenty-
first century. Depending on where one lives, the effects of climate change are felt by way of
drastic weather changes or severe events, by the mass migration of displaced populations, or
by the economic impact of both. Climate change is a challenging problem to address by virtue of
its slow progression and delayed impacts from human behaviour starting over a century ago.
The agreed-upon start to this period of human impact is varied as some suggest the start to be
the invention of the steam engine – April 1784 according to Timothy Morton (Hyperobjects), with
others suggesting the start is at the peak of the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth
century/early nineteenth century. The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) indicates that 1950
is the start of the Anthropocene period as this coincides with the period of “great acceleration” of
the effects of Anthropogenic climate change (“Anthropocene” National Geographic Society). The
image of a runaway train on which the conductor does not yet know that the train is moving too
quickly until it is too late is commonly used to indicate where we currently stand with regards to
the climate disaster. The fact that the effects may seem intermittent or gradual makes it more
difficult to affect change. It is a hard sell to convince policymakers and large corporations to
completely restructure their standard operating procedures in cataclysmically expensive ways to
prevent a 1.5-degree increase in global temperatures some decades in the future. It is equally
hard to explain that this 1.5-degree increase is unfathomably large compared to the temperature
changes in the Earth’s climate over the past several hundred thousand years – so while the
temperature increase does not sound significant, the required economic investment most
certainly does, and this ultimately results in much weaker political, industrial, and economic
responses globally. Due to its imaginative capacity, literature has an increasingly important role
in communicating and depicting what is otherwise challenging to conceptualize.
In 2024, there is now – hard as it may be to digest – unquestionable evidence that the
Earth’s climate is being radically altered by human activity. The Met Office in the UK reports that
2023 is set to be the tenth consecutive year in which the global temperature has exceeded the
pre-industrial average by 1-degree Celsius. In The Anthropocene Unconscious (2021), Mark
Bould states simply that “No one is seriously a denialist anymore, yet we all live in denial; we act
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as if there are endless opportunities for the path to fork, but live within systems of constant
foreclosure” (118). This period of human impact is known as the Anthropocene. The
Anthropocene is characterized by the change we as a species have had on the environment
through industry, agriculture, travel, waste, and the belief that economic growth and prosperity
are paramount. So, it is challenging to think of the Anthropocene period and the climate crisis
separately. The climate crisis is thus an issue many ignore thanks to a sense of personal
complicity in the problem – we know that our lifestyles perpetuate the problem. Our collective
way of dealing with the crisis often comes down to one of complacency and willful ignorance –
Amitav Ghosh thus refers to this period, the Anthropocene, as “The Great Derangement” in his
2017 book of the same title. Tim Clark refers to our collective reaction as a “derangement of
scale” (Telemorphosis: Theory in the Era of Climate Change; The Value of Ecocriticism) in that
we cannot seem to properly comprehend the sheer scope of the looming crisis, and our ability to
properly engage with the crisis on an individual level does not properly equate to the changes
the climate is currently undergoing.
Clark writes that “Ecocritical stances are becoming a standard part of all literary
criticism” (The Value of Ecocriticism 14). Similarly, Mithra Moezzi et al. remark in their work on
“storytelling in energy and climate research” that “References to narratives, stories, and
storytelling have become more common in energy and climate change research and policy” and
that “Stories are used to communicate with, influence, and engage audiences; they serve as
artefacts to be investigated in terms of content, actors, relationships, power, and structure; they
can be used to gather information, provide insight, and reframe evidence in ways that more
science-ordered formats miss” (1). I argue that a text would be diverging from literary realism or
an aim to properly represent the early twenty-first century if it did not engage with the climate
crisis in some way or another.
Climate fiction (cli-fi) is the most obvious and familiar way in which creative writers can
reflect on the climate crisis. While producing undoubtedly valuable and entertaining speculative
depictions of various climate futures, cli-fi can be limited in its ability to depict the climate crisis
accurately. The term cli-fi could also be said to occlude the many other ways in which
speculative fiction can speak to environmental issues. Thus, it is not the fiction itself within this
subgenre which is problematic, but rather the act of considering only work within this subgenre
to be useful in communicating the climate crisis. In Science Fiction (2021), Sherryl Vint remarks
of cli-fi that “this faddish coinage obscures a longer history of sf’s engagement with the
environment” and that “Even before the idea of climate change took hold, sf embraced the
geological and evolutionary timescales of nineteenth-century science and began to think of the
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planet as something that preceded our species and could conceivably continue without us” (Vint
117). Vint states simply that “If we think about science fiction in terms of the genre’s connections
to pressing issues in twenty-first century culture, no topic is more urgent than climate change”
(117).
Until recently however, science fiction (sf) (other than cli-fi) and fantasy literature have
been largely overlooked in terms of their contribution to ecological discourse. Much of the
ecocritical approach involving sci-fi has been sequestered into the cli-fi sphere, and fantasy
literature has been ignored by virtue of its more obvious distance from the real, requiring a
suspension of disbelief apparently disqualifying it from being considered capable of representing
real-world crises like climate change. Oziewicz et al. acknowledge this directly in their 2022
book Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene. Sherryl Vint highlights the growing prominence of
sf as the genre best equipped to deal with today’s pressing problems. She writes that “Science
fiction has moved from being a niche genre at the beginning of the twentieth century to a widely
shared cultural vernacular for describing the twenty-first. In many ways, sf is no longer a
specialized genre, but now the dominant way to analyze a world in which our technology
changes faster than we do” (Vint 55). As Oziewicz suggests, the idea that sf is no longer a
specialized or niche genre is not only the case for sf, but also for texts with elements of fantasy
(Oziewicz, “Introduction”). The same is true for those texts in the overlapping space between sf
and fantasy, and it is in this space in which there are texts which can be discussed from an
ecocritical perspective. This is particularly the case for those fantasy texts which take place over
long time periods or look into the future, as do those in Chapter Three of this project.
My project is an exploration of three sf and fantasy (SFF) subgenres. I first explain what
cli-fi can achieve as well as where it is limited through several central examples, then analyze
the distinctive ways in which Anthropo-Temporal Quasi-Fantasy (ATQF) and New Weird (NW)
fiction can engage with the current climate crisis. Cli-fi is explored in Chapter Two – there I
explain its parameters and its function in terms of what it offers to ecological discourse and why
it is limited. Chapter Three focuses on ATQF and explains how an indirect approach, drawing on
fantasy elements, offers a powerful reflection of the way that the climate crisis is experienced in
the twenty-first century. Chapter Four explores texts from the NW subgenre and focuses on the
Anthropocene signposts within such texts which are indicative of the climate crisis.
Reading for Climate Change in Cli-fi, ATQF, and NW
Literature prompts thought about topics about which we may know nothing, a little, or
about which we may be experts. It helps us to understand human nature by exploring
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possibilities and playing with the myriad variables at work in our day to day lives and answering
‘what if’ questions about countless possibilities. Literature can rewrite histories, explain events
from different vantage points, and give readers glimpses of individual points in time or massive
expanses of time. The field of literary studies more broadly is often thought of by those outside it
to be somewhat diffuse. In his paper on the “Value of Literary Studies” Fleming remarks that
“Because new texts can always be plucked from the darkness of obscurity and thrust into the
light of our attention, the body of texts we can legitimately study is theoretically infinite, and can
never be charted” (462). Here he is commenting on what is considered a text of inherent literary
‘value’ or one which belongs in an agreed-upon literary canon, versus that which simply has
value to readers independently. He suggests that “The result of this opening of the floodgates is
books and articles on disparate topics which are held to be valuable simply because they say
new things about possibly new topics, which means they concern hitherto unconsidered corners
of the tapestry or consider an already-known corner in a new way” (462). Here Fleming is
addressing the many newly formed genres and subgenres, a list to which I contribute a further
one in Chapter 3 of this project with ATQF.
In this project I spend some time explaining the limitations that cli-fi faces when trying to
educate or inform its readership about the climate crisis. It seems somewhat disloyal to simply
focus on subgenre’s shortcomings, which is why I spend a great deal of time discussing what it
does right. An important caveat Fleming makes in his paper on literary value, which I agree with
in this project, is that “mostly, … literature does not tell us things we don't already know. Instead,
it changes the world by articulating and putting into focus something that we have experienced
already” (471). Cli-fi achieves this expertly. Cli-fi is a thought experiment in fiction with a focus
on the possibilities of an increasingly rapidly changing climate which range from the radically
improbable to those which are only partially removed from reality and require much subtler
suspensions of disbelief for readers. On this subject of the literary value of these subgenres,
Miéville remarks of NW that:
For me, and I think for the best New Weird, the fantastic will of course
resonate with certain ‘meanings’ in the real world (we can’t help but process
metaphors wherever we look), but it is also and crucially its own end. In this
model, what distinguishes New Weird from some Magic Realism, say, or from
certain varieties of postmodernist writing, is that it surrenders to the weird
itself. (“The New Weird” 50)
This is what makes NW interesting from the perspective of the indirect approach to climate
change, too. Indeed, we look for metaphors and ‘meanings’ in the texts we read, but that need
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not presuppose a singular purpose for a text. I do not suggest in this project that the purpose of
NW – or indeed ATQF – texts is to communicate the climate crisis. Rather, these subgenres
present readers with novel ways of engaging with this omnipresent crisis by utilizing the
“surrender” to the weird for NW, or by utilizing the fantasy components of otherwise non-fantasy
narratives in ATQF.
Existing Research and Critical Framework – Climate Change in SFF
This project draws on Amitav Ghosh’s concept of our current era being one of “great
derangement,” as well as Bould’s related idea of an “Anthropocene Unconscious” and Marek
Oziewicz’s notion of the “ecocidal unconscious,” and applies them to close readings of texts
within the following three subgenres: cli-fi, ATQF, and New Weird fiction. My project is the first to
offer a sustained comparative analysis of these three subgenres. I use Timothy Morton’s
hyperobject ontology from Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World
(2013)
1
to help demonstrate that ATQF and NW take an indirect approach to depicting climate
change and force contemporary readers to confront the realities of the crisis by inserting climate
strands into narratives which are not wholly concerned with climate change. As Morton
suggests, global warming
2
is the example of the “objects in the mirror [which] are closer than
they appear.” Morton asks “Don’t care about ecology? You might think you don’t, but you might
all the same” (Being Ecological 1).
Bould’s work explores the idea of the Anthropocene unconscious in sf texts and popular-
culture movies ranging from 2012 (dir. R. Emmerich 2009) to the cult/pulp series of Fast and
Furious and Sharknado movies. He asks: “Must fiction be immediately and explicitly about
climate change for it to be fiction about climate change?” (Bould 4) and he suggests that many
works engage with climate change unconsciously. My project focuses on ATQF and NW fiction,
both of which engage with climate change indirectly. ATQF is indicative of a recent trend
regarding climate change in some SFF works, and much of the NW has yet to be closely
examined for its attention to climate change.
In The Great Derangement, Ghosh discusses the demarcation of sf from the literary
mainstream. Marek Oziewicz’s book Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene (2022) approaches
climate change in SFF from a fantasy-oriented perspective, something fewer critics have done
until recently. He suggests that this period is one of “ecocidal unconscious” in which we are
1
A concept they explore further in Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Coexistence (2016), Being
Ecological (2018), and All Art is Ecological (2018).
2
Morton insists on referring to climate change exclusively by the term ‘global warming’
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unaware of the climate destruction that we see or that we are perhaps even complicit in
(Oziewicz, “Fantasy for the Anthropocene”). My thesis spans both sf and fantasy, with the ATQF
subgenre representing the texts which engage with the climate crisis indirectly and which are
not wholly fantasy. I combine Ghosh and Bould’s approach to climate change in sf, and
Oziewicz’s approach to climate change and the Anthropocene in Fantasy literature in particular.
This thesis builds upon the notion that the Anthropocene now permeates fiction across genre
boundaries. My project is the first to group texts according to their Anthropo-Temporal Quasi-
fantasy qualities and is the first to explore this selection of New Weird texts for their
engagement with the climate crisis in an indirect way.
Many of the widely known critical texts relating to cli-fi provide useful framework for
explaining the role cli-fi plays in contemporary SFF ecocritical discourse – these texts are
explored in Chapter Two when I explain the criteria for cli-fi before indicating its limitations. Like
Sherryl Vint, Gregers Andersen’s Climate Fiction and Cultural Analysis (2020) addresses the
overuse of the term ‘cli-fi’ and suggests that the subgenre has become limited in its scope and
power to depict and comprehend the ongoing climate crisis. This body of critical literature also
includes Antonia Menhert’s Climate Change Fictions: Representations of Global Warming in
American Literature (2016), Adam Trexler’s Anthropocene Fictions: The Novel in the Time of
Climate Change (2015) which focuses on disaster fiction as well as cli-fi more broadly, and
Adeline Johns-Putra’s Climate Change and the Contemporary Novel (2019). Broadly speaking,
the existing literature on climate change in fiction focuses on texts which engage with climate
change as their primary concern rather than those which engage with the climate crisis more
obliquely. These critics acknowledge the limitations of cli-fi and suggest that fiction collectively
has a near impossible job when it comes to depicting climate change accurately. My project
offers a contribution to this discussion which goes beyond exclusively what the direct, cli-fi texts
offer. Given that SFF texts, particularly those leaning more towards the fantasy end of the SFF
spectrum, are now beginning to include climate themes, it is important to engage with such
works from an ecocritical perspective. This trend is beginning to be acknowledged by critics,
with works by Elizabeth Callaway
3
and Gry Ulstein
4
discussing climate change in David Mitchell
and Jeff VanderMeer’s works, respectively. Niall Harrison’s work on “Green Overshoots” also
discusses the emergence of climate themes in non-cli-fi SF works. Building on the work of these
critics, my project offers a sustained analysis of contemporary SFF texts not just within the cli-fi
3
“Seeing What’s Right in Front of Us: The Bone Clocks, Climate Change, and Human Attention”
(2018)
4
“ ‘Through the Eyes of Area X’: (Dis)Locating Ecological Hope via New Weird Spatiality” (2019)
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umbrella, but extending into ATQF, and through to the more fantasy-oriented texts from the New
Weird.
My project pioneers the new SFF subgenre termed Anthropo-Temporal Quasi-Fantasy. It
groups a selection of twenty-first century novels which engage with the climate crisis indirectly
by using expansive timelines and fantasy components to highlight and draw out their
underpinning climate themes, thereby placing climate change into the reader’s field of vision
without becoming, as can be the case with cli-fi, overly didactic. This indirect engagement with
the climate crisis speaks to what Ghosh, Bould, and Oziewicz suggest is necessary within SFF
as these texts rely less on exaggerated or overly fictionalized accounts of climatic changes, and
instead use climate change as a secondary theme which underpins the primary narratives which
include fantasy components. By using expansive timelines, and in many cases multiple
timelines in different strands of their narratives, these ATQF texts more accurately depict the
climate crisis not just in the future as is the case in cli-fi, but also as it began in the past and how
it affects society in the present. Categorizing these texts into this new ATQF subgenre is a way
of representing an emerging trend within SFF over the past decade. My project positions ATQF
as a hybrid subgenre which moves away from engaging with the climate crisis directly as in cli-fi
and works as a bridge between cli-fi and more fantasy-oriented subgenres including the New
Weird.
Finally, this project extends existing work of earlier critics into NW fiction from an
ecocritical perspective which is currently more exclusively applied to texts such as Jeff
VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy and N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy. There is some
critical engagement with NW texts, albeit from the perspective of speculative fiction rather than
specifically focusing on what the New Weird genre offers with regards to ecocritical analysis.
This is evidenced by Dêdinová et al.’s Images of the Anthropocene in Speculative Fiction:
Narrating the Future (2021) which offers close analyses of texts by both N. K. Jemisin and
China Miéville among others. While this is not entirely untouched territory, my project furthers
the critical conversation and offers a unique analysis of central NW texts – beginning with the
prototypical texts by Miéville including his Bas Lag books – which revolves around their
portrayal of energy scarcity and the pursuit of resources as well as garbage and urban decay. I
demonstrate that these themes are indicative of current Anthropogenic concerns relating directly
to our ongoing climate crisis. I explore how later NW works experiment with characters’
consciousness to bring the climate unconscious into the reader’s mind.
More SFF texts are now including climate themes which underpin their narratives. With
this in mind, my project contributes valuable and original critical analyses of SFF works which
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demonstrate the emerging trend of representing climate change indirectly in novels which are
not wholly about climate change. By exploring these ATQF and NW texts for their climatic
themes I address the absence of critical analysis focusing on the overlap between sf and
fantasy literature.
Hyperobjects, Defamiliarization, and Indirection:
As indicated above, Chapters Three and Four of this project explore subgenres in which
climate change is present but is not the primary focus of the narrative – that is, these ATQF and
NW texts include climate themes and Anthropocene signposts, but their narratives are not
ostensibly centered around the climate crisis. To properly interrogate these two subgenres this
way, an explanation of several key principles is needed. I will first explain Morton’s concept of
hyperobjects and how it applies to climate themes in literature. I will then outline what is meant
by an indirect approach to climate change in sf and fantasy while aiming to clarify some of the
complex genre overlaps between sf and fantasy. Sherryl Vint refers to Fredric Jameson’s
interpretation of sf and its critical contribution in that it asks readers to reconceptualize their view
of the present by offering images and speculations of the future. His suggestion is that “The
genre’s function is not to predict the future, as people sometimes imagine and as popular
journalism often implies, but rather ‘to defamiliarize and restructure our experience of our own
present’” (qtd. in Vint 11). The overlap between fantasy literature and sf is clearer still in the later
chapter of Vint’s Science Fiction introduction entitled “Environment, Climate Change, and the
Anthropocene” in which she remarks on the climate themes found in several popular novels
which could easily be described as fantasy rather than sf. It is in this interstitial space in which sf
and fantasy overlap that cli-fi exists, and where ATQF and NW fiction also exist.
Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects:
Hyperobjects are Morton’s term for conceptualizing large-scale phenomena, such as
climate change. It is a philosophical ontology, and a means for literary analysis and criticism.
Morton developed the concept of hyperobjects out of Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented
Ontology. OOO is a mode of thinking concerned with moving humans away from the forefront of
thought, and rejects the idea that humanity is more important than other non-human objects
(Harman). In essence, it is a way of engaging with natural phenomena and even human-caused
phenomena which rejects the commonly held anthropocentric way of thinking (Morton,
Hyperobjects 2). OOO places the thing ahead of the human. For example, an issue may be
caused by human behaviour or not, but a common outcome to such a scenario is that the
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moment of awareness of the issue tends to then be when the issue is considered to have
begun. This, obviously, is not the case for such things as climate change or the energy crisis.
Such phenomena had begun long before society had the capacity to measure them thoroughly.
Put more simply, the climate had already begun to have been damaged – perhaps irreparably –
prior to our awareness of the fact that this was a problem. Thus, it did not become a problem
only once we became aware of it – it was already a problem.
A hyperobject is something which is so “massively distributed in time and space” that it
cannot be directly or tangibly conceived of by the individual (Morton, Hyperobjects 1). It is
omnipresent, viscous (sticky), affecting everything with which it comes into contact (1). One
might think of a hyperobject as the cloaked figure or specter looming over the scene, or the
feeling of the sun on one’s neck while walking outside in the Summertime or when working in a
field. Morton acknowledges hyperobjects’ abstract nature and complexity as they write that “The
more I struggle to understand hyperobjects, the more I discover that I am stuck to them. They
are all over me. They are me. I feel like Neo in The Matrix, lifting to his face in horrified wonder
his hand coated in the mirrorlike substance into which the doorknob has dissolved, as his virtual
body begins to disintegrate” (Morton, Hyperobjects 28).
Given that we perceive our reality from an unavoidably Anthropocentric perspective, it is
challenging to conceptualize what hyperobjects are even when directly acknowledging this
limitation and striving for a purely object-oriented approach. This often leads to a stalemate or
impasse when coming up against issues – like global warming – which are inconceivably large
or challenging to deal with. This is the case when trying to conceive of what the Anthropocene
is, and how this is depicted in literature as well. Gry Ulstein suggests that:
The dizzying sense of insignificance in other words causes a kind of cognitive
dissonance when (not) dealing with Anthropocene issues, one that leads to either
rejecting as false the information which caused the uncomfortable emotion
(denial), or trying to act, but being forced to accept that the large scale issues will
remain inherently inconceivable and that therefore it is best to do nothing until we
do understand more (paralysis). (“Brave New Weird” 79)
Morton’s hyperobjects, then, are challenging to conceptualize from an Anthropocentric
perspective precisely because they are at odds with an Anthropocene understanding of the
natural world.
Taking an object-oriented, or hyperobject-oriented view of the world is challenging simply
because as humans we automatically experience life ‘anthropocentrically.’ However, Morton has
drawn up a set of criteria, along with some primary examples of hyperobjects and how people
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interact with them regularly, to help conceptualize exactly what a hyperobject is. It should be
noted that Morton’s explanation of hyperobjects from which these definitions and criteria are
taken is centered around climate change – or global warming as they prefer – as the primary
example.
A hyperobject could be the sum of all the nuclear materials on Earth; or just the
plutonium, or the uranium. A hyperobject could be the very long-lasting product of
direct human manufacture, such as Styrofoam or plastic bags, or the sum of all
the whirring machinery of capitalism. (Morton, Hyperobjects 1)
They suggest that “Hyperobjects, then, are hyper in relation to some other entity, whether they
are directly manufactured by humans or not” (1). Morton’s criteria for hyperobjects are as
follows:
They are viscous, which means that they “stick” to beings that are involved with
them. They are nonlocal; in other words, any “local manifestation” of a
hyperobject is not directly the hyperobject. They involve profoundly different
temporalities than the human-scale ones we are used to. … And they exhibit their
effects interobjectively; that is, they can be detected in a space that consists of
interrelationships between aesthetic properties of objects. (1)
Hyperobjects are also molten in that they refute the idea that spacetime is a fixed and consistent
concept, as well as being phased in that they can exist in interplanar space and come and go
from our three-dimensional perception (Morton, Hyperobjects).
Morton’s criteria for hyperobjects often seem to do little to explain exactly what they are.
Something Morton does make clear, however, is that climate change is indeed a hyperobject.
Morton describes climate change as something that cannot be directly seen, but whose effects
can be felt, studied and recorded. They suggest that “the end of the world has already occurred”
in that it coincides with the invention of the steam engine in April 1784 (Hyperobjects 7). The
end of the world, caused by this hyperobject of global warming then, is “correlated with the
Anthropocene” (7). Climate change – “as a result of global warming” (8) – for Morton, then, can
be considered the most complete and accurate example of a hyperobject. It – along with all of
its subsequent elements including overproduction of plastics and single-use products, energy
production and conservation, pollution, innovation, electrification, denial, and acceptance
leading to action – is the model for a hyperobject. Morton refers to hyperobjects in relation to the
statement one reads in the wing-mirrors on a car: “objects in the mirror are closer than they
appear.” Climate change is one such object whose existence is undeniably closer than it
Andrews 11
appears. Climate change then is something that is experienced ubiquitously and omni-presently,
yet indirectly most of the time.
For the sake of clarity, I will briefly discuss one further example of a hyperobject to
compare with climate change. One may consider the economy itself to be a hyperobject. The
abstract concept of the global economy, or indeed a more localized economy, comprises an
interconnected network of value, and a “system of trade and industry by which the wealth of a
country is made and used” (Cambridge Dictionary). It is something that affects all things
(viscous) and it is nonlocal in that it is massively distributed across time and space. One might
even suggest that the economy is an intangible object that exists in some interplanar space thus
making it both “molten” and “phased” according to Morton’s criteria. Put simply, one may
experience or know the economy by simply thinking about the value of a thing or making a
purchase of an item, or by thinking about the value of every dollar in an entire nation’s GDP.
While the hyperobject ontology is a useful mechanism for understanding climate change
and how it can be perceived and engaged with, Morton’s definition of hyperobjects is
frustratingly diffuse at times. This has led some critics and philosophers to disregard it entirely
as essentially anything could be considered a hyperobject given this set of criteria. Ursula
Heise, for example, suggests that hyperobjects’ diffuse nature renders them essentially obsolete
as a concept (Heise, “Review of Hyperobjects”). Despite this, the definition does apply neatly to
climate change, and provides a useful framework for trying to conceptualize something as large
and frightening as the current climate crisis. Importantly, a hyperobject-centric approach to
climate change is one that is based upon a fundamental shift in the way we conceive of the
problem. Such a shift is required when trying to engage with problems as large as climate
change. This is exacerbated by the widespread rejection and denial of the widely available
scientific proof of the issue. The hyperobject mechanism for describing climate change is used
by many authors in the twenty-first century when describing how literature engages with the
climate crisis including both Bould and Ghosh, whose works are discussed at length in this
thesis. Viewing climate change as a hyperobject is useful in this thesis as it applies to those
works which do not aim to capture or depict climate change either wholly or directly. Rather,
climate change is that which underpins narratives and is unpacked and engaged with indirectly
when considered a hyperobject. It is the object in the mirror which is closer than it appears. It is
the single Styrofoam cup, or the quantity of carbon-dioxide emitted from either a single car or
every car on the planet.
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Theorizing Genre: Science fiction and Fantasy - Defamiliarization and Estrangement:
Any use of defamiliarization as a concept within SFF first requires an explanation of the
genres to which the term is most applied. While a full history of the overlapping genres within
SFF is notoriously tricky due to the uncertain nature of the genre boundaries of sf and fantasy
and the many subgenres within each, I endeavour to provide a brief background of these terms
and their associated complexities. I need to first clarify the distinction between what I am calling
a subgenre from the broader and more frequently used ‘genre.’ As I note throughout this thesis,
genre boundaries are hard to define, and authors routinely push back against being categorized
in such ways. In this project, I treat sf and fantasy as genres of their own, while the individual
branches of cli-fi, NW, and ATQF are considered subgenres of these umbrella terms. However,
this too is complex, as even the concept of genre boundaries is malleable. In Evaporating
Genres (2011), Wolfe remarks that “‘genre’ is used largely as a term of convenience. From the
pure perspective of literary theory, persuasive arguments can be made that none of the major
fields discussed here—science fiction, fantasy, horror—are true genres in any taxonomic sense,
and thus that the whole notion of genres evaporating, destabilizing, or negotiating with one
another is a chimerical argument” (1). Similarly, John Rieder remarks of this genrefication when
reflecting on sf that “although constructing generic definitions is a scholarly necessity, an
historical approach to genre seems to undermine any fixed definition” (191). He suggests that a
premise of sf is that it is “historical and mutable” in that it evolves over time, and ought to be
considered less of a preset genre, and simply as more of a way of understanding texts and the
relationships between them.
Bould and Vint comment on this complexity around the definition of sf, remarking that
“the continued debate over its ‘true’ meaning and importance to the SF canon reveals what is at
stake when anyone asserts that SF is a thing with a single, clear and unified identity” (43). They
acknowledge that the creation and determination of genres is often retroactive and that
“selected features of existing texts are eventually recognized, for a multitude of reasons, by
discursive agents as collectively forming a genre” (48). They suggest that there is “no such thing
as science fiction” as they “want to draw attention to the complexity of texts and the meanings
they are able to sustain, and to encourage a self-reflexivity about one’s own reading which
recognizes that all readings … create their own criteria of judgement” (51) and ultimately
recognize that sf “is profoundly enriched by recognizing that genres are intersubjective,
discursive constructs, full of contradictions and constantly in flux” (51). I focus on the fantasy
elements – rather than the overtly sf elements – of the texts within the NW and ATQF
Andrews 13
subgenres, in part because this area has been less exhaustively explored in relation to climate
change, and I consider how they defamiliarize readers to the climate crisis.
To defamiliarize a person to a thing – reader to text – means to have them experience
the known or familiar object in a way that differs from their everyday experience. Viktor
Shklovsky’s initial concept of defamiliarization from his 1917 essay “Art as Technique” asserts
that art can be experienced in multiple ways. This applies to different pieces of art being
experienced individually, or to the same piece of art being experienced in multiple different
ways. For Shklovsky this concept was grounded in the writer’s use of language. He asserted
that poetic language should differ from practical language; this was, for Shklovsky, largely
rooted in the inherent complexity of language as he suggested that “The purpose of art is to
impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique
of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar', to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length
of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be
prolonged” (Shklovsky 50). His purpose was to suggest that traditional patterns or means of
engaging with art could be disrupted so as to experience the art itself differently. This assumes
that reading becomes habitual and eventually automatic – such is the need for defamiliarization.
Shklovsky’s ostraenie (Defamiliarization) and Bertolt Brecht’s verfrumdungseffekt (v-
effect) are overlapping concepts. Simon Spiegel writes that
At first glance, Brecht’s definition of Verfremdung seems almost identical to
Shklovsky’s ostraenie [defamiliarization]: ‘A representation which estranges is
one which allows us to recognize its subject, but at the same time makes it
unfamiliar.’ … Yet for Brecht, Verfremdung [v-effekt] also has a strong didactic
political meaning, and clearly is part of the audience’s perception (370).
This complexity necessitates an examination of the history of the terms in relation to sf theory.
Spiegel remarks that “The concept of estrangement has been significant for sf criticism ever
since Darko Suvin defined sf as the ‘genre of cognitive estrangement’ in his Metamorphoses of
Science Fiction (1979)” (369). Suvin’s use of the term cognitive estrangement has been
influential as well as complex and contested. It differs from how Shklovsky and Brecht apply
their respective concepts in that Suvin’s estrangement is applied to worlds within narratives
rather than the narrative style or framework: “Although ostraenie and Verfremdung are
ambiguous concepts, both primarily designate rhetorical strategies. Suvin, however, uses
estrangement to characterize the relation between the fictional and empirical worlds – in this
sense, an estranged fictional world is a world containing marvelous elements, elements which
are not (yet) part of the world we live in” (Spiegel 371). Spiegel writes that “Suvin refers explicitly
Andrews 14
to Shklovsky and Brecht, but without distinguishing properly between these two theoretical
traditions. Instead, he introduces the term estrangement in a completely new realm when using
it to designate a genre” (371). In his prior work “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre”
(1972), Suvin states that “SF is, then a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions
are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device
is an imaginative framework alternative to the author’s empirical environment” (375, Italics in
original). Suvin’s concept of ‘estrangement’ is nonetheless complex and ambiguous.
Spiegel remarks that “there are considerable differences in the way sf scholars make
use of Suvin’s concept. This is partly due to inconsistencies within Suvin’s own definition, which
are themselves a consequence of the vagueness of the concept of ‘estrangement’ before it was
introduced into sf criticism” (369). What I am suggesting in this project, is that the texts within
the three SFF subgenres which I explore are defamiliarizing and estranging in that they make
what is typically familiar strange in some way, thus calling upon readers to examine or reflect
upon a particular issue. The issue in question in this thesis is climate change. This is distinct
from Skhlosky’s initial use and draws on Suvin’s interpretation of the term in that in SFF the use
of defamiliarization is less to do with style than subject matter and setting. I focus on strange
worlds and fantastic elements in fiction rather than on formal or stylistic quirks as did Shklovsky.
Miéville remarks of Suvin’s explanation of cognitive estrangement that it is particularly
“savaging” that Suvin suggested “SF and fantasy are and must remain not only radically distinct
but hierarchically related” (Miéville, “Cognition as Ideology” 231). Miéville does, however, remind
readers that Suvin acknowledges the overlap between sf and fantasy in that the latter also
estranges, despite Suvin’s distaste towards this fact.
5
Carl Freedman writes that “It is
symptomatic of the complexity of science fiction as a generic category that critical discussion of
it tends to devote considerable attention to the problem of definition” but that ultimately “No
definitional consensus exists” (Critical Theory, 14). Even Suvin himself remarks in “Considering
the Sense of Fantasy” simply that “Once again, I find myself considering how to define what
we’re talking about” (215) when it comes to fantasy more generally.
6
On the ‘cognition’ aspect of
5
In “Considering the Sense of Fantasy” Suvin writes “Let me therefore revoke, probably to my
general regret, my blanket rejection of fantastic fiction. The divide between cognitive (pleasantly
useful) and non-cognitive (useless) does not run between SF and fantastic fiction but inside
each – though in rather different ways and in different proportions, for there are more obstacles
to liberating cognition in the latter” (211).
6
In “A Note on Marxism and Fantasy” (2002) Freedman similarly challenges Marxist dismissals
of fantasy as escapist. He suggests instead that fantasy can be a useful tool for exploring and
critiquing society. Freedman uses Samuel Delany’s work as that which questions dominant
Andrews 15
cognitive estrangement in sf and fantasy, Miéville remarks on what is ‘possible’ in each genre.
Rather than sf being about what is possible versus fantasy being about what is impossible,
Miéville suggests this is more nuanced and explains that the ‘attitude’ of the text matters more
than the objective possibility of the text. This is based on Carl Freedman’s remark that the
distinction lies in the “attitude of the text itself to the kind of estrangements being performed”
(Freedman 18). Thus, the distinction between sf and fantasy in this project is predicated on this
perception of the “attitude of the text” with that which is intentionally grounded in ‘science’ –
however implausible – being more aptly considered sf. With this framework, the cli-fi works
reside within the parameters of sf as they ask the reader to consider the potential plausibility of
the climate events, and the NW texts reside more centrally within fantasy. While the ATQF texts
include elements of sf – notably those which look far into the future – I focus on the fantastical
components which allow for even greater, more expansive, timelines to be explored, as well as
the myth and folklore which links the narrative strands.
Complicating this overlap between sf and fantasy further is the concept of immersion in
SFF. Spiegel remarks that “In sf, all kinds of marvelous things may happen. People can travel in
time, exceed the speed of light, and do many other things that, according to our present
knowledge, we will never achieve in the real world. Contrary to Suvin's definition, these
marvelous acts are not presented in an estranged way; rather they are rationalized and made
plausible” (Spiegel 371). This speaks to the way that both sf and fantasy works can be
simultaneously estranging yet immersive as the reader is given the framework to believe and
become immersed in varying degrees of possibility. In Rhetorics of Fantasy (2008), Farah
Mendlesohn makes the bold assertion that “Any sufficiently immersive fantasy is
indistinguishable from science fiction” (62). This is borne out of her explanation of immersive
fantasy as “a fantasy set in a world built so that it functions on all levels as a complete world …
[which] must act as if it is impervious to external influence. … It must assume that the reader is
as much a part of the world as are those being read about” (60). Fantasy can of course easily
fall short of being sufficiently immersive. If the worldbuilding is not complete, or if the reader is
not convinced by the parameters of the world in which the story takes place, the text fails to be
immersive. This is equivalent to the feeling of being remarkably ‘aware’ of oneself watching a
play during the experience rather than being drawn into the narrative and production, which
resembles what Brecht intends with the v-effekt. Mendlesohn suggests that “The immersive
fantasy is both the mirror of mimetic literature and its inner soul. It reveals what is frequently
social and political norms, illustrating the genre’s capacity to grapple with sophisticated
theoretical concepts.
Andrews 16
hidden: that all literature builds worlds, but some genres are more honest about it than others”
(59). For example, a narrative which contains no fantasy is still constructing a world in which its
events take place, such a world just more closely resembles the reality of the reader from the
outset. The texts in the cli-fi chapter are sufficiently immersive as works of sf, and those in the
ATQF chapter are immersive in that the narratives take place within worlds which include
fantasy components. The NW narratives are set in worlds which are more completely fantasy,
but which are nonetheless immersive. These texts create a sense of estrangement by either
revealing sudden, unexpected familiar elements in unfamiliar worlds or by prompting reflection
on how these immersive worlds mirror our own.
Both ATQF and NW’s narrative methods are simultaneously immersive and
defamiliarizing. That is, their narratives immerse the reader in the Quasi-Fantasy or New Weird
environment and use their various fantasy components to defamiliarize the reader to things
which are otherwise commonplace. The result is readers are confronted with the more familiar
underpinning climate themes amidst narratives which appear at first to be unrelated to the crisis.
For example, a New Weird text set in Miéville’s Bas Lag universe in the city of New Crobuzon
7
is defamiliarizing for many reasons. The city is inhabited by a broad array of creatures including
Garudas (anthropomorphized and human-sized hawk-like creatures, Cactacae (humanoid
cacti), Khepri (human-bug hybrids)
8
, and Weavers (inter-dimensional spider-like beings). These
creatures inhabit a vaguely Earth-like city and go about many of the same day-to-day trivialities
of life as humans. Miéville’s imagined city of New Crobuzon is thus equally immersive and
defamiliarizing, as there are facets and elements of the characters’ existence which indeed
resemble human existence. Perhaps it is immersive by virtue of its defamiliarizing setting.
Anderson and Iversen note that “defamiliarization” and “immersion” are often thought of as
opposing ideas in that one aims to foster closeness between the reader and the text whereas
the other aims to estrange the reader by making things different, odd, or otherwise unexpected
in some way. They suggest though, that texts can both immerse and defamiliarize: “Both the
suspension of disbelief and the direction of attention can be seen as scalar phenomena, as
axes; aspects of a text can be more or less interested in either steering the reader into the
invented world or in returning the reader to the world outside the storyworld” (Anderson and
Iversen 571). They argue that “immersion and defamiliarization can both serve to imitate and
7
New Crobuzon is the fictional city in Miéville’s Bas Lag universe. It is the setting for the first of
the three Bas Lag books – Perdido Street Station (2000). It is also referenced in both The Scar
(2002) and Iron Council (2004)
8
The Khepri are an individual species rather than an assemblage of humans and bugs and
would be seen as such by the characters in PSS.
Andrews 17
direct the attention of the reader toward their immersion in the world” and subsequently to
“question the nature of what lies beyond the text” (572). In this case, it is the climate themes
which underpin and lie beyond the texts in question. So, to return to the example of Miéville’s
city of New Crobuzon, the day-to-day trivialities of life are what help to ground the reader in an
otherwise wholly unfamiliar setting.
I use the hyperobject framework to explain the difficulty of engaging with climate change
both in reality and in fiction, and the concept of defamiliarization and estrangement to explain
how texts from both the ATQF and NW subgenres engage with the climate crisis indirectly.
Viewing climate change as a hyperobject is to view it indirectly and experience it ubiquitously in
everyday life. The texts in the ATQF chapter demonstrate how the components of fantasy and
surrealism work as a defamiliarizing mechanism to distract from, but also mirror and highlight
the underpinning climate themes present in their narratives. This defamiliarizing mechanism is
further utilized in NW fiction as NW narratives include more fantasy components and fewer
familiarities. The climate themes present in both ATQF and NW fiction are thus visible not in
spite of the texts’ fantasy elements, but largely because of them.
Introduction to Anthropo-Temporal Quasi-Fantasy:
The texts in Chapter Three engage with the climate crisis as explained above – that is,
indirectly, as a hyperobject. I use the term Anthropo-Temporal Quasi-fantasy as a loose
collective moniker to represent a trend within SFF in the early twenty-first century. ATQF texts
are inherently hybrid as they cross many genre boundaries. Hybrid genre for example, can refer
simply to “the combination of two or more genres” (Oxford Dictionary of Media and
Communication) such as crime narrative and romance, or Western and thriller, but to define
ATQF texts merely as hybrid would be an oversimplification. Even in terms of literary criticism,
the term ‘hybridity’ “is an umbrella term for all kinds of blending, mixing, and combining that
occur in genres and texts” (Mäntynen and Shore 738). As discussed in the prior section, there is
much hybridity
9
and overlap between sf and fantasy literature, so a more specific approach is
required.
That this selection of texts resulted from an exploration of hybridity and hybrid genre
fiction is indicative of the integration of multiple narrative forms and styles. As will be explored
further in the chapter named for these ATQF works, my selection is of texts with at least one
central plot or theme which is not climate-oriented, underpinned by the climate narrative as the
9
Mikhail Bakhtin’s initial concept of hybridity with regards to language (polyglossia) could thus
also be discussed if this set of texts were to be termed simply ‘hybrid genre.’
Andrews 18
secondary focus. The climate crisis itself is indeed a hybrid concept as it affects everything.
Morton would suggest this relates to its “viscosity” – its ability to stick to all things with which it
comes into contact (Hyperobjects). Tim Clark, in The Value of Ecocriticism, remarks on the
hybridity of the climate crisis when he states that “The proposed Anthropocene is an
unavoidably hybrid concept, involving the geological, historical and political” (18). It is again
important to note that he refers to the Anthropocene as essentially synonymous with the climate
crisis. He embarks on an extended classification and definition process to reach this
understanding. Clark remarks on the challenges of localizing a concern as far-reaching and
seemingly intangible as the climate crisis. It is a challenging concept to grasp for individuals on
a day-to-day basis, and is thus equally challenging to depict accurately in fiction:
The Earth has become itself an increasingly hybrid entity in which human impacts
interact in emergent ways with partially understood ecological systems, with
sometimes counterintuitive interactions that cross the continents. To give a simple
example of the problem: nothing in the sight of the contents of an ordinary
shopping basket will make visible the lost tropical forests implicit in the palm oil
used in about 50 per cent of consumer products. (51)
Despite this overwhelming challenge, these hybrid genre texts have value in their indirect
presentation of the climate crisis, or through inattention to it as the primary driver of the
narrative.
These texts work to introduce the ecological and the climate-oriented into the reader’s
periphery rather than immediately into their direct field of vision. In a 2015 episode of the now
problematic Joe Rogan Podcast, science communicator and Fellow of the Royal Society,
Professor Brian Cox, remarks on the BBC’s method for communicating science and important
information to the masses. He explains that the BBC funds traditional entertainment shows and
puts them on the air in prime-time slots, but then they follow such shows with nature
documentaries, cosmology documentaries, and other information that the public, as he puts it,
simply “needs to know.” The result is that some of the viewership of the traditional entertainment
show will overflow into the nature documentary that immediately follows it. The works selected
here to represent the ATQF subgenre of SFF aim to position climate change similarly. The
reader is given a fantasy tale or a speculative sf narrative that is underpinned by an
unavoidable, omnipresent ecological component that they, too, simply need to know. Thus,
readers experience the climate crisis in these narratives without a soapbox orator or lecturer
explaining the intricacies of the issue and the scientific data and predictive models, or the
inherently negative status of the climate to them directly.
Andrews 19
The term ATQF aims to broadly encapsulate the texts in this chapter such that a claim
can be made about this kind of literature. Firstly, the prefix ‘Anthropo-’ refers to the
climatological orientation of each of these texts. As mentioned earlier, the Anthropocene period
is that which is characterized by an irrevocable human impact on the environment. The prefix
‘Anthropo-’ refers to the Anthropocene, not to climate change broadly – as this can indeed be
natural
10
- but to Anthropogenic climate change specifically. This term belongs in the title of this
subgenre as these texts do indeed have climate themes which, while usually being secondary to
the main narrative or conflict, are clear and apparent to the reader. The climate component of
these texts is unpacked indirectly, but it is nonetheless visible. This is a departure from the direct
engagement that cli-fi texts have with the climate crisis – this is a stipulation for a text to be
considered cli-fi at all, as will be unpacked in Chapter Two.
These texts are also characterized by their utilization of vast timelines, hence the
inclusion of ‘temporal’ in the title of this subgenre. For many of these texts, there is a duality or
plurality of timelines explored throughout the narrative. These may span years, decades, or in
some situations, centuries or even millennia. Importantly, these timelines often begin in the past
and then extend well into the future. For context, one of the primary texts discussed in Chapter
Three is David Mitchell’s 2014 novel The Bone Clocks. In this text, the primary narrative is set
around the life of one protagonist, Holly Sykes, at various points in her life either from her
perspective or from the perspective of someone close to her. The narrative is told in six
sections, the first beginning in 1984 when Holly is a teenager. The last section is set in 2043
when Holly is in her seventies. Underpinning this central timeline is the vast timeline of
fantastical beings called Horologists and their evil counterparts, the Anchorites. The Horologists
are essentially immortal as they take on a new host after living a full life in one body. The oldest
of these beings, Xi Lo, is centuries, perhaps even thousands of years old; one of the central
Horologist characters, Marinus, indicates that Xi Lo is “twenty-five centuries” old. This broad
time span in novels like The Bone Clocks, particularly when explored secondarily to a central
time frame of roughly one human lifetime, allows for a greater depth of engagement with a
global issue as massive and “interobjective” or “nonlocal” (Morton, Hyperobjects) as climate
change.
10
Referring to ‘climate change’ as opposed to ‘Anthropogenic climate change’ leaves room for
misinterpretation as the Earth’s climate does indeed change as a result of solar cycles, volcanic
activity, and natural changes in the CO2 levels in the atmosphere (British Geological Survey) –
such changes are not what is being referred to with the term ‘Anthropogenic Climate Change’.
Andrews 20
When discussing the constraints we experience simply because of time, and of the slow-
moving nature of the issue when describing climate change, Morton remarks that “A weather
conversation provides a nice background to our daily affairs, nice to the extent that we don’t pay
too much attention to it. … it has to operate in our peripher[y]” (102). Morton asks then, “what
happens when global warming enters the scene? The background ceases to be background,
because we have started to observe it” (Hyperobjects 102). This is not to say that global
warming has only just begun, but rather our awareness of it began at that moment. The reader
sees the climate change more clearly over much longer time scales. This differs from simply
being dropped into a setting in which the climate has already changed, or is experiencing a
singular weather or climate event, as is usually the case with cli-fi texts. Such texts usually take
place in a specific period in time, even a particular year in the future – as is the case with Kim
Stanley Robinson’s excellent depictions of a near-future United States in New York 2140 (2017)
and 2312 (2012). Comparatively, ATQF texts are thus able to take a more diachronic view of the
climate crisis than the specific or restricted synchronic view that cli-fi often takes.
The term ‘Quasi-Fantasy’ demonstrates that these texts are not simply traditional fantasy
texts and could not be discussed in the same light as texts which would fall neatly into the
genre. Most notably, the texts which fall into the ATQF subgenre all take place on Earth rather
than in an imagined world, realm, or universe. Indeed, in the works discussed in both the ATQF
and New Weird Chapters there are texts which meet each of those requirements regarding
place – i.e. those which take place on Earth, those in which Earth itself is the same but
additional realms exist, those in which there are specific magical or fantastical spaces within,
and those which take place in an imagined world. In this project, texts which take place on a
wholly imagined world are however only those in the New Weird Chapter. As it is then, fantasy
itself is limiting even at its first definitional hurdle despite being useful to describe the magical
components which do underpin these texts.
Mitchell engages with the overlap between sci-fi and fantasy, and between fantasy and
simply literary fiction directly in The Bone Clocks (TBC), discussed at length in the ATQF
chapter. In the fourth section of TBC, the fictional writer Crispin Hershey and his publicist
engage in a tongue-in-cheek discussion about such limitations as Crispin says his novel is “only
one-third fantasy. Half, at most”, to which his publicist replies that “A book can’t be half-fantasy
any more than a woman can be half pregnant” (Mitchell 359). Mitchell indicates in interviews
that this was a remark made to him by Lana Wachowski – of The Matrix movies – during the
production of the Cloud Atlas (2012) movie. The Encyclopedia Britannica definition of fantasy
remarks that “Science fiction can be seen as a form of fantasy, but the terms are not
Andrews 21
interchangeable, as science fiction usually is set in the future and is based on some aspect of
science or technology, while fantasy is set in an imaginary world and features the magic of
mythical beings.” Despite this, we are familiar with fantasy texts which do not fulfil these
requirements. So, one may consider the ATQF texts to be perhaps twenty-percent fantasy, thirty
at the most.
ATQF thus provides readers with a set of texts which engage with the climate crisis
without being wholly about the climate crisis. It is important to properly situate ATQF as a
subgenre of SFF and clarify its deviation from simply what cli-fi intends. Roman Jakobson’s
concept of “the dominant” in his 1935 work is that “It is the focusing component of a work of art;
it rules, determines and transforms the remaining components. It is the dominant which
guarantees the integrity of structure. The dominant specifies the work” (751). Put simply, this is
the notion that despite texts having many genre elements or components, one tends to be the
primary or ‘dominating’ feature which shapes the other genre elements. Hana Arie Gaifman
explains that “The dominant … is the highest organizing and therefore the chief stabilizing
component of a given structure … [It] follow at least implicitly, that it comprises also the chief
dynamic constituent of the structure” (Gaifman 65). The dominant in cli-fi is undoubtedly that the
texts are wholly about climate change and that their narratives focus on climate change. The
dominant in ATQF is indeed climate change, however it is made apparent to the reader through
specific and definite means: the texts are structured around expansive timelines and their use of
fantasy components brings out the underlying climate themes. So rather than the dominant in
ATQF being explicitly climate change from the start, the Anthropocentric, climate-focused
orientation of these texts is made clearer by the fantasy components. The primary texts under
this ATQF umbrella are David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks, Chris Beckett’s Beneath the World, A
Sea (2019), Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land (2021), Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island (2019),
Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility (2022), and Helen Marshall’s The Migration (2019).
These texts, all from the early twenty-first century, all display the core qualities and criteria of
ATQF fiction and thus provide a cohesive unit to form a clear foundation for this subgenre. That
these texts are all written within the past decade is indicative of the recent exploration of climate
change in fantasy literature which has, until recently, been overlooked in favour of cli-fi. This
subgenre explores climate change in a way that engages with what Ghosh refers to as “The
Great Derangement” of our time, what Oziewicz refers to as a period of “Ecocidal unconscious,”
and what Bould refers to as an “Anthropocene Unconscious.” I argue that the indirect
engagement with the climate crisis in ATQF paradoxically makes readers more conscious of it
and begins to address this state of Anthropocene or ecocidal unconscious.
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The New Weird
Like many SFF subgenres, New Weird is a porous and amorphous entity with varying
facets and features. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s widely known definition of the term in The New
Weird (2008) is a useful starting point. They write that it is “a type of urban, secondary-world
fiction that subverts the romanticized ideas about place found in traditional fantasy, largely by
choosing realistic, complex real-world models as the jumping-off point for creation of settings
that may combine elements of both science fiction and fantasy” (xvi). This definition works well,
and in Chapter Four I make some minor qualifications to the definition of the subgenre
surrounding place. I suggest that the focus on urban settings is not mandatory for New Weird
fiction. I also explain that NW texts need not always be set on a secondary or imagined world.
Rather, NW texts can have either an urban or a rural setting, as is evidenced by the rural, yet
Earth-based “pristine wilderness” setting of VanderMeer’s Annihilation (2014) and the urban
squalor setting of Miéville’s Perdido Street Station (2000) in his imagined Bas Lag world.
I then explore the progression from traditional/Old Weird to the New Weird, beginning
with H. P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness (1936) towards Miéville’s The Tain (2002)
and Perdido Street Station. My specific focus in this examination is on the defamiliarization
present in both the Old Weird and the NW. This progression from one to the next is important as
it helps to show my rationale for selecting the key texts in this project. China Miéville suggests
that “as soon as the fantastic becomes a cliché, it’s no longer fantastic. And it’s against that
internal betrayal that New Weird militates. New Weird is a return to the radical fantastic” (“New
Weird”, 50). What Miéville is remarking upon here confirms what I am suggesting about this
progression from the Weird to the NW in that what Lovecraft was doing in the 1930s with
AtMoM and Cthulhu is no longer as strange and defamiliarizing as it was at the time. Miéville is
central to New Weird. When discussing what NW is, one cannot ignore his works and his
influence. Jeff VanderMeer’s work is a more contemporary progression of NW, 15 years after
the term originated. Chris Beckett’s Beneath the World, A Sea also represents a useful point of
comparison to these NW texts as it includes an imagined space with NW qualities, and
Beckett’s work is useful more broadly for my project as his work is also discussed in my Cli-Fi
chapter with America City (2017) and Two Tribes (2020).
Chapter Outline
In this opening chapter I have briefly explained ecocriticism, introduced hyperobjects,
and introduced the indirect approach to climate change using defamiliarization. My project is
then organized according to the three genres with which I engage closely. In Chapter Two I
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explore cli-fi. I explore two prototypical cli-fi texts from the 1960s by J. G. Ballard, and I use
William Liggett’s “cli-fi criteria” to explain what makes a text cli-fi. I explain that this set of criteria
can be modified and applied as points on a continuum or spectrum. Importantly however, the
first of Liggett’s criteria must be followed – that a text must be ‘about’ climate change to be
thought of as cli-fi. I then undertake close readings of recent cli-fi texts by Kim Stanley Robinson
and Chris Beckett and demonstrate that there are limitations to what cli-fi can accomplish with
regards to its goal of portraying the climate crisis with verisimilitude.
In Chapter Three I explore the SFF subgenre which I have named ‘Anthropo-Temporal
Quasi-Fantasy.’ ATQF reflects a trend within SFF in which climate change is becoming a more
prominent theme in texts whose primary concern does not appear to be the climate crisis itself.
This subgenre explores twenty-first-century novels which include expansive and layered
timelines as well as fantasy components. Combined, these features work to draw out and
highlight the underpinning climate themes which are present in these texts. I begin by exploring
two ATQF texts, Ghosh’s Gun Island and Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land which use myth and
folklore as their fantasy components. I then engage in a close reading of the most central ATQF
novel, Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks. In the last section, I explore several authors’ use of
pandemics alongside climate change.
Finally, Chapter Four moves further from cli-fi towards the fantasy end of the SFF
spectrum and focuses on New Weird fiction. Chapter Four begins with a further explanation of
how defamiliarization and hyperobjects pertain to ecocritical discourse. I then explore the roots
of the NW genre from its early twentieth-century origins in the traditional Weird by comparing H.
P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness with China Miéville’s novella The Tain. I then focus
on how climate themes are made apparent in NW texts through depictions of garbage and the
pursuit of energy. These texts experiment with characters’ states of consciousness and memory
and provoke readers to question their own state of unconsciousness towards the climate
signposts. I begin by focusing on the first two of Miéville’s Bas Lag novels, Perdido Street
Station and The Scar (2002). I then explore VanderMeer’s more ecologically oriented novel
Annihilation alongside Beckett’s Beneath the World, A Sea. Lastly, I explore Miéville’s young
adult novel Railsea (2012) which is concerned with salvage in a dystopian future world in which
oceans have been replaced with a sprawling network of train tracks, and I unpack Miéville’s
language-oriented space SF novel Embassytown (2011) for its depiction of how the pursuit of a
scarce resource leads to the downfall of a civilization.
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“Some deep flip in the global unconscious was making people queasy.” (Kim Stanley Robinson,
The Ministry for the Future 286)
Chapter 2 – Climate Fiction: Criteria and Limitations, and Contemporary Cli-fi Novels
Cli-fi is a subgenre of sf dealing directly with the topic of climate change. Most commonly
the kind of climate change depicted in cli-fi is Anthropogenic – human caused – but this has not
always been the case. Cli-fi developed as a subgenre of SFF in the second half of the twentieth
century with writers such as J. G. Ballard in The Drought (1964) and The Drowned World
(1962), John Christopher’s The World in Winter (1962), Brian Aldiss’ Hothouse (1962), and later
Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower (1993); however, there were earlier indications of
what would now be termed cli-fi including H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895) and Laurence
Manning’s The Man Who Awoke (1933) in which the protagonist wakes from cryo-sleep every
5000 years to find the world brought to its knees by the collapse of civilization as generations
argue over what they are entitled to.
The term cli-fi was first used in 2007 and is credited to Dan Bloom,
11
a freelance writer –
in an interview with David Thorpe, Bloom stated that “Cli-fi is a new genre term for novels, short
stories and movies that stands for works of art and storytelling that deal with climate change and
global warming concerns” (qtd. in Thorpe).
12
In his 2018 article, “Cli-fi,” Derek Gladwin remarks
that although cli-fi trends have been visible for longer, “Cli-fi as a recognized literary style is only
about 10 years old” (167) and he refers to Dan Bloom’s 2007 coining of the term as the start of
the SFF subgenre.
For the subgenre to have meaning or value, there must be parameters for what can or
cannot be considered cli-fi. Without borders to the term, any text referring to climate change at
all could be considered cli-fi. For example, The Time Machine (1895) imagines a post-
apocalyptic future in which the climate has indeed changed, but it does not specify how the
Earth’s climate reached the state in which the Time-traveler found it each year, and the climate
is not the central focus of the story.
This chapter begins with a discussion explaining the parameters of the cli-fi subgenre.
Importantly, this project focuses on the cli-fi which could equally be described as sf, hence the
11
“The Cli-fi Report” - https://www.cli-fi.net/index.html
12
From an interview with David Thorpe entitled “Dan Bloom on CliFi and Imagining the Cities of
the Future” - https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/interview-dan-
bloom-clifi-and-imagining-cities-future/1037731/
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use of the term ‘subgenre’ to refer to cli-fi as a group of texts within the sf genre. I use William
Liggett’s five cli-fi criteria (“What is Cli-fi?”) as a starting point for what constitutes a cli-fi text and
explain that texts within the cli-fi subgenre, as is often the case in other subgenres, may fulfil
some criteria but not others. Because of this, the texts can be thought of on a scale, or
continuum, of closeness to what is most centrally cli-fi. I then offer a brief analysis of J. G.
Ballard’s The Drought and The Drowned World as these two texts are important early examples
of mid-twentieth-century proto cli-fi. I explain the limitations faced by cli-fi texts when trying to
properly depict or encapsulate the climate change hyperobject. Here I discuss limitations
relating to the potential readership, as well as limitations of proximity and scale in both time and
space. Next, I explore Chris Beckett’s America City and Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140
as these are central texts on the cli-fi continuum, both meeting all the required criteria. In the
final section of this chapter, I explore Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (2020)
and Chris Beckett’s Two Tribes. These two texts demonstrate how this spatial and temporal
limitation can be, at least in part, overcome in cli-fi. Finally, I discuss the overlap between the cli-
fi subgenre and the ATQF and New Weird subgenres discussed in chapters three and four.
These Anthropogenic-cli-fi texts are speculative in that they imagine climate-changed
futures based on the effects of variables and factors which are underway in the present such as
carbon emissions, garbage accumulation, water shortage, and overpopulation. Climate-changed
futures thus tend to be dark depictions of how our present-day way of life is threatened or
irrevocably changed; however, they are not always depictions of dystopias as some present
innovative solutions for humanity’s survival. The narratives take place at varying points in the
future, with some texts’ timelines beginning only years or decades from now, and others looking
several centuries ahead – for example, Ballard’s Drought takes place in the twenty-second
century, as does Chris Beckett’s America City. Beckett’s Two Tribes has two primary narratives,
one set during the tumult of the Brexit referendum and the other in the twenty-third century. Kim
Stanley Robinson’s Ministry for the Future is set in 2025 and extends through to the end of the
twenty-first century. There are frequently overlaps between cli-fi and post-apocalyptic fiction, as
both genres depict various ‘end of days’ scenarios, but not all cli-fi aims to present the post-
climate world through a dystopian or apocalyptic lens.
13
NY2140, for example, depicts a future
13
Movie depictions of climate-altered worlds, whether Anthropogenic or not, tend to dramatize
climate change so dramatically that the world is on the literal and immediate brink of destruction
practically immediately. This is summed up most literally by the 2004 Roland Emmerich movie
The Day After Tomorrow in which the climate reversal causing an apocalyptic ice-age happens
over a matter of days rather than centuries. Similarly, the end-of-days movie 2012 (2009), also
Andrews 26
in which civilization has embraced more communal living and sustainable energy use, and
society flourishes on water-highways using small watercrafts weaving between the half-
submerged skyscrapers of New York in the twenty-second century.
Different cli-fi texts place the reader at various points relative to climate disasters.
Climate change is a slow-moving threat, so it is challenging to portray it with accuracy in a
period in which the change is occurring in real time or affecting populations across the globe.
Most cli-fi texts are set either during a major climatic event, or at some point in the future after
several major events. This is evidenced in America City after the changing climate has caused
mass migration from dust bowl states in the USA.
14
By contrast, KSR’s The Ministry for the
Future begins during our current climate crisis and aims to depict various climatic events all over
the world over the course of several decades. Throughout MftF there are call-backs to the many
disasters which have happened over the century in which the book takes place, with much of
the narrative occurring post-disaster at each point. “The group talked over events they often
named – the Heat Wave, Crash Day, the Little Depression, the Transition, the Intervention, the
Strange Times, the super depression” (Robinson, MftF 420). These events populate the present
and the past in KSR’s novel. They are evidence of extreme weather events and apocalyptic
events having happened in the past. The novel’s present is one in which society is emerging
from such events.
Steve McIlwaine, a journalist and academic, refers to the challenges journalists face
when communicating the climate crisis. He highlights several barriers to this communication
process. He suggests that climate science and journalism are simply two different fields, and the
explanation process is challenging as the information itself is hard to grasp – he refers to the
problem as one of “irreconcilable worlds” (48). He also acknowledges that, because of its slow-
moving nature, climate change news is limited to “local, regional events” (54). He remarks that
“Climate change does not fit easily into the contemporary 24-hour news cycle, nor does it match
dominant news frames (Smith 2005: 1478). Climate findings are not produced on a predictable
schedule by dependably responsive spokespeople” (54). He suggests that this issue of gradual
change and irregularity of events is challenging to overcome. Consumers of news media are apt
to quickly forget news events which are no longer in their immediate vicinity. McIlwaine also
suggests that readers are limited in their capacity to understand the implications of current
directed by Emmerich, marked a very dramatic change to the climate status quo only a few
years ahead of when it was released
14
This is also clear in KSR’s New York 2140 as the narrative occurs after two major sea-level
increases.
Andrews 27
events, models, patterns, and predictions of future conditions for the Earth’s climate. He
suggests that “human imagination does not readily grasp the ‘future orientation’ and
gradualness of climate events predicted for the middle or end of next century” (54). So, cli-fi
aims to do the work that the collective human imagination cannot do as it gives the reader a
speculative depiction of a climate-changed future in which the current events and predictions
have come to fruition. An important caveat for the definition of cli-fi in this project is that such
works must be focused on Anthropogenic climate change specifically rather than climate change
with a natural cause; otherwise, its intention is different, and the text may be more aptly
considered a disaster-novel or simply post-apocalypse fiction.
In The Great Derangement (2017), Ghosh asserts that the speculative depictions of
climate change which are the most effective are those which “are set in a time that is
recognizable as our own” and those which “communicate, with marvelous vividness, the
uncanniness and improbability, the magnitude and interconnectedness of the transformations
that are now under way” (73). When speaking about the limitations that sf – and by the same
token cli-fi – has when addressing the Anthropocene in fiction, Ghosh suggests that “The Future
is but one aspect of the Anthropocene: this era also includes the recent past, and, most
significantly, the present” (72). He states that “By no means are the events of the era of global
warming akin to the stuff of wonder tales” (73). An issue discussed in the final section of this
chapter is the tendency for climate change narratives to over-dramatize or fictionalize that which
is already underway as if it were not interesting or catastrophic enough on its own merit. This is
often the result of conflation between climate, weather, and natural disasters. In “Contemporary
Ecocriticism and the Weather,” Caren Irr remarks that so often “[in] these climate fictions,
weather serves as a synecdoche for climate, and readers are alerted to climate change through
the texts’ imaginative investment in a particular but typical weather crisis” (262). As McIlwaine
notes in his article on journalism and climate communication, too often weather and climate are
confused and conflated such that misunderstandings about individual weather events lead to
misunderstandings about Anthropogenic climate change. So, while cli-fi aims to provide an
accurate speculative depiction of a climate future, it is often limited by virtue of the approaches it
takes when fictionalizing or sensationalizing the real.
Criteria for Cli-fi
Cli-Fi engages with the climate crisis directly. Cli-fi texts’ primary concern must be the
climate crisis. As indicated above, the ‘dominant’ as per Roman Jakobson in cli-fi is climate
change. In Ecological Exile (2017) Derek Gladwin cites Dan Bloom’s website The Cli-Fi Report
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as “one of the most definitive and timely sources to obtain information about climate change
fiction” (“Cli-Fi” 169). On Bloom’s Cli-Fi Report, blogger and cli-fi writer William Liggett outlines
five criteria differentiating cli-fi from other subgenres. The first two of Liggett’s criteria are those
which differentiate cli-fi from other SF which may include climate themes. “First, the central
theme is explicitly or implicitly about climate change” (Liggett qtd. in Gladwin 169). This is the
defining characteristic or criterion for cli-fi texts. Such texts’ primary concern is the climate crisis,
and they are about the climate crisis rather than using it as the backdrop to an unrelated primary
narrative arc. “Second, cli-fi focuses on planet Earth, even though Earth may be compared to
other planets or futuristic scenarios of [Earth]” (Liggett qtd. in Gladwin 169). In this project I
discuss various fantasy texts which are not set on planet Earth or even in the same universe as
Earth. Those texts, while dealing with climate change to varying degrees, cannot be considered
cli-fi as they do not speak directly to the climatic changes occurring on Earth, and as a result,
our climate change is not always their primary concern. As will be made clear throughout this
project, this does not preclude them from effectively engaging with the climate crisis, but it does
prevent them from being considered cli-fi. “Third, [cli-fi] includes information about climate
science in the story. Fourth, the story’s action illustrates the consequences of changing climates
with often catastrophic or sensational results. Fifth, cli-fi synergises the sciences, humanities,
and political advocacy into one fictional form” (Liggett qtd. in Gladwin 169). The central texts in
this chapter fulfil Liggett’s criteria directly and are placed centrally on the cli-fi spectrum as a
result.
Liggett’s set of parameters for cli-fi helps to differentiate texts which simply mention
climate change to those which are indeed cli-fi. As mentioned above, an important distinction
this project makes for cli-fi is that the first two of these criteria must be met for a text to be a part
of the subgenre. Most importantly, the text must be about the climate crisis. Next, it must take
place on Earth. The remaining three criteria may or may not be met but a text could still be cli-fi
if it fulfills the first two. To simplify this, my project adapts these criteria into just two categories:
one which must be met, and the second which could be met. The foundational requirement (a
combination of Liggett’s first two) for what constitutes cli-fi is that it must be about Anthropogenic
climate change on Earth. Then Liggett’s remaining three criteria may or may not be met, but the
text can still be considered cli-fi.
Cli-Fi uses Anthropogenic climate change as the primary theme, the driving force in the
narrative, or the primary conflict. Its purpose is to highlight the issue of Anthropogenic climate
change. “For Bloom, [who coined the term ‘cli-fi,’] fiction served as an ideal way to raise
awareness of climate change issues to reduce the global threat” (Brady qtd. in Gladwin 167).
Andrews 29
Despite its obvious relevance in contemporary literature and culture, “Climate fiction as a term
or sustained genre, form, or mode has yet to receive as much critical attention as one might
expect considering the vast amounts of scholarship written about environmental literature over
the past 30 years” (Gladwin 167). The existing literature on Anthropogenic climate change
fiction tends more towards defining the genre itself and explaining its purpose within the broader
genre of sf.
Antonia Menhert suggests in Climate Change Fictions that “the creation of a scientific
image, in this case a climate change scenario, resonates a particular assumption about the
course of development of the world. Thus, no climate scenario is ever neutral or unambiguously
true” (5). Put simply, cli-fi fictionalizes the issue of climate change rather than aiming to
represent it with complete scientific accuracy. For this reason, cli-fi texts can be forgiven for
false predictions or speculations while still being a useful source in the growing climate change
discussion. Cli-Fi then, tends to serve as a speculation or warning of a direction in which the
world may be heading, but cannot be held directly accountable for its predictions or speculations
given the fictionalization of an otherwise real and tangible global crisis.
Over the past 50 years, cli-fi has increased in popularity and prevalence, and has seen a
marked increase in publicity and critical acclaim in the past two decades. Adam Trexler remarks
in Anthropocene Fictions (2015) that there are at least 150 examples of cli-fi novels, and in the
subsequent 9 years there have been many more published. Trexler also explains that cli-fi’s
prevalence is largely because cli-fi also covers multiple other genres – he remarks that cli-fi
includes “comic novels, thrillers, action-adventure stories, romance novels, mysteries, stories
about prehistoric climate change, multicultural novels, last man narratives, quasi-religious
apocalypses, monster stories, and teen novels” (7). To be clear, I do not aim to encapsulate the
entirety of the cli-fi subgenre in this project as it is too expansive to do so, and its boundaries –
as explained above – are by no means rigid. I review a small, representative selection of texts
which exhibit the core qualities of cli-fi as per the definition above. This chapter explores cli-fi
from the 2010s and 2020s. I demonstrate that cli-fi is effective in its depiction of the climate
crisis, but that it is limited by the sheer vastness of a concept as hyper as climate change. It is
thus challenging for all literature, not just cli-fi, to grasp its massive scale in both time and
space. Cli-fi is limited by how effectively it can make the climate change hyperobject proximate
to readers in both time and space. I also explain that cli-fi is limited in scope when it comes to
attracting a wider readership of those who may not already be convinced by climate science.
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Proto-Cli-Fi - J. G. Ballard –The Drowned World (1962) and The Drought (1964)
While the parameters for cli-fi and the term itself are new, depicting the climate crisis in
literature is not. The two proto-cli-fi works by J. G. Ballard from the 1960s discussed briefly in
this chapter depict the climate crisis from two perspectives. The climate crisis is a natural
phenomenon in The Drowned World and an Anthropogenic phenomenon in The Drought. These
works both take place on Earth, and their primary concern is the climate crisis, so they fulfil the
first of the simplified cli-fi criteria. However, as I mention above, an important caveat to the
simplified cli-fi criteria is that in a cli-fi text, it must be made clear that the changing climate is
Anthropogenically caused, which is not the case in The Drowned World. Firstly, I discuss The
Drowned World and the cause for the changing climate in the narrative. I explain the importance
of including accurate climate science which depicts the climate crisis as the result of human
activity. Secondly, I discuss The Drought for its early indication of climate change caused by the
dumping of industrial waste. Finally, I explain where these two texts fit in a twenty-first century
discussion of cli-fi.
The Drowned World (1962)
The cause of the apocalyptic climate future in Ballard’s The Drowned World is not
Anthropogenic. The Earth has been rendered almost uninhabitable but for small areas with now
tropical climates. The novel is set in London – or rather over a now flooded London – and
follows Dr. Robert Kerans and a team of researchers who have been sent south from the North
Pole to catalogue the new ecosystems in the literal drowned world which once housed the
majority of the Earth’s population. Ballard explains the cause of the extreme climate change in
the twenty-second century thus: “The succession of gigantic geophysical upheavals… had
transformed the Earth’s climate … sixty or seventy years earlier. A series of violent and
prolonged solar storms lasting several years caused by a sudden instability in the Sun had
enlarged the Van Allen belts and diminished the Earth’s gravitational hold upon the outer layers
of the ionosphere” (Ballard, The Drowned World 21). The result of this is that “mean
temperatures rose by a few degrees each year. The majority of tropical areas rapidly became
uninhabitable, entire populations migrating north or south from temperatures of a hundred and
thirty and a hundred and forty degrees” … “Once temperate areas became tropical” (21). The
cause of climate change in The Drowned World is of particular importance, as to be considered
cli-fi under the modified cli-fi criteria, the cause of the changing climate must be Anthropogenic.
As a result, The Drowned World would not fit neatly within the contemporary simplified criteria,
but it remains a seminal climate change novel.
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The Drowned World was written over 60 years ago, so it cannot be held up to the same
scientific scrutiny as current cli-fi texts. Scientific knowledge of Anthropogenic climate-change
has progressed, as has the actual change in the climate and the rate of change, too. The
scientific explanation for the climate having changed by 2145 in The Drowned World can be
forgiven for appearing far-fetched. While there is an attempt to provide a scientific explanation
for the changing climate, there are themes in The Drowned World which lean more towards
fantasy with regards to the characters’ strange dreams. An increase in global temperatures
leading to extreme sea-level rise is a common preconception and oversimplification of legitimate
climate science. Given that Ballard’s work is still widely read in the twenty-first century, it must
be made clear that this novel represents a kind of proto-cli-fi which does not suggest that the
climate was changed by humans (i.e. is not Anthropogenic), and which is not supported by or
based on models from current climate science. Liggett’s five criteria for cli-fi indicate that “[cli-fi]
includes information about climate science in the story” (qtd. in Gladwin 167). The usefulness of
this criterion is called into question here, as climate science is present in The Drowned World,
however it is neither current, nor was it backed by scientific evidence or predictive models in the
1960s. Even in the 1960s, climate research acknowledged the human component in climate
change which was attributed to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (UCAR). Charles
Keeling’s paper “The Concentration and Isotopic Abundances of Carbon Dioxide in the
Atmosphere” (1960) which gave us the Keeling Curve for illustrating the amount of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere in parts per million was already indicating increases which were
beyond seasonal variations.
This is not to say that Ballard needed to be an expert on Keeling’s research to write a
book about runaway climate change. Jim Clarke remarks that “Ballard wrote these novels in the
early 1960s, long before climate change became a prominent subject in the popular press, and
even before the term 'global warming' was coined by environmental scientist Wallace Broeker in
1975” (9). Rather, in a twenty-first-century context, it is important to amend the simplified cli-fi
criteria to ensure that they acknowledge the human element in climate change because it is so
well known now. This ensures a greater level of accuracy in the cli-fi criteria as the
overwhelming majority – or simply the “absolute consensus” according to Brian Cox in a 2016
Q&A panel on the subject (“Climate Change: Brian Cox Clashes with Sceptic Malcolm Roberts”
BBC News) – of climate scientists acknowledge that human activity is directly contributing to the
climate change impacts felt all over the world. It is important for contemporary cli-fi to reflect this
consensus among scientists when portraying the changing climate. What occurs in The
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Drowned World is a fictional representation of a hypothetical climate-changed future which is
not based in science.
The Drowned World, like many contemporary cli-fi novels, is set in a future which is
distant enough to be well outside the lifetime of the generations reading it. It is set in 2145,
almost two centuries after it was written. This is similar to other cli-fi texts discussed in this
chapter, such as KSR’s New York 2140, or Beckett’s America City. Cli-fi texts are often set far in
the future to depict a world which has already been ravaged by climate change. It allows
authors to depict a much greater degree of change than if a text was set in the more proximate
future or if it were set in the present. In such texts, warming has usually drastically increased,
and phenomena like sea-level rise, population migration, heat waves, forest fires, and dramatic
weather events have happened at an alarmingly increased rate. This speeds up an otherwise
slow-moving threat. As mentioned earlier, Steve McIlwaine notes that one of the most
challenging aspects of climate science communication is making people care about an issue
which will not directly impact them in the here and now, a problem he refers to by explaining that
too often the climatic news is focused on “Local, Regional Events” (53). These narratives aim to
immerse the reader in a climate-changed future. While this can be effective, it can also suggest
simply that the drastic impacts of the climate crisis are decades or centuries away anyway, thus
contributing to the passive response to the current climate science. Put simply, it is easier for
policymakers and industry leaders to delay expensive action on a problem if the impacts will not
be felt for two centuries anyway.
Ballard’s focus in The Drowned World then, is less about the changing climate and more
about the dissolution of human civilization in the face of disaster, however such a disaster is
caused. Milner and Burgmann remark that “of course, The Drowned World is not really about
climate change. It was widely applauded for the introduction of a new seriousness into the
genre, especially for the psychoanalytic preoccupations of both its author and its central
protagonist, Dr Robert Kerans” (11). Jim Clarke comments on Ballard’s decision not to place
blame on humanity for the changing climate in The Drowned World as he writes that: “in
insisting upon climate change as something that happens to humanity rather than something
that is committed or generated by humankind, Ballard's evasion of the blame game can also be
seen as a product of his relative antipathy towards scientists, an antipathy somewhat atypical in
the SF genre” (10). The scientists in The Drowned World are essentially rats in a maze believing
that they have the knowledge or capacity to understand their impending doom. That humans
have devolved into tribes of ‘pirates vs scientists’ is indicative of what Jim Clarke refers to as an
“existential pointlessness” (10) in which the changing climate is simply the setting rather than
Andrews 33
the actual focus of the narrative. This existential pointlessness is perhaps at the heart of an
accurate climate change narrative as it begins to encapsulate the feelings of ambivalence
shared by many towards the ongoing climate crisis. The internal struggle of micro, individual-
level positive climate actions seem irrelevant when pitted against the broad-scale industrial lack
of action, or at worst, inherently negative action, most certainly brings about feelings of
ambivalence, or indeed, existential pointlessness.
The Drought (1964/65)
J. G. Ballard’s 1965 novel The Drought, a longer version of The Burning World (1964),
takes an Anthropogenic approach to the climate-changed future it depicts. The world is
experiencing, as the title suggests, a widespread drought caused by humanity’s irresponsible
dumping of industrial waste. This continued action has caused mass water scarcity and led to a
years-long drought. The drought is caused by the waste in the oceans which has led to the
forming of a membrane – or film – on the surface of the ocean meaning that water does not
properly evaporate. So, with no evaporation there are no clouds and no rain, so the cycle
continues to exacerbate. As in The Drowned World though, Ballard is more concerned with
human behavior in The Drought than he is with climate change itself or with environmental or
ecological concerns. So, while The Drought is indeed set in a climate future, it is not concerned
with the climate crisis in quite the same way as is contemporary cli-fi.
In his Introduction to The Drowned World, Martin Amis suggests that “[w]e [can]
conclude that Ballard is quite unstimulated by human interaction – unless it takes the form of
something inherently weird, like mob atavism or mass hysteria. What excites him is human
isolation” (4). This focus on isolation and minimalism is prevalent in post-apocalyptic narratives
in which the global population has decreased, for any number of reasons, to just a fractional
percentage of what it once was. The Walking Dead (2004) graphic novel series by Kirkman and
Moore (and AMC’s television adaptation), The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy (and the
subsequent 2009 movie adaptation directed by John Hillcoat), and Station Eleven (2014) by
Emily St. John Mandel are recent examples of a kind of “2-percent” fiction in which the focus is
on human isolation and perseverance in the face of the collapse of human civilization wherein
only a fraction of humanity remains. So, while both these Ballard texts engage with climate
change, the focus is on human isolation. Although Ballard’s texts do not wholly meet the criteria
for cli-fi and should be placed further from the center of the spectrum than the twenty-first
century cli-fi discussed in this chapter such as Beckett’s America City, and Kim Stanley
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Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, they begin to acknowledge the state of ambivalence and
hopelessness of the climate crisis.
Cli-fi Limitations – Audience and Scale/Proximity
In this short section I suggest two ways in which cli-fi is limited in its ability to engage
with the climate crisis fully. Firstly, I explore the limited scope of the readership of cli-fi using
studies by Matthew Schneider Mayerson (2018) and by Schneider-Mayerson et al. (2023). In
this section I discuss the audience for cli-fi. Secondly, I explore the limitations of the subgenre
itself. Here I discuss setting and scale in cli-fi given that the time and place in which such works
take place determines their relative proximity to readers. A further common limitation to cli-fi
texts is the tendency to over-dramatize the real, thus fictionalizing climate change and making it
appear far-fetched rather than representing the ongoing reality of the crisis. This leads to a trend
in which the climate crisis is depicted through doomsday scenarios or dystopian visions of the
future in which humanity has failed in its current endeavours to get the ongoing climate crisis
under control. This chapter is based around two pairs of texts by Chris Beckett and Kim Stanley
Robinson. The first text from each pair represents what is most typical and central to the cli-fi
subgenre, while the second of each pair begins to transcend some of the limitations discussed
in this chapter. While I do spend some time discussing the limitations of cli-fi in this section, this
by no means suggests that such work is not useful or relevant with regards to its depiction of the
climate crisis. Rather, I acknowledge the challenges authors face when trying to depict climate
change in fiction at all, and I focus on cli-fi as it aims to do this the most directly.
Before discussing the specific limitations of cli-fi, it is important to acknowledge the
sentiment that fiction itself is perhaps ill-suited to the job of depicting climate change. There is
some disagreement over this among scholars. Ghosh goes so far as to suggest that the
contemporary novel is simply not capable of capturing and accurately depicting the climate
crisis. He writes that “Indeed, it could even be said that fiction that deals with climate change is
almost by definition not of the kind that is taken seriously by serious literary journals” (TGD 7).
On the limitations of the novel he writes that: “Here, then, is another form of resistance, a scalar
one, that the Anthropocene presents to the techniques that are most closely identified with the
novel: its essence consists of phenomena that were long ago expelled from the territory of the
novel – forces of unthinkable magnitude that create unbearably intimate connections over vast
gaps in time and space” (Ghosh, TGD 63). His acknowledgement of fiction’s limited capacity to
deal with climate change comes from a position of experience given that his fiction endeavours
to do so. Bould acknowledges these limitations in The Anthropocene Unconscious but suggests
Andrews 35
that some texts engage with the crisis unconsciously rather than directly. Tim Clark explores the
novel’s value with regards to depicting the Anthropocene before explaining its limitations. In The
Value of Ecocriticism (2019), he begins his chapter on “The Challenge for Prose Narrative” by
explaining how the novel could indeed be useful when aiming to depict climate change. He
remarks that:
The novel has long seemed especially suited to the way environmental issues
are always and immediately also issues of politics and culture. A novel in
particular has the power to be comprehensive in the way that, say, a paper in a
scientific or social science journal never could be; for it is free to trace all
imaginable scenarios and survey how prejudice, personal background, cultural
assumptions, scientific research and the complacencies of day-to-day life all form
part of how people engage or evade environmental questions. (Clark 78)
The freedom that the novel form possesses to depict various scenarios and perspectives is
indeed valuable. The climate crisis is an issue of such multiplicity and broad scope, that the
novel is capable of encapsulating and packaging a complex issue in a way which is more
accessible than, as he says, a paper in a journal.
Clark goes on to acknowledge that although he has criticized the novel form elsewhere
in his book, “its dramatization of plural responses to this event illustrates how the novel as a
form can seem ideally placed to engage the very mixed-up nature of the Anthropocene, its blend
of fact and value, politics and climatology, emotional denial and habit, the interplay of global and
local scales” (Clark 79). Indeed, the novel, and particularly the cli-fi novel, draws together this
otherwise “mixed up nature of the Anthropocene,” but is limited simply by virtue of the
staggering complexity and breadth of a concept like climate change or the Anthropocene.
Narrative is limited precisely because of “the almost bewildering multiplicity of factors behind
global environmental degradation” (Clark 83) when it comes to properly depicting climate
change. It is hard to keep track of all the things causing climate change as it’s very rarely an ‘A
causes B’ situation. Rather it is an ‘A-thru-Z to the power of three all contribute to Anthropogenic
Climate Change’ kind of situation. Depicting climate-change in any genre of fiction, whether that
is cli-fi specifically or another subgenre entirely, is most definitely challenging. Müller et al. refer
to this interplay as a form of “ecological ambivalence,” in their eponymous book, which they
suggest “refers to the disorder, ecological grief, global dissonance, and denial we—both as
individuals and as members of society—feel, witness, seek to understand, or combat in the face
of multiple and seemingly unresolvable planetary crises. As contributions in this volume
illustrate, ecological ambivalence works on multiple scales and in multiple formats” (4). They
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suggest that this feeling of ecological ambivalence is pervasive in a twenty-first century context
in that it is “thus more than an expression of disorder and difference, or merely a critique of
binary conceptual thinking. In an era of climate change, biodiversity loss, and planetary
contamination, it is an intrinsic part of all human experience, thought, and action—an expression
of the current Zeitgeist and logic” (6). This ambivalence so often manifests into inaction, and
“the state of angst, inaction, and paralysis that affects societies while they should instead be
taking action has created a conundrum that the social sciences have set out to solve in their
studies on human behavior” (4). Literature, too, takes up this challenge. It is this “mixed-up
nature of the Anthropocene” (Clark 79) which cli-fi aims to encapsulate most directly, and which
other subgenres are acknowledging with greater frequency.
Who is reading cli-fi?
Studies on the effectiveness of cli-fi with regards to its ability to persuade readers about
the climate change threat are limited. Fortunately, the few articles which have evaluated cli-fi’s
effectiveness provide some quantitative information about the readership of cli-fi. Matthew
Schneider-Mayerson has been a part of several important studies on the readership and
effectiveness of cli-fi; his work offers some insight to who is reading it. Schneider-Mayerson et
al.’s 2023 article “Environmental Literature as Persuasion: An Experimental Test of the Effects of
Reading Climate Fiction” acknowledges the growth of the cli-fi subgenre:
Today, the genre is growing so quickly that any comprehensive list would soon
become outdated. These works are no longer relegated to the margins of
literature or viewed as mere genre fiction, but instead represent some of the most
well-respected and widely-read English-language authors writing today, including
Margaret Atwood, Barbara Kingsolver, Amitav Ghosh, Ian McEwan, Cormac
McCarthy, David Mitchell, and Kim Stanley Robinson. Fictional works that focus
on climate change are also beginning to win major literary awards. (Schneider-
Mayerson et al. 36)
Several of the authors indicated in Schneider-Mayerson et al.’s article’s works are discussed in
this project. “Using an exploratory qualitative survey, Schneider-Mayerson (2018) found that
climate fiction readers reported that reading climate fiction caused them to perceive climate
change as more psychologically proximate, to explore the psychological and social dimensions
of climate change, and to appreciate the scale and gravity of climate change.” “A second survey
(Schneider-Mayerson, 2020) suggests that a climate fiction novel can make readers more
aware of climate injustice and lead them to empathize with climate migrants” (Schneider-
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Mayerson et al. 37). This demonstrates the value that cli-fi has with regards to climate change
communication – something Steve McIlwaine calls for in his article on “Journalism and Climate
Science” as poor communication of a challenging concept tends to lead to further denial and
skepticism.
A limitation to Schneider-Mayerson et al.’s study on cli-fi readership, and an important
caveat to their findings about the effectiveness of the genre, is that “The population of interest
for [their] experiment was fiction readers who tend to believe that global warming is happening
and human-caused, but do not consider the risks to be severe and do not consider the issue to
be highly important to them personally” (Schneider-Mayerson et al. 38). So, while these
respondents do not necessarily think climate change is particularly problematic or dangerous,
they do understand that climate change is happening and that it is human caused. That is, they
at least partially understand the science behind the climate crisis already. This is an important
audience to reach, however the scope of the study is limited as a further important audience is
comprised of those who do not necessarily have a prior opinion about climate change, or those
who have the opinion that it is not happening or that we are not causing it – put simply, people
who are ignorant or people who are denialists.
In his 2018 article “The Influence of Climate Fiction,” Schneider-Mayerson surveyed
readers of cli-fi. He asks “Who reads climate fiction? … While literary criticism often implies the
existence of an average reader who interprets a text or genre in a way that is consistent with the
analysis of a professional reader and critic, empirical research shows that readers often
experience literature very differently” (477). His study “found cli-fi readers to be younger, more
liberal, and more concerned about climate change than non-readers of climate fiction” (478).
Schneider-Mayerson acknowledges the apparent leftism of the cli-fi readership but does not go
so far as to suggest that this renders cli-fi powerless in convincing readers of the severity of
climate change if they already know this to be the case. While he suggests that “climate fiction
is not merely preaching to the liberal choir” he also comments that this seems to be the case as
he states that “cli-fi readers are also strong believers in climate change” (479). He also remarks
that “Most cli-fi novels announce their subject—and therefore their assumptions about the
existence, causation, and significance of climate change—in their synopses, which are visible
on back covers and Amazon pages. As such, it seems unlikely that these works would function
as Trojan horses for message smuggling” (479). What he means here is that for a non-trivial
portion of cli-fi’s readership, some understanding of climate science and some understanding of
the severity of the situation is already present. When remarking on cli-fi’s potential impact with
regards to reaching wider audiences, he suggests that “For ecocritics and environmentalists
Andrews 38
who hope that climate fiction might convert conservative climate deniers, these results might be
disappointing” (479). Herein lies one of the key limitations to the cli-fi genre.
Perhaps the genre is limited through being referred to as cli-fi rather than more broadly
as simply sf. Climate skeptics or outright deniers of Anthropogenic climate change are less likely
to read cli-fi works in part because the focus of such texts is almost always on the negative
outcomes of a climate future which such readers would consider an impossibility. With this in
mind, there does seem to be an element of “preaching to the choir” as Schneider-Mayerson
puts it, when it comes to who is reading cli-fi and what it can do to persuade readers. An
important nuance here is that, despite preaching to the choir, he concludes that:
literature can be quite effective at enabling or compelling readers to imagine
potential futures and consider the fragility of human societies and vulnerable
ecosystems. While it may not play a significant role in convincing skeptics and
deniers to reconsider their positions (partially because they are less likely to read
these works of fiction), it might effectively nudge moderates and remind
concerned liberals and leftists of the severity and urgency of Anthropogenic
climate change. This in itself is ecopolitically significant. (495)
Indeed, the impact that cli-fi has on readers is ecopolitically significant as it is a further means of
getting climate change science in front of readers beyond news articles and reports, or
academic journal articles. In their 2023 study, Schneider-Mayerson et al.’s results
[highlight] the effects that the growing genre of environmental literature is likely
having on the beliefs and attitudes of its readers. Further, educators, researchers,
publishers, and activists seeking persuasive climate change communication
content should note the growing body of research indicating the effectiveness of
narratives and storytelling, and of climate fiction specifically. (47)
As the list of cli-fi texts continues to grow, so too should its impact on readers, even if this
impact is minor, and even if the readers are already those who accept climate science.
The readership of cli-fi is indeed a factor to acknowledge when considering its
effectiveness and persuasiveness with regards to readers’ potential climate orientations. As the
above studies indicate, there is an impact on readers’ climate views, but such works do not act
“as Trojan horses for message smuggling” (Schneider-Mayerson 479). This calls for an
examination of other subgenres – including ATQF and New Weird – for their ability to potentially
smuggle climate messages into readers’ peripheral vision.
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An Issue of Scale and Proximity
One of the principal challenges to communicating the climate crisis effectively is its vast
scale – what makes it a hyperobject according to Morton. It is so massively distributed across
time and space, it touches and affects practically everything, yet it is often intangible or invisible.
Tim Clark remarks on the scale of the hyperobject in The Value of Ecocriticism – he refers to the
understanding of the issue as one of “scalar literacy.” He suggests that “‘Scale [has become] a
new focus of critical debate. The fact that major environmental issues and changes are now
largely outside the range of the local, embodied perception has had the effect of enmeshing
environmental questions more deeply and perplexingly into the nature of politics and social
debate” (Clark 38). To illustrate the complexities of scale associated with the climate crisis, he
refers to the well-known adage that to do right by the environment one must ‘think globally and
act locally.’ With this example he demonstrates the dualistic approach needed to fully
comprehend the climate crisis, as it suggests “that environmental activists need to work on at
least two scales at once. … The inherent logic is also, paradoxically, that one cannot only act
locally, that any action affects the whole world, however minutely” (39). Literature about climate
change also faces this difficulty when trying to encapsulate the multi-scalar and complex nature
of the climate crisis.
Scale and setting are reflective of two overlapping concepts: position in time, and
position in space. For simplicity, I refer to scale using the related term ‘proximity.’ From an
individual perspective, the lack of proximity that many feel in relation to the most direct effects of
the climate crisis is a huge component in the lack of resulting awareness or action about the
issue more broadly. As mentioned earlier, McIlwaine remarks that one of the major challenges
when communicating the climate crisis is the fact that climatic events are localized while the
gradually more dangerous long-term impacts are at the global scale. Cli-fi aims to overcome this
challenge of scale by making the climate crisis more proximate to readers both in terms of time
and space.
This is done in a multitude of ways, the most common of which is that many cli-fi texts,
not just those explored in this chapter, take place at a point in the future when climate change
has become more severe. This aims to tackle the lack of temporal proximity by placing the
reader right in front of the severe climate events, but it can also work counter-intuitively by
setting a text so far in the future that the reader can no longer connect with the events in the
story as if they are real or in any way representative of reality
15
. For example, setting a novel in
15
This is not the case for all cli-fi as there are well-known examples which are set in the near
future such as Ian McEwan’s Solar (2010) which takes place over three periods in 2000, 2005,
Andrews 40
the mid-twenty-second century brings the effects of the climate crisis to the fore, but detaches
the reader from the events in the text as the entirety of the readership will be long gone by the
time we get to that point in the future. The Not-in-my-Backyard (NIMBY) mentality, most often
associated with space as opposed to time, applies here. Put simply, readers care less about
what may happen in the distant future than what may occur in their lifetimes.
It is challenging to encapsulate that which affects the globe collectively within the
parameters of a novel. As a result, many texts focus on localized events in specific places –
such as New York City in the year 2140 as Robinson’s novel’s title suggests. Some cli-fi is set at
a more global scale, with various characters travelling all over the world, but the effects of the
climate crisis in such narratives are still localized. This is a point raised by Kim Stanley
Robinson in MftF. The novel begins with a heat wave in India which kills 20 million people and
prompts the creation of the eponymous Ministry. Robinson emphasises the fact that, globally,
citizens quickly forget about the Indian Heat Wave unless they are in India, and things continue
as usual until events happen in their more immediate proximity – later in the novel a massive
flood hits Los Angeles and garners much more attention in North America.
Tim Clark discusses the temporal and spatial limitations of cli-fi in his chapter on “The
Challenge for Prose Narrative” from The Value of Ecocriticism. He writes that “Erin James …in
her The Storyworld Accord (2015) … celebrates the power of novels to immerse readers in local
environments and modes of perceiving them. Her argument hinges on the way narratives are
most ‘immersive’ when they successfully project the spatial and cultural as felt on the human
scale” (Clark 79).
16
It is challenging to couple the scale of the Anthropocene with the human
scale. That is, readers are more apt to care about the local scale inhabited by the protagonists
than that of the whole world. Clark writes that:
At the same time, James’s very defence of features that make a narrative
immediate also, unwittingly, suggests possible limitations and questions when it
comes to engaging environmental issues on a global scale, or which may not be
visible locally, such as climate change. The global context is now one of variously
dangerous environmental tipping points, but in which changes are happening at
and 2009, as well as Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior (2012) which is set in the present
rather than looking into the far future. The final texts discussed in this chapter acknowledge that
some cli-fi is set in the present as I engage with Beckett’s Two Tribes (2020) which is set in the
present as well as in the far future, as well as Robinson’s Ministry for the Future (2020) which is
set just a few years in the future.
16
Erin James coined the term eco-narratology in her 2015 paper “The Storyworld Accord” to
define a branch of literary criticism concerned with combining ecocriticism and the study of
narrative.
Andrews 41
scales that we do not perceive with ordinary human faculties, and with a
complexity that may escape us, though we cannot escape it. This is a whole
whose ‘unconformities’ in a broad material sense may well elude the novel
understood as a form which privileges the realm of personal human experience
as the basic reality. (80-81)
This is interesting as the novels in this chapter experiment with narrative perspective. It is
common for novels to be narrated either from the perspective of a primary character or set of
characters, or for them follow that character or group closely. As a result, many narratives are
literally restricted to where those characters can go in the space of a novel (spatial limitation), or
to how long those characters may live (temporal limitation). This is something even cli-fi
struggles to overcome, as human beings only live for a finite period, usually less than one
century, whereas climatic changes occur over periods which are of course much longer.
Temporal and spatial issues of scale limit cli-fi’s ability to properly engage with or depict
the climate crisis. Clark acknowledges that this limitation goes beyond just cli-fi. He suggests
that a re-evaluation of genre-fiction collectively, and of cli-fi’s place in genre fiction in relation to
‘serious’ fiction, is needed. He writes that “a claim Trexler makes for ‘Anthropocene fiction’ more
generally, [is] that ‘melting ice caps, global climate models, rising sea levels, and tipping points
have altered the formal possibilities of the novel” (Clark 96). A look at more than just the cli-fi
subgenre is needed as part of the re-evaluation. As a result of this re-evaluation of what the
novel can achieve with regards to the Anthropocene, Clark remarks that “Ecocritics have been a
leading voice in calling for a revaluation of much so-called genre fiction” (96). Clark indicates
that “Ghosh… and Trexler each argue for a drastic shakeup of the arguably elitist distinction
between so-called serious literature and genre literature, particularly ‘horror’, ‘science fiction’
and ‘gothic’” (96). Cli-fi quite obviously belongs on the list of genre fiction here as a subgenre to
sf, and it too should be taken more seriously alongside the so-called ‘serious’ literature as Clark
suggests.
The subgenres introduced in the latter chapters of this project, Anthropo-Temporal
Quasi-Fantasy and New Weird fiction, also belong on the list of subgenres which should be
taken seriously in relation to mainstream literature. Clark remarks that “The focus on genre
literature might suggest that what is called for is a drastic reconsideration of current norms of
literary quality” (97) and he states that Ghosh finds:
too often a blinkered limitation of ambition, oblivious to the wider kinds of spatial
and temporal scale familiar in science fiction. He traces the ‘separation of science
fiction from the literary mainstream’ as a ‘slow and gradual’ drawing of
Andrews 42
boundaries. … The result, [Ghosh] argues, is a now dangerous disjunction
between the contemporary world and so-called serious literature, mostly oblivious
to realities on the spatial and temporal scales familiar in science fiction. (97)
James acknowledges this challenge as she argues that “the categories and concepts of current
narratological models are insufficient for our epoch – that narrative is changing along with the
world in which we tell and receive stories, and that narrative scholars require a new set of
conceptual tools to identify, articulate, and track these changes” (James, Narrative in the
Anthropocene 14). Cli-fi, being the most centrally and directly climate-oriented subgenre of
fiction, is of course under the most scrutiny for how it engages with and depicts the climate
crisis. The academic community acknowledges the difficulties here, too. This project offers an
examination of existing cli-fi before introducing subgenres which approach the issue of proximity
to climate change by engaging with it indirectly.
Dramatization/Over-Fictionalization in Cli-fi
The final part of this discussion of the limitations of cli-fi refers to the way the climate
crisis itself is depicted and the choices made by cli-fi authors when positioning climate change
as the central antagonist. In a conference I attended (virtually) at Anglia Ruskin University in
2021 on “Migration and Exile in Science Fiction,” keynote speaker and author, Professor Helen
Marshall discussed the challenge sci-fi writers encounter when trying to invoke climate change
as the paramount threat within a narrative. She acknowledged that it is challenging to make
‘raindrops’ the enemy, for example. As a result, the climate futures in cli-fi tend to be the most
extreme possible scenarios. This is indeed the case in the proto-cli-fi works by J. G. Ballard
discussed in this chapter – The Drought and The Drowned World both depict a world in which
climate change has reached a dystopian end-of-days state. Put simply, “Fiction dealing with
climate change must find ways to dramatise aggregate change, to narrate slowness over time,
while also highlighting potential dystopian disasters of flooding, food shortages, or intense heat”
(Macfarlane qtd. in Gladwin 171). It is this dramatization, or over-dramatization, of aggregate
change which can make cli-fi texts read as if they are not accurate representations of the reality
of the crisis.
The two initial cli-fi works selected for this chapter by Beckett and Robinson endeavour
to make the representations of the climate crisis accurate within reason. However, as their focus
is on the climate crisis, they inevitably include the familiar disasters of flooding, forest fires,
droughts, heat waves, and the subsequent conflict, migration, and economic turmoil most
commonly associated with climate change. It can appear to be an over-fictionalization of an
Andrews 43
issue if a novel simply bombards the reader with disaster after disaster – like binge-watching a
TV drama in which the characters seem to all be involved in plane crashes, hostage situations,
and bombings all while trying to navigate the complexities of young relationships while
completing their surgical residency programs.
17
Beckett and Kim Stanley Robinson strive to
overcome the issue of over-fictionalizing the real by focusing on the secondary effects of the
climate crisis – in Beckett’s case with America City this is population migration, and in
Robinson’s NY2140 the focus is on the economics of the climate-changed landscape.
Depictions of climate futures tend to be negative as they suggest a continuation and
acceleration of the things that we, as a global society, are doing wrong. Erin James and Adam
Trexler both suggest a need for change in the way that the Anthropocene is depicted in fiction;
James remarks that “an Anthropocene narrative is one that will focus on certain literary qualities:
disproportionate scale effects, especially between domestic and planetary scales; complex
descriptions of transformations to human economy; and a dominant presence of nonhuman
things” (Narrative in the Anthropocene 10). She suggests that “we have told ourselves stories
about the environment that permit and encourage destructive behaviour and call for the
exploration of new, more environmentally responsible ones” (7). James is referring to the need
for more ecologically conscious narratives which tell stories which resist the destructive
narratives which have come before. Müller et al. suggest a similar need for a change in the
narratives we tell around climate change. They remark upon societal ambivalence towards the
crisis and suggest that “the human mind rather responds to the challenges of climate change
with new narratives of evasion that help sustain old privileges, rather than with behavioral
change. This deviation in narratology, in turn, some environmental scholars and activists seek to
counter with yet other, perhaps more radically hopeful, narratives, ultimately creating a ping-
pong between seemingly incompatible positions” (5).
I suggest that despite its value in ecocritical discourse, cli-fi can also contribute to what
James refers to as “destructive behaviour” if it is the exclusive or de-facto genre for depicting
climate change in fiction. I argue that there are other subgenres within SFF (namely ATQF and
NW) which deserve attention for the way they engage with the Anthropocene and shake up the
collective ecological unconscious. Morton aims to awaken readers from their ecological
unconscious with the concept of hyperobjects. Morton is “in search of forms of representation
that can push humans past the damaging anthropocentrism that produced the Anthropocene”
(James, Narrative in the Anthropocene 8). Morton argues “that a more responsible way of living
17
This refers to the popular ongoing medical drama Grey’s Anatomy (2005-present)
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in the world in the Anthropocene depends upon new representations of that world” and that
“responsible art in the Anthropocene cannot maintain a status quo” (qtd. in James 9). Ghosh
goes so far to say that the climate change novel simply cannot exist, and that the problem is not
about form itself, but rather about the impossibility of the task. Perhaps this is why narratives
either appear to over dramatize the climate crisis or appear overly optimistic in depictions of the
world 200 years in the future in which civilization still functions with relative ease. It is a
challenging line for cli-fi authors to tread.
The reality of Anthropogenic climate change is that we are living in a period of
unprecedented crisis. So, to present the modern world accurately is to depict that crisis. I argue
here that this is difficult to do without such a depiction appearing overly dramatized or
fictionalized. The World Economic Forum’s report from January 2023 highlights the Ukraine war,
social unrest, food shortages, and supply chain issues among the top 10 risks, alongside 6 of
the ten which relate to the climate crisis (Torkington). This combination, they suggest, indicates
that we are in a time of polycrisis. They remark that “The collective vocabularies stored in the
world’s great dictionaries didn’t appear to hold a single word to sum up all this strife. So here’s a
new one: Polycrisis” (Torkington).
18
The title of the WEF article asks simply “how worried should
we be?” Given that this is the period we find ourselves in, it is understandable that the fiction of
our time tends towards the dramatization and eventual doomsday or dystopian scenarios when
it aims to depict the climate crisis directly.
So, what we need is a re-evaluation of exactly what kinds of texts are useful when
discussing climate change. I do not go as far as Ghosh in saying that the climate novel cannot
exist, but I do agree with Ghosh – and Heise and Trexler among other ecocritics and scholars –
that a re-examination of genre is needed when it comes to the representation of the
Anthropocene in fiction. Put simply, it is not that cli-fi texts are bad at this job, but rather that we
can look beyond them to overcome some of these limitations.
The Archetypal Contemporary/Twenty-First Century Cli-fi Novel: America City (2017), by
Chris Beckett
Perhaps the most representative twenty-first century cli-fi novel in this chapter is Chris
Beckett’s America City. Beckett’s text is a politically driven cli-fi narrative centered around US
senator Stephen Slaymaker’s rise to political stardom with the help of his campaign advisor and
18
The term ‘polycrisis’ was first coined by historian Adam Tooze in the 1970s to reflect the
culmination and agglomeration of multiple crises.
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public-relations expert, Holly Peacock. Set in the middle of the twenty-second century, the
effects of our current climate crisis are worsening at alarming rates, rendering much of the
continental US an extremely unpredictable and dangerous place to live. The changing climate in
Beckett’s near future has led to mass migrations of large populations in the southern US, and
this leads to political tensions between the US and Canada because of the vast, unused, and
increasingly temperate space in Canada’s north. With a massive population and shrinking areas
of habitability, American politicians, including Slaymaker, look for solutions for where to send the
storm-people, or “Barreduras” – Beckett’s term in AC for people displaced by the changing
climate. Slaymaker’s solution is to look towards Canada. The novel’s title comes from the name
for the newly built US territory in Canada’s north after pressure from Slaymaker forces the
Canadian government to open its borders to Americans.
Cli-fi Criteria
Beckett’s text is a central example of cli-fi for several reasons. Firstly, and most simply, it
fulfils the mandatory requirement to be considered cli-fi as it is set on Earth and its primary
concern is Anthropogenic climate change. Next, it meets the secondary cli-fi criteria as it
focuses on the political process in the US surrounding the climate crisis. It works to explain the
science behind the climate crisis, and it illustrates that there are still skeptics who deny the
effects of climate change even as it worsens and is felt across the US. Beckett explores how
new technology and AI impacts communication and public opinion when misinformation and
disinformation can spread with remarkable ease. Thirdly, Beckett’s novel is particularly important
for its specific focus on population migration as a fundamental impact of the climate crisis. This
impact makes the climate crisis more proximate to those who believe they are in areas which
may not be affected by the direct impacts of a warming climate.
America City has a relatively static setting as it is set almost exclusively in the United
States. Once the decision is made for Canada to open its southern border to America’s
displaced populations, some of the latter chapters take place in the new America City in
Canada’s north. Like many contemporary cli-fi novels, AC is set at a point in the future which is
both near enough to the present to be shocking, and also near enough to reflect an educated
guess or speculative prediction as to what could happen by this point with regards to the
climate. Set in the mid twenty-second century, the events in AC occur well beyond the lifetime of
all its readership – nobody alive today will be alive in the mid-twenty-second-century. Cli-fi is set
in the future for a variety of reasons, the most obvious being that it shows readers a point in
time in which the climate is markedly worse than in the present and allows authors to depict
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gradual change immediately. Readers can see changes in the climate over the span of a
century or more without necessarily needing to intensify or dramatize too far what is suggested
by existing predictive models on climate change.
Depicting the changing climate over long time scales is a challenge for narrative as
authors and texts are confined by how much can be explored in the span of a book or series
and still make sense to the reader. Ursula Heise, in her work on “Science Fiction and the Time
Scales of the Anthropocene” (2019), writes that:
Large temporal scales, in particular, have come to the fore in discussions of the
Anthropocene. In the perspective of many scholars, writers, and artists, the
Anthropocene forces us to consider human society and the conditions that have
enabled its survival in the past over long time spans, as well as to assess impacts
that may last hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of years into the
future. (277)
Cli-fi aims to overcome this challenge, at least in part, by frequently being set far into the future.
The imagined future in Beckett’s AC is in many ways very similar to the present in the 2020s.
The book does not contain radical differences or developments to current technologies which
would appear to be at the farfetched end of speculative. Rather, Beckett’s depiction of twenty-
second century America is still characterized by a wealth gap, a polarized political spectrum,
and influential social media combined with AI which is adept at generating misinformation and
disinformation – Beckett calls this the “Whisperstream.”
Beckett remarks on the technological development of the “Jeenee” and the “cristal” –
technologies akin to an AI and a smartphone or tablet – when he writes that:
Holly and Richard lived at a time of famine, poverty, war and disease, an epoch
when historic nations were falling apart in bloody civil wars, million-year-old
forests were dying, and vast and ancient ocean reefs, full of life and color within
the memory of their own grandparents, had turned to crumbling white skeletons
of stone. Yet oddly it was also a time of unprecedented technological power. No
one talked about the Turing Test. The jeenee inside Holly’s cristal was quite
capable of talking for hours without revealing that it wasn’t human. (Beckett, AC
50)
Despite being a depiction of the twenty-second century, this could almost be a description of the
present in terms of our ecological destruction occurring alongside unprecedented technological
advancements. The Jeenee, a siri-esque chatbot, is reflective of the kind of developments seen
in generative AI technology over the past few years in the 2020s. The ‘unprecedented’ tech in
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AC is perhaps less speculative than Beckett had initially intended. Beckett remarks on this
himself in a 2021 interview entitled “Good guys and bad guys: a writer’s perspective by Chris
Beckett” as he jokes that “No one ever thinks about the problems all this rapid change is
causing for writers of speculative fiction! Sitting there at my laptop, writing America City, it
sometimes felt to me as if reality was overtaking me” (qtd. in W. James). In the same interview,
when discussing AI and technology, he says “I’m not in any way technical, but one thing I’ve
learnt as a writer about the future is that if you think about something that could plausibly
happen then very likely it will exist, and quite probably already does” (qtd. in W. James). That
which Beckett implies “could plausibly happen” pertains both to the climate scenarios and the
developments of AI technology becoming realities.
A marked difference between Beckett’s twenty-second century America and America in
reality is the state of the climate and the direct effect it is having on Americans. Beckett
juxtaposes this technological progress and ecological catastrophe by using several first-person
perspectives from characters who have been displaced by environmental disasters in
interjecting chapters between those which follow Holly, the novel’s protagonist. In one such
chapter, a first-person account reads:
[t]he hardest part was that our houses and businesses were now worth nothing at
all. No one was going to move into a town with no water, so pretty much all of the
money we had invested there was gone for good. … We’d kind of seen it coming
for several years, though – the same thing was happening all over the south-west
– and we made up our minds as a community to have one last big party under
the stars, sell whatever movable stuff we could, and then go our separate ways.
(Beckett, AC 65)
This excerpt reads similarly to personal accounts in news stories in the 2020s, however the fact
that these climate disasters and weather events affect Americans more directly is part of what
distinguishes the text from such news stories. Rather than the USA coming to the aid of other
countries in need, or even welcoming displaced Americans from parts of the country which had
been hard hit by disasters, AC depicts a fractured America in which the “delicado” (wealthy,
upper-class Americans) and “barredura” (literally ‘dirt’ – “storm trash” or “dusties”) populations
within America’s borders are at odds with one another thanks to the rapidly changing climate
causing mass population migration.
The context for Beckett’s novel being set in the twenty-second century is “an America in
about a hundred years’ time, that was already almost completely closed off to climate refugees
from other parts of the world, but was facing new stresses as a result of mass internal
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migrations caused by climate change” (Beckett qtd. in L. James). Setting the text in the twenty-
second century allows Beckett to accelerate the changes in the climate and force the reader’s
focus onto North America. Steve McIlwaine reminds us that it is challenging to communicate
climate concerns to an audience when those concerns are spatially distant to them. Put simply,
if a major climate event occurs in the Middle East, or North Africa, or Southeast Asia, readers
and viewers in North America or Europe are more easily able to disregard or ignore it. In
America City, the changes in climate occur in North America, so readers are more spatially
cognizant of the impacts as they can more easily place themselves in the narrative if the effects
are felt closer to home. A speculative article in the Washington Post entitled “Which U.S. cities
will fare best in a warming world — and which will be hit hardest?” (2023) aims to explain how
the worst effects of the changing climate will impact major cities across the US. Interestingly, it
leaves out the primary impact discussed in Beckett’s novel: population migration. The article
focuses on “heat, drought, and sea level rise” (Birnbaum) as the three metrics by which cities
will be most affected by climate change. Given that heat, drought, and sea level rise are already
having catastrophic effects all over the world, such articles demonstrate that the attention of
American readers with regards to the climate crisis is sequestered into what the impact will be
close to home. Setting AC a century in the future helps Beckett bring the climate crisis itself
closer to home by including migration on this list of impacts.
The side-effect of cli-fi like AC being set so far in the future, is that there is a greater
sense of distance between the reader’s experience of the text and their experience of the real
world. The trade-off to making the climate crisis more spatially proximate is that the setting is
less temporally proximate. It is limited in the same way that many similar cli-fi texts are limited: it
is hard to make someone care about a problem that is a century away, let alone within a work of
fiction. Heise remarks on this limitation, as does James in Narrative in the Anthropocene (2022),
and Ghosh in The Great Derangement. Like Ghosh, Heise remarks on the mainstream novel’s
inability to deal with climate change (Heise, “Time Scales of the Anthropocene” 281). AC is set
just too far in the future to be temporally proximate for current readers to care. Worse still, it may
suggest that we have a century of easy living before things change drastically, despite the
climate data indicating that severe climate impacts are likely to worsen much sooner. The lack
of temporal proximity to the issue is part of what limits cli-fi’s ability to depict the climate crisis in
a way which is impactful to readers or that might change their perception of the climate crisis at
all.
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Climate Change Policy and Public Perception
America City, like Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, explores the
political process relative to the changing climate. While MftF looks directly at climate policy
around the world with the eponymous working group the “Ministry for the Future,” AC focuses
on Senator Stephen Slaymaker’s journey to the White House as he navigates the political
landscape amidst the changing climate and the resultingly fractured United States. AC and MftF
operate in this overlapping space between literature and policymaking as their narratives are
about policy. Beckett’s novel focuses on the communication element of the climate crisis rather
than simply on shocking the reader by envisioning increasingly dramatic or catastrophic weather
events. McIlwaine highlights the need for clearer communication about the climate crisis in that
“many media reports have been found to start from the assumption that climate scientists
disagree about the human contribution to increases in greenhouse gases” (50). He makes it
clear that: “All this perceived uncertainty, of course, is unfounded. While climate scientists are
typically cautious about precise predictions of essentially chaotic systems, they are
overwhelmingly in agreement on this question and have been for many years” and he
demonstrates the “remarkably high level of consensus among the leading climate scientists
around the world” (51). Beckett explores this fault in communication around climate change in
Slaymaker’s campaign and uses the “whisperstream” – like X (formerly Twitter) – to spread fake
news, rumours, and slander related to climate policy. This ultimately results in the Senator’s bid
to place blame for the climate crisis on Canada for having so much unused space while limiting
the number of citizenships it grants to foreigners. The America City site is then built in Canada’s
north. The denialism and rejection of known climate science for political gain mirrors that which
is already happening in reality. This policy, while appearing to be a kind of ‘solution,’ is ultimately
a further delay of the larger problem anyway. Eventually there will be no space further North for
people to migrate. Michael Howlett remarks that policy-makers tend to be blame-avoidant and
risk-averse in the short-term, ultimately denying the problem or simply trying to outlast it rather
than solve it. He suggests that:
risk averse governments are often happier to do nothing or little rather than do
something which might lead them to be blamed for a failure. This aversion in the
climate change case extends so far as leading some governments to engage in a
number of procedural strategies intended to downplay a problem and deny the
need for substantive action to deal with it rather than take positive action towards
its remediation. (Howlett 401)
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Slaymaker’s policy is reflective of real-world climate policies which are blame-avoidant and risk-
averse, which ultimately do not deal with the root causes of climate change.
With problems like climate change, which are so hyperobjective and massively
distributed across the world, it is not easy to assign exclusive blame to any one individual,
country, or organization. The Covid-19 pandemic presented a similar problem. When something
like climate change, or Covid-19 happens, many people take it personally, as if it is happening
‘to them’ directly. With covid, this resulted in conspiracy theories, moral panics, and targeted
campaigns of misinformation and disinformation. Ridiculous and baseless theories like Covid-19
being caused by 5G cellular towers or implanted microchips (Goodman and Carmichael)
circulated freely on social media. Politicians quickly politicized the pandemic, making it a key
part of their platforms and, in the US, a key part of electoral campaigns – former US President
Donald Trump was a vocal critic of much of the Covid-19 science and instead favoured
unsubstantiated claims about alternative medications and therapies touted from niche areas on
the internet (BBC News, “Coronavirus: Trump’s signals ‘not helpful’ says Fauci”). Thanks to
social media, even unverified and unsubstantiated claims can spread extremely quickly if they
appeal to readers. Misinformation and disinformation so often spreads easily because it offers
simpler, more attractive narratives and quick solutions to complex problems. So, when a political
figure like Donald Trump implies that medically-backed treatments may be dangerous, or that
the severity of the pandemic may be being overstated for political means, people who feel like
they have been personally slighted by the Covid-19 safety measures suddenly have an
attractive alternative. The same is the case in Beckett’s vision of a climate future in Canada and
the US in America City.
Beckett’s novel looks at the politicization of the climate crisis in the face of mass
migrations in the US and looks to externalize blame with a simple solution: Canada. In AC the
truth is less important than the political or social-mediated narrative. Americans quickly come
around to the idea of annexing some of Canada’s land – an initially preposterous idea –
because it fulfils two simple requirements: it is easy to understand, and it externalizes blame.
Beckett writes that “All of humanity possessed the same basic toolkit of principles but everyone
selected only the ones that suited their present purposes” (224). When directing the AIs in the
whisperstream – the literal whisper campaign and rumor mill – Holly crafts specific themes and
directions for the narrative to take which include jokes about dead Canadians and references to
Canadians being associated with words like ‘traitor’ (212-213). Beckett writes that:
Factual accuracy meant very little to the whisperstream, flowing along its
countless separate parallel channels like the buried id of human society,
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hidden away, often denied or decried by its own creators, yet far more
powerful than anything that lay above. Factual accuracy – factual accuracy
even as an aspiration – was for the broadscreen-based news hubs, and only a
minority of the population ever looked at those. Down in the stream, as in art,
it wasn’t the literal truth of a thing that counted, but whether it felt true in your
gut. (213)
As is the case on social media today, factual accuracy very rarely tends to be the primary
objective – rather, the traction of the story to generate views, follows, and likes is all that
matters. The focus becomes less on solving the climate crisis, and more on reallocating the
blame for its impacts.
In AC, Americans do not take long to take the bait of the easy solution presented by the
Canada option: “Look at all that empty space, those green meadows. It’s kind of an indulgence,
wouldn’t you say, with the world as it is, for one country to insist on keeping all that to itself”
(Beckett 239). People displaced from their homes in the southern states quickly see the Canada
option as their only hope, and people in the northern states most affected by swathes of migrant
populations from the south see it as their right – if they are being asked to share their once
pristine and sparsely populated land, so too should the Canadians.
Climate Change Impacts: Migration
Like many cli-fi novels, America City includes depictions of severe weather events
including flooding, droughts, and heat waves. Importantly, Beckett’s novel also focuses on the
less-discussed secondary impact of climate change: population migration. When areas become
uninhabitable, populations are forced to move. As mentioned earlier, one of the primary hurdles
to climate-change communication is the intermittent and usually non-proximate nature of the
issue. McIlwaine notes that climate change is so often confined to local and regional events,
and we are quick to forget about the issue when it is not in our direct field of vision. So, in areas
which are less directly affected by the climate crisis, it can be a challenge to communicate the
collective severity of the issue. For example, in a temperate city like Vancouver, BC, the direct
effects of climate change, particularly in the 2020s, are most commonly positive – a slight
increase in average temperatures making winters slightly less dreary and summers slightly
more pleasant. By comparison, in BC’s interior in the Okanagan Valley in a small town like
Vernon, the effects of climate change include extreme heat and deadly forest fires in the
summers, and erratic cold snaps in the winters. Beckett uses population migration as a more
constant widely impacting result of climate change.
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Again here, the Covid-19 pandemic makes for a useful point of comparison. For
example, in Vernon, whose population is under a hundred thousand, there were very few cases
of Covid-19 early in the pandemic, whereas in the densely populated city of Vancouver on the
coast of BC there were many more cases, and the virus was much more visible. The restrictions
related to masking and lockdowns were Province-wide. A person living in Vernon could perhaps
be forgiven for thinking the pandemic was less severe than it was and could be forgiven for
being frustrated at the lockdown measures damaging businesses and laying off thousands of
workers. Similarly, a person living in Vancouver could be forgiven for being less attuned to the
climatic changes occurring in the Okanagan Valley several hundreds of kilometers inland.
What Beckett’s novel brings into focus is that even the places which seem to be immune
to or less harmed by the direct effects of climate change will be affected by the secondary
impact of population migration. The Northwestern states in the US are temperate and wet in the
twenty-second century. By comparison, the Southern states are dry, dusty, and towns are
increasingly in the paths of hurricanes. While the Southern states are those most directly and
catastrophically affected by the climate impacts, the Northern states, and subsequently Northern
Canada, feel the impact of the climate crisis by way of population increase and a strain on
infrastructure, services, and ultimately the status quo. Those from the southern states are
simply not wanted by those in the north. When describing the changing climate, Beckett
includes the deluge of human migration in the same train of thought as all the other climate
impacts:
There has only been a small change in the way that water comes down the
mountains, but an entire web of consequences are flowing out from it. Trees die.
Animals starve … And in the human world, farmers dig deeper wells, invest in
costly water-saving devices, experiment with expensively engineered low-water
crops, until a time comes when they can no longer borrow the money or no
longer service their debts. And then they abandon everything and follow the
animals north, becoming another stream, a human stream that branches across
America, a river of people with no money and no home, leaving crumbling
buildings and rusty machinery and empty fields. (92)
The imagery of a constant “human stream” flowing and overflowing into different parts of North
America is consistent throughout AC. Beckett thus positions population migration as a direct
consequence or impact of the changing climate equivalent to rising sea levels or increasing
temperatures. Beckett’s novel explores the migration implication of climate change both directly
and metaphorically. The overflow of migrant populations is a literal outcome of the climate in his
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novel and is also metaphorically representative of the actual rising tides which will be
experienced in coastal areas.
The cli-fi genre is often looked upon as an area within SF which is concerned solely with
climate change rather than being able to engage with other issues at the same time. This is a
reductive view of cli-fi as it would be for any other genre or subgenre. Cli-fi narratives
incorporate elements of many other genres. In her 2018 review of America City, Linda Wilson
uses a dismissive tone about cli-fi as she feels the need to add that Beckett’s novel does more
than simply discuss the climate – as if this is a limiting factor. She writes that “whilst America
City could be called a climate-change novel, it is much more than that. The droughts, storms,
and floods provide the context in which questions about identity, crafting story, creating and
manipulating political events and policy, and exploring tensions in friendships and relationships,
occur” (Wilson). Wilson’s remark here is somewhat counter-intuitive as these elements of the
text which she suggests are what make it more than cli-fi are inextricably linked to climate
change. The climate change narrative is the dominant story in Beckett’s text, just as it should be
seen in the real world. America City is indeed a climate change novel, but I agree with Wilson
that it goes further than simply expressing the direct or most apparent climate impacts. This is
reflective of the climate communication problem as a whole: simply communicating the climate
science or communicating potential climate futures tends not to be enough to evoke an
emotional response leading to action. Beckett’s novel works to make the climate crisis more
proximate to readers who are not always directly affected by the common impacts of climate
change like sea level or temperature rises.
America City is a typical contemporary example of cli-fi according to Liggett’s five criteria
and the simplified criteria used in this project: it is about Anthropogenic climate change, and it
takes place on Earth. Secondly, Beckett uses a political campaign as the ultimate culmination of
the resulting chaos of the climate crisis. The mass migrations of large populations from the US,
resulting from the destruction from the unstable climate, leads to the eventual settling, unrest,
conflict, and unrest between Canada and the United States.
AC and Cli-fi Limitations
Beckett’s novel begins to challenge some of the limitations of cli-fi, but it is still restricted
due to its direct engagement with the climate crisis. As AC is set in the mid-twenty-second
century, Beckett’s text makes the worst effects of the climate crisis more immediately visible to
readers. While the effects are visible, the novel is ultimately set beyond the lifetimes of its
readers, so the problem remains, as far as readers are concerned, not temporally proximate.
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The effects of the crisis itself are ultimately not the direct focus of the narrative as the novel
instead focuses on Slaymaker’s political campaigns and the resettling of Americans in Canada’s
North. The changing climate and the most drastic weather events are cleverly positioned as a
kind of ongoing newsreel told by interjecting narratives from those who have been displaced.
This is an effective means of depicting the climate crisis in a way which appears to reflect reality
more closely than if the novel focused solely on mass catastrophe affecting everyone. As stated
above, the “overflow” is the drastic increase in population migration which ultimately affects
everyone. This backdrop of stories from displaced populations in the US makes the worst
effects of the climate crisis appear to be less localized and instead spread out more vastly
across North America. This, in part, tackles the spatial proximity limitation faced by many cli-fi
texts. Importantly, these drastic effects are also taking place in North America as opposed to in
faraway parts of the world which are most affected in the twenty-first century and thus resonate
more with readers in North America and other parts of the prosperous, developed world.
Beckett’s novel takes the harshest impacts of climate change and makes them everyone’s
problem – rather than just a problem for the areas most specifically or directly affected –
because of population migration.
Kim Stanley Robinson – The Ministry for the Future (2020)
KSR’s MftF occupies an interesting place within the subgenre for several reasons.
Perhaps most importantly, it uses a breadth of accurate scientific information regarding the
status of the climate in the early twenty-first century, so much so that it is referred to in reviews,
and on the book’s cover, as “science fiction non-fiction.” Robinson’s other cli-fi also takes this
hard-sf approach to depicting the climate crisis, as is evident in New York 2140, and his Science
in the Capital trilogy. As in Forty Signs of Rain (2004), the first book in the Capital trilogy,
Robinson chooses to set MftF very close to the present rather than at some period either
decades or even centuries in the future. The novel is set amidst the most dramatic specific
events of the ongoing climate crisis as opposed to at some point after a projected global
catastrophe as is the case in both 2312 and New York 2140. As in Forty Signs of Rain, the
narrative in MftF focuses not only on the climatic disasters themselves, but also on the political,
economic, and bureaucratic processes behind solving a problem as vast as the climate crisis.
MftF fulfills the simple requirement of any cli-fi text in that it directly engages with Anthropogenic
climate change – its opening chapter tells the story of a crippling heat wave gripping India in
which twenty million people die as they literally bake in their homes, burn in the street, or boil in
the only small body of water in their villages.
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MftF is an important work within the growing body of cli-fi. Firstly, it fulfills the mandatory
and secondary cli-fi criteria – its focus is Anthropogenic climate change on Earth. Secondly, the
novel blurs the line between ecological activism and ecological terrorism by presenting the
reader with a character who is an eco-terrorist, but with whom the reader is expected to
sympathize given the wider context of the narrative. This is suggestive of a societal mentality
shift towards more radical action. Finally, the multitude of narrative perspectives allows
Robinson to span many different international viewpoints, but also many points in time after the
creation of the eponymous Ministry under the leadership of Mary Murphy. While similar to other
cli-fi texts, MftF challenges some of the limitations of proximity (in both space and time) facing
cli-fi authors.
Cli-fi Criteria – A twenty-first Century Global Setting
MftF is set on Earth and begins in 2025 – the implication is that the initial disaster occurs
at a point in time in which climate policy, and the condition of the climate, closely reflected what
it was when the novel was written in 2020. The novel challenges the spatial proximity limitation
of cli-fi by having a global setting rather than focusing on a specific local perspective.
Typical of many cli-fi texts, MftF begins with a mass-scale climate disaster. The Indian
Heat Wave which kills over 20 million people is recounted from the perspective of an American
ex-pat – Frank May – living in the area at the time. Robinson’s decision to use a Western
character while basing this part of the narrative in India helps to tackle the issue of proximity.
Frank initially tries to shelter those around him as his building has a working air-conditioner,
however this is quickly stolen by thieves as the heat intensifies. The group sheltering in place
quickly runs out of water and the elderly begin to perish. When they decide to abandon their
shelter for fear of being baked inside the building, the group heads for the small lake in the
village. All people can do is wait in the near-boiling water – which is marginally cooler than the
surface air-temperature – for help to arrive. By the time it does, Frank is the only person left
barely alive. The catastrophic death toll of 20 million people is a startling point at which to begin
the narrative. By comparison, the deadliest heatwaves in recorded history have amassed death
tolls in the tens of thousands
19
rather than in the hundreds of thousands or millions. MftF is set
just a few years in the future, so Robinson anticipates a sharp, yet not implausible increase in
the severity of climate related disasters. The Indian Heat Wave prompts global action and leads
19
National Weather Service, World Atlas, and Guinness World Records all suggest the deadliest heat waves
in recorded history killed between 9500 and 76000 people.
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to the establishment by the UN of the “Ministry for the Future” as a group whose role is to enact
and guide policy advocating for future generations.
Robinson’s novel reflects the urgent need for international collaboration where it
currently does not exist. This is evident from how quickly the Indian Heat Wave seems to fade
into the periphery of people’s collective consciousness: for many it simply becomes another
disaster happening to people in a faraway place relative to the Western perspective. This
NIMBY mentality is problematic for many global issues. People are quick to forget or disregard
issues even of great importance unless they are either spatially or temporally proximate to them.
With that in mind, it is easier to see why people in MftF could so easily forget the Indian Heat
Wave if it did not affect them directly the more time passes. Robinson makes clear the
perverseness of our societal lack of response to the climate crisis by depicting it within the novel
with regards to the Indian Heat Wave. Frank’s character makes us more aware of the
irrationality of forgetting such events so quickly.
Focusing on individual climate events is problematic for several reasons. One is that
such events, while most often associated with the global climate crisis, cannot always be
directly or tangibly attached to the climate crisis in a clearly demarcated cause-and-effect way
that news audiences expect from other issues. For example, when reading about a grisly
murder, readers want to know who the perpetrator was, who the victim was, what their
circumstances were, and what the motive was for the killing. They seek definitive answers to a
closed-system issue. When faced with the larger problem of systemic mental health concerns
which are so often related to violent crime, the news becomes less interesting to many viewers
and readers as the cause-and-effect relationship becomes harder to neatly trace.
With local or regional events, skeptics are quick to dissociate events from the climate
crisis due to what McIlwaine suggests is a “perceived lack of certainty” among the scientific
community. This apparent lack of certainty is not simply that scientists disagree, but rather that
readers expect clear, simple, direct answers suggesting that ‘A caused B’ with no other factors
involved. The scientific community faced a similar challenge when initially trying to communicate
the dangers of the Covid-19 virus. Even when backed by statistics and data on death counts,
infection rates, R:0 numbers, and vaccine-efficacy it was challenging to convince those in
smaller communities with less visible outbreaks that they should shelter in place or shut down
businesses which were vital to their town’s economy and individual families’ livelihoods. Like
Covid-19, the climate crisis is an unpleasant reality, so when presented with a means to
question a complex situation which does not simply present as ‘A caused B,’ it is easy to see
why denial and skepticism persist.
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The second reason why a focus on individual events like the Indian Heat Wave is
problematic is that people distance themselves from a problem if it does not affect them directly
– hence the NIMBY mentality. In Robinson’s novel, the Indian government quickly works on
climate-change mitigation projects to prevent such a heat wave from happening again, but the
global community is slower to respond. Only when a similar event happens on American soil, in
Los Angeles, one of the most photographed places in the world, does the collective conscious
begin to awaken to the reality of the crisis. Robinson writes of the major flood hitting Los
Angeles: “If it could happen to LA, rich as it was, dreamy as it was, it could happen anywhere.
Was that right? Maybe not, but it felt that way. Some deep flip in the global unconscious was
making people queasy” (286). Robinson refers to the ignorance, denial, or skepticism of the
climate crisis as the “global unconscious.” This mirrors what Bould calls the “Anthropocene
Unconscious” and what Ghosh calls a period of “great derangement.” In Robinson’s novel, the
climate crisis appears to be at a crucial transition point. On the one hand, more people are
awakening to their prior ignorance, while on the other, people are still quick to return to their
daily lives as if the Indian Heat Wave had not occurred.
Although MftF’s ostensible antagonist is the changing climate, the primary source of
actual conflict comes from the bureaucracy and red tape blocking various policies and initiatives
not just for the Ministry but for international agencies and governments around the world.
Robinson’s novel is certainly about Anthropogenic climate change on Earth – thus fulfilling the
primary cli-fi criterion. As it depicts the climate crisis from a perspective which aims to be based
in science, clearly discusses the consequences of the climate crisis, and synergises the climate
discussion with both the sciences and political advocacy, it also fulfills the secondary criteria for
cli-fi. Robinson’s novel begins to challenge the spatial limitation faced by many cli-fi texts by
having a global rather than local setting as the Ministry itself is global. The reader is encouraged
to think globally rather than focusing on the individual events like the Heat Wave or the flooding
and consider the implication that such things will eventually occur everywhere. Importantly, MftF
begins to offer solutions to the multitude of crises and take what NY2140 achieves further in this
regard. As indicated by Ameel, the vision of New York in Robinson’s text is simultaneously
catastrophic and optimistic. The same is true of MftF as it begins with the horrific heat-wave but
ends with substantive climate mitigation measures being implemented across the globe. In their
article on MftF and the “Politics of Hope,” Mikes and New remark that KSR moves from “tragedy
to hope” and from “dread to hope” (230). They suggest that works like MftF begin to offer
“pragmatic realism” in the face of the climate crisis and “and inspire a liveable future—an
optopia—” (230). I agree that MftF has this capacity, however it is still limited by the restraints
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faced by cli-fi more generally. As Ameel remarks of NY2140 being written in “an overtly
didactical tone” (1328), the same is true of MftF.
Ecological Activism and Terrorism in Ministry for the Future:
Robinson’s novel blurs the line between activist and terrorist in MftF. One of its main
characters, Frank May, embodies the frustration and anger felt by climate activists and
ecologically conscious individuals. Frank’s experience as a survivor of the Indian Heat Wave in
the opening chapter leaves him with severe PTSD, and he ultimately turns to the extremist
group the “Children of Kali” to participate in global protests and disruptive action. When they
reject his admission to their ranks, Frank goes to Switzerland and kidnaps the head of the
Ministry for the Future, Mary Murphy. Throughout the novel, Robinson encourages the reader to
sympathise with Frank despite knowing that he has committed serious crimes – including
murder. During his time in prison, Mary visits Frank and they develop a strange friendship
lasting until Frank dies in hospital from cancer years later. The development of Frank’s character
from victim to activist, to murderer, to friend, resembles Seymour’s character development in
Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land.
20
Seymour’s anger towards industrial development and
contributors to climate change leads him to embark on a shooting-spree in a public library.
Despite this, the reader sympathizes with Seymour – in part because his autism makes it
difficult for him to adhere to some social norms, and in part because of his deprived upbringing.
In MftF, Robinson challenges readers to consider the culpability and responsibility of a character
who is indeed a murderer alongside governments whose action and lack of action also
contribute to deaths. Andrew Milner remarks that eco-terrorism is treated in a more “balanced”
way in KSR’s MftF, and suggests that with Frank May, “Robinson is clear … that eco-terrorism
really works” (Milner 26) as he has Frank state that “some things were just too dangerous to
continue doing” (Robinson qtd. in Milner 26). So, while not condoning terrorism, Robinson’s
work simply “deal[s] squarely with the possible costs and benefits of ecoterrorism” (Milner 28)
and presents it as a much more complex situation than simply suggesting that the Children of
Kali or Frank are wholly wrong for their actions.
Firstly, Frank’s experience surviving the Indian Heat Wave and the fact that many
chapters of the novel are told from Frank’s first-person perspective encourages a sympathetic
response from readers. Robinson makes it clear throughout MftF that Frank’s anger is justified,
if not necessarily his actions. It is abundantly apparent, not just for those who lived through a
20
Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land (2021) is a central text in my next chapter on Anthropo-Temporal Quasi
Fantasy.
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deadly heat wave, that the climate crisis is worsening and that it is unequivocally affected and
exacerbated by ongoing human activity. Frank has first-hand experience of how deadly the
catastrophe is, yet he feels that global leaders are either slow to act or are engaging simply in
blame-avoidance and problem denial. Frank’s view of governments and policymakers is that
they “had worked all their lives to deny climate change, to keep burning carbon, to keep
wrecking biomes, to keep driving other species extinct. That evil work had been their lives’
project, and while pursuing that project they had prospered and lived in luxury. They wrecked
the world happily, thinking they were supermen, laughing at the weak, crushing them underfoot”
(Robinson, MftF 66). As far as he is concerned, they should be held legally responsible or liable
not just for their lack of action, but for the decisions they have made which have directly led to
the deaths of millions of people. Michael Howlett, in his paper on “Climate Policy Innovations,”
remarks that:
[a]ltering any aspect of an existing policy regime, or policy innovation, contains a
risk of failure (Hood, 2010b; Howlett, 2012). And risk averse governments are
often happier to do nothing or little rather than do something which might lead
them to be blamed for a failure. This aversion in the climate change case extends
so far as leading some governments to engage in a number of procedural
strategies intended to downplay a problem and deny the need for substantive
action to deal with it rather than take positive action towards its remediation.
(401)
It is precisely because the policymakers are the lawmakers that this persists. It is a challenge to
hold policymakers responsible when they comprise the same legislative bodies which regulate
what they do – or what they do not do. Frank has thus appointed himself an agent of vigilante
justice against those who he views as the most dangerous. He has been extremified by the
circumstances and parties he deems responsible, and his extremism is reflective of the attitude
of young climate activists today.
Secondly, the actions of global leaders and policymakers are thus positioned in a similar
light to Frank’s actions. Frank frequently refers to policymakers as murderers and holds them
directly responsible for the 20 million deaths in the Indian Heat Wave. Robinson does however
refer to the ‘Children of Kali’ group as a terrorist organization, whereas the global leaders and
policymakers are not described as murderers or terrorists other than when they are spoken
about from Frank’s perspective. Ultimately the reader is asked to view both the Ministry’s
actions as well as Frank’s actions in a similar eco-terrorism light by the end of the novel. Milner
writes that MftF “invites us to have our cake and eat it, as it were, opting as it does both for
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Mary’s Ministry and for [the] Children of Kali” (28). That Frank holds the head of the Ministry for
the Future hostage in her home is a misjudgement on his part; Robinson aims to make it clear
that the Ministry is positioned as an impartial entity responsible for the people of the future
rather than the financial interests of governments in the present. Frank’s altercation with Mary,
though, does lead to their friendship until his death, and his influence on her is undeniable. He
represents the embodiment of what the climate crisis has done to individual people; he localizes
the otherwise diffuse and easy to disregard hyperobject for Mary. The implication is that her
decisions while working for the Ministry are impacted by having been taken as a hostage, but
also by having learned about Frank’s experiences during their friendship. The novel is thus not
ambivalent towards Frank’s violence but confronts readers with those most affected by climate
change so that they may witness their anger, terror, and panic.
The blurring of the boundary is complete when we realize that the Ministry also has a
‘black wing’ which is often just as responsible for some of the eco-terrorism acts which are
believed to have been carried out by known groups like the Children of Kali. This reaffirms
Milner’s position regarding eco-terrorism in MftF that at one point in history “one man’s terrorist
[was] another man’s freedom-fighter” (Milner 23), and the reader is invited to decipher the
difference between the two. During the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, the world’s
financial, industrial, and political elites are held hostage and forced to literally confront the
implications of their actions on a large screen erected by the terrorists showing the climate
impacts. While the hostage situation is initially attributed to ecoterrorist groups, the implication is
that the “black wing” of the Ministry may have had some hand in coordinating the hostage
situation. It is also only the consistent assault and siege upon air-travel and cargo shipping
which begins to dissuade people from travelling and limit rampant consumerism later in the
novel. Robinson pairs these events with the policy enacted by the Ministry to create a sense of
progress which is seemingly only achieved because of the disruption to the status quo created
from both fronts. Eric Morales-Franceschini, in his review of MftF entitled “Catastrophe and
Utopia,” remarks of the hostage situation that “[w]hether the Children of Kali are responsible for
all this, and whether they are in fact the Ministry’s “black wing,” is left somewhat ambiguous in
the novel, but the takeaway is unmistakable: Robinson believes everything must be on the
table.” Robinson’s cli-fi work tends to be more optimistic in its depiction of climate futures, yet
Frank represents the growing sentiment of anger and frustration at those in power who have
either not done enough to prevent harm, or made decisions which have directly caused harm.
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Narrative Perspective in Ministry for the Future:
Finally, Robinson uses a multitude of narrative perspectives throughout the novel.
Robinson also experiments with multiple narrative points of view in NY2140, and Beckett
includes interjecting narratives in America City, but MftF takes what those novels have done one
step further. Most of the novel is told from the perspective of the two main characters, Mary
Murphy and Frank May. Additionally, there are chapters which are told from unspecified
perspectives, some in the form of meeting minutes, some as field notes from research teams
undertaking experimental climate mitigation projects, and some literally from the perspective of
inanimate objects or abstract concepts. For example, one chapter is told from the perspective of
“the market,” another from the perspective of a photon, and another from a cryptically unstated
perspective. In addition, the narrative voice switches chapter by chapter from first-person to
third-person. This multifocal style of narrative has several important effects on the way that the
novel communicates the climate crisis to readers. As mentioned above, a common point of
contention from climate deniers or skeptics is that when events are not close in proximity to
them, they are less likely to care. By making the narrative voice more diffuse, the shared
sentiment on the severity of the climate crisis is echoed from many perspectives all over the
world. Googasian remarks that a multi-focal narrative perspective is a common theme among
cli-fi texts as she refers to KSR’s NY2140 and MftF. She suggests that “In eschewing focus on a
singular, human protagonist, they respond to an environmental crisis whose impacts occur at
scales far removed from individual human experience” (Googasian 197). She goes on to
suggest that “[t]he recent proliferation of multi-protagonist climate change novels suggests that
anglophone fiction is striving to accommodate the challenges posed by planetary crisis” (198).
MftF, and indeed many of the texts I discuss in Chapter 3, utilize this multi-protagonist approach
to reverberate the climate crisis across broader points of view.
Mary’s role as the head of the Ministry for the Future puts her in front of global leaders
throughout the book – both politicians and bankers. As a result, the reader glimpses the
processes behind policymaking, seeing how frustratingly slow and incremental such things can
be when they are not economically attractive to the various stakeholders. While Mary is
knowledgeable, Robinson shows that she is not meant to be an expert on either the climate
crisis itself, or in global economics. Rather, she is a mediator, a communicator of information,
and a representative of future generations. This allows Robinson to explain the various
intricacies of the climate crisis and the global economy to the reader as they are explained to
Mary. This reflects the issue that McIlwaine raises in his article in that the primary issue
regarding the climate crisis now is one of communication. The challenge lies in making the
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available solutions economically viable or attractive to global players. McIlwaine’s article
focuses on the role that journalists play in the accurate communication of climate science. He
remarks that “Telling the story accurately and effectively requires that journalists be interested in
and generally knowledgeable about the current state of climate-change science” and that
“Adequate knowledge of the science and associated discourse will be useful in avoiding bogus
distractions about disagreement, including the distortion of debate using unrepresentative
‘balance’” (55). Journalists are the mediators and communicators of information between the
scientific community and the public. In Robinson’s novel, Mary plays the role of this
communicator, much like a journalist, between the scientific community and the governments
and financial world leaders. She acknowledges that the insurmountable science proving the
climate crisis coupled with the staggering death tolls – literally in the millions – simply is not
enough to scare bankers and politicians into action. Instead, she says “‘Well, you know. What
really scares people is financial’” (Robinson, MftF 114). Mary essentially condones – or turns a
blind eye to – acts of terror to force economic leaders to take the appropriate steps. Her
perspective represents those in the political-industrial complex who both understand that the
climate crisis is a very real and very dangerous problem for all of humanity, and that the way to
solve such a problem must appeal financially to those in power.
Frank’s perspective on the climate crisis mirrors Mary’s, but his means of achieving any
sense of change are far more limited than hers. In a sense, his perspective is representative of
the many frustrated citizens of the world who feel that governments are failing them and future
generations. Having lived through the worst of the Indian Heat Wave when many did not, Frank
has a unique perspective on the climate crisis which is not dissimilar to a soldier’s perspective
on a war. He has the lived experience to give legitimacy to his frustrations. Frank’s PTSD
ultimately makes him respond violently to those he perceives to be the greatest contributors to
the climate crisis, and Mary gets caught in the crosshairs of his rage as he takes her hostage in
her own home.
Frank’s perspective in the narrative is representative of the individual citizen looking up
to the responsible governments and institutions. As mentioned earlier, Frank believes these
actors to be evil and suggests that they “wrecked the world happily” (Robinson, MftF 66) to fulfill
their evil means. Their wilful ignorance has made them complicit in the climate crisis, and this
makes them evil as they have, according to Frank, participated in the murder of the 20 million
people who died in the Indian Heat Wave. Robinson initially positions Frank’s perspective as
opposite to Mary’s as if they are on different sides of the climate-crisis argument; as the
narrative progresses it becomes clear that they simply represent different perspectives in
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society – Mary as a person from within the political-industrial complex, and Frank as a person
outside of it.
The multitude of other perspectives throughout the narrative from all over the world
broadens the scope of the novel and makes the climate crisis proximate – both spatially and
temporally – to more readers. It is much more challenging to dismiss an idea which comes from
many collaborative perspectives – such an idea is less likely to be the result of collective folly or
any kind of conspiratorial collusion. Robinson includes chapters which are told from the first-
person perspective of several nonhuman objects. Perhaps most notably, Robinson personifies
the global economy into a beast which consumes all it touches – reminiscent of a Morton-
inspired hyperobject with a viscous quality in which it sticks to all things. This chapter is told
from a first-person perspective by the market itself: “My body worked so well that eventually all
things everywhere were swallowed and digested by me. I grew so large that I ate the world and
all the blood in the world is mine. … I am the market” (Robinson, MftF 192). In a narrative with a
more opaque and diffuse sense of an antagonist, this chapter suggests that the market itself –
along with Frank as an ecoterrorist, politicians and ‘elites’ as ecologically destructive, and the
climate crisis itself – is one of the global antagonists facing Mary and the Ministry.
Robinson’s personified objects also include the sun (13), a photon (235-236), computer
code (177), the abstract concept of simply “an ideology” (41) or “history” (385), and a carbon
atom (327-329). Even more abstract, the subject of Chapter 95 is an unidentified object which
tells the reader “I am a thing. I am alive and I am dead. I am conscious and I am unconscious.
Sentient but not” before ending the chapter with simply “You know what I am. Now find me out”
(491). Robinson highlights the reader’s unconsciousness with the ambiguous narrative
perspective in Chapter 95, perhaps questioning their consciousness regarding the climate crisis.
These narrative interludes – interjections perhaps – disrupt the traditional narrative arc found
commonly in literary fiction or genre fiction. Rather, Robinson’s MftF reads as a collection of
documents and an amalgam of perspectives discussing the same issue from a multitude of
vantage points in time and space. While this is somewhat defamiliarizing – in that it disrupts
narrative norms – it also contributes directly to the realism of the text by immersing the reader
amidst the multitude of perspectives while simultaneously reminding the reader that they are
indeed reading a narrative. Reader-response-theory would suggest that this immersion in the
narrative is created by “the reader’s contribution to [the] text” and that “The reading is
complementary: it actualizes potential meaning. Thus, the reader does not have, as ha[d] been
traditionally thought and accepted, a passive role; on the contrary, the reader is an active agent
in the creation of meaning” (Cuddon, Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory 726). The
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reader’s immersion in the text from multiple narrative perspectives creates the necessary active
role within it.
This novel approach of immersion in the apparent reality of the situation is achieved, at
least in part, by the multitude of narrative perspectives. In addition to the various personified
objects, Robinson includes chapters made up entirely of meeting transcriptions. These are
written in incomplete sentences for ease and speed, implying that the events of the narrative
resemble similar potential real-world meetings held about the same topics. A problem often
encountered by a great deal of cli-fi is that “Fiction dealing with climate change must find ways
to dramatise aggregate change, to narrate slowness over time” (Macfarlane qtd. in Gladwin,
Ecological Exile 171). In MftF, Robinson focuses less on dramatizing aggregate change – aside
from the initial Indian Heat Wave and later the LA flood – for the majority of the novel, and
instead focuses on the seemingly tedious bureaucratic and incremental changes at the level of
policymakers and world leaders. This is depicted through the varying perspectives within the
Ministry’s meetings in the form of notetaking, dialogue among characters, and characters’ inner
dialogues as they wrestle with the complexities of the situation and the banalities of the process.
This approach to the climate crisis differs to many earlier cli-fi texts. It acknowledges that our
engagement with the crisis needs to be one which is proactive rather than reactive, and it
acknowledges that solutions are not straightforward. The depiction of the bureaucratic process
demonstrates that Hollywood movie depictions of simple solutions to hyper problems like
climate change are simply not realistic.
In Narrative in the Anthropocene (2022), James explains that “we understand better the
current state of the world and our relationship to it by engaging with narrative. We also better
understand narrative by placing it in the context of the Anthropocene” (5). She remarks that it is
indeed challenging for narrative to wholly encapsulate an issue as vast and hyper as the climate
crisis and mentions too that Ghosh doubts the ability of the novel to accurately depict climate
change. She writes that “The fault does not lie with authors, Ghosh suggests, but with the form
itself. The climate change novel does not exist because it cannot exist” (13). She explains that
“the categories and concepts of current narratological models are insufficient for our epoch –
that narrative is changing along with the world in which we tell and receive stories, and that
narrative scholars require a new set of conceptual tools to identify, articulate, and track these
changes” (14). To address this challenge, she discusses the role that scientists play in terms of
communicating the climate crisis and indicates that scientists have the capacity to use narrative
in articulations of their work. She argues:
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that outdated understandings of what narrative is has led … scholars to limited
imaginations of what narrative can do. I propose two updates to these models of
best practice—first, that scientists use their own stories of environmental grief
and hope to worldbuild for the specific purpose of immersing readers into an
alternative to the status quo of environmental crisis in the Anthropocene, and
second that scholars more broadly recognize that narratives themselves are
valuable data that advances our understanding of the mechanisms by which
Anthropogenic climate change functions and can be course-corrected. (25)
While Robinson’s work is still sf, it includes a great deal of the necessary science-fact to
address the need for narratives from that perspective. The novel includes full chapters
explaining the scientific processes behind the many complex facets of the climate crisis. In
addition, the multitude of narrative perspectives from which this information is told allows the
reader to understand the climate crisis from multiple vantage points, as if these perspectives
were backing up and verifying one another like sources supporting a claim in an article. The
reader experiences the climate crisis from more of an objective, global perspective than if it was
narrated from the standard one or two protagonists’ perspectives. In MftF, Robinson challenges
the “limited understandings of what narrative is” and “what narrative can do” (James 25).
Ministry for the Future: Cli-fi towards ATQF:
By virtue of its direct focus on the climate crisis as the primary antagonist in the
narrative, MftF is undoubtedly cli-fi. It also depicts the crisis from multiple perspectives which
cast both the policymakers and the climate activists in a multitude of lights both negative and
positive. This blurs the line between the terrorist organizations and individual actors and those in
power who turn a blind eye to the damage to the environment they directly cause. Thanks to its
multifocal narrative perspectives, MftF begins to move more towards what the Anthropo-
Temporal texts discussed in the next chapter can accomplish. Despite this multifocal narrative
approach, Robinson’s novel is still limited in what it can achieve in terms of depicting climate
change on a geologic time scale.
As is discussed earlier in this chapter, encapsulating climatic changes in geologic scales
over perhaps 600 pages is indeed challenging. In Narrative in the Anthropocene (2022), James
discusses the narrative complexities of accurately depicting the Anthropocene epoch at all in
literature. She questions the ability that a novel has to encapsulate timelines on the scale of an
epoch while simultaneously adhering to narrative norms in which a novel follows characters in
timescales which are possible to conceive of in relation to one human life. She recognizes that
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“At its core, the Anthropocene is an idea about time” (93). It is about the naming of a period, a
geological epoch. Such time scales are not short. The prior geological epoch, which has just
ended, was the Holocene, which was a period of about twelve-thousand years. “[Recognizing]
the Anthropocene as the latest epoch in a geological sequence has generated lively debates
about temporal duration” (James 93). She writes that “To put it simply, these debates [about
geologic time] query how (or even if) narrative, which tends to foreground the experiences of
individual existents, can stretch to accommodate the long durations, deep histories, and
anticipated distant futures of stratigraphic time” (95). James proposes the need for
“Anthropocene Narrative Theory” which “is interested in a narrative structure that tasks readers
with interpreting the implications of an event within multiple timelines—that of the embodied time
of a narrative’s existents and the longer timescales of historical and/or climatological time that
outpace the text’s timeframe” (97). Robinson’s novel uses a multifocal narrative structure to try
to accomplish this, however it is still limited to the span of one lifetime.
While MftF is an indeed immersive cli-fi narrative, it still cannot fully depict, or give
readers the ability to grasp, the impact of or the scale of the geologic changes associated with
Anthropogenic climate change. MftF, as with the other cli-fi texts discussed in this chapter, is
tethered to one narrative arc, one timeline attached to the existents within the confines of the
twenty-first century. The narrative does not stretch hundreds or thousands of years into the
future, and it does not thoroughly explore the time leading up to the crises experienced
throughout the novel. The novel begins in the very near future – a departure from other cli-fi
texts which begin often decades or centuries in the future – and its timeline stretches through to
the late twenty-first century only, as it is based around Mary Murphy’s tenure as the head of the
Ministry.
I argue that MftF overcomes the limitation of spatial proximity to the climate crisis by
making the eponymous Ministry a global one and having multiple narrative perspectives.
Robinson also begins to overcome the limitation of temporal proximity by setting the story at a
point in the future which is far less distant than many other cli-fi works, it is just unable to
encapsulate the vast time spans necessary to depict the slow moving, insidious violence of the
climate crisis. The timeline briefly jumps several decades ahead in the final chapter and
functions as a kind of epilogue for the various climate harm-reduction measures implemented
over the course of the novel. The final chapter is a hopeful, predictive testament to what can be
achieved with the pinnacle of global collaboration. MftF is undoubtedly an important text in any
discussion about climate change in literature.
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Chris Beckett’s Two Tribes (2020) and Narrative Time in Cli-fi
Chris Beckett’s Brexit and climate-change novel Two Tribes challenges the temporal
proximity limitation faced by traditional cli-fi novels with its dual-timeline narrative structure. As
mentioned in the prior section, James remarks upon the challenges of encapsulating time on a
geologic scale within the limited constraints of a realist novel. This is for a variety of reasons, but
perhaps most importantly, such narratives are limited by the fact that the human characters
within them only live for so long. Even in a novel with multiple narrative perspectives, like AC
and then to a greater extent MftF, the narrative requires some unifying thread for it to make
sense or for the reader to be invested in the major events of the plot. There are, of course,
narratives which span longer than one human life which connect their various strands through a
variety of means including: following multiple generations of a family or those using individual
place as the unifying feature between narratives set decades or centuries apart, or employing sf
tropes like cryogenic freezing or generation ships to allow for vast stretches of space and time
to be covered in shorter narrative time. Ultimately, there must be something connecting
storylines which take place over periods of time longer than a human life, otherwise the events
in each storyline are simply inconsequential to the others and end up having no underpinning
meaning.
James dedicates a chapter of Narrative in the Anthropocene (2022) to narrative time.
James, Adeline Johns-Putra,
21
and Ursula Heise
22
discuss the importance of narrative time with
regards to depicting the Anthropocene in fiction, and James refers to Gérard Genette’s 1980
book, Narrative Discourse, for its categorization of narrative temporality. James summarizes
three core chapters of Genette’s book as she writes that: “The chapters form the three pillars of
the classical narratological model of time: order, duration, and frequency. They also introduced
essential terms related to each pillar, including analepsis, and prolepsis (order); ellipsis, pause,
scene, and summary (duration); and singular, repetitive, and iterative (frequency)” (James 97-
98).
When focusing on long time scales in particular, James explores Genette’s explanation
of duration in detail. She writes that: “Genette’s spatial model tracks the difference between
narrative time—number of sentences, paragraphs, pages—and story time, such that it
categorizes the relationship between space on the page and the timeline of the world in which
characters function.” She explains that Genette’s “understanding of duration thus is
fundamentally concerned with ‘accelerations and slowdowns’—with the ratio of ‘duration-of-
21
Climate and Literature (2019)
22
“Science Fiction and Time Scales of the Anthropocene” (2019)
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story’ and ‘length-of-narrative’ (88)” (James 98). Further, she explains Genette’s subcategories
of duration which:
exist along a continuum of ellipses, or events that occur in story time but take up
no narrative time (NT = 0; ST = n), and pauses, or narrative time that does not
narrate any events at all (NT = n; ST = 0). In between these poles we find
summary, in which events are narrated more quickly than they occur in story time
(NT < ST), and scene, in which a text renders faithfully in narration a timeline of
events as they occur in story time, as is typical of written dialogue (NT = ST).
(James 98)
To make a simple example of Genette’s explanation of duration in narrative time, you might start
with a novel which takes place over the span of one year, like the books in the Harry Potter
series, as each represents a school year. If the novel were to be composed entirely of scene,
then it would be the dialogue of all information starting at the beginning of the year until the end
of the year – this would of course be an extremely long and tedious novel. So instead, there are
sections in which narrative time passes quickly as the author uses summary to span longer
periods of time within that year, as well as some pauses in which no actual time passes in the
narrative, but further explanation and description may be provided.
Narrating changes in the climate over time is thus challenging, as there is only so much
‘summary’ one can do before rendering the earlier points in time irrelevant or unrelated to those
in the narrative’s present. As mentioned above, there must be some point of connection
between points in time within a narrative. James and Heise both explore narrative time with
regards to what sf can achieve to overcome this temporal boundary. James writes that:
Given the extreme durations of the geologic time scale—and taking a cue from
Heise’s survey of science fiction that represents extreme spans of time via travel,
lapse, and so forth … ellipses and summary offer us an effective means of
bridging the gap between the limited number of pages in the average novel and
the extremely long spans of geological time moving readers quickly from the
representation of one experience to another in the future. Yet both categories
pose problems for our specific understanding of the Anthropocene as both are
singular and part of a longer sequence of events that resist narrativization. (98-
99)
It is important to note here that James and Heise acknowledge the things that sf can do to
overcome the basic restrictions of narrative time with plot devices like time lapse and time-
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travel. Despite this, James still recognizes that representing geologic time scales accurately and
compellingly requires narratives which can unify the points in time effectively.
James suggests that narrative “is ill-suited to tasking readers with recognizing the
significance of an event along multiple timelines, or engaging at the same time with the
experiential timeline of a narrative’s existents and the much longer timelines of deep historical
and/or climatological time that necessarily exceed the text” (100). Put simply, it is hard for the
readers to engage with or connect with information spread too far over space and time. There
must be clear and logical connections between the points within the ellipses or during the
summary sections. She goes on to suggest that this “does not satisfy an Anthropocene narrative
theory’s search for a temporal structure that can represent the epoch’s singularity and place it in
a longer chain that far eclipses the epoch” (100). Even with an understanding of the different
stages of pause, summary, and scene with regards to duration in narrative according to
Genette, realist narrative still appears to be somewhat limited with regards to depicting geologic
or Anthropocene time scales. However, while the Anthropocene does resist narrativization in
terms of encapsulating change over long periods of time, there are means by which it can be
depicted in cli-fi.
Two Timelines in Two Tribes
Beckett’s novel is told from the twenty-third century by historian, Zoe, as she aims to
write a historical account of the early twenty-first century before the periods of conflict and
catastrophe in the intervening years between 2016 and the twenty-third century. The novel
follows a brief romance between Harry, a London architect, and Michelle, a hairdresser from
Norfolk. Beckett uses Zoe to connect the 2010s to the period in the twenty-third century. This
would reflect a long period of “narrative pause” according to Gérard Genette’s framework in
Narrative Discourse (1980) rather than the two timelines simply being entirely separate. The
dual timeline approach allows Beckett to center the main narrative – Zoe’s historical account of
2016 – around the social and political divides resulting from the Brexit referendum. It is only
through the brief conversations between Zoe and her colleague Cally, and descriptions of
setting in the twenty-third century, that the reader learns of the climate collapse between now
and then. The central storyline in Two Tribes is not ostensibly about climate change. This is why
this text is not included in the earlier selection of centrally cli-fi texts earlier in this chapter.
However, despite not meeting that primary cli-fi criterion, Two Tribes’ use of a dual-timeline
narrative begins to overcome the temporal limitation while depicting the Anthropocene.
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Two Tribes places the Brexit referendum and the romantic relationship between Harry
and Michelle ahead of the climate crisis being experienced 250 years in the future. Thus, the
climate crisis is the omnipresent spectre looming over the primary narrative. Beckett’s text also
tackles a key issue faced by many cli-fi texts by exploring the limitations of fictionalizing a topic
like climate change. This is mirrored by having the present time-period be openly fictionalized by
the historian from the future, rather than seeing just the future being fictionalized from the
present. Equally, Zoe’s over-dramatization of 2016 politics mirrors the over-fictionalization of
some cli-fi works. Zoe makes it clear that if a narrative is to be read by a wide audience, some
over-fictionalization tends to be necessary.
The dual-timeline narrative allows Beckett to depict the Brexit referendum and a bleak
climate future simultaneously. Two Tribes is thus not limited to using what Genette calls ellipsis,
summary, or pause. The effect of this simultaneity is that Brexit appears trivial by comparison to
the fragmented images of a bleak climate future. Brexit dominates all conversations amongst
those in Harry’s upper-middle-class social circle in 2016. His romantic journey with Michelle – a
member of the apparently opposite ‘tribe’ given that she is of a different social class to Harry
and given that she voted the opposite way to him in the Brexit referendum – is also
foregrounded alongside Brexit. Beckett ensures that the reader’s focus is on these two
intertwined issues, while simultaneously telling the reader how trivial they are. In Zoe’s future
250 years later, the climate has deteriorated and things like political structure seem pointless in
a world in which having the choice of who runs one’s country would seem odd or far-fetched.
Zoe’s timeline, despite being the perspective from which Harry’s timeline is narrated, is
positioned as secondarily important to the pressing issues of the Brexit referendum and of
Harry’s love life – much of the novel is centered around Harry and Michelle.
By making the climate crisis a background event in an otherwise familiar political, social,
and romantic drama, the elements of the climate crisis which do emerge are particularly
noticeable. In Zoe’s timeline, the climate crisis is referred to in the past tense as simply “The
Catastrophe.” Harry gets lost in his isolation while walking in the countryside, and Zoe remarks
in her historical narrative that:
There is little left these days of that in-between realm. Storm erosion and rising
seas have swept almost all of it away, leaving only a few mudflats that emerge
when the tide is very low. Of the birds and shelled creatures Harry saw, many are
now extinct, and the village has seen a similar decline. (36)
This quotation is placed amid Harry’s isolation and lonesomeness. It’s as though this is
commentary or backdrop to the obviously more important narrative feature: his love life. The
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narrative quickly ushers the reader back to the safety of the romantic narrative after having paid
dues to the climate crisis here. Beckett ensures that the climate crisis is an omnipresent factor
underpinning the lives of those in the 2016 timeline, but by only mentioning it peripherally he
demonstrates the lack of action and engagement that society has towards solving the problem.
It is an unpleasant interruption or niggling worry at most for Harry and Michelle.
Beckett explains the complexities of the Brexit referendum via Zoe as though it is
something far off in our own history. After explaining the process by which Brexit came to pass,
Zoe states, most importantly, that “From our perspective, when the European Union and the
British state no longer exist, this all seems trivial stuff by comparison with what was to come, but
it was a big thing then” (Beckett, Two Tribes 6). Beckett shows that even the most seemingly
fundamental or far-reaching political processes seem insignificant if they lead to very little
substantive change for issues like the climate crisis. What is interesting to note throughout the
novel, is that the characters in the 2016 timeline are all aware of the climate crisis – as Harry
“had written in his diary only a couple of days before about ‘the sheer pig-headedness of climate
change deniers who think they know better than people who’ve dedicated their whole lives to
researching the subject’” (13) and Michelle ponders the crisis after her friend had “finished
reading about ‘global warming.’ And, in the strange meaningless emptiness the screaming plane
had left behind, Michelle thought about the melting ice, the fires, the islands sinking beneath the
sea…” (71). The Brexit referendum is a mechanism by which the characters from opposing
‘tribes’ seem to enumerate or quantify their value as ‘good’ people trying to improve the world or
improve their country. Zoe remarks on the apparent hypocrisy and smallness of this perspective,
from both parties, as she suggests that “It’s interesting that, even as the Catastrophe crept up,
and they, by their own behaviour, knowingly drew it closer, people back then still liked to think
that they were contributing in some way to making the world a better place” (95). Those in Harry
and Michelle’s present know of the impending doom for the 2016 timeline, and the hindsight
afforded by Zoe’s awareness in her present makes the knowledge of The Catastrophe more
significant. Beckett shows that it is unlikely or unreasonable to suggest that people would not
know about climate change in twenty-first century Britain. If we looked into the past to when
industrialization was beginning in the early nineteenth century, the inhabitants could be forgiven
for not knowing the catastrophe which lay ahead of them. This is not the case in 2016.
Ghosh refers to our current anthropological time period as “The Great Derangement” in
that we are so fully aware of what is coming, yet we trudge towards the negative outcome at a
faster and faster rate with endless justifications for our behaviour. When commenting on Harry
and Michelle’s generation’s surprisingly high rate of meat consumption as one example, Zoe
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refers to this derangement and justification as the result of our “Ponzi-scheme society that was
only possible because it was able to defer its inevitable collapse to a point some way off in the
future” (104). The way that Beckett positions the climate crisis as secondary to the Brexit
narrative and to Harry’s love life is thus a reflection of the way that society distracts itself from
the realities of things like climate change.
Two Tribes’ dual timeline makes the climate crisis proximate to readers as the twenty-
third century perspective looks back on 2016 with informed hindsight to point out that the
climate crisis was already at a dangerous and pivotal stage. Beckett highlights our derangement
to the situation by suggesting that Brexit was the primary concern of the hour when attention
should have been paid to the climate crisis. By comparison, it was remarkable that during the
Covid-19 pandemic which forced a global shutdown, the top BBC headlines were more
concerned about who is or is not a member of the royal family in England. As remarkable as it is
that the England national football team made it to the finals of the delayed EURO2020
international competition (only to inevitably lose on penalties), it was perhaps more remarkable
that this also dominated the public discussion during the Pandemic – it was a welcome
distraction from a more unpleasant reality. But the pandemic, although devastating, could itself
be seen like Brexit in Two Tribes as the short-term distraction to the larger issue when
compared to climate change. Beckett highlights society’s attention span and demonstrates that
the focus tends to be on what is indeed less important. This sentiment is satirized directly in the
2021 comedy Don’t Look Up, in which the world knows it marches towards its demise thanks to
an approaching asteroid, but never rallies to attempt to solve the problem and instead resorts to
essentially ignoring it until everyone on Earth dies (dir. Adam McKay).
23
In Two Tribes, the
reader is compelled to return to the Harry and Michelle narrative as quickly as possible to ignore
the future reality that will soon be upon us. The safety of the romance narrative and the Brexit
narrative upon which everyone has an opinion is far more attractive than the climate-ravaged
future depicted in Zoe and Cally’s timeline.
Beckett’s Two Tribes combats one of the key limitations to conventional cli-fi in that it
acknowledges that there are limitations to fictionalizing or dramatizing a real event. Cli-fi, by
definition, fictionalizes the climate crisis. This creates distance between what is real, predicted,
and modelled, and what is expressed as some sort of narrative disaster. As a result, the reader
is less obliged to take the stories seriously as warnings or reflections of reality. For this reason,
the scope of the impact of cli-fi is somewhat limited. Two Tribes’ use of a dual-timeline narrative
23
Interestingly, the production company behind Don’t Look Up (2021) is Hyperobject Industries.
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makes the most severe impacts of the climate crisis appear more temporally proximate to
readers by depicting them alongside the Brexit referendum. The illusion is that Zoe’s narrative in
the twenty-third century is more ‘real’ than the 2016 one as the latter is her fictionalisation of the
political landscape. Rather than a period of what Genette would refer to as ellipsis, the timelines
are narrated simultaneously.
24
The narrative in Two Tribes is analogous to a palimpsest in which
one image is presented atop or alongside the next so the reader make sense of the two
simultaneously. England in the twenty-third century is placed over England in 2016, just as the
climate crisis is placed over the Brexit referendum.
Concluding Remarks: Cli-Fi and Other SFF Subgenres
My selection of novels in this chapter is intended to be a representation of recent work
which reflects the notable achievements and limitations of the cli-fi subgenre. As discussed
above, writers aiming to depict climate change in fiction encounter several limitations. Most
importantly, it is challenging to represent the climate crisis accurately without over-fictionalizing
or over-dramatizing it. Climate change is also difficult to fully capture in a novel as it is so widely
distributed across time and space. It is a slowly developing and intermittent crisis, yet the novel
is constrained to that which can be explored within a book or series. To effectively depict the
climate crisis, a novel must aim to overcome the limitations of over-fictionalization, and temporal
and spatial proximity to the issue. In this chapter I have explored contemporary cli-fi and
explained the specific criteria that such work needs to fulfil to be considered cli-fi. Most
importantly, such texts need to engage with Anthropogenic climate change directly, and
obviously take place on Earth for that to be the case.
That the body of cli-fi is growing is indicative of a new direction and trend in terms of
what audiences are interested in when they read sf and speculative fiction. The climate crisis is
undoubtedly an extremely important and omnipresent threat, and it is interesting to make
24
Christopher Priest’s recent climate novel, Expect Me Tomorrow (2022), also uses a dual
timeline narrative structure to demonstrate changes in the Earth’s climate over time. The
primary timeline in EMT is set only a few years in the future, however Priest incorporates the
fantasy-sci-fi trope of a ‘time-travel’-like device to peek backwards in time and actually
communicate with those in the past. In EMT, the greatest threat in the near future is the
increasing temperature and the rising sea-level. The protagonist in the 1850s is a climate
scientist observing solar cycles and their impact on global temperatures. While Priest’s novel
may not be considered directly fantasy, its inclusion of a time-travel, time-viewing technology
does preclude it from being considered purely realist or even speculative. It takes this
impossibility for Priest to be able to appropriately link the timelines in 1850 and the near future.
This use of a fantasy component like time-travel makes Priest’s work an interesting bridge
between cli-fi and ATQF – discussed in the next chapter.
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models and predictions in fiction, unconstrained by the intermittent and seemingly slow-moving
changes occurring in the climate on a global scale.
25
James calls for a new kind of narrative theory to address the Anthropocene in literature
and Ghosh suggests – among others – that the novel is simply incapable of addressing climate
change sufficiently. This indicates that, while cli-fi is an important tool for discussing climate
change, it is limited in terms of what it can do to properly communicate the urgency, severity,
and reality of Anthropogenic climate change. Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, in his work on who
is reading cli-fi, indicates that the readers of cli-fi do not tend to be those who are unconvinced
by climate science, so it is perhaps preaching to the converted, at least in part. Schneider-
Mayerson et al., in their paper on the effects of reading climate change fiction, indicate that cli-fi
alone is not sufficient to sound the climate alarm.
While much is made of the limitations cli-fi faces, I do not go as far as Ghosh in
suggesting that the novel is incapable of capturing the climate crisis at all. Rather, I have
demonstrated that a reassessment of genre is needed with regards to where and how we might
address the climate crisis in new ways in fiction. In the next two chapters I explore two
subgenres of SFF which incorporate, in different ways, components of fantasy literature to help
overcome some of cli-fi’s key limitations discussed in this chapter.
25
The changes are obviously incredibly fast – often termed ‘the great acceleration’ – by
geologic standards, but such changes still take decades or generations to be seen or felt
directly at the individual level.
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“What else has changed since 1984?’ ‘Oil’s running out,’…‘Earth’s population is eight billion,
mass extinctions of flora and fauna are commonplace, climate change is foreclosing the
Holocene Era. … China’s a powerhouse – though their air is industrial effluence in a gaseous
state … The world’s twenty-seven richest people own more wealth than the poorest five billion,
and people accept that as normal.’” (Mitchell, The Bone Clocks 491)
Chapter 3 – Indirect Engagement with Climate Change in Anthropo-Temporal Quasi-
Fantasy Literature
Introduction – Outline
In the previous chapter I explained the limitations faced by authors of cli-fi when trying to
depict the climate crisis accurately and effectively. The novels in this chapter fall within the
parameters of the subgenre I am calling Anthropo-Temporal Quasi-Fantasy (ATQF). Climate
change is an important theme in the novels in this chapter. Unlike cli-fi however, these novels
are not wholly about climate change – it is not, at least on the surface, their primary concern.
ATQF is an emerging trend within twenty-first century SFF. These texts utilize multiple timelines
to span vast periods of time within one novel and integrate fantasy features within the narratives
while not being wholly fantasy. Put simply, this subgenre of SFF is comprised of texts which
typically only include indirect depictions of or references to Anthropogenic climate change, or
which only depict the effects of climate change in certain sections of the narrative. The extended
timelines and visions of broader periods in time enable a clearer depiction of the slow-moving
threat of climate change which is challenging to depict within the span of one human life or one
linear narrative. Using fantasy devices as distraction which conceals their concern with
environmental issues, these ATQF works challenge readers to confront their own failure to
identify climate change as their true focus.
Niall Harrison categorizes novels within SFF which engage with climate change with
similar temporal experimentation as “Green Overshoots” in reference to the novel Overshoot
(1998) by Mona Clee. He writes that “an overshoot novel is a linear mosaic novel whose
timeline starts in the past, and tells a story that will only resolve in the future, thereby creating a
sense of necessity for that future to be shown and to be believed in, as well as for the stories of
human characters to be resolved” (Harrison). So, for Harrison, a novel with “green overshoots”
is one which sets out this problem-solution pattern from the past to the future around the climate
crisis in some way. ATQF is a subgenre which contains novels with “Green Overshoots.”
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As is the case with other genres and subgenres, there are novels which fit more neatly
within the boundaries of ATQF, and others which include some components and not others.
Similarly to cli-fi, the list of texts which could be considered ATQF is continually growing, and
this is for several key reasons. Firstly, climate change is an omnipresent threat in reality, and is
thus being depicted in more literature both inside and outside of SFF. Secondly, society appears
to be becoming at least fractionally more concerned with climate change, even if it is not always
featured as the top news story. And thirdly and perhaps most importantly, because fantasy
literature, which had for a long time been overlooked with regards to its contributions to
ecocritical discourse, is becoming more widely utilized as a medium for engagement with the
ongoing climate crisis.
This set of texts has been grouped for its engagement with the climate crisis as an
oblique secondary theme while having a more visible theme apparently driving the plot. It is the
case for many of these texts that the climate crisis becomes the more prevalent theme as the
narrative progresses, moving from the periphery of the reader’s awareness and concern to the
forefront of the text. It is this indirect yet omnipresent and hyper-objective nature of the climate
crisis in these novels that I explore in this chapter. Readers of these ATQF texts may or may not
read them for their climate orientation but are likely to be aware of its presence after having read
the entire text. In The Anthropocene Unconscious, Bould discusses works which introduce
climate change in a similarly covert way, as well as texts with more overt climate orientations.
The works he discusses invoke climate themes which may or may not have been the writer or
director’s intention. He writes that “From sharknadoes to slow cinema, from slabs of bourgeois
solipsism to the crepuscular domain of ligneous lives, we have seen the Anthropocene lurking
within texts that have little or no idea that that is what they are talking about” (Bould 131). This
concept of Anthropocene unconscious is relevant to ATQF, but more so from the perspective of
the reader rather than the novelist, as the climate themes are often intentionally concealed
leaving the reader’s perception of climate change obscured until later in each text. In this
chapter I concentrate on texts whose engagement with such climate themes is notably less
direct than in cli-fi. I posit that these texts are effective at engaging with the climate crisis not in-
spite of their indirect engagement with it, but because of their indirect engagement with it.
First, I briefly explain the selection of the novels with which I engage in this chapter and
demonstrate fantasy’s emerging role in literature’s depiction of the climate crisis. Next, I explore
two texts which use folklore and myth as elements of fantasy which occur over vast time periods
to depict a broader, more prolonged, picture of the climate crisis. In keeping with the ATQF
parameters, these two texts – Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh and Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony
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Doerr – are not ostensibly about climate change but include the climate as a secondary or
covert yet omnipresent theme. In the third section I engage with the most central ATQF text,
David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks. While having sections which could be more accurately
categorized as literary fiction which follow the life of one central character, The Bone Clocks
weaves in a fantasy strand involving essentially immortal creatures to depict time over
thousands of years. These immortal creatures – the Horologists and the Anchorites – are
embroiled in a war lasting millennia. For the first five of the novel’s six sections, Mitchell focuses
the reader’s attention on this fantastical war underpinning the world in which Holly (the novel’s
protagonist) lives. In the sixth section Mitchell brings the climate crisis into the forefront of the
reader’s attention in the year 2043 and demonstrates that the Horologist-Anchorite war has
been secondary to the changing climate as the primary source of conflict towards which the
novel was working throughout. Finally, I engage with three texts which depict fantasy-like
pandemics as the primary reason for global crisis. Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility,
Sequoia Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the Dark, and Helen Marshall’s The Migration are
centered around fictional pandemics which threaten the status quo. Mandel uses the fantasy
element of time-travel to set her novel over multiple centuries. Nagamatsu employs the
generation-ship trope to explore thousands of years into the future, as well as fantasy
“Worldbuilder” characters who inhabit human bodies on Earth to give his novel an almost
infinitely broad time-span. Marshall uses references to prior pandemics in history to draw
attention to the cyclical and repetitive yet worsening plagues which coincide with periods of
environmental change.
The ATQF novels in this chapter were all written in the twenty-first century, and the same
goes for the cli-fi and NW texts explored in this project. Because of this, I can compare the three
subgenres for their engagement with the climate crisis from the same period. ATQF combines
varied timelines and some indications of climate change with elements of fantasy – it is, by
definition, a hybrid genre. A hybrid genre text “can be a fusion of elements of existing genres
arising from unprecedented rhetorical situations, or they can be the product of antecedent
genres” (Sloane, Encyclopedia of Rhetoric). ATQF is the product of the climate change context
from which it arose, as well as a fusion of elements from existing genres. Grouping texts into
genres remains a tricky and often heated subject given the often amorphous and changeable
boundaries to most genres. David Shields refers to genre as “a minimum-security prison”
26
(qtd.
in Eaglestone 25) – it has borders or boundaries, but they are not particularly steadfast or rigid
26
When discussing his 2010 non-fiction book Reality Hunger: A Manifesto
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and there are frequently overlaps between genres, or outliers which belong in no named genre
at all.
In Narratives of Scale in the Anthropocene (2021), Dürbeck and Hüpkes remark that “the
Anthropocene concept transcends discipline-specific conceptions and theories. It emphasizes
the entanglement of social, political, ecological, biological and geological processes at multiple
spatial and temporal scales” (Dürbeck and Hüpkes 1). Just as the Anthropocene transcends
discipline boundaries, ATQF transcends traditional fantasy and literary-fiction boundaries. The
texts in this selection have a clear climate-oriented or anthropocentric theme: they utilize fantasy
components to encapsulate vast timelines within the confines of a novel to depict the slow
violence of climate change more accurately, hence the name Anthropo-Temporal Quasi-Fantasy.
Fantasy Literature and Climate Change
Many authors and critics within SFF, including Ghosh, Clark, Oziewicz, Heise, and
James have suggested that there are limitations to what can be achieved – in terms of
communicating the climate crisis accurately or communicating its severity to readers without
becoming overly didactic – with cli-fi specifically, or even with narrative more generally. Fantasy
literature was until the past few decades often overlooked with regards to its contributions to
ecological discourse and to its depiction of the Anthropocene. More recently, fantasy literature
has been increasingly viewed as a space in which the Anthropocene can be explored. It is in
this fantasy space that ATQF exists, as it utilizes its fantasy components to help offer longer
diachronic views of the changing climate.
As indicated in my Introduction, one of the principal challenges when depicting the
climate crisis is that any individual view of the issue is a mere snapshot of it at a particular point
in time. The crisis itself is too temporally vast to be able to encapsulate in narrative time, so
even a diachronic view over one human lifetime still fails to capture the extent of the climate
crisis in full. In “Science Fiction and the Time Scales of the Anthropocene,” Ursula Heise
remarks that:
For narratives that engage with the Anthropocene, therefore, one of the major
problems is the discrepancy between geological or evolutionary time spans to be
narrated, on one hand, and the limited length of the average novel, on the other:
a century in three hundred pages or less may be conceivable, but how does one
fit 800,000 years into such a format (as H. G. Wells does in his—unusually
short—novel The Time Machine), or two billion years (as Olaf Stapledon does in
Last and First Men)? (284)
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ATQF texts employ fantasy components including but not limited to time-travel, immortal
human-like beings, depictions of historical cycles, and simply multiple timelines in interlocking
narrative arcs to overcome this temporal limitation and better fit the Anthropocene into the novel
form.
Dürbeck and Hüpkes refer to this challenge as a crisis of scale, and they call the
Anthropocene period an “Age of Scalar Complexity” in their introduction. They explain that
“Scale can either be understood as a relationship of relative size or as a relationship between
vertical levels. In both cases, a scale always already presumes the existence of at least another
scale to which it relates or to which it can be compared. It matters how we think of this relative
size relationship in terms of the extrapolation of scales” (Dürbeck and Hüpkes 5). The relative
scope of climate change compared to one human lifetime is an example of this scalar
complexity. It is challenging to fully comprehend time scales which stretch beyond the length of
one or two human lifetimes. Rather than being understood in terms of decades or centuries,
Geologic time scales are dizzyingly long as they cover time periods spanning thousands or
millions of years. This scalar complexity is analogous to trying to explain the size and scale of
the universe – it is challenging for people to truly comprehend that there are billions of stars with
planetary systems in the Milky Way Galaxy alone, and that the Milky Way Galaxy is one of
billions of galaxies in the observable universe.
When discussing this scalar complexity, Dürbeck and Hüpkes remark that “One of the
most crucial challenges of the Anthropocene is that the relationship between what we can
immediately witness with our senses and what has to be computed for us to be sensible cannot
anymore be thought of (if it ever were) in terms of a clear ontological distinction” (Dürbeck and
Hüpkes 4). One of the challenging things for the scientific community to communicate about
climate change is that the cause-effect relationship between human activity and its impact on
the environment is often not as linear or straightforward as consumers of information have
grown to expect. Standard linear narratives of A-causes-B in Hollywood movies have further
complicated this, as viewer expectations for linear causal relationships are not often met by the
reality of climate change over time. “Processes such as climate change can only be described
as complex entanglements that do not exclusively affect human actors and actions, but include
them as substantial particularities. At the same time, these processes remain inexplicable when
conceived in terms of linear causality” (Dürbeck and Hüpkes 4). A different approach is needed
to depict or engage with the climate crisis representatively in the novel form.
Fantasy literature offers some interesting alternatives and solutions for engaging with the
climate crisis. In The Anthropocene Unconscious, Bould suggests that:
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The fantastic expresses our fears and anxieties, our desires and sometimes even
our hopes. Frankenstein’s monster embodies terrors of reproduction,
foreshadows proletarian and anti-colonial revolution. King Kong rampaging
through Manhattan enacts white fears of black masculinity and colonial
comeuppance. Bodysnatching aliens are avatars of consumerist conformism.
Robots are our dehumanised selves. Godzilla is the bomb. So the first thing you
should always ask of a monster is: what does it represent? (26)
While the texts in this chapter offer only partially fantasy threads – hence the use of the prefix
‘Quasi’ – compared to Godzilla or King Kong, these fantasy components are nonetheless
significant. I focus on the effect that the fantasy components in these texts have on their ability
to depict or engage with climate concerns be it through a loosening of the restrictions of
narrative time, the freedom to turn a pandemic into a metamorphosing plague, or simply the
surrendering to the power of myth and folklore in storytelling which spans generations.
In Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene (2022), Oziewicz remarks on the need for
narrative in the global discussion about climate change. He explains simply that “We know more
than enough to take action. We know what action needs to be taken. We even know how. The
contrast between how much we know and how little we have acted on this knowledge may be
the greatest puzzle of our time” (“Introduction” 1). He suggests that using narrative – specifically
fantasy and myth – will be a useful contributor to acknowledging the “Great Derangement”
(Ghosh) in which we find ourselves. He acknowledges Morton among others as he suggests
that what is needed is “a recognition of language as a crucial site of intervention against
anthropocentric myopia that drives the annihilation of life on Earth” (“Introduction” 3). Oziewicz
acknowledges the varying terminology for the period itself – Anthropocene as opposed to
Capitalocene, Cthulhucene etc. – and argues that this clarification of nomenclature is important
given the elements of human intervention on which he focuses in his Introduction. He indicates
that “We now live in a world where ‘on average, for each person on the globe, Anthropogenic
mass equal to more than his or her bodyweight is produced each week’ … ‘a world in which the
total weight of plastic is twice that of all animals’” (Elhachem et al. qtd. in Oziewicz 3).
Importantly, Oziewicz also focuses here on garbage as an indicator of climate change and
Anthropocentrism which is an important component of the engagement with New Weird texts in
my next chapter.
With regards to the role that language plays in this climate crisis, Oziewicz highlights the
need for fiction’s capacity to “jump-start our imaginations to envision an ecological civilization”
(5). His book focuses on fantasy, the magical, and the supernatural “as a fact in the world of
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narrative – whether or not it makes any ontological claims about the world of the reader’s direct
experience” (Oziewicz qtd. in Oziewicz 7). This chapter helps demonstrate in detail some of the
ways in which fantasy can be used to reflect on climate change and ecology. Mitchell’s The
Bone Clocks and its war between the Atemporals steals the reader’s attention before raising the
curtain revealing the dystopian climate future. Ghosh’s Gun Island similarly invokes fantasy and
supernatural themes which include folk tales and myths from the Sundarbans region of India to
distract the reader from the underlying climatic changes which permeate the narrative. These
key texts do as Oziewicz suggests – they approach the “ecocidal unconscious” mindset and
tackle it by presenting the reader with the climate crisis whether they like it or not, and by
making the reader conscious of their present distraction from it.
Oziewicz focuses on fantasy in his book as he suggests that literary fiction needs to do
more to address the climate crisis. He is frustrated when he remarks that “We live amid human-
caused climate change, desertification, mountains of trash, and mass extinctions, and so it
seems like the height of folly to go on telling stories about ambitions, love affairs, and financial
scandals as if those purely social concerns were unaffected by, and had no effect on, the natural
world” (“Introduction” 16). Put simply, we need literature that can do better: “An obvious answer
is science fiction, which employs extrapolation and utopian critique to wake us to the
devastation in which we are complicit and encourages us to imagine other ways to live and
organize ourselves” (“Introduction” 16). This is echoed by Bould as he writes that “Sf in its
empirical, realist mode directly depicts climate change unfolding. However, sf also possesses
mundane literature’s metaphoric capacity to produce equally concrete but indirect
representations of climate change” (Bould 119). Literature with “concrete but indirect
representations of climate change” is where the fantasy component of ATQF resides in this
chapter. ATQF possesses this “metaphoric capacity to produce … indirect representations of
climate change.” ATQF literature can indeed present the climate crisis accurately and indirectly
at the same time.
Fantasy through Folklore in Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island (2019) and Anthony Doerr’s
Cloud Cuckoo Land (2021)
Amitav Ghosh – Gun Island (2019)
Folklore and cultural myths are foregrounded in Gun Island. Throughout the
protagonist’s globetrotting journey, the climate crisis is an omnipresent threat. GI is concerned
with the protagonist finding his place in the world, and with the nature of coincidence during this
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period of great acceleration. Coincidence, myth, and folklore are at odds with scientific reason
and logic. Ghosh positions coincidence, myth and folklore opposite the changing climate as the
pillar of scientific certainty in the text. The titular ‘gun island’ refers to a myth about the “‘Bonduki
Sadagar’, translated as ‘the Gun Merchant’” (3), a figure in Bengali folklore. It is the tale of a
merchant fated to travel the world seeking a safe haven from the goddess of snakes, Manasa
Devi” (A. Clark, The Guardian 2019). In the folklore tale, The Gun Merchant incurs the wrath of
Manasa Devi, the goddess of snakes, and must roam the Earth to escape her climatic
punishment. The background of the Gun Merchant unfolds fragmentarily as the novel’s
protagonist – Deen Datta – travels around the world in a journey reminiscent of the Gun
Merchant and learns more about the folklore he remembered as a child. Deen’s journey places
him in markedly different environments both culturally and environmentally. Each place he visits
is affected by the changing climate, but the impacts felt most apparently vary in each area – this
highlights the differences in the global response to climate change. Ghosh confronts the role
that narrative plays in our collective response to the issue and aims to overcome some of the
limitations of cli-fi in doing so. It is as if Deen’s journey through climate disasters mirrors the
journey taken by the Gun Merchant who tries to escape the wrath of the Manasa Devi.
GI is typical of ATQF literature’s indirect approach towards climate change. Ghosh,
however, is undoubtedly preoccupied with climate change. He writes extensively about the
climate in his other work – most importantly in his non-fiction critical work, The Great
Derangement (2017). Much of GI is set in areas discussed at length in TGD. In GI, the reader is
drawn into a narrative of coincidence regarding cultural folklore. It is as though events from the
old stories have come to repeat themselves in the twenty-first century. This is openly mocked by
some characters in the story, just as the idea of a changing climate is often quickly shut down by
those arguing erroneously that such changes are merely cyclical. The reader’s attention is kept
on the development of the Gun Merchant folklore rather than on the changing climate, despite
Ghosh including multiple climate and weather events unfolding in the background of the
narrative. Ghosh’s text links folklore and myth to the climate crisis by using coincidence and the
apparent cyclical nature of time; it begins to overcome the spatial and temporal limitations faced
by cli-fi. By foregrounding the folkloric and fantasy elements of the text, Ghosh ensures that GI
can depict climate change without devolving into a lecture.
In her paper on “Ethnographic Surrealism in Gun Island,” Lava Asaad remarks that GI is
in part a response to the limitations and challenges faced by cli-fi and realist fiction when trying
to depict the climate crisis – a view shared by Ghosh. She remarks that GI “brings to the
forefront the inadequacy of realist fiction in presenting [the] climate crisis” (7). Asaad also
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remarks upon Ghosh’s critique of “writers’ unwillingness to engage more vehemently in
critiquing the global world order that breeds economic inequality and environmental destruction”
(10) and reminds readers that “in The Great Derangement, Ghosh presses the point that the few
existing literary representations of climate change have derailed our understanding of its gravity.
Ghosh’s frustration with the prevalent mainstream representation of the reality of climate
catastrophe decries its miniscule efforts in comparison to the actual scale of climate crisis”
(Asaad 11). Asaad speaks directly about the limitations of cli-fi as she writes that:
Climate Fiction (cli-fi), moreover, only preoccupies itself with stories set in the
far future as if to suggest that climate crisis is divorced from the current
present and the distant past. Ghosh’s body of works, on the other hand, brings
elements of the Anthropocene (past, present, and future) into play to attest to
a sense of continuity and urgency within the crisis against the dominant
conception of climate change as a novelty always and forever projected onto
the future. Here lies the rub for Ghosh: the climate crisis is primarily presented
as a science fiction. (11)
Here Asaad highlights the importance broader timescales in fiction engaging with the climate
crisis. ATQF achieves this and using fantasy devices as means to depict even broader spans of
time than are possible in literary fiction. In GI, Ghosh combats this notion that the climate
change component of a narrative must be the sf or unreal component of the text. Instead, he
uses elements of fantasy and folklore amidst an otherwise realist narrative to highlight the
ubiquitous and seemingly coincidental climate and weather events in the present.
Fantasy, Myth, and Folklore
The fantasy component of GI is its use of myth and folklore. Deen’s journey begins as he
explores the Bonduki Sadagar myth. He reminisces about what he remembers from his
childhood about this story as well as many others to which it relates or is derived from. Deen’s
position is one of logic and reason, so he is uneasy about the idea that these myths or
traditional stories are anything more than simply old tales which have become more magical
with retelling over generations. Myth and folklore are juxtaposed with Deen’s logical reasoning
and intellect throughout the narrative. Asaad remarks that “Gun Island, takes into consideration
popular mythologies and puts them into conversation with the current discourse on ecological
disasters on a global scale, focusing on how these folktales have foreseen ecological
imbalances and where juxtapositioning of events is not a mere coincidence” (8). When being
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retold some of the Bengali folklore tales most associated with the Sundarbans early in the text,
Deen remarks that:
He [Kanai] went on to name a few other well-known characters from Bengali
folklore: Satya Pir, Lakhindar and the like. Such figures are not quite gods and
nor are they merely saintly mortals: like the shifting mudflats of the Bengal delta,
they arise at the conjuncture of many currents. Sometimes shrines are built to
preserve their memory; and almost always their names are associated with a
legend. (Ghosh, GI 5-6)
Ghosh pairs climate change with myths, gods, and folklore early in the novel. This conjunction
of the fantasy with reality is present throughout the text and is demonstrated by revealing
apparent extreme coincidence not to be the stuff of myth, but instead an everyday reality in our
climate changed present.
The adaptation of the Gun Merchant tale strikes a chord with Deen as he recalls having
been told similar tales in his childhood and he reflects upon its meaning for him: “The story’s
appeal is, I suppose, not unlike that of the Odyssey, with a resourceful human protagonist being
pitted against vastly more powerful forces, earthly and divine” (6). He remarks that the story,
with all its strangeness, is something that has been engrained into him throughout his life since
childhood: “I don’t remember when I first heard the story, or who told it to me, but constant
repetition ensured that it sank so deep into my consciousness that I wasn’t even aware that it
was there. But some stories, like certain life forms, possess a special streak of vitality that allow
them to outlive others of their kind” (6). Here, the story has become real in that it is a real part of
his childhood and his upbringing in the Sundarbans. It is reflective of society’s engrained belief
that the environment is enduring. It is thus a surprise when it fails. Ghosh’s engagement with
fantasy and folklore raises an interesting point about what people collectively can come to
believe over time. This is contrasted with what people choose not to believe in terms of climate
change, often in the face of overwhelming evidence.
In her 2017 article for The New Yorker entitled “Fantastic Beasts and How to Rank
Them,” Kathryn Schulz asks readers to name the mythical creatures they can think of – from the
Loch Ness Monster, to Vampires, to Santa Claus, to Dementors – and then literally rank them in
order of how real they could be. This exercise demonstrates humanity’s bizarre ability to
rationalize and reason with the irrational and unreasonable. We can rationalize and make sense
of things that simply do not make sense, yet we fail to make sense of clear and direct
information that is presented to us if it disagrees with our pre-existing views. Schulz suggests
with regards to these mythical creatures that “Given so much natural extravagance, it’s not
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surprising that the real and the unreal are sometimes mistaken for each other” (27). So, it is
easy to see how people are likely to subscribe to myths and folklore when they offer a more
pleasant, magical, or palatable option than reality – she suggests that “in the end, what’s most
remarkable is not that our fantasies contain so much reality; it is that our reality contains so
much fantasy” (Schulz, “Fantastic Beasts” 28). When it comes to belief in things like myths and
folklore, or denial of climate-science, what Ghosh refers to as a period of “great derangement” is
to Schulz a symptom of a kind of “inextinguishable hope.” In GI these two kinds of denial and
belief coalesce, and the reader is shown characters reasoning with the unreasonable and
denying the undeniable. Ghosh uses myth and folklore to demonstrate humanity’s often
problematic and limited thought processes when it comes to the climate events occurring
throughout the story. He demonstrates humanity’s inability to deal with the climate crisis.
Cycles and Patterns over Time
Deen travels all over the world and experiences the varying effects of the climate crisis
in each location. This repeated exposure to such extremes challenges conventional or realistic
narrative structure as it appears that the climate crisis is again being over-fictionalized. This is
intentional on Ghosh’s part as his text aims to show that the frequency and severity of such
events – cyclones, floods, droughts, forest fires – is by no means over-fictionalized or
exaggerated, and that instead these kinds of events occur with relative frequency every day all
over the world. In TGD he remarks on the challenge that fiction faces as he states that “if novels
were not built upon a scaffolding of exceptional moments, writers would be faced with the
Borgesian task of reproducing the world in its entirety. But the modern novel, unlike geology, has
never been forced to confront the centrality of the improbable: the concealment of its scaffolding
of events continues to be central to its functioning” (Ghosh, TGD 23). Novels thus must be built
on apparently exceptional moments, even if the moments in question are not indeed
exceptional. He suggests that:
in the era of global warming, nothing is really far away; there is no place where
the orderly expectations of bourgeois life hold unchallenged sway. … This, then,
is the first of the many ways in which the age of global warming defies both
literary fiction and contemporary common sense: the weather events of this time
have a very high degree of improbability. Indeed, It has even been proposed that
this era should be named the ‘catastrophozoic’ … It is certain in any case that
these are not ordinary times; the events that mark them are not easily
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accommodated in the deliberately prosaic world of serious prose fiction. (Ghosh,
TGD 26)
In these unprecedented climatic times, it is necessary to reflect in fiction the events which may
seem to be improbable or uncommon despite their relative frequency. This is the challenge
faced most directly by cli-fi: How can texts accurately portray the world in fiction without
seemingly dramatizing the already dramatic, or over-fictionalizing the real? In a Wall Street
Journal review of Gun Island, Sam Sacks asks the related question: “How can novelists address
climate change without turning their books into seminars?” Ghosh does so by foregrounding an
ab-real, fantasy, or surreal element of the text and keeping the climate narrative in the periphery
of the reader’s focus.
A frustrating and misguided perspective about the climate crisis from deniers is that the
changing climate is the result of the Earth’s natural cycles, and that human activity is not to
blame for the increase in temperature and the resulting extreme weather patterns. Additionally,
deniers cite coincidence as means to rationalize with and reason away the frequency of such
events, the implication being that such events would be happening regardless of humanity’s
influence. The Hadley Center Central England Temperature (HadCET) Dataset published by the
Met Office in the UK “is the longest instrumental record of temperature in the world”(Met Office
UK). This record demonstrates the increasing temperatures compared to the pre-industrial
average and demonstrates clearly that this theory of natural cycles is incorrect. Ghosh tackles
this perspective by utilizing coincidence as a component of his fantasy-folklore narrative.
Despite being a rational man of science, Deen questions himself and is clearly influenced by the
nature of coincidence throughout his journey in GI. When first recounting the tale of the Gun
Merchant, Deen says: “As I began to read the Bangla verse epics that narrate the Merchant’s
story (there are many) I discovered that the legend’s place in the culture of eastern India was
strangely similar to the pattern of its life in my own mind” (7). His journey around the world
reflects the journey the Merchant takes in the legend as he escapes the Manasa Devi’s wrath.
Deen’s journey and experiences mirror those of the Merchant. The resurfacing of the story
throughout his life is positioned in relation to the recurring tornadoes over the span of the
second half of the twentieth century. The cyclones in the early 1970s were initially
unprecedented and unexpected, “The vocabulary of the report is evidence of how
unprecedented this disaster was. So unfamiliar was this phenomenon that the papers literally
did not know what to call it: at a loss for words they resorted to ‘cyclone’ and ‘funnel-shaped
whirlwind’” (Ghosh, TGD 14). By the 1990s such events had become routine and expected. In
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GI, Deen remarks of the people in the Sundarbans that “Storms, I soon discovered, were [their]
measure of time” (Ghosh, GI 59).
The repetitive, coincidental, and cyclical nature of the extreme weather events in GI
directly reflects the problematic way in which many people dismiss or trivialize the climate crisis.
The climate events are in the reader’s periphery. Ghosh positions the climate events as
secondary to the folklore narrative and uses coincidence to connect the two. It is important to
note that coincidence does not discount the reality of a situation. Rather, the concern is the
incorrect connection between two things that may lead to an incorrect causal relationship being
drawn. Climate deniers use coincidence and correlation-versus-causation argumentation to
discredit events that do indeed happen with increasing frequency. Thus, when Deen encounters
cyclones and rising tides in the Sundarbans, forest fires in the US, and extreme hailstorms in
Italy, these events seem as coincidental as his recollections of the Gun Merchant reflecting his
own life. Ghosh asks the reader to focus on the folklore while depicting climate change similarly
coincidentally at every stop on Deen’s journey. As a result, it is the climate crisis that becomes
consistently real; it is the backdrop to the fantasy and folklore elements of the narrative.
Coincidence itself is presented in relation to folklore and myth. The climate crisis is thus
positioned as that which is not then viewed as impossible or improbable by comparison.
Responses to the Climate Crisis over Space and Time
A key component to ATQF novels is their use of vast, far-reaching timelines to depict the
climate crisis as a more diachronic process as opposed to any one individual event or
catastrophe. Throughout GI, Deen travels all over the world, and reflects upon various patterns
in weather through stories and tales told by locals in each area. These tales stretch far back into
the past.
As Deen’s journey takes him to the varying ecosystems of the Sundarbans, the US, and
central Europe, he directly experiences a variety of the weather patterns associated with climate
change in each area. His experience with climate change is largely dictated by his observations
of human and animal migration. Migration patterns for animals are often associated with climatic
changes as the ecology of various areas across the globe changes such that certain animals
can no longer live in their once natural environments. Less immediately associated with climate
change, despite it being a logical result of the impacts of the changing climate, is the
widespread human migration. Simply put, when areas become uninhabitable or unable to
sustain life for long periods of time, the population is forced to move. This can happen abruptly –
as in the case of an extreme weather event resulting from climate change such as a tornado,
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cyclone, or flood – or over the course of months or years of dwindling crop yields and increasing
average temperatures causing long-term droughts. As far back as 1990, the IPCC has
suggested that “the single greatest impact of climate change could be on human migration”
(International Organization for Migration). This association between migration and climate
change is studied by agencies responsible for advising policymakers on climate and emissions
targets. Douglas Morris indicates that “interactions among human migration, climate change,
and CO2 emissions are similarly recognized as significant global concerns” by the United
Nations General Assembly (Morris). In her article on climate change and migration for the
Council on Foreign Relations, Mia Prange writes that “More than half of the developing world’s
population lives in these three regions, and many live in vulnerable areas, some of which are
already experiencing climate-driven migration crises.” Similarly, in his article on “Migration and
Narrative Method,” Brian Yazell remarks that “experts and speculative authors alike attest [that]
the future is migratory. Globalization has turned mobility into an essential component for
survival… Against this backdrop, climate change accelerates displacement on a planetary
scale” (Yazell 155).
Ghosh uses the history of storms in the Sundarbans to look back in time rather than
projecting forwards to an imagined climate future. In GI Deen is confronted with migration from
the Sundarbans region and from India and Bangladesh collectively when he learns more about
the history of weather patterns in the area. Speaking of the history of cyclones that began to be
recorded in the 1970s in the Sundarbans region, Deen’s contact in the area, Moyna, explains:
“Starting in the late 1990s warning systems for storms had been put in place across the region
so there was plenty of time to prepare. Mass evacuations had been planned in advance and
millions of people had been moved to safety” (Ghosh, GI 52). Evacuations are unfortunately
only temporary solutions for moving large populations – people either need to return home or go
somewhere else more permanently. Moyna goes on to show that “Aila’s [the cyclone’s] long-
term consequences were even more devastating than those of earlier cyclones. Hundreds of
miles of embankment had been swept away and the sea had invaded places where it had never
entered before; vast tracts of once fertile land had been swamped by salt water, rendering them
uncultivatable for a generation, if not forever” (52-53). While it appears that the direct
environmental impact of the cyclone Aila is Moyna’s focus as she retells the story to Deen, it
becomes clear that the secondary impacts, the human trafficking and mass migration, are the
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most significant in the long term.
27
She introduces migration and human trafficking as something
unexpected, mirroring the way that many people initially dissociate it from climate change or are
unconscious of it:
The evacuations too had produced effects that no one could have foretold….
Communities had been destroyed and families dispersed; the young had drifted
to cities, swelling already-swollen slums; among the elderly many had given up
trying to eke out a living and had taken to begging on the streets.
The Sundarbans had always attracted traffickers, because of its poverty, but
never in such numbers as after Aila. (53)
Moyna describes the situation to Deen as though the flood of people is simply an extension of
the literal flood of water.
When Deen first witnesses migration first-hand, he is as unaware of this kind of
secondary outcome as Moyna had indicated. This is indicative of the “ecocidal unconscious”
(Oziewicz) and the “great derangement” (Ghosh) mentalities that we experience with regards to
climate change. Deen’s first interaction with Tipu – a young and enterprising Bangladeshi-
American boy – is characterized by his ignorance about the world in which he lives. When Tipu
first introduces himself to Deen he is smoking a joint and he refers to Deen only as “Pops.” As a
result, when Deen asks about Tipu’s money-making endeavours and assumes illegality, his first
thought is that Tipu is selling drugs. It quickly becomes clear that people-moving is the real
economic goldmine. It is clear that governments and individual entities view it in the same way
that the climate crisis is viewed. It is a necessary evil to produce billions of dollars: “‘Drugs?
Jeez Pops, that’s no industry to be in – declining margins, shrinking profits, bad risk profile. No,
that wouldn’t work for me at all. I like growth industries, like the one I’m in.’ ‘And what would that
be?’ ‘The people-moving industry Pops,’ he said, grinning. ‘It’s already one of the world’s biggest
and still growing fast’” (65). Deen bluntly responds by stating simply that “‘What you’re talking
about sounds like human trafficking’” (65). While Deen ultimately does learn more about the
precarious situation that many young people from Bangladesh, India, and similarly affected
parts of the world find themselves in, this kind of migration is still largely overlooked by many
with regards to its connection to climate change. When it is broken down simply as a cause-
and-effect relationship it becomes harder to disregard – when an area can no longer support its
inhabitants, they move.
27
Sheu et al. elucidate the causal relationship between poverty, climate change, and human trafficking and
illustrate that climate change is a crucial factor in understanding the complexities of global human
trafficking. “Potential Impact of Climate Change on Human Trafficking: A Narrative Review” (2021)
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Throughout GI, the effects of the changing climate are clear in the depictions of the
various settings across the globe. There are metaphorical representations of the influx of
migration – and human trafficking – as an indication of the literal rising tide of people. This
resembles the dam-breaking imagery in Beckett’s America City as mass migration has become
one of the greatest problems in the US. In GI, the actual water level increases in the
Sundarbans, the forest fires burn fiercely in California, and the storms become increasingly
unpredictable in Italy. The reader is first introduced to the impacts of the changing climate on the
animal life that Piya – a biologist studying the migratory patterns of marine life in the
Sundarbans – is researching. Tipu laughs at Deen’s ignorance yet again when he compares the
migration of such animals to the migration of people: “now the fish catch is down, the land’s
turning salty, and you can’t go into the jungle without bribing the forest guards. On top of that
every other year you get hit by a storm that blows everything to pieces. So what are people
supposed to do? What would anyone do? If you’re young you can’t just sit on your butt till you
starve to death. Even the animals are moving” (65). This is a simple response to an
overwhelming problem. Ghosh demonstrates the omnipresence of these climatic changes in a
way which makes them appear coincidental. They are not coincidental, but rather they are
simply occurring with rapidly increasing frequency and severity. Deen’s ignorance throughout
the novel is reflective of our collective ignorance and unconsciousness to global issues like
climate change.
While spending time in the US for a conference, Deen is confronted with extreme forest
fires – not uncommon for the area or the time of year – that threaten the homes in the area and
displace people from their homes. Deen says “I had not kept up with the news that week. Now,
looking at my smartphone, I learnt that massive wildfires had been raging around Los Angeles
for several days. Thousands of acres of land had been incinerated and tens of thousands of
people had been moved to safety” (Ghosh, GI 126). This is not only a clear indication of the
resulting impacts of the increasing temperature from climate change, but it is also reminiscent of
the same kind of response as was the case in the Sundarbans. It is something that should not
have been surprising, but somehow was still a shock and a surprise for Deen. Additionally, the
response to the situation is the same – when areas become uninhabitable, people evacuate or
move completely. Later in the hotel Deen remarks: “But as I was slipping between the soft, white
sheets I noticed a strange orange glow around the edges of the curtains … [the] landscape …
seemed to be ablaze with fire and smoke. It took me a while to realize that the fires were
actually many miles away: in the darkness of the night they seemed to fill the horizon, from end
to end” (131). This is an interesting depiction of climate change and of the fact that Deen was so
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shocked that things were so close. It is also reminiscent of Morton’s concept of hyperobjects
bearing the phrase marked on car wing-mirrors: objects in the mirror are closer than they
appear.
My home province of British Columbia has been hit hard with forest fires over the past
15 years. The first that I experienced in 2008 and 2009 were particularly widespread, causing
mass evacuations throughout the interior’s Okanagan valley. The fires in 2019 – spanning over
2200 hectares (Judd, GlobalNewsBC) – destroyed the town of Lytton which has still not been
rebuilt and continues to struggle with fires year on year. The fires over the past 2-3 years in BC
and the Greater Vancouver Area more specifically have been particularly newsworthy, yet I, like
many others, continue to hypocritically do the things that directly contribute to the problem. In
our derangement we drive past the sign on the highway indicating that the forest fire risk is
‘Extreme’ while being told to ‘Have a Nice Day! Enjoy the Summer Sun!’ just 100 yards ahead
by the next overhead road sign. For Deen in GI, this derangement is most clearly indicated by
the hotel taking action so that the conference attendees do not have to see the fires themselves:
“Next morning there was much confusion in the lobby, largely because the hotel had rearranged
its dining rooms so that its guests would not have to gaze at waves of flame as they
breakfasted” (Ghosh, GI 133). Indeed, heaven forbid the ongoing climate crisis should ruin our
breakfast plans.
Deen’s run-ins with the impacts of the increasing climate change are widely relevant as
the narrative is not restricted to one location. By having Deen travel the world – on a journey
reminiscent of the Bonduki Sadagar’s – the reader sees how many areas experience the direct
impacts of climate change. The fantasy and folklore thread of the narrative – in Deen’s journey
mirroring the journey of the folkloric Gun Merchant – is the vehicle that takes Deen around the
world, and the climate events thus do not seem to be the narrative’s focus. Instead, they
coincidentally occur everywhere he goes. Deen acknowledges the repetitive nature of what he
experiences, however not directly in relation to climate change. For him, the coincidental nature
of his journey reflects the folkloric and coincidence-laden story of the Bonduki Sadagar, the
story his own journey mirrors. He remarks that:
The word ‘chance’ hit me with such force that I lost track of what Piya was saying.
Shutting my eyes I silently embraced the word, clinging to it as though it were my
last connection with reality. Yes, of course, it was all chance, these unlikely
encounters, these improbable intersections between past and present … all of
this was pure coincidence, of course it was. (201)
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Here, Deen is referring to the coincidences relating to his life mirroring the journey of the Gun
Merchant. Ghosh positions these coincidences alongside the actual climate events which are
ultimately not coincidental. Rather, they represent the increasingly changing climate across the
globe. The climatic events that Deen experiences merely appear to be governed by chance
when displayed one after the other. Ghosh presents the reader with the reality of the climate
crisis and uses Deen to rationalize all such events as either chance or random happenstance to
give them meaning. Deen remarks that: “To cease to believe in it [chance] was to cross over into
the territory of fate and destiny, devils and demons, spells and miracles – or, more prosaically,
into the conspiratorial universe of the paranoiac, where hidden forces decide everything” (202).
When it comes to the climate events like the forest fires and the floods, there are no hidden
forces causing them. The contributing factors for such events are well known.
Anthropo-Temporal Quasi-Fantasy – Folklore and Climate
Gun Island concludes with the clashing of folklore and climate crisis – the climate crisis
is as much a crisis of culture as a crisis of science. Ghosh has his characters reflect on this
convergence. He combines the folklore stories with experiences from reality in both history and
in the characters’ present: “‘over there is the Lazzaretto Vecchio, where those who were stricken
by the plague were sent. Thousands of skeletons have been found there, in mass graves; it
hasn’t changed much in centuries; what you are seeing is what the Gun Merchant would have
seen’” (276). Here Ghosh refers to the continually cyclical nature of time while directly referring
to the Gun Merchant legend. He follows this immediately with a reference to the climate crisis
and has Deen remark on how “unworldly” such events seem:
And all the while the dark, swirling heavens continued to heave and churn,
occasionally extruding twisters that sometimes made contact with land or water
and sometimes not. The sight was like nothing I had ever seen before; it seemed
to not belong on the Earth of human experience but in the pages of some
unworldly fantasy, like the Hypnerotomachia Polyphili. (276)
28
The climate crisis indeed seems at times like an “unworldly fantasy.”
Finally, Ghosh remarks directly on the complexities of narrative in relation to apparently
unrealistic, coincidental, or extreme events. As he suggests in TGD, writing about such events
seems to be at odds with narrative convention that aims for realism, yet writing about the
28
The Hypnerotomachia Polyphili is a fantasy text written in 1499 by the priest Francesco
Colonna; it depicts a love story, dreams within dreams, and artwork depicting the various
creatures encountered throughout its narrative.
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climate crisis necessitates writing about extreme events. This is the challenge of bringing
literature and ecology together. Ghosh uses the folkloric narrative to make this entanglement
clearer. Upon researching and visiting the temple of the Goddess of Snakes, the Manasa Devi,
Deen questions the value of storytelling entirely when it comes to folklore. He states: “‘The
temple was there, just as she had said… The temple was also associated with the goddess of
snakes, Manasa Devi, about whom there are many legends, some of which are linked to the
figure of a merchant. … The strange thing about this little temple is that the legend that’s
associated with it was never written down or published’” (140). He questions the value of such
stories given that they change over time with each retelling, and muses upon how such stories
have persisted without having been written down. “‘that’s not so unusual’ said Cinta. ‘There are
many secret legends and stories.’ … Cinta smiled cryptically. ‘Maybe they believed the story
wasn’t over – that it would reach out into the future?’ ‘I don’t get that, Cinta,’ I said. ‘I don’t see
how a legend could reach out into the future. After all, it’s just a story…’ She stopped me with a
rap on the knuckles. ‘You must never use that phrase, Dino’” (140).
Here we begin to see Ghosh directly illustrating the power that storytelling has to tell the
most important things to the largest amount of people. In this case, the novel itself and the myth
within it warns people of climate change. Cinta explains how things were in the seventeenth
century to teach him:
At that time people recognized that stories could tap into dimensions that were
beyond the ordinary, beyond the human even. They knew that only through
stories was it possible to enter the most inward mysteries of our existence …
Only through stories can invisible or inarticulate or silent beings speak to us; it is
they who allow the past to reach out to us. … You mustn’t underestimate the
power of stories. There is something in them that is elemental and inexplicable.
Haven’t you heard it said that what makes us human, what separates us from
animals, is the faculty of storytelling? (141)
Cinta demonstrates narrative’s value with regards to the longevity of beliefs and ideas. She
shows that stories have the capacity to endure for centuries. Ghosh brings together the folklore,
the fantasy, and the ecological and speaks directly to the value that a narrative has to properly
illustrate a concern like the climate crisis. Indeed, there are things in folklore and fantasy which
are inexplicable and strange, but Ghosh has Deen remark simply: “But what if the truth were
even stranger?” (141).
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Conclusion to Gun Island
Ghosh’s Gun Island utilizes Bengali folklore and the nature of coincidence to blur the line
between fantasy and reality. This coalescence of literary fiction and folkloric fantasy make up the
‘quasi-fantasy’ component of ATQF. Deen explores traditions and historical events relating to the
folk tale of the Gun Merchant, and Ghosh uses these tales to explore a past in which several
major climate events have occurred. This depiction of past events and the reiteration of cycles
and patterns over time fulfills the temporal component of ATQF. Cycles are invoked in other
texts in this chapter, including Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land which is discussed in the next
section. The Earth’s climate is indeed cyclical, and a cursory examination of the climate could
suggest that warming and cooling are the norm. It is only over increasingly expansive time
scales that the greater increase in temperature and erratic weather events becomes undeniable.
This broader span of narrative time, coupled with the use of folklore and fantasy, allows Ghosh’s
text to overcome the barriers faced by many cli-fi texts. Rather than turning his text into a
seminar or misrepresenting the issue as something that is either over-fictionalized or
dramatized, Ghosh presents the reader with a variety of climatic events across the globe as
simply the backdrop to the exploration of Bengali folklore and the tale of the Bonduki Sadagar.
The rising water levels in the Sundarbans, the forest fires in the USA, and the extreme weather
events in Italy all lead to characters being displaced, and this becomes the ultimate focus of the
text. These events are indeed things that have happened before, and Ghosh demonstrates that
the lack of action is ultimately a reflection of our derangement as a society. We would rather
simply turn our chairs in the other direction to avoid looking at the forest fires while we eat our
breakfast.
Anthony Doerr – Cloud Cuckoo Land (2021)
Cloud Cuckoo Land (CCL) is an ATQF text which utilizes multiple timelines set
simultaneously amidst the siege of fifteenth century Constantinople, the mid-to-late twentieth
century, the near-present in the year 2020/2021, and an apparent deep-space voyage in the
twenty-second century. Doerr uses a fictional text by the Greek philosopher Diogenes to
connect the stories in the past, our present, and the near future with the titular Cloud Cuckoo
Land representing a utopian magical city in the sky. While the hardships of each period in the
novel differ, the underlying theme of the circular and repetitive passage of time persists – as it
does in Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks, discussed in the next section of this chapter – and this is
closely attached to the changing of the Earth’s climate over multiple centuries. The looming
threat to the security and safety of the city of Constantinople – interestingly mirrored by the
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feeling of complicity in the siege itself given that Omeir’s narrative arc is told from the
perspective of the approaching army – is reflective of the looming threat of the climate crisis in
the present-day narrative in which humanity is undoubtedly presented as complicit. By the near-
future timeline, this responsibility appears to have been addressed in the form of an escapist
project in which inhabitants of an interstellar ship head for a replacement homestead planet.
At first glance, CCL is less directly concerned with climate change than Ghosh’s Gun
Island. Doerr seems cognizant of the cli-fi moniker at times and references, through Seymour
(the protagonist in the present), the potentially limiting nature of society’s engagement with
problematically sensationalized and fanciful cli-fi in popular culture. The changing climate is
what ultimately drives the narratives which take place after the siege of Constantinople, but
congruently to climate change in reality, this presentation is gradual. Doerr uses the multiple-
timeline approach, connected by a story of myth and folkloric fantasy, to demonstrate gradual
change. Fictionalizing a legitimate problem in the present is not something to which he must
resort. So, while climate change is a key factor in the narrative, Doerr’s engagement with it
emerges more indirectly. The primary narratives in each timeline are instead focused simply on
the state of a world balanced precariously on the brink of many different states of chaos. In
Narrative in the Anthropocene, James is concerned with how narrative can “represent ideas
such as the extended duration of geological timelines, the increasing instability of spaces in an
age of climate change, and the collective action of (some) humans that has produced the
Anthropocene” (14). Doerr’s text spans multiple centuries and uses a fictional text originating
over a thousand years earlier. The multiple-timeline quasi-fantasy narrative in CCL allows Doerr
to depict the changing climate over a broader span than would otherwise be possible in literary
fiction.
Firstly, I focus on the cyclical nature of time and the relative impermanence of human
development by unpacking Anna’s experience during the Constantinople timeline. I then
examine the theme of escapism in relation to the climate crisis in the future timeline set in the
2200s on the Argos, a ship designed to reach a new homestead planet for humanity: BetaOph2.
A common solution or mechanism for dealing with the climate crisis in reality – often presented
by those unwilling to acknowledge the proximity of the hyperobject – is to develop a means to
leave our planet. This is essentially the next step to what Slaymaker suggests by moving into
Canada’s north in America City. In CCL, that escapist mentality is presented as one that is
inherently flawed. Doerr’s text does eventually explain the purpose of the mission the Argos is
undertaking, but the reason is secondary to the internal narrative of the inhabitants of the Argos,
of which Konstance is the young protagonist and sole survivor. Thirdly, I unpack Doerr’s
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engagement with the sense of angst and anger felt by the Millennial generations and beyond.
Doerr’s troubled protagonist, Seymour, represents an amalgam of the many responses and
emotions regarding the climate crisis. Seymour’s actions are similar to Frank’s actions in
Robinson’s MftF. His violence is misguided, and his actions are not justified, but they are
representative of the angst of a generation
In CCL Doerr uses a literal story directly – a physical artifact representing the enduring
power of storytelling over centuries. Doerr’s novel offers one solution to a problem identified by
James. “[T]o task fully readers with interpreting an event along experiential and climatological
time, authors must draw upon narrative resources that can represent an event as occurring
within a narrative but also as existing in a chain that outpaces the timeline of narrative events”
(James 97). This multiple-timeline approach, unified by a fictional fantasy story is one such
narrative mechanism capable of fulfilling this duty.
In his 2021 review of Doerr’s novel entitled “The World the Book Can Build,” Joshua
Mohr writes that “The main connective tissue between these threads is a book, is storytelling
itself: how books are magic, how they are time machines, how they connect us all to the story
that has been happening since the first scribbles appeared on cave walls” (Mohr 42). The
reader’s attention is drawn to the survival of this text as it comes close to vanishing into history
multiple times only to be rescued by Anna, pieced together by Zeno, and then rediscovered by
Konstance. In the interview with Mohr for the same article, Doerr states: “I wanted a text that
had been whittled down to a single copy so that it was in extreme danger of extinction” (qtd. in
Mohr 45). The word extinction becomes particularly relevant given the precarious setting of
each of the text’s timelines. Anna’s constant city of Constantinople is under threat in the past,
and Konstance fears humanity is at the edge of extinction in the future. In TGD Ghosh remarks
on the limiting nature of fiction when it comes to talking about the climate crisis. By including this
kind of background narrative – this fictional text – Doerr acknowledges this challenge and
explains that this is a fragmentary process which must be dealt with from multiple vantage
points and perspectives. It is hard to depict something as diffuse and complex as the climate
crisis in a singular narrative – one time frame from start to finish. Rather, it is best expressed by
juxtaposing parts of the story against other parts. In this sense, he has Diogenes’ text unpacked
and pieced together by the characters in the same way that we experience his own narrative. By
the time it is completely pieced together in both Seymour’s timeline and then later in
Konstance’s, it is a moment of realization – this realization is reflective of humanity’s collective
realization about the climate crisis.
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Anna in Constantinople: The Enduring Walls
The earliest timeline in Doerr’s CCL is told from two perspectives – Anna’s and Omeir’s.
Anna is a young child living inside the walls of Constantinople in poverty in the mid-1400s.
Omeir is born into equally grim circumstances, and his survival is immediately threatened as he
is born with a facial deformity that causes his family to consider leaving him to die. His survival
and resilience are demonstrated throughout his timeline as he is conscripted into the ranks of
the Muslim forces of the Sultan aiming to march on Constantinople and break through its
centuries-old walls. For Anna and the inhabitants of Constantinople, the walls are constant and
enduring. The idea that they could be breached is unfathomable, just as in the opening lines of
H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898), “No one would have believed” the alien invasion
could have been possible. Precarity is thematic in Doerr’s novel, and he challenges things which
have indeed been constant right up to the point at which they cease or break. As a young child
Anna learns to read by stealing books from a crumbling library building. Her teacher, Himerius,
muses that “The things that look fixed in the world, child – mountains, wealth, empires – their
permanence is only an illusion. We believe they will last, but that is only because of the brevity
of our own lives” (Doerr 172). The looming threat of the Sultan and his army confronts the
tenacity and ubiquity of the walls. Anna and Omeir’s place in time is not characterized by climate
strife or anxiety. Instead, Doerr uses the predominant threat of their time – from two opposing
perspectives – to illustrate that even the most certain and unwavering things in humanity’s brief
time on Earth are breakable.
The Sultan’s army grows gradually closer to the walls of Constantinople – it is a slow-
moving threat, akin to what James refers to as the “slow violence” of the climate crisis. The
inhabitants of the city know the army approaches, and they know that with it comes the threat of
the new technology – the canons capable of launching massive projectiles at their sacred walls.
While they understand the looming threat of the army, they seem paralyzed in their response to
its advance. Their lack of substantive action reflects the lack of action that, in the later timeline,
Seymour knows is the case regarding climate change. Doerr uses the siege of Constantinople
as it reflects the most significant threat of the time-period. Those inside the walls are presented
as victims of the approaching army – victims of the technological advancement that will wipe
them out. As is the case with the climate crisis, they know the destruction is coming, yet they do
very little about it. “‘But the walls,” she says. “They have survived so many sieges before” (229).
While the protagonists in each of Doerr’s timelines are not members of the upper-classes – and
most experience extreme hardships due to poverty – they acknowledge the effect that the
looming threat will have not just on their own lives, but equally on the lives of the wealthy: “‘The
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world is in its final days. Anna remembers something Chryse once said: The houses of the rich
burn as quick as any other’” (231). Indeed, the houses of the wealthy inside the walls of the city
are just as vulnerable as the house in which Anna had grown up poor and in servitude to a
master who had abandoned their home shortly before the impending attack.
Escapism: Konstance and the Argos
Cloud Cuckoo Land challenges twenty-first century inter-planetary travel ideologies in
which the climate change crisis can simply be outrun. The future timeline is set on the Argos –
the interplanetary ship headed for the planet of Beta Oph2. Initially, the mission the Argos is
undertaking appears to be innovative and necessary. It is reminiscent of the great ark-type
vessels from sf movies such as Passengers (2016), Avatar (2009), or even the climate and
garbage themed Pixar movie, Wall-E (2008). Such ships carry thousands of inhabitants to
distant areas in space in search of new potential home-planets. The Argos is a self-sustaining
and self-contained eco-system for its inhabitants. It is presided over and kept functional by the
artificial-intelligence CPU called Sybil. Sybil keeps the inhabitants safe, monitors their health,
and ensures that all the necessary tasks required to keep the vessel working are completed.
Initially, the Argos’ existence appears to be the result of humanity’s capacity for foresight and
planning. It is a shock for Konstance, the timeline’s protagonist, to learn that she will never
reach the target destination of Beta Oph2. Sybil offers Konstance a potential consolation:
She writes 216,078 Earth days in years? and puts the paper in and a fresh slip
flutters down. 592….
‘We’ll never--?’
‘That’s right, child. We know that Beta Oph2 has an atmosphere like Earth’s, that
it has liquid water like Earth does, that it probably has forests of some type. But
we will never see them. None of us will. We are the bridge generations, the
intermediaries, the ones who do the work so that our descendants will be ready.’
(Doerr 210)
This capacity for foresight is something that has been lost or abandoned in humanity’s battle
against the worsening climate. Chief concerns instead tend to be electoral victories, economic
gains, and popularity contests. This is, however, a new phenomenon. In the Middle-Ages, it was
not uncommon for monarchs to begin the construction of churches and cathedrals knowing that
such buildings would not be completed in their own lifetimes. While Konstance is indeed part of
something apparently bigger than herself, she is not consoled by Sybil’s rationale: “You and I
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will never reach BetaOph2, dear, and that is a painful truth. But in time you will come to believe
that there is nobility in being a part of an enterprise that will outlast you” (Doerr 213).
The reader learns that the Argos is in fact not on its way to a new home-planet. Doerr
demonstrates that a plan to flee the climate crisis, as is often touted by tech-billionaire Elon
Musk with regards to living on Mars, is not actually viable. Instead, it is a self-sustaining facility
on the ground built to outlast environmental problems that have threatened humanity in the
preceding decades. Doerr introduces the climate-crisis into Konstance’s timeline gradually. The
children on the Argos – long before the pandemic which breaks out on board or the realization
that the vessel is not in outer-space – spend much of their time in the vast VR-Library with a
seemingly endless database of information. In a program reminiscent of Google-Earth or
Google-Maps called the Atlas, Konstance can explore the planet virtually and walk around
anywhere in the world. It is inside the Atlas and the VR library of information on the Argos where
Konstance begins to research her father’s past to determine how they ended up on the Argos
mission at all.
It is important to note that Konstance’s father lived during the worst of the climate crisis.
This is undoubtedly his reason for joining the Argos mission and ultimately abandoning the
world at home. Konstance observes signs reading: “DO YOUR PART DEFEAT DAY ZERO YOU
CAN DO WITH 10 LITERS A DAY” (358) when she visits his hometown inside the Atlas. Here
Doerr looks from the future back at a world which was already struggling with water shortages
reminiscent of the approach of ‘Day Zero’ in South Africa. “In 2018, Cape Town’s ‘Day Zero’
became the focus for South Africa’s water crisis, but while its circumstances were certainly
unique, the causes of its water problems were not—high demand and inadequate supply”
(Heggie). While Cape Town ultimately avoided day zero, “it hasn’t disappeared, it’s merely been
delayed. While the catastrophic shortage that nearly turned off its faucets was narrowly averted,
Capetonians continue to survive on much less than they were used to —just over 27 gallons
(105 liters) per person per day” (Heggie).
It is also inside the Atlas that Doerr makes the connection between Seymour’s narrative
from our present and Konstance’s narrative in the twenty-second century. As is made clear in
the following section, Seymour is defined by his anger towards a global society doing nothing
about the impending climate disaster. During his jail term his job is to contribute to the coding for
the program that later becomes the Atlas in Konstance’s time. His method of communicating the
climate crisis to future generations is to conceal easter-eggs in the code such that viewers in the
Atlas can interact very minutely with their surroundings and reveal the true image of the
landscape. Rather than data-wiping anything considered unsavory with regards to the decaying
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climate, Seymour builds in secrets that Konstance discovers for herself many years later:
Discovering each easter-egg reveals what the countryside really looks like rather than what the
Atlas projects that it should look like:
She touches the owl and the mangroves tear away and a wall of red-brown water,
full of debris and garbage, gushes into place. It obliterates the people, submerges
the path, rides up the sides of the apartment towers. Boats are tethered to
second-floor balconies; someone is frozen atop the roof of a submerged car, her
arms raised for help, her scream blurred off her face. (Doerr 497)
Doerr confronts not only the apparent climate crisis, but also how it is communicated, denied,
and concealed. The program, the Atlas, is designed to show its viewers the most visually
appropriate perspective of the Earth. As such, the towns in which water was in short supply, the
areas of conflict and crime, and the depictions of fleeing refugees are subsequently concealed.
Konstance transcends the physical, spatial boundary that often limits our capacity to fully
comprehend the climate crisis. While she is initially using the Atlas to transcend the physical
boundaries of the walls of the Argos, she eventually transcends the boundary of comprehension
regarding the changing climate and the reason for the Argos’ mission altogether. Doerr uses the
Atlas as a tool to dramatize our distraction from the climate crisis.
By making the Argos’ mission not only a failure, but simply a non-starter, Doerr confronts
the notion that the climate crisis is not something that can be simply outrun or walled-off from
our understanding, no matter how hard society may try to conceal it. Using the Argos to force
Konstance into a position in which she can observe the world from any location using the Atlas,
Doerr removes the spatial boundary that can limit a person’s perspective of the climate crisis.
Trexler remarks that contemporary authors who can overcome boundaries of place are now
able to discuss the climate crisis with greater accuracy and legitimacy because “Climate change
defies scales from local places to global spaces, but it is also recognizable as a category of
effects that dissolve both place and space” (Trexler 237). Konstance’s experience on the Argos
does not appear initially to contend with the climate crisis on Earth directly. She experiences the
isolation of the journey itself, the pandemic on the Argos leading to further isolation, the
understanding that she will never reach the new homestead planet, and ultimately the
understanding that the endeavor was futile from the start. Doerr demonstrates that mechanisms
for concealing a problem, either by literal walls – like those of the Argos or in Constantinople in
the fifteenth century – or by mental or societal barriers, like the hiding of anything climate related
in the Atlas, tend to be flawed from the start. Rather, such problems should be dealt with directly
to be solved.
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Anger and Extremism – Seymour
In the twenty-first century timeline in CCL, two of the timelines converge - Seymour as a
young adult and Zeno as an old man. The narratives meet at the library at which Zeno is
teaching a group of young students about Diogenes’ fictional “Cloud Cuckoo Land” story and
having them perform it as a play. At the same library, Seymour is carrying out an attack after
having been misled and coerced by an extremist group. Seymour is Doerr’s closest
engagement with the climate crisis in CCL. Seymour’s complex characterization can, however,
also be misread in relation to this issue. The line between ecological activist and eco-terrorist is
becoming increasingly blurry in media reports, with protests intended to simply disrupt being
labelled as eco-terrorism, and groups or individuals being shut down or disbanded.
29
Seymour’s
upbringing is one of contemporary American impoverishment, and his mother works hard to
provide for him. He has difficulties with social interactions and is depicted with traits akin to
Asperger’s syndrome or autism. He often experiences a kind of sensory overload, and his
refuge becomes an area of undeveloped land behind his mother’s home where he befriends an
owl whom he calls ‘Trustyfriend.”
30
When Trustyfriend is killed during the destruction of the
wooded area to make way for a housing development, Seymour’s angst becomes more
targeted. He, like many young people in the twenty-first century – voiced globally by young
activists like Greta Thunberg – cannot understand why the climate crisis is not taken more
seriously by leaders and policymakers. Seymour’s anger towards the lack of action ultimately
manifests in severely misguided violent extremist action.
Seymour is still a young boy when he becomes engrossed in the realities of the climate
crisis. An excerpt from his tenth-grade U.S. history paper reads:
this summer scientists announced that in the last 40 yrs humans have killed 60
percent of the wild mammals and fishes and birds on Earth. Is that fun? Also in
the past 30 yrs, we melted 95 percent of the oldest thickest ice in the arctic.
When we have melted all the ice in Greenland, just the ice in Greenland, not
Alaska, just Greenland … know what happens? The oceans rise 23 feet. That
drowns Miami, New York, London, and Shanghai. (Doerr 349)
Seymour becomes a troubled extremist later in his life, but his angst is demonstrative of the
anger that today’s young generation feels towards those in power with regards to the lack of
29
Examples of this include: “Inside Earth Uprising: Environmental Activists Defying Suppression”
(B. Cullum 2024); “Greta Thunberg voices support for climate group shut down by France”
(2023)
30
Trustyfriend – Pisthetaerus – is also the name of a character in Aristophanes’ play The Birds.
This is also the play from which the phrase ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ originates.
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action regarding the impending climate crisis. In grades 9 and 10 he knows this information
already, yet he watches as nothing happens. It is important to note that Seymour unequivocally
takes his angst too far with his response, and he is most definitely swept up into the
propaganda. He reaches a boiling point and crosses a line from which he feels, and the reader
feels, that he cannot return. This point is foreshadowed a great deal in Doerr’s text, but the
warning of his violence and rage is as much a warning about the impending doom of the climate
crisis itself. Joshua Mohr suggests that Doerr is able to engage with the climate crisis through
his character development rather than turning his text into a lecture. He writes of the climate
crisis that “In lesser hands those concerns would read like a polemic, a sermon tuned to
saccharine buzzwords. But Doerr hits these zeitgeist targets through his visceral characters, not
authorial intention” (42). In the same article, Mohr asks Doerr for his perspective on Seymour’s
troubled character with this in mind. Doerr explains that “Seymour’s sensitivities were
sometimes hard to render: To write his sections I dug into my own sensitivities to crowds and
loud noises and my own anxieties about the health of the planet” (qtd. in Mohr 47).
The anxieties and sensitivities felt by Seymour are thus reflective not simply of an
extremist youth, but rather of the collective anxieties of the Millennial generation and younger.
With Seymour, Doerr confronts the reductive views of climate deniers that climate activists –
such as Greta Thunberg – are simply this generation’s extremists and should be disregarded as
crackpots. Doerr expresses Seymour’s actions and his perspective on the crisis initially not as
one of violence or aggression, but as one of simply understanding and comprehension. The
climate crisis should no longer be considered a crisis of innovation, or even a crisis of
understanding. Rather, it is a crisis of selfishness and ignorance among the one percent. Doerr
uses Seymour as a child to express the issue as simply as possible: “Seymour stands in front of
the desks and reads from a crumpled sheet of notebook paper. ‘Movies make you think
civilization will end fast, like with aliens and explosions, but really it’ll end slow. Ours is already
ending, it’s just ending too slow for people to notice’” (350). Here Doerr uses Seymour to directly
challenge cli-fi and its limitations; he shows that the kind of dramatizations of these kinds of
events lead to a misguided perspective and understanding of the reality of the situation in which
we find ourselves.
Doerr utilizes Seymour’s adolescent perspective to demonstrate the frustration felt by
young generations witnessing the lack of action towards the climate crisis. Seymour is a deeply
troubled individual, but like many of the components of Doerr’s novel, he represents the
precarious state of the world. His case confronts the climate crisis more directly than the other
threads of CCL. He is a warning. Seymour eventually reaches a breaking point, and his anger
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becomes extremism. Doerr writes that “Some swivel in Seymour has locked: he can no longer
see the planet as anything but dying, and everyone around him complicit in the killing” (508).
This turning point for Seymour leads to serious, extremist action because he is a product of his
upbringing and his pre-existing difficulties with social interaction. With Seymour, Doerr does not
need to dramatize the climate crisis in the way that cli-fi aims to. Rather, he dramatizes the
response to the climate crisis that many young people experience. He is not suggesting that all
social and environmental activists will reach this point, nor is he suggesting that Seymour is
justified in his violent response – he spends time in prison for his actions – but rather he is
fictionalizing the product of the frustration felt by entire generations.
Conclusion to Cloud Cuckoo Land
Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land is an ATQF text for its ability to combine narratives from
timelines stretching from several centuries in the past to a century in the future. The bridge
between the historical narrative of Anna and Omeir in fifteenth century Constantinople is starkly
contrasted by the sf setting of the Argos’ apparently interstellar mission, and the narratives are
linked by the mythical fantasy story depicting the titular Cloud Cuckoo Land. In his conclusion to
Anthropocene Fictions, Adam Trexler remarks on contemporary authors’ ability to include the
climate crisis in their fiction without making it the primary narrative. He suggests that “Climate
change is not just a ‘theme’ in fiction. It remakes basic narrative operations. It undermines the
passivity of place, elevating it to an actor that is itself shaped by world systems. It alters the
interactions between characters and introduces entirely new things to fiction. … In a very real
sense, contemporary fiction is becoming climate fiction” (233). In this sense, Doerr’s ATQF
novel need not be cli-fi to depict the climate crisis. James remarks that “An Anthropocene
narrative theory is interested in a narrative structure that tasks readers with interpreting the
implications of an event within multiple timelines—that of the embodied time of a narrative’s
existents and the longer timescales of historical and/or climatological time that outpace the
text’s timeframe” (97). Climate change does indeed remake narrative operations and calls for
innovative narrative devices, including multiple timelines stretching into the past and the future,
to depict the slow threat of climate change.
Fantasy and Futurity – Climate Change in a Central ATQF Novel: David Mitchell’s The
Bone Clocks (2014)
David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks (TBC) is the central example of ATQF in this chapter. It
is comprised of 6 novella-chapters, each focusing on different but connected protagonists
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centered around the lifetime of Holly Sykes. The novel is bookended by two sections which both
follow Holly directly. The first section – “A Hot Spell” – follows Holly at age 15 in the 1980s
wherein she realizes she possesses an innate supernatural ability connecting her with an
immortal race of universal protectors known as the “Horologists.” The book concludes with Holly
in her seventies living in a colony in Ireland as the dwindling global population battles the ever-
increasing impacts of the climate crisis. Despite the last section of the book dealing directly with
the impacts of the climate crisis, TBC engages with it gradually up to that point. As such, it is not
simply a cli-fi novel. Elizabeth Callaway remarks of TBC that “The effects of climate change
surround the characters, but they are distracted by a better story (as is the reader). The
interrupting genre of the distraction could be fantasy, pulp science fiction, romance, mystery, or
any number of other types of story” (Callaway 3). Rather, it neatly fits the ATQF subgenre
criteria as it is the use of multiple timelines and fantasy themes highlighting the climate crisis
which exists as a continuous but largely submerged threat behind the primary narrative.
The novel reads as a literary fiction or realist text with a fantasy element interspersed
throughout. This fantasy thread concerns the ancient and ongoing war between the Atemporal
“Horologists” and vampirical “Anchorites.” This supernatural war becomes an increasingly
dominant theme in the novel despite its otherwise realist characteristics, and Mitchell positions
this war as the chief concern of the protagonists until the concluding section. The fantasy
component of TBC is also revealed fragmentarily – it interrupts the otherwise realist narrative.
The reader is not given a clear picture of the Horologists and their universal war until later in the
novel - as Holly is confused about the situation in which she becomes embroiled, the reader is
also kept in the dark. In the first chapter Holly is a typical 15-year-old grappling with life’s
expected challenges. She rebels against the life her parents want her to live and runs away
from home. She is aware, though, of an anomaly about herself. She hears voices and has had
strange and unexplainable events occur throughout her life. She calls the voices the “radio
people.” The six sections of the novel incrementally introduce the fantasy component of the text,
and only the fifth section, An Horologist’s Labyrinth, focuses on the Atemporal Horologists
directly. The reader’s attention is drawn towards the fantasy conflict throughout the novel, before
being abruptly brought back to reality in the final section’s depiction of a bleak climate future.
The Horologists and Anchorites are at the crucial climax of an ages-long universal war.
While the Horologists live life after life when their human hosts die, the Anchorites only gain their
immortality by using the power of gifted children like Holly to sustain them and delay the onset
of death and aging – a process called “decanting.” Mitchell positions this war as the primary
concern linking the timelines. In her article regarding what she refers to as an inattention
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towards climate change in Mitchell’s work, Callaway remarks that “the stories are held together
by the intermittent eruption of a fantasy subplot (or uberplot) into each section. This fantasy plot
both ties together and interrupts the narratives in each chapter, injecting what is otherwise a
story about family life, marriage strain, career choices, midlife crises, and teenage angst with
epic stakes” (2). While the reader assumes this to be the novel’s primary conflict, the characters
are unaware of the existence of this great war and are also plagued with their own individual,
human concerns. When it comes to the climate crisis in TBC, it is “the narration of inattention to
rather than the presence of readily observable environmental degradation” (Callaway 2).
Callaway suggests that the climate theme in TBC represents humanity’s “failure of attention to
those signals that are right in front of us” (1). This failure or inattention resembles what Bould
calls the unconscious. I suggest that this is fragmentary, yet ubiquitous presentation of climate
change is equally representative of humanity’s denial of the problem as well as our inattention to
it. Put simply, the reader is easily distracted by the fantasy world and could overlook the climate
crisis entirely until the sixth section. It is precisely because of the fantasy components of the
narrative, the essentially immortal beings with expansive lives, that Mitchell can depict the
changing climate over millennia. The lives of the central characters in TBC offer the necessary
literary realism for readers to both forget that the novel is a fantasy text and simultaneously
allow the introduction of fantasy to distract them from the underlying catastrophe of the climate
crisis. Similarly to our inattention to the climate crisis in Beckett’s Two Tribes, we gleefully return
to the fantasy narrative in Mitchell’s TBC whenever possible rather than engaging directly with
the climate narrative until it is thrust into our direct field of vision in the final section.
I first unpack the fantasy components of TBC and examine its engagement with climate
change gradually worsening behind the psychic war unfolding throughout the novel. Mitchell
develops the world of the Atemporals – the Horologists and Anchorites – fragmentarily in the
first four sections before delving into their world directly in the fifth section. Among their many
abilities, the Atemporals count precognition and foresight. Their foresight is ironic, and I suggest
that it mirrors society’s lack of foresight with regards to climatic modelling and scientific
projections which show impending future scenarios.
Secondly, I focus on how Mitchell removes the spatial and temporal boundaries of
traditional realist narratives in this hybrid genre ATQF text. In her work on “literary futurity,”
Michaela Bronstein remarks that “Action on climate change is a problem about futurity: how to
see other times as requiring something of us today” (122). She explains that “Literary futurity …
offers a vision of negotiation between the present and the future, in which anticipating a future
audience calls the present to account on behalf of the future as something new and other”
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(122). Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and TBC are Bronstein’s primary examples of texts experimenting
successfully with Literary Futurity for their ability to span multiple decades or centuries. While
Cloud Atlas spans several centuries over its 6 sections, TBC has two timescales over which the
narrative unfolds. The first section takes place in 1984, and the last in 2043. This 60-year span
covers a period of astonishingly rapid changes in technological development and advancement,
while simultaneously dismantling and deconstructing the fragile climate. While this 60-year
period is pivotal, Mitchell positions it as merely a single human lifespan for the Atemporals. With
the Atemporals, Mitchell incorporates a secondary timescale of millennia rather than simply
years or decades. For them, this period is merely one among the many through which they have
lived. The Atemporals, who can live for centuries or even millennia, allow Mitchell to look far into
both the past and the potential future. I focus on Mitchell’s use of fantasy and temporality
throughout TBC as narrative tools for depicting the climate crisis.
Fantasy in The Bone Clocks
Despite the focus of the sixth section, Sheep’s Head, The Bone Clocks is not cli-fi prior
to that point. It is a hybridgenre ATQF text whose narrative is centered around the conflict
between the Horologists and Anchorites. Beneath this conflict is the continued presence of the
climate crisis, which is foregrounded only in the sixth section, set in 2043. In the introduction to
Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene (2022), Oziewicz comments on the need for fantasy
texts when aiming to depict climate change representatively or accurately in fiction. He
acknowledges the purpose of cli-fi but suggests that it has limitations. He writes: “There is a gap
though. None of the major works to date have considered fantasy and myth as productive
spaces for anticipatory imagination to engage with the questions of the Anthropocene”
(“Introduction” 4). Similarly, when remarking on the limited scope of cli-fi texts, Michaela
Bronstein simply remarks that “We may need to get over our fear of literature as public-service
announcement” (127). This refers to what Ghosh suggests in The Great Derangement and
which I highlight in Chapter Two: too often, cli-fi reads like a seminar. So, new means of
incorporating climate change into fiction need to be adopted. The PSA-oriented cli-fi texts, as
Schneider-Mayerson indicates, are often targeting those who already acknowledge and
understand the climate crisis. Fiction which appeals to readers beyond simply those who are
already climate-conscious is thus needed. ATQF like TBC fills the gap to which Oziewicz refers,
and it can be ecological without being a didactic PSA.
Mitchell’s text distracts the reader from its intent to depict the climate crisis by focusing
the reader’s attention on the epic fantasy war. The Atemporals’ feud vastly pre-dates the
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trivialities of the lives of the characters surrounding Holly. Even Holly’s life, around which the
novel is based, does not have the longevity and importance that the Horologists and Anchorites
clearly possess. Despite this remarkable war, and the Atemporal and essentially immortal state
of those involved (the Anchorites are not immortal as they can die from injuries or be killed, they
merely do not age), the planet itself is quickly deteriorating beneath their feet. It is easy to
assume that TBC is simply a fantasy text about the fight between immortal good and evil that
most of the world cannot see, “Yet the final section of the novel shows that, while the atemporals
were busy fighting psychic battles with their equally fantastical opponents, humanity destroyed
itself much more prosaically” (Bronstein 133). Bronstein indicates the value of Mitchell’s use of
expansive timelines when depicting the climate crisis as it allows us to look into the future. This
takes a cli-fi-oriented approach to futurity in Mitchell’s work. I suggest that the ability to look both
forwards and backwards in time, both on the time-scale of Holly’s life and on the grand
timescales of the Horologists, allows Mitchell to more starkly indicate the abrupt change in the
global climate compared to centuries or millennia of prior stability, something Asaad remarks of
similarly about the past, present, and future in Ghosh’s Gun Island. This differs from the typical
future-directed approach taken by most cli-fi. Oziewicz suggests that “the ecocidal unconscious
frames articulations of our ontologies, habituated behaviours, cultural assumptions, and ways of
reasoning that have accrued around the delusion of ourselves as masters of the biosphere. It is
through these notions that the ecocidal unconscious has penetrated the narrative structures of
the stories we tell” (60). Put simply, even the cli-fi that engages with the climate crisis directly is
complicit in this ecocidal unconscious. Oziewicz concludes “To stop the ecocide, we must
change how we tell stories” (61). TBC depicts the climate crisis with what Callaway calls
“inattention,” which is representative of how society indeed engages with climate change.
TBC’s fantasy element is that which enchants the reader – and at the same time
prevents it from being a simply a PSA. Oziewicz notes that “Fantasy, of course, has been
conceived as a vehicle of enchantment. It succeeds only when it enchants” (66), yet “Fantasy
has long been underrated as a tool for social and political change, but fantasy for the
Anthropocene will [also] succeed only when it spurs readers toward a biocentric commitment to
the planet” (68). Oziewicz argues that fantasy is a useful yet under-utilized tool for
communication about the climate crisis. He remarks that:
It is not encouraging to realize that our literary conventions work against our
survival. Yet, the recognition of the ecocidal unconscious is a necessary first step
toward challenging the dominance of the tragic mode. The next steps include
experimentation with plot structures, tropes, and themes to enable the
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imaginative process required to productively engage with ecocide and the
urgencies of the Anthropocene. (Oziewicz, “Ecocidal Unconscious” 63)
This is where the texts that engage with the climate crisis indirectly have the capacity to
demonstrate our ecocidal unconscious perspective and challenge it by making us aware that in
not recognising the importance of climate change as a theme we have been essentially
misreading the text. This is what Callaway calls an “inattention” to the crisis, and what I suggest
is a component of the indirect engagement with the crisis. In this case, it is an effective form of
inattention rather than the problematic ecocidal unconsciousness. This engagement is reflective
of the mere glimpses people get of the climate change hyperobject through major weather
events.
In his 2017 article, “Genre Beside Itself,” Joseph Metz writes of TBC that the “collision of
genre hierarchies and the splitting of the subject of the novel” is particularly radical. He observes
that “[P]ulp fictional imagery, themes, and style both unnervingly abut and violently invade such
moments of high seriousness as Iraq war journalism and global environmental collapse” (Metz
121). It is interesting here that Metz equates the Iraq war with climate collapse when Mitchell’s
novel appears to position the climate crisis as the conflict above all else, including war, as even
the Atemporal war is secondary to the climate crisis. It is here that ATQF has a role in depicting
the climate crisis and challenging the ecocidal unconscious.
The Anchorites and Horologists’ fantasy war is the primary conflict in TBC while the
climate crisis slowly unfolds as a backdrop. While the Anchorites kill for sustenance and want to
wipe out the Horologists to have control over the human world, the Horologists aim to simply
maintain the status quo and prevent the Anchorites from becoming too numerous and thus too
powerful. It is important to note that the Anchorites are initially human – with Hugo Lamb as the
key example. I argue that their means of sustenance can be read as a metaphor for humanity’s
means of collective sustenance on a dying planet. Simply put, the Anchorites can only persist at
the expense of others. They must literally consume others to survive and persist. Mitchell
ensures that the reader feels a sense of complicity in this consumption of others as we humans
ultimately consume the planet to survive. In the sixth section, during the energy-shortage
“Endarkenment,” Holly helplessly defends her neighbor’s home from marauders stealing solar
panels. The leader of the intruding gang refers to himself as Hood as if he is a reinvention of
Robin Hood stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Rather, he and his gang steal from two
elderly women protecting two young children. He feels justified in his actions, and when
questioned by Mo – Holly’s neighbor – he retorts: “Your power stations, your cars, your creature
comforts. Well, you lived too long. The bill’s due. Today…you start to pay” (Mitchell, TBC 588).
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Hood represents the awakened attitude of thirty-somethings in 2043 after which the climate
crisis – or in this case more specifically the energy crisis – has reached a point at which it is too
late for diplomacy and rationality. Mitchell’s Anchorites consume others to persist, just as
humanity consumes the planet such that others must suffer or die for the privileged few to
persist.
Mitchell unpacks the backstories of the Atemporals in “An Horologist’s Labyrinth.” The
great war reaches its climax in the Chapel of the Dusk, and Holly, despite not being an
Atemporal, is swept along for the final magical psychic battle. She escapes the Labyrinth at the
center of the Dusk by correctly feeling her way through the maze that her little brother Jacko –
with Xi Lo, the founder of the Horologists’ society, inhabiting his body – had made her memorize
throughout her life. If TBC was purely a fantasy novel, it could end after the fifth section. The
conflict reaches its conclusion and the heroine escapes. While Mitchell suggests in interviews
and discussions of the novel that its individual sections can be considered independent
novellas, I disagree that the sections of the text can be read in such a way if the novel is to be
read as a hybrid genre text. However, sections 1-5 could be read as a fantasy novel without
section 6, and readers could remain unconscious and unaware of the climate disaster which has
been carefully threaded into the substrate of the novel to that point.
It is in the final section – Sheep’s Head – where the text becomes a cli-fi, post-disaster,
sf novel. It is only in the final pages where Mitchell reminds the reader of the fantasy component
of the text by revealing that one lone Horologist – Marinus – had survived the prior battle.
Sheep’s Head is a gloomy depiction of the near future. It brings the reader quickly back down to
Earth after the fantasy distractions of the prior section. What Oziewicz calls the “Ecocidal
Unconscious” and Ghosh the “Great Derangement” is, in TBC, perhaps the ‘great distraction’
followed by the eventual reveal. The ATQF genre of TBC allows Mitchell to use the fantasy
component of the text to distract the reader from the climate crisis until the final section.
Futurity – Removing the Spatial and Temporal Boundaries of Cli-fi
Mitchell’s use of essentially immortal Atemporal beings removes the temporal
boundaries of depicting climate change in TBC. The novel is set across two time-scales –Holly
Sykes’ life from 1984 to 2043 – and the millennia long scale of the Atemporals’ war. So, while
“[t]he central narrative begins 30 years ago, in 1984 … once you factor in various digressions
and backstories, the time span of the book covers some 7,000 years” (Schulz, “Boundaries are
Conventions”). Holly’s timeline is consistent throughout all six sections of the novel, even in
those in which Holly is not the central character. When referring to the different scales within
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Mitchell’s work, Paul Harris writes that “Mitchell’s fiction could be seen as a labyrinth of
Anthropocene time stretching from the deep past to the foreseeable future in which humanity is
confronted with its predacious nature, an evolutionary drive that fuels the rapacious colonial-
capitalist consumption of the Earth’s resources and species, including its own” (Harris 5).
Indeed, the time scales in the novel are a depiction of Anthropocene time which culminates in
the bleak climate future in 2043.
When discussing the lives of the Horologists, Schulz remarks that they:
don’t know why they are immortal; they only know that, 49 days after they die,
they wake up in a body whose former soul has just departed. The Anchorites
know exactly why they are immortal: because they hunt down children with
especially potent souls, lure them to a mysterious chapel, and “decant” them, like
hell’s own sommeliers. (Schulz, “Boundaries are Conventions”)
Esther Little and Xi Lo – two of the oldest Horologists – are well into their thousands by the start
of the novel. The Horologist with whom the reader spends the most time, Marinus, can trace
their lives back to 640AD.
31
Thus, these characters have experienced relative climatic stability
for hundreds, or even thousands of years. So, when the climate disintegrates in the late
twentieth century and early twenty-first century, this is not the culmination of one lifetime, but
rather of a millennia-long scale. Harris remarks that “Like Borges, Mitchell builds labyrinths
composed in and of time as well as space” (4). It is this multi-scalar labyrinth of time which
allows Mitchell to depict the climate crisis over time and also make clearer the point of climax in
2043 as one which has been in the making not for merely a century or two, but for thousands of
years.
Importantly, Mitchell refrains from exploring the distant future with either of these time
scales. 2043, at the time of the novel’s publication, was just three decades in the future. As
such, it is a period that should be well within the lives of his readership. While many cli-fi texts
are set many decades or even centuries in the future, Mitchell’s climate-oriented section of TBC
remains within reach for readers. In the last section of TBC, Mitchell forces readers to fully
acknowledge that which they had been ignorant or unconscious of until that point. The
seriousness of the climate crisis slowly builds as the backdrop to the Atemporals’ battle
throughout the first four sections, then in “An Horologist’s Labyrinth” the reader is swept into an
immersive fantasy world which distracts them from this enduring crisis. Oziewicz writes that “To
stop the ecocide, we must change how we tell stories” (61); fantasy literature can address this
31
The Horologists alternate between genders with each metalife.
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kind of ecocidal unconscious. Mitchell, then, does not simply use “Sheep’s Head” as a
mechanism for guiding the reader “toward active resistance and hopeful dreaming” (63) as
Oziewicz suggests fantasy can do. This would be what a cli-fi text may do by depicting a world
in chaos or a world having been saved in the far future. Rather, “Sheep’s Head” is used to
effectively illustrate a plausible and very near future climate dystopia. It is positioned as an
affront to the fantasy of “An Horologist’s Labyrinth” in the previous section. It abruptly forces the
reader to be hyper-aware of the underlying climate themes. Mitchell ensures this is possible by
giving the reader a hypothetical future grounded not in the fantasy of the Atemporals, but in the
reality of the climate and energy crisis - one that is within the lifetimes of many of the novel’s
readers.
The events between the novel’s publication in 2014 and the dystopian future in 2043 are
presented – albeit fragmentarily – through Holly’s memories. It is clear why humanity has found
itself in the Endarkenment.
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This differs from cli-fi texts set much further in the future and
ensures that the reader feels connected to the events just several decades away. By 2025 – the
period during which the events in “An Horologist’s Labyrinth” occur – there is little notable
difference to the global climate. Some remarks made by the Horologists indicate that they are
aware of the changes in the climate over a longer period, but for the humans with one lifetime –
the “bone clocks” themselves – the change is not yet any more noticeable than it is today. The
change is gradual. During Holly’s visit to 119a – the Horologist’s headquarters in New York –
Esther-in-Unalaq remarks that “‘Books’ll be back,’ … ‘Wait till the power grids start failing in the
late 2030s and the datavats get erased. It’s not far away. The future looks a lot like the past.’
Holly asks, ‘Is that, like… an official prophecy?’ ‘It’s the inevitable result,’ I say, ‘of population
growth and lies about oil reserves’” (493). Esther-in-Unalaq’s remark is included as an off-hand
comment that comes amidst the preparations for the psychic battle between the Anchorites and
the Horologists rather than as an “official prophecy” as Holly asks. It is forgotten in the
discussion as quickly as it is mentioned.
Mitchell uses Holly’s memories to bring events closer to one another to demonstrate the
severity of a pattern over time as he writes:
I remember the pictures of seawater flooding Fremantle during the deluge of ’33.
Or was it the deluge of ’37? Or am I confusing it with pictures of the sea sluicing
into the New York Subway, when five thousand people drowned underground. Or
was that Athens? Or Mumbai? Footage of catastrophes flowed so thick and fast
32
The term ‘Endarkenment’ can be understood as a reversal of progress and the opposite of the
‘Enlightenment’ of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
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through the thirties that it was hard to keep track of which coastal region had
been devastated this week, or which city had been decimated by Ebola or Ratflu.
The news turned into a plotless never-ending disaster movie. But since Netcrash
One we’ve had hardly any news at all and, if anything, this is worse. (541)
A challenge often faced by climate scientists in terms of communicating the severity of a climatic
event to society is our collectively short attention span and memory. When it gets cooler in the
winter, we quickly forget about the ‘heat-dome’
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events of the prior summer. Showing the
reader event after catastrophic event in Holly’s memory, without offering the reader time to
digest the information in real-time, prevents this short-sightedness from suggesting that each
individual event was an anomaly. Instead, catastrophe has become the norm by the early
2030s.
By using Holly’s individual lifetime as the novel’s primary timeline, the reader more
clearly sees the direct impacts of destructive human behaviour play out in what will undoubtedly
be within the lifetimes of many of TBC’s readers. The distance between the future in TBC and
the present compared to the distance between the future in cli-fi texts and the present is far
narrower despite the last section of the novel being oriented towards futurity. Mitchell uses
Holly’s lifetime and the greater meta-life timeline of the Horologists to look far into the past and
only slightly into the future. I argue that the potential near-future is thus read as less of a
hypothetical leap – it is stabilized by the explanation of the prior 6 decades of Holly’s life. That
is, the Script for the future is actualized in the short term as we see Holly’s life unfold. Holly’s life
is the weather, whereas the longer-term Script is the climate. Over the course of her life, the
underlying climate trend changes for the worse. Despite their seemingly unwavering continuity,
the Atemporals are almost wiped out in the early twenty-first century. The period of the
Anthropocene – and later the Endarkenment to be more specific – sees the population of
Horologists reduced to just one and humanity brought to its knees. Here, Mitchell uses the
fantastic to further illustrate the sense of closure or abrupt ending to the progress experienced
by humanity over the prior several centuries. Harris observes that “The scales on which
Mitchell’s historical and speculative explorations unfold ultimately mark him as a novelist of the
Anthropocene” (5). The climate crisis, the Anthropocene, causes not only our fragile human
society to come crashing down, but it also coincides with the abrupt end to the race of
Horologists that, until that point, had been thought to be eternal.
33
An anomalous localized increase in heat; an event which occurred in the Summer of 2022
affecting my home city of Vancouver, BC.
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Concluding remarks:
The Bone Clocks gradually weaves the climate crisis into the quasi-fantasy narrative. The
reader is primarily concerned with the epic psychic war between the Atemporals, while the world
as we know it quickly deteriorates into the climate-ravaged Endarkenment. Mitchell uses fantasy
as a distracting and estranging tool for the first five novella-sections before revealing the
eventual cli-fi-oriented finale in 2043. Mitchell utilizes the fantasy meta-lives of the Atemporals to
include timelines much longer than could be depicted in a realist narrative. He mirrors this with
the single-lifetime timeline centered around Holly Sykes to demonstrate the severity and
swiftness of the energy crisis just several decades in the future. Mitchell questions readers’
complicity in the ecocidal unconscious for 5 sections of the novel. He asks how they could have
missed the climate crisis all along.
Pandemic and Climate Change in ATQF – Emily St. John Mandel, Sequoia Nagamatsu,
and Helen Marshall
This final section of my chapter on ATQF explores three texts which engage with the
climate crisis, to varying degrees, while simultaneously utilizing global pandemic to depict a
destabilizing and crumbling world. Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility, Sequoia
Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the Dark, and Helen Marshall’s The Migration fulfill the
‘temporal’ and ‘quasi-fantasy’ components of ATQF in different ways which help to draw out their
underlying climate themes.
I first explore Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility (SOT) for its use of multiple timelines beginning
in 1912 and extending in to the twenty-fifth century. This use of timelines which extend both
forwards and backwards is typical of ATQF texts. Mandel utilizes a time-travel theme to connect
the timelines with one central character – Gaspery Jacques. The time-travel element of the
narrative is that which fulfills the quasi-fantasy criteria for ATQF. I then briefly engage with
Nagamatsu’s How High for its use of timelines beginning in the future and utilizing fantasy
beings known as “worldbuilders” as well as sf tropes like hyper-sleep and generation ships to
stretch into the very far future. Nagamatsu depicts a near-future world crippled by a global
pandemic caused by a scientific discovery gone awry. The pandemic is how Nagamatsu also
connects the near and far future to a distant past in which the same plague ravaged humanity.
Finally, I explore Marshall’s The Migration for its depiction of a fantasy pandemic which is
directly related to climatic changes. Marshall’s protagonist, Sophie, deals with the apparent
death of her sister early in the novel, before learning that the pandemic which killed her is in fact
mutating children and teenagers into nymph-like creatures which migrate away from the
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climatically deteriorating UK at the end of the novel. Marshall uses recurrences of pandemics
alongside climatic changes to incorporate a timeline which stretches far back into the past and
culminates in the climate crisis of the present day.
Time-Travel and Pandemic in Sea of Tranquility
Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility includes climate themes beneath the larger conflicts and
existential crises associated with time-travel, determinism, and the simulation hypothesis (that
is, whether our universe exists only as a simulation).
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The novel spans several centuries and is
told from several specific points in time. The 2203 timeline includes colonies on the Moon as
humanity has begun to explore options for living off-world as the Earth is becoming increasingly
overpopulated and challenging to inhabit due to climate change. This climate change backdrop
is mentioned only in passing, but the Anthropocene expansion and population boom is the
principal reason for the need to move some of human civilization on to the Moon and out into
the solar system. The text is not quite sf and not quite fantasy – Mandel has herself expressed
that she sometimes cannot shake the label of sf despite her work not really being sf. SOT
explores time-travel and the nature of determinism and an individual’s impact on others
throughout their life. Time-travel is a challenging concept to place in terms of it being either sf or
fantasy. Given that time-travel is the only fantastical or impossible component of this book, it
fulfills the Quasi-Fantasy element of ATQF. While time-travel is often more closely associated
with sf, SOT does not fully explain time-travel from a scientific perspective. SOT also takes
place over multiple timelines beginning in our past and stretching well into the future – this is
typical of ATQF texts.
It is this expanse of timelines – stretching from 1912 to 2401 – which allows Mandel to
depict the more radical changes in the Earth’s habitability than if it were simply set in a period in
which the changes had already occurred, as is commonplace in cli-fi. Cli-fi texts less commonly
have settings in the present or the past. Rather, they tend to take place in the future and either
remain in that time-period or extend much further into the future. Mandel’s work, like Mitchell’s
The Bone Clocks and Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land have full narrative arcs beginning in the past
and extending well into the future. As in the aforementioned works, as well as Ghosh’s Gun
Island, SOT is set at a point of crisis in which the world is teetering on the brink of chaos and
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Nick Bostrom’s 2003 paper “Are We Living in a Computer Simulation” posits that one of the
following must be true: “(1) the human species is very likely to become extinct before reaching a
‘posthuman’ stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant
number of simulations of its evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost
certainly living in a computer simulation”
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collapse. Including time-travel allows Mandel to make that critical moment of crisis, that tipping
point, appear within the confines of one novel or one human life. In reality, such a moment
actually lasts several hundred years rather than just days or months. Time travel allows for a
protracted view of a longer timespan of several centuries. The collapse of the climate over those
few centuries is also mirrored by the collapse of society when it is brought to its knees by the
global, and solar-system wide pandemic. Ultimately, it is society’s technological progression,
actualized in the form of time-travel technology, which stands to potentially spell the end of
everything by causing a rip in the fabric of space-time. This reflects our technological
advancements which have ultimately caused the acceleration of climate change. Here, Mandel
demonstrates humanity’s capacity to damage not only the Earth, but the physical laws
governing absolutely everything.
Time-Travel as a Juxtaposition Device
First and foremost, SOT is a time-travel novel. This fantasy element is that which allows
Mandel to more expansively depict the changes in the Earth’s climate in the backdrop to the
primary narrative. Her character Gaspery Jacques travels over multiple centuries, so the time
Mandel can focus on is broader than simply one human life. As mentioned above, there is
debate about time-travel being sf rather than fantasy. Natalie Zutter asks the question directly
and remarks that time-travel often “occurs via technology and/or science, which allows us to
peek into the future” adding that this “sounds like science fiction” (Zutter). She goes on to
compare this kind of time-travel to that which occurs in shows like Outlander in which “time-
travel … not only include[s] no technology, but also contain[s] no real method for time-travel
aside from an ineffable magic” (Zutter). SOT gestures towards presenting time-travel from a
scientific perspective, with the time-travel device being housed within a university research
facility called the “Time Institute.” However, time-travel is not something that technology simply
has not yet achieved, it is fundamentally impossible according to the laws of physics.
35
With that
in mind, time-travel does indeed include what Zutter calls an “ineffable magic” even if it is
discussed through a scientific lens. She remarks that “some sci-fi will go always the handwave
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Carlo Rovelli explains in The Order of Time (2017) that we are all essentially time-travelling
forwards – at the rate of 1 second per second, but that our concept of time is somewhat
misunderstood and incomplete. It is the order of time itself that protects the past from the future.
This is what makes it a fantasy concept rather than an sf one.
Michael Marshall discusses this in a BBC news article entitled “Is Time-travel Really Possible?
Here’s what physics says” (2023) and remarks that time-travel into the past is “either wildly
difficult or absolutely impossible” based on Einstein’s theories of general relativity and special
relativity.
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route, while others create hard rules for the technology or science propelling the story.” In SOT
the technology is not laid out in a set of universe-defining rules as it might be in a typical hard-sf
text. Mandel’s work handwaves over the details of the science behind time-travel and is instead
concerned with its implications.
36
Similarly, her work handwaves over the responsibility of the
climate crisis by simply trying to outrun it and expand into the solar-system with colony after
colony.
Mandel uses time-travel as a mechanism to overlay different periods of time upon one
another to demonstrate their differences more starkly. She presents the reader with a vivid
pastoral landscape in 1912 which rapidly transforms into a sprawling inter-solar-system
civilization with multiple Moon colonies. The juxtaposition of these timelines gives the reader a
clear view of the changes from past to present to future. Mandel’s focus in the brief present-day
timeline is more on the recent Covid-19 pandemic, something that her time-traveller protagonist
alludes to before it had happened, than on climate change. It is how the world is brought to its
knees in the middle-future timeline in 2203 is via a similar, albeit far deadlier, influenza
pandemic. The 2203 narrative arc focuses on this pandemic while depicting the start to
humanity’s inter-solar-system sprawl after the Earth has become unable to support the weight of
human civilization’s increased expansion and impact on the environment and climate.
Mandel depicts the climate of the manufactured Moon Colonies in great detail in the
2203 and 2401 timelines. She introduces the need for the Moon Colonies by indicating the
climatic instability of Earth: “There was substantial interest in immigration to the colony. Earth
was so crowded by then, and such swaths of it had been rendered uninhabitable by flooding or
heat” (Mandel 106). Indeed, overpopulation is perhaps the most Anthropogenic problem. Her
protagonist in the 2203 timeline, Olive, muses over her upbringing on the Moon Colonies: “Did
Olive actually wish she could live on Earth? She vacillated on the question. She’d lived all her
life in the hundred and fifty square kilometres of the second moon colony, the imaginatively
named Colony Two. … Colony Two was soothing in its symmetry and its order. Sometimes
order can be relentless” (68). This relentless order mirrors what Edwin feels in the pastoral
landscape of 1912 Canada. The colonies themselves also do not last. They deteriorate quickly
due to too rapid expansion – “Colony Two was built a little too hastily, and within a century the
lighting system on the main dome had failed. The lighting system was meant to mimic the
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Ted Chiang’s short fiction frequently explores the implications of time-travel on human nature
in terms of free will versus determinism. Chiang’s time-travel stories reflect the spectrum of sf to
fantasy. His micro-fiction story “What’s Expected of Us” (2005), and his short stories “The
Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” (2007) and “Story of Your Life” (1998/2002) – on which the
2016 movie Arrival was based – experiment with time-travel’s implications.
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appearance of the sky as viewed from Earth … when it failed there was no more false
atmosphere … that light was extremely un-Earthlike. … The juxtaposition of utter darkness with
bright light made some people dizzy” (106-107). The Moon Colonies are emblematic of human
civilization’s unexpectedly and uncontrollably fast growth. The Earth quickly becomes unable to
support the global population, and the colonies are prefabricated and functional at best. The
atmospheric bubbles in which Moon Colony inhabitants live also ultimately become their tombs
in a civilization in which a pandemic can spread so readily. Mandel’s work hints that simply
outrunning the climate crisis by expanding into the solar-system is ultimately an unrealistic
fantasy. The trope of solar-system exploration is moved from sf to fantasy. By utilizing expansive
timelines over several centuries, Mandel can depict rapid change from pastoral countryside in
Canada to prefabricated Moon Colonies. The rapid rate of progression of industry has a distinct
scarring effect on the landscape, which forces humanity to migrate off-world. Forced migration is
an important element of the climate crisis, as is indicated in Gun Island, and is experimented
with in Cloud Cuckoo Land. Notably, in both Cloud Cuckoo Land and SOT, the mission to live
off-world does not run smoothly.
Time-Travel and Determinism
The approach to the climate crisis is indirectly called into question by the nature of the
universe perhaps being deterministic. Mandel’s novel explores both time-travel and determinism
by having her protagonist, Gaspery-Jacques, impact all the timelines and ultimately impact his
own life in a circular manner after having become stranded (or marooned) in time for committing
crimes amounting to changing the past. Given that the past returned to is our present, this
mirrors our destruction of the environment – future generations will be held accountable for our
actions now. Mandel’s work grapples with this concept of determinism at the same time as she
explores the concept of our universe being the product of a simulation – as per Nick Bostrom’s
“Simulation hypothesis” (2003). In 2401, Gaspery-Jacques’ sister Zoey believes that the rips in
time which have been experienced and catalogued over the span of several hundred years are
evidence of a flaw or fault in the underlying computer code of reality. We later learn that this rip
in time is deterministic, but that it is not the result of the universe being part of a simulation.
Rather, it is the result of their own intervention in spacetime by sending Gaspery-Jacques back
to various points in time in the preceding four centuries.
As is the case with Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks – albeit to a lesser degree – the use of
multiple timelines, in this case revolving around the same character over hundreds of years, the
reader sees the degradation of the Earth more starkly. The reader stays with Gaspery-Jacques
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over multiple centuries from the early stages of industry in 1812, through to the start of the
twenty-fifth century. As in TBC, this degradation is not positioned as the primary concern for the
characters. Mandel uses a pandemic narrative arc and the existential concern of the simulation
hypothesis and rips in time to stress the importance of the time-travel research in the 2400s.
These two concerns pose visible and exciting threats to humanity – more visible and exciting at
a narrative level than the slow-moving decay of the climate crisis. Mandel uses time-travel and a
global pandemic as both distractions from and surrogates for the climate crisis in SOT. The
reader’s attention is focused on what appear to be the primary concerns, while the global
climate crumbles beneath civilization’s feet as we struggle to leave the planet behind.
Pandemic, Climate Change, and Worldbuilders in Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the
Dark (2022)
Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the Dark (2022) presents the reader with a pandemic-
ravaged world resulting from scientific exploration. While the novel does not initially appear to
be bound to climate change, there are significant and visible climate threads to each of the
narratives making the novel climate-change-adjacent throughout. Nagamatsu positions climate
change as the lesser or secondary threat to the overt global threat of the pandemic, referred to
simply as the “plague.” Nagamatsu’s ATQF novel includes this indirect engagement with the
climate crisis, and it bears many similarities to other texts within the subgenre. It also resembles
the two other texts in this section – SOT and The Migration – for its use of a global pandemic as
a major component of the narrative. As with the Atemporals in Mitchell’s TBC, its inclusion of
beings which live many millennia – Worldbuilders – who are responsible for the creation of
worlds, allows Nagamatsu to incorporate vast timelines far exceeding the comparatively trivial
spans of single human lives. Nagamatsu also employs the familiar SF trope of a generation ship
– the Yamato – which travels out into space over hundreds of years while its inhabitants go into
cryogenic sleep states. This period is narrated by characters who periodically wake up and
acknowledge their distance from Earth in both space and time.
How High uses multiple narrative arcs which loosely overlap with one another, and
Nagamatsu often subtly signals to the reader how each timeline and narrative is related to the
prior one. The novel begins just a few years in the future, and follows Cliff, a geologist
researching in Siberia on the same project which had recently caused the death of his daughter
Clara, who was also a climate researcher. While on the project, Cliff learns more about his
daughter from her journals. In the opening chapter, Nagamatsu uses Clara’s journals to indicate
the precipice upon which the global climate rests as she writes: “Everybody understands what’s
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at stake. It’s hard to ignore the Earth when it slowly destabilizes beneath you as you sleep,
when it unlocks secrets you never asked for or wanted” (8). She goes on to remark that her
work – which ultimately kills her – is “to ensure that they and their children and their
grandchildren can breathe and imagine—and so they don’t have to deliver the eulogies of so
many species” (8). Cliff later understands his daughter after having chastised her to some
degree for many years for her extreme climate views and insisting that despite everything
people must live their lives. He pens a letter to his daughter after she dies saying: “I understand
now why you never could rest. It wasn’t about us or a job or all the little things we call a life. You
saw a future of dead soil and dead oceans, all of us fighting for our lives. You had a vision of
what life would be like for future generations and acted like the planet had a gun to our head.
And maybe it does” (27). Importantly, the reader later learns that Clara was the human form of a
greater ‘worldbuilding’ being who was living just one of its human lives – reminiscent of
Mitchell’s Horologists in TBC – through Clara. Here, Nagamatsu demonstrates that, viewed from
above, from the perspective of a being which lives essentially eternally compared to human
time-scales or even geological time-scales, that the Earth is at a crucial tipping point.
Nagamatsu gives the reader not just a climate scientist pushing for change, but an objective
nonhuman entity seeing and acknowledging the crisis from outside.
Nagamatsu envisions the climate crisis from a protracted perspective in several ways in
How High. Using multiple perspectives and protagonists in different settings within this created
world allows him to move easily between different points in time without disorienting the reader
or making each component of the narrative irrelevant to the prior one. The novel begins in the
very near future, and each of the timelines until the very last chapter take place almost
exclusively within the twenty-first century. The scientific research at the start of the novel is
ultimately what looses the plague upon civilization and changes everything about the natural
world order – theme parks gently culling children on euthanasia-roller-coasters and ‘Elegy
hotels’ have become big business as a result of the widespread virus. Nagamatsu uses the
plague to depict a world in crisis without making the primary crisis wholly climate oriented.
Nagamatsu also shows that, like plagues throughout history, the changing climate is ultimately
what caused the virus to awaken as the glacier had thawed, revealing the trapped virus from
within it. The novel thus centers around this plague while in each of the narratives, the
characters remark upon the rapid degradation of the climate. A T-shirt in one of the theme-parks
simply reads “CLIMATE CHANGE THREATENS BEER” (Nagamatsu 60), while on a TV news
broadcast (watched by a sentient/intelligent pig), “a talk-show host blames the plague on the
governments of the world, calls [the plague] an orchestrated attempt to reduce the population—
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Less people, more water and food, lower carbon emissions. Think about it! This was the only
way they could think of to dig us out of this mess” (75). Ultimately, the solution for the rapidly
deteriorating state of the climate comes in the form of a generation-ship bound for a secondary
home. This plan is seemingly welcomed by society. They acknowledge: “Rising sea levels,
California burned to a crisp every year, plague wards filled with patients … yeah, it’s a party
down here” (176). The plague and the climate crisis are positioned in parallel to one another.
Once the starship Yamato departs in 2037, the timelines become much more protracted
and the reader sees massive changes over the span of hundreds of years, and eventually even
thousands of years. This is made possible for the passengers on the Yamato, including Clara’s
mother, thanks to their cryogenic sleeping pods as they do not age, so they can travel
thousands of light years from Earth. The departure of the Yamato is heralded simply as:
“Second chance, second chance!” (187) in the newspapers. Clara’s mother remarks of her
place on the generation ship that: “I wonder if the Department of Planetary Security offered me
privileged passage aboard the Yamato out of some sense of guilt, the widow of the great Clifford
Miyasharo, who gave his life attempting to avert an outbreak; the mother of the woman who
tried to cool the planet” (192). In a New York Times review of the novel, Lincoln Michel remarks
that “‘How High We Go in the Dark’ is a welcome addition to a growing trend of what we might
call the ‘speculative epic’: genre-bending novels that use a wide aperture to tackle large issues
like climate change while jumping between characters, timelines and even narrative modes”
(Michel, NYT). Nagamatsu’s work is indeed a speculative epic with regards to its remarkably
expansive timespan.
Nagamatsu accelerates the reader through time into the far future thanks to the
cryosleep function on the Yamato. Clara’s mother thus wakes only periodically throughout the
millennia long journey. After 50 years of travel, she wakes from sleep and remarks that:
When we arrived at the Centauri system, we received a decades-old message
from Earth, informing us that a cure for the plague had been discovered—the
comatose woke up and people began to rebuild their lives. Funerary corporations
expanded to focus on climate projects, building seawalls around coastal cities,
sponsoring the solar shade project until the end of the century. (Nagamatsu 196)
Here Nagamatsu depicts a more hopeful exit to the pandemic and indicates that if civilization
could adapt to deal with such a crisis, it could put such resources to work do adapt to and deal
with the climate crisis. The gaps between stops for Clara’s mother become wider as the journey
continues: “Ross 128 B – 11 Light Years from Earth; Travel Time: 110 Years” (197), “Gliese 832
C – 16 Light Years from Earth; Travel Time: 160 Years” (201), “Trappist-1 System – 40 Light
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Years from Earth; Travel Time: 400 Years” (203). Eventually, the Yamato reaches its destination
“6000 light years” from Earth. Nagamatsu utilizes the SF ‘generation ship’ trope to peer into
Earth’s past from an ever-increasingly distant future while maintaining narrative continuity with
one character. When looking back towards Earth, the solutions to the pandemic appear fleeting
in comparison to the required solutions for the climate crisis. Nagamatsu consistently discusses
the plague in relation to climate change and in this chapter overlaps their solutions as they are
similarly global concerns.
Nagamatsu’s novel only appears to be a loosely fantasy text with a more sf inclination
until its latter chapters. The plague ravaging the Earth is fantastical in that it quite literally
causes cells in one part of the body to become cells for another part – heart cells turn into brain
cells, lung tissue becomes liver tissue and so on – but this is explained from a scientific and
medical perspective, leading to a more SF-oriented suspension of disbelief as opposed to the
magical suspension of disbelief required for fantasy. In the penultimate chapter, Nagamatsu ties
the disconnected narratives together by introducing the Worldbuilders responsible for seeding
Earth and growing the various possibilities resulting from different prompts and interventions
throughout history. The worldbuilder who inhabits Clara in the opening chapter explains – albeit
fragmentarily – her life as a worldbuilder and why she chose our world to inhabit and intervene
in: “When she was seven hundred years old, still a baby by world builder standards, I walked my
daughter to the seed field where I had been designing Earth. Kids weren’t usually allowed in the
fields until they had completed their apprenticeship in their second millennium, but I needed to
show her; she needed to understand” (273). Nagamatsu introduces the “Probability scope” in
this final chapter, too:
Probability scopes are an important part of our technology—they’re like
telescopes but fitted with lenses made from the jellylike remains of our ancestors.
They allow us to see through reality based on the contents of each seed. My
father used to say our planet and everyone on it was made of pure possibility and
that’s what made us special, made us able to create, become anything we
wanted. (275)
As is the case in Mitchell’s TBC with the Atemporals, Nagamatsu uses the fantasy worldbuilders
to protract the timespan that can be comprehended within the confines of a single novel.
By making the worldbuilders essentially immortal and God-like, the reader sees the
Earth from an omniscient perspective. Even from this hyper-macro perspective, the
worldbuilders are directly concerned with the climate crisis as the worldbuilder remarks that: “I
believed change was possible, that my creations were finally going to get it right. … As Clara
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Miyasharo, I tried to stop the globe from warming as the glaciers and permafrost melted,
knowing my oldest mistake might be unlocked from the past – the plague that took my first Earth
daughter” (Nagamatsu 285). The worldbuilders, and Mitchell’s Atemporals, acknowledge the
precarity of human civilization amidst constant Anthropocene expansion.
The plague in How High brings humanity to its knees. Nagamatsu depicts a bleak world
in which death has become so commonplace that it is simply considered big business. Despite
this obvious catastrophe, throughout the novel the reader’s attention is drawn closer and closer
to the climate crisis as the greater threat to humanity. Nagamatsu’s ATQF novel achieves this by
utilizing multiple timelines, a generation-ship capable of travelling millennia into our future within
the same human lifetime, as well as the even broader scope of the worldbuilders’ lives.
“JI2” – Fantasy Plague and Climate Change in Helen Marshall’s The Migration (2019)
Like Nagamatsu’s How High and Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility, Marshall’s The Migration
uses a global pandemic to present the reader with a vision of the world in crisis. Beneath the
fantasy pandemic – which in this case sees teenagers evolve into flying nymph-creatures after
their death – the world is also quickly collapsing due to climate change. Marshall, like
Nagamatsu and Mandel, uses the more visible, immediate threat of a global pandemic to depict
the world on the brink, and ties the cause of the pandemic to humanity’s impact on the
environment to make the reader more aware of the climate crisis as the greater threat to
civilization. In this ATQF novel, Marshall utilizes an expansive historical timeline stretching
centuries into the past, exploring the cyclical history of other pandemics and how they correlate
with rapid changes in the global climate to meet the Anthropo-temporal criteria of the subgenre.
The Migration’s fantasy element is the surreal manifestation and progression of the JI2 plague.
The global response to the plague itself is realist, but the final stage of the disease whereupon
the infected ‘die’ and then mutate into nymphs crosses the fantasy and surreal threshold and
meets the ‘quasi-fantasy requirement of ATQF. Marshall’s novel challenges humanity’s ability to
cope in the face of a climate-changed world down to our cellular and genetic makeup.
The Migration is a novel about a world on the brink of collapse, and the effects of the
plague are mirrored by the effects of the climate crisis – a literalization of the expression: when
it rains, it pours. Its protagonist, Sophie, is initially surrounded by the virus – JI2 – as there are
news stories of people getting sick, dying, and reanimating and changing before it is properly
understood what is happening to the infected. Her sister Kira is infected early, and quickly
succumbs to the virus. Sophie makes the gothic and macabre decision to steal her sister’s body
from the morgue before she can be cremated as she is sure she will reanimate and turn into
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one of the creatures of which she has seen snapshots and quick glimpses. During this period,
Sophie and her mother are living with her Aunt Irene, a professor at the local university, in
England, and the country appears to literally be washing away under the weight of the extreme
rainfall and flooding. Sophie ponders the rising sea-level and flooding and wonders how long
this period of precarity can really last: “Sandbags line the river but why we’re still fighting the
water I don’t understand. We should abandon the city and move to higher ground: Cumbria,
Northumberland, the Scottish islands. Except there won’t be enough room, will there? Not for
everyone” (Marshall 59). Marshall then directly combines the plague and the climate crisis,
bringing forth the dangers of both and amalgamates them: “When we pull up in front of the
house, the sandbags are still there beside the Thames, but now the men in fluorescent vests
are struggling with unwieldy sacks. … And then I realize they aren’t sandbags at all. As they lift,
the damp canvas briefly reveals a human form: hips, knees, shoulders, the faint bulge of a
head. They’re fishing bodies from the river” (84-85). The bodies themselves become the
sandbags holding back the water. In this case, Marshall brings the climate crisis into the fore,
and makes something as seemingly innocuous and almost boring as ‘flooding’ or simply rain
into the novel’s antagonist.
Marshall expands the timeline within The Migration similarly to the way Ghosh does in
Gun Island, by recalling past events and observing cyclical patterns over history. Sophie’s Aunt
Irene explains the repetitive nature of history with regards to plagues and dramatic changes in
the global climate. When referring to the 1373 plague in York, she says “It was the same
confluence of events back then… the changing weather patterns and shifts in the climate. For a
long time scholars thought the plague was spread predominantly by rats carrying fleas but the
story’s more complicated than that. … There’s evidence now that warmer temperatures were
spreading diseases such as malaria and dengue” (Marshall 30). Looking back into the past
rather than exploring a speculative future is an interesting engagement with the climate crisis as
a common argument against climate science is that climate change is merely reflective of a
grander cycle in the Earth’s natural geologic makeup. Importantly, Marshall distinguishes
between natural climate change and Anthropogenic climate change, noting that the cycles of
climatic changes have been associated with human activity dating back to Medieval times, and
the plagues and diseases coincide with these changes in climate because our species cannot
adapt to such rapid change. The flooding, the increased heat, poorer crop yields, vermin and
other infected species thriving in the changed climate coalesce to form a breeding ground for
disease. Sophie’s Aunt Irene remarks that in the 1300s “the shifts in climate had already
weakened the population. An unusually heavy rain in the spring of 1315, followed by harsh
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winters and cold summers meant that most of the crops failed. It took more than five years for
Europe to recover, and in the meantime there was widespread famine” (30). She explains that
“Disease shaped our development, not just at a superficial level, but our biology as well. Our
genome is riddled with the debris of ancient viruses, invaders, colonizers who inserted their
genes into our own. They changed us, and we changed them in return” (33). Marshall
demonstrates that the pandemics and the changing climate are both Anthropogenic outcomes.
As a result, the human genome adapts to survive—in this case adapting entirely into a
nonhuman creature. This reiterates the position that when we damage the climate, it is humanity
who will ultimately suffer, not the planet itself.
As the flooding and power outages worsen later in the narrative, Sophie and her Aunt
Irene continue their investigation of prior plagues aligning with shifts in climate. Aunt Irene
remarks that
In 536, there were three massive volcanic eruptions that ushered in an earlier
period of cooling. And it coincided with one of the worst epidemics the Roman
Empire had seen. … The Earth has always experienced natural fluctuations in its
temperature. The Middle Ages coincided with a period of intense ecological
change. The Little Ice Age. A terrible stretch fell between 1290 to the late 1400s
when plagues and famines ravaged Europe and glaciers descended from the
Alps. Changes in the climate, droughts in the summer, increased flooding of
coastal regions. (Marshall 132-133)
She adds that “The Earth is a vast self-regulating system. But sometimes it doesn’t work
properly. … The scale of all this change is unprecedented. They’re calling it the Anthropocene
epoch. A period of dramatic human impact on the environment” (133). This reflects what Ghosh
indicates that he tries to avoid in his own fiction. In this case though, because the story is not
wholly about climate change, this explanation becomes simply a part of the detective work that
Sophie and Irene do while trying to understand the disease as opposed to the climatic changes.
Rather than focusing the narrative on climate change and making it the characters’ primary
concern, their focus is on the JI2 pandemic, so Marshall can discuss the climate crisis indirectly
and effectively smuggle a climate narrative into a novel about a fantasy pandemic turning the
infected into nymphs.
Additionally, in The Migration Sophie remarks upon the climactic feeling about this
plague and the associated climate change: “The storm that drowned Kira has swept out to sea
where it’s gathering new strength. Something about this feels right, the sense of all that energy
massing on the horizon. An unstoppable force that could sweep everything away” (Marshall 55).
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Despite this climax of plague and climate change, it is remarkable how quickly people forget the
extreme weather, ignore the increasing cases of JI2 and simply continue with life as usual: “The
floodwaters have receded and winter is barely a memory for these people. The papers report
our thinning numbers but no one seems to care. There are still late-night hen parties at the pub
across the road, still shops selling confetti and cheap champagne as the end of the term
approaches – the pop and crackle of fireworks after dusk. They just want to forget” (117). The
desire to forget is simply the denial and selective ignorance towards the problem. This is indeed
reflective of our collective societal view towards the changing climate, what Ghosh calls our
“derangement” and Oziewicz our “ecocidal unconscious.”
While the climate disintegrates beneath them and Oxford slowly seems to sink into the
mire, the JI2 pandemic is the primary focus of the many families losing their teenagers and
children to the disease. The climate crisis does not discriminate between classes – Sophie
notices empty properties and is surprised that such nice houses are derelict and abandoned:
“The line of terrace houses is quiet. There are vacant properties, more than you’d expect in a
good area. The town is emptying out, as if some mass migration is already underway. All I can
hear is the low murmur of the swollen Thames moving beside me” (100). The climate crisis and
the pandemic are both responsible for the emptying of houses and the mass migration. The
novel’s title reflects both the departure of the nymphs at the end of the narrative, as well as the
migration which occurs due to shifts in climate making areas uninhabitable.
Equally, the JI2 pandemic does not discriminate. Irene remarks of the repeated plagues
and diseases throughout history, a list on which Covid-19 would not appear out of place, when
she suggests that “this isn’t the first time people have been sick. The Spanish flu killed millions.
There was the AIDS crisis. Ebola. Zika. Your generation isn’t the first to suffer, to feel alone and
frightened” (135). The notable and obviously ‘fantasy-difference’ with this pandemic is the
transformation that the infected undergo in that they experience a zombie-like transformation
post-death. Marshall does describe the nymphs in partial detail at different points throughout the
novel, giving readers glimpses of their wings, their bird-like bone structure, the colour of their
eyes, and their pale skin: “It’s her wings, bursting through the thin membrane of her skin. Those
masses on her shoulders, those hulking deformities moving beneath the surface—now
stretching out, unfolding. Her eyes are lustrous, golden” (174). Despite this, the reader gets only
fragmented glimpses of the nymphs, making them less of a fantasy creature or monster than is
more commonly described in purely fantasy novels.
Bryan remarks upon what seems to be the changing nature of the world in general, as if
the transformation into Nymphs reflects civilization reaching a breaking point, or one of
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emergence from some sort of protected chrysalis into something else: “‘It’s coming. Can’t you
feel it? In the air, in the earth, as if the world is shifting. But my symptoms are getting worse.’ His
eyes are dark and coppery, the colour of molasses” (234). The pandemic in The Migration,
hence the novel’s title, is inherently tied to the migration of populations – a largely overlooked
yet fundamental impact of the ongoing climate crisis. The fact that the young people who
ultimately die, mutate into nymphs, and fly away from the flooded landscape reflects this
component of the climate change, and is perhaps also indicative of the doomed perception that
young people have about the current state of the world regarding climate change. A common
feature of climate change literature is that it focuses heavily on dystopian speculative visions of
the future. To counter this, Oziewicz remarks that “fantasy co-evolved with the idea of ecology
and represents a major alternative to literary conventions wedded to the tragic” (“Ecocidal
Unconscious” 61). While The Migration is bleak, its concluding scene is merely bleak for
humans. The ‘surviving’ nymphs indeed migrate at the end of the novel, suggesting that they are
capable of adapting to the changing environment, it is humanity that is not capable. In this
sense, Marshall’s novel is not simply “wedded to the tragic”, and instead offers a sense of hope
and change.
There is a sense throughout The Migration that people know that the world is
experiencing this rapid, accelerated transformation, yet the unconsciousness with which they
engage with it is most definitely evident. By transforming human characters into nonhuman
nymphs, Marshall is also highlighting the human assumption that our species is in control, or in
charge of the environment. The creatures which survive post-death in The Migration are those
which become nonhuman and leave. Oziewicz suggests of our Anthropocentric mindset that this
is reflective “of what sociologist Eileen Crist calls ‘the human-supremacist worldview’ (2019, 3)”
(“Ecocidal Unconscious” 60) and he suggests that “the ecocidal unconscious frames
articulations of our ontologies, habituated behaviors, cultural assumptions, and ways of
reasoning that have accrued around the delusion of ourselves as masters of the biosphere. It is
through these notions that the ecocidal unconscious has penetrated the narrative structure of
the stories we tell” (60). Oziewicz demonstrates not only the value that fantasy has with regards
to ecological discourse, but also specifically to the inclusion of nonhuman agents in this
discussion. He remarks that “As fantasy scholars, we like to point out that fantasy is most open
to subjectivity of nonhuman agents, from animals, plants, and natural elements, to animistic
formations like rivers, continents, and planets” (61). Despite this, he also acknowledges that
fantasy literature itself “has also been shaped by ecocidal literary epistemologies” (61). In The
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Migration, the fantasy pandemic is positioned as the natural response to the changing climate.
Marshall turns humans into what Oziewicz here refers to as nonhuman agents.
Marshall’s novel fits neatly into the ATQF subgenre for its ability to utilize its primary
fantasy component – in this case the JI2 nymph-transformation – amidst an otherwise realist
text to draw out climate change themes which underpin the narrative. Marshall looks back into
the past at cyclical pandemics and plagues as they coincide with rapid changes in the global
climate and indicates that the JI2 disease represents something new. JI2, and its impact on the
infected (dead), signals a fundamental change to the status quo for humanity. Sophie
acknowledges this directly, and even remarks upon the fantasy within the narrative directly as
she remarks that “‘Listen, this isn’t magical thinking, no matter what you believe. It’s just a new
way of thinking. We’re caught in a cycle. This has happened before—during the Black Death,
during those earlier days of sickness and calamity—because whatever’s causing it is a part of
us. We can’t keep doing the same thing we’ve done before’” (Marshall 265). The Migration uses
a fantasy plague causing magical changes to the infected to demonstrate as climate change
worsens, something has to change: “Nature finds a way when it’s threatened, doesn’t it. It
changes itself so the next generation will survive and have a better chance” (225). As I have
mentioned earlier, a common misconception – or perhaps derangement – regarding the climate
crisis is that humanity must ‘protect Mother Earth’ as if it needs protecting from us. The
Migration reminds us that Mother Earth will be fine. Rather, it is humanity who will not be.
Sophie acknowledges this and says simply: “And finally I understand. This is what the nymphs
have been waiting for: the beginning of the end” (238).
Pandemic ATQF concluding remarks:
Mandel, Nagamatsu, and Marshall are all distinctly aware of the climate crisis in these
three texts. So, while climate change is not the immediate concern of the characters in each
narrative as they battle pandemics which are decimating civilization, the implication is that the
two concerns are intrinsically linked. These three novels work to conflate climate change and
pandemic in both the grief experienced at massive loss of life, but also at the disruption and
impact to civilization and the grief experienced at this loss of the status quo. These ATQF novels
ensure that climate change is a visible, yet indirectly grappled with concern by utilizing a variety
of narrative-time tools. Mandel incorporates time-travel in her non-linear and cyclical narrative in
SOT. Nagamatsu incorporates over a dozen narrative perspectives and uses fantasy
worldbuilder characters as well as a generation ship flying for thousands of years away from
Earth. Marshall unpacks a history of cyclical pandemics dating back to the sixth century AD.
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These novels use their fantasy elements – time-travel, worldbuilders, and nymphs – to more
effectively draw out the climate themes present in their narratives. These quasi-fantasy texts do
what Oziewicz calls for regarding new approaches and new tools to engage with climate change
using fantasy literature.
AQTF Concluding Remarks:
Anthropo-temporal Quasi-Fantasy takes a more oblique approach to the climate crisis.
Often such novels appear at first glance to be entirely separate to cli-fi and its direct approach;
however, in ATQF climate change is moved from an apparently marginal position into the
forefront of the reader’s attention as the narratives progress. These texts utilize fantasy tools
including time-travel, generation-ships, or long-living fantasy beings among other devices to
connect vastly long timelines. This broad range of narrative time thus allows authors to depict
gradual climatic change over time more effectively than the change which would occur during
just one human lifetime. ATQF texts force readers to confront their own mental state of ecocidal
unconsciousness as they question readers’ failure or disinclination to acknowledge that the
climate crisis was the fundamental threat to the world order in each text. These novels
demonstrate the hyperobjective and incomprehensibly massive scale of the climate crisis in that
it comes to overshadow fantasy wars between immortal beings, centuries-old conflicts, and
fantasy pandemics. I argue that these novels more aptly engage with the climate crisis as it is
positioned as that which is omnipresent amidst all other conflicts or crises. It is the looming
threat which encompasses everything else, and despite efforts to ignore or disregard it, the
climate crisis ultimately does not discriminate over who or what it affects. This indirect model for
engaging with the climate crisis which uses defamiliarizing fantasy tools is explored further in
the next chapter on New Weird fiction.
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Chapter 4 – The Anthropocene in the New Weird: Climate Signposts and
Unconsciousness
This chapter demonstrates how climate change is presented indirectly in New Weird
fiction. As explained in the previous chapters on cli-fi and ATQF, cli-fi deals with the climate
crisis directly and is consciously engaging with the issue, whereas ATQF texts engage with the
crisis indirectly, but they do so explicitly – they aim to show the reader that the underpinning
climate themes are ultimately the most important factors in otherwise fantasy-adjacent or quasi-
fantasy narratives. It is not always clear in NW whether the authors intend to engage with the
climate crisis or whether this is instead an emergent property of the narratives. Although its
mechanisms differ to those in cli-fi, NW fiction has the power to bring climate change from the
reader’s unconscious into their conscious field of vision.
NW fiction utilizes several approaches and strategies to engage with the climate crisis
indirectly. These strategies include an exploration of Anthropocentric signposts from both the
micro and macro scale. The micro indicator of the impact of human activity in NW fiction is often
the presence of garbage. These NW texts ask readers to reconceptualize their relationship with
garbage from something which is ignored or viewed as grotesque to something which has
agency, value, and which cannot be ignored. I utilize Iovino and Opperman’s definition of
“material ecocriticism” to further explore this relationship to garbage. They suggest in Material
Ecocriticism (2014) that it is “the study of the way material forms – bodies, things, elements,
toxic substances, chemicals, organic and inorganic matter, landscapes, and biological entities –
intra-act with each other and with the human dimension, producing configurations of meanings
and discourses that we can interpret as stories” (7). Tim Clark writes that “Material ecocriticism
reads as giving an ethical interpretation of something the Anthropocene has made all too plain –
that the material and natural world is falsely conceived as the realm of passive, separate
entities, ripe to be used at will as resources for humanity” (Clark, The Value of Ecocriticism 114).
In this chapter I explore how garbage is positioned as something which is by no means passive,
and I demonstrate how it is often moved from the peripheral to the centre of the reader’s
attention. The macro indicator of climate change in NW is the presence and pursuit of different
forces of nature and energy as a resource. I explore forces of nature that can be controlled or
harnessed by the characters in these novels, as well as resources which are indirectly used as
sources of energy, and which ultimately become scarce. Another effective method of engaging
with the climate crisis indirectly in NW is the depiction of altered states of consciousness and
fragmented or distorted memories. This is reflective of the NW genre working to bring what is
most commonly in the unconscious to the unavoidable forefront of a reader’s consciousness.
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Narrative itself is an important component of climate change communication. As
indicated throughout this project, there is an ongoing difficulty facing authors who wish to
engage with the climate crisis. James, Ghosh, Morton, and Oziewicz all comment on the
challenges faced by literature which engages with the climate crisis, and here I suggest that part
of the solution to this narrative block resides in ATQF and NW fiction. By depicting the climate
crisis indirectly at first, then working to move it from the unconscious to the reader’s conscious,
the NW invites readers to experience the climate crisis from a fresh and ultimately
defamiliarizing perspective and challenges us on our complicities and our inability to accept
responsibility or keep the issue in the forefront of our minds by showing us the crisis in new
ways. Bould’s The Anthropocene Unconscious explores a variety of popular movies and novels
across several genres which engage with climate change unconsciously. While NW authors
may not necessarily be engaging with the climate crisis unconsciously, the readers of NW are
presented with the climate themes indirectly or secondarily to the main narratives.
I first explain the emergence of the New Weird subgenre by exploring its origins in the
traditional or ‘Old’ Weird of the early-twentieth century. I compare H. P. Lovecraft’s At the
Mountains of Madness (AtMoM) with China Miéville’s The Tain as each author is central to his
period’s weird subgenre. I then explore the first two of Miéville’s Bas Lag novels, Perdido Street
Station (PSS) and The Scar. Next, I explore VanderMeer’s Annihilation and Chris Beckett’s
Beneath the World, A Sea (BTWAS) for their depiction of NW fantasy spaces and for their
utilization of memory and altered states of consciousness as a means to reflect the reader’s
own state of unconsciousness or derangement towards the climate crisis. Next, I explore
Miéville’s young adult, steampunk styled novel Railsea (2012) for its reimagining of the ocean
as a vast sea of railway tracks and its reconceptualization of garbage and a future view of the
Anthropocene as a period in geologic history. Finally, I unpack Miéville’s fantasy, space novel
Embassytown (2011) which positions language itself as a scarce resource pursued by the host
creatures of the planet Arieka.
In Chapter 3 I explain how ATQF utilizes fantasy components to allow for expansive
timelines to depict climate change over time, starting indirectly and becoming more apparent
towards the end of their narratives. NW is further towards the fantasy end of the SFF continuum
compared to ATQF. NW fiction presents the reader with the familiar Anthropocentric signposts of
garbage and urban decay as well as the ongoing pursuit of energy at all costs and forces
readers to confront these Anthropocentric themes. This is heightened by the process of
defamiliarization and weirding in the surrounding narratives. As Ann and Jeff VanderMeer make
clear, NW uses traditional SFF tropes as a “jumping off point” and quickly becomes
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defamiliarizing and estranging (The New Weird xvi). NW brings the climate unconscious into the
reader’s field of view, and our complicity in the climate crisis – our “ecocidal unconscious”
(Oziewicz) – becomes harder to deny.
Defamiliarization and Hyperobjects
As explained in Chapter One, Victor Skhlovsky developed the concept of
defamiliarization to express his feeling that the experience of art ought to be disrupted from the
habitual or automatic process into which it had developed by the early-twentieth century (49).
Texts that defamiliarize present readers with things which are familiar but in ways which they
have not yet seen. The purpose is to disrupt a process which has become habitual so that the
reader experiences the information within the text more deeply. Shklovsky writes that “the
technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar’, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty
and length of perception” and that “art removes objects from the automatism of perception” (50).
NW texts do this largely through the creation of bizarre settings, characters and plot lines which
disorient the reader. I argue that in these NW texts the familiar Anthropocene themes of
garbage and the pursuit of energy become more apparent and recognizable for the reader
amongst the comparative weirding of the immersive NW environments, while experimenting with
characters’ states of consciousness to draw readers’ attention to the climate themes towards
which they have historically been unconscious.
NW fiction immerses readers within intricately detailed yet estranging fantasy
storyworlds and returns them to the real world through the use of unexpectedly familiar
signposts of climate change and the Anthropocene. In NW, immersion and defamiliarization are
important components in the process of making readers confront the climate crisis beyond the
text. NW texts immerse readers in the imagined worlds and specific NW spaces while
presenting them with characterization, setting, and narrative structure which have been
rendered unfamiliar. Readers are often left with just an outline or silhouette of the protagonists.
There are often merely fragments of traditional characterization, just as there are fragments of
traditional norms and tropes regarding setting and place. An example of this is that both the
characters and the setting in VanderMeer’s Annihilation are named only by their occupation or
by the place holder name of ‘Area X’ as if the name has not been decided upon or cannot be
named. NW texts also use a variety of narrative tools with regards to narrative voice and
develop existing tools like the found manuscript trope combined with unreliable narrators to give
readers protagonists who are not only unreliable, but who are unsure of their own mental states
or memories and do not even trust themselves. NW fiction often limits narrative structure
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extensively to make the reader feel intentionally lost, experimenting with narrative voice to
deliberately conceal information from the reader and the characters, placing nonhuman
characters in distinctly human-oriented situations, and blurring the lines between the mechanical
and the organic. Miéville remarks that NW fiction aims to give the reader “something which is
secretly familiar, which has undergone repression and then returned from it” (Miéville, Weird
Fiction Review). In this case, I focus on climate change – the Anthropocene – as that which is
secretly familiar to the reader among the surrounding defamiliarizing components of NW fiction.
Morton’s hyperobject framework is often associated with NW fiction, and most commonly
with VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, of which Annihilation is the first book. VanderMeer
himself notes “echoes within the Southern Reach novels” of hyperobjects after having
discovered Morton’s work some time after having written the trilogy (VanderMeer, “Area X: The
Fictive Imagination”). Additionally, Kaisa Kortekallio draws together VanderMeer and Morton,
remarking that “In Annihilation and Hyperobjects, the characters of the biologist and Tim Morton
are presented as objects for hyperobjects: their fictional bodies are affected by strange
imperceptible forces, and they are transformed in the process” (Kortekallio 71). Kortekallio
unpacks VanderMeer’s use of a first-person narrative in journal form and similarly reads
Hyperobjects from a narrative perspective. Kortekallio describes Morton’s work on Hyperobjects
as “a philosophical monograph” which presents “the reader with strange, imperceptible objects
that have the power to change humans into something else” (57). She goes on to compare this
to the first-person perspective in Annihilation, and remarks that a “first-person narrator invites
readers to feel the visceral force of global capital and the burn of climate change on one’s body,”
(57) something achieved by both Morton and VanderMeer in their respective works.
In this chapter I suggest that the micro example of the climate change hyperobject – the
Styrofoam cup, or the many different types of garbage found in NW fiction – can be considered
a synecdoche to the hyperobject, a signifier, rather than the hyperobject itself, and the same can
be said for the macro example – the forces of nature or the pursuit of energy as a resource.
These are signposts for the Anthropocene, for climate change. The hyperobject framework is
thus a useful tool to think about climate change and the way that humanity tends to engage with
it: as an omnipresent, looming specter that is impossibly and unfathomably large in terms of its
literal and figurative weight on humanity and on ecology. In his article on the “Abcanny,” Guy
Witzel remarks of the challenges facing literature with regards to depicting something as ‘hyper’
as the climate crisis:
To say that the climate crisis thwarts conceptualization is to state a chief impasse
of the environmental humanities. Many attempts to conceive climate change do
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not surmount this difficulty so much as adopt it. We see this in Timothy Morton’s
description of global warming as hyperobject, wherein vast phenomena cohere
into nontotalizable totalities spanning space and time. (562)
The crisis is hyper in that it defies categorization and is thus remarkably difficult to depict within
the confines of a novel. Garrard explains that “Ecocriticism is essentially about the demarcation
between nature and culture, its construction and reconstruction” (Garrard, Ecocriticism 179).
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His definition of ecocriticism is particularly pertinent to NW fiction. The ecocritical approach to
NW fiction is to observe closely the human impact on the NW environments. Indications of
human (or ab-human) activity are persistent in the core NW texts, both at the micro scale of the
garbage or the styrofoam cup, and at the macro scale of the ceaseless pursuit of energy and
resources, are thus evidence of not just the Anthropocene period, but of the contributing factors
to climate change.
Engaging with the climate crisis in literature requires “thinking at temporal and spatial
scales that are unfamiliar, even monstrously gigantic” (Morton, Dark Ecology 25). NW deals with
this challenge by focusing on garbage and the pursuit of energy which invite the reader to
discover echoes of Anthropogenic climate change even in otherwise alien environments.
Garbage is directly related to climate change for two reasons. Firstly, the garbage itself is an
indicator of human activity. It is inextricably linked to the Anthropocene period, and it is an
indicator of human abuse of the landscape. Microplastics in the ocean are one of the most
significant threats to marine wildlife. Commonly referred to as garbage island, ‘The Great Pacific
Garbage Patch’, is a collection of coalescing garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean, and which is
too big to determine accurately how much garbage it contains (National Geographic Society).
Garbage is also an indicator of climate change because it requires the emission of fossil fuels to
create – especially for the creation of plastics and building materials – and it emits CO2 as it
very slowly degrades. Additionally, poor means of disposing of garbage also lead to severe
increases in CO2 in the atmosphere in parts per million – most commonly via open-air burning
of trash. Garbage is an integral part of the climate crisis, and as such is a clear indicator of the
climate crisis when depicted in fiction.
The Anthropocentric pursuit of energy is expressed variably across this selection of NW
texts. The pursuit of energy is, for us, ongoing. The progression and continuance of our
civilization’s way of life is dependent on the continuous production and consumption of energy.
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Trexler also remarks on the limitations of the term ‘Ecocriticism’ and refers to both Morton and
Heise’s objections to the term and suggests that “literature and criticism had yet had limited
success in addressing climate change” (Anthropocene Fictions 18)
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Sadly, this energy tends to come from non-renewables such as oil and gas for needs such as
transportation, heating and cooling, or powering our global network of digital communication.
The knowledge that our day-to-day activities contribute to the climate change engine makes us
complicit in the crisis. This complicity is often what leads to denial, or simply to keeping the
crisis sequestered in our unconscious minds. This is reflective of Oziewicz’s “ecocidal
unconscious.” Our pursuit of energy to continue to power our way of life is well understood, as
are the ways we tend to pollute the Earth with the by-products of this pursuit and consumption.
The forms of energy pursued in the NW texts on which I focus in this chapter are unfamiliar and
strange; however, the pursuit itself is distinctly recognizable and familiar. These worlds include
technologically mature civilizations also striving to progress and persist, requiring a continuous
source of energy. This Anthropocentric pursuit of energy is depicted indirectly in NW fiction and
makes readers confront their own energy consumption and our energy pursuits as a civilization.
Weird Traditions in the Early-Twentieth Century to New Weird in the Twenty-first Century
The New Weird is often described as a subgenre of SFF characterized by secondary or
created worlds dealing with strange monsters, uncanny flora/fauna, and is usually set in some
kind of state of urban squalor or post-industrial decay (A.& J. VanderMeer, The New Weird).
Steph Swainston also describes NW texts as “exercises in world building characterised by a
heterogeneity of sources, genres and details” (Weinstock 184). The term was first attached to
China Miéville’s 2002 novella The Tain (Weinstock 183) and was then most closely associated
with the first of his three Bas Lag books, Perdido Street Station. These brief definitions of NW
begin to set some boundaries on the subgenre; I aim to unpack it further by referring to some of
its origins in the traditional Weird, or the Old Weird, commonly associated with H. P. Lovecraft.
The “largely urban settings” caveat in the VanderMeers’ definition pertains to the initial NW texts
including The Tain, which takes place in an imagined version of London, and Perdido Street
Station, which takes place in the city of New Crobuzon in the Bas Lag world. However, several
NW texts have rural settings as well as urban ones, and it is not a prerequisite for the setting to
be entirely secondary world. This is evidenced by the fact that Annihilation, and BTWAS both
take place on Earth in rural settings. NW fiction takes what the Old Weird accomplishes with the
unimaginable and unstated monsters and applies this form of defamiliarization to many other
components of the narratives.
NW borrows features from across multiple genres including horror, fantasy, magical
realism, slipstream, and steampunk. Swainston suggests that there are problems associated
with rigidly defining genres and subgenres and then arguing that texts either belong within these
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parameters or are excluded due to certain traits. In an interview with VanderMeer for
Clarkesworld (2007), she suggests that texts should instead be thought of on a ‘continuum’ in
relation to genre divides. This is a useful way of trying to group texts like those which could be
considered ATQF or cli-fi, as is discussed in other parts of this project, without suggesting
simply that anything can be considered NW or that certain specific features immediately
preclude something from being NW. Steph Swainston’s The Year of Our War (2004), for
example, fits onto the New Weird continuum at the more fantasy-oriented end as it has traits
akin to Miéville’s PSS. Further towards the fantasy end of NW are texts like N. K. Jemisin’s
Broken Earth (2015-2017) trilogy or K. J. Bishop’s The Etched City (2003). Further towards the
sci-fi end of the NW continuum, then, are texts like VanderMeer’s Annihilation and Miéville’s
Embassytown.
NW takes traditions from the Old Weird with regards to setting. For example, many Old
Weird Lovecraftian tales take place on Earth, but their specific locales are unfamiliar or
imagined. They venture into imagined and unexplored corners of the globe, as is the case in
AtMoM in which the characters explore an imagined Antarctica. In an early-twentieth century
context this plot device was still effective as areas of the Earth did indeed remain unexplored. In
the twenty-first century, the idea that there is some mystical corner of the globe that the reader
must believe has been shielded or secluded despite all of humankind’s exploration and
technology is less plausible. As a result, NW texts are indeed often set on some secondary
imagined world. However, others are set on an Earth which displays some deviation or
alteration to the Earth we know. This is the case with the pioneering NW text, The Tain, which
takes place in an imagined London. It is also true of some of Miéville’s later works such as Un
Lun Dun (2007), Kraken (2010) and The Last Days of New Paris (2016). Beckett’s Beneath the
World, A Sea is one example of such a stepping-stone from the traditional weird to NW as his
setting is on Earth in a secluded region in South America, but the region itself is purely fictional,
and it houses the NW properties that he explores throughout the narrative. This is perhaps what
Ann and Jeff VanderMeer are suggesting when they state that NW uses “real-world models as
the jumping off point” for their narratives (The New Weird xvi). Jeff VanderMeer himself uses the
Floridian forest and everglade landscape as the inspiration for Area X’s ‘pristine wilderness’ in
Annihilation.
Weird to New Weird
The progression from the Weird to the NW then is important to address directly. Both
Weird and NW aim to defamiliarize readers, and it is the progression and development of this
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defamiliarization on which I focus. The monsters of the Old Weird are defamiliarizing in that they
were original in the early-twentieth century. These newly created monsters are presented in
relation to the otherwise familiar terrestrial settings, relatable characters and comparatively
traditional adventure narratives. Weird fiction aims to reinterpret the mythos of pre-existing
monsters or horror tropes and subvert what were, by then, norms of horror and fantasy. Weird
fiction creates monsters and scenes of horror which are wholly indescribable – this is a
prominent feature of H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction. Miéville suggests of the weird monsters that “As
often as not, they are described as ‘undescribable.’ This is more than sheer teratological
exuberance, however: it is an assault on conventional reality. Usually, this impossible physiology
is barely glimpsed, by characters who sensibly flee the scene” (xiv). The ‘undescribable’
monsters go further than simply being an extension of prior myths and monsters. Lovecraft does
provide some description of the Old Ones in AtMoM; he writes:
It had only horror, because I knew unerringly the monstrous, nefandous analogy
that had suggested it. We had expected, upon looking back, to see a terrible and
incredibly moving entity if the mists were thin enough; but of that entity we had
formed a clear idea. What we did see – for the mists were indeed all too malignly
thinned – was something altogether different, and immeasurably more hideous
and detestable. It was the utter, objective embodiment of the fantastic novelist’s
‘thing that should not be’. (96)
Lovecraft displays the “undescribable” nature of the Old Ones here by suggesting only that they
are the embodiment of horror, thus leaving the reader to conjure up an image of grotesquerie of
their own. This is defamiliarizing in that it provides a fragmented image of a monster rather than
a carefully explained depiction of a werewolf or a vampire as would have been the case in prior
fantasy and horror texts.
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The undescribable monsters commonly appearing in Weird fiction
are designed to defamiliarize the reader. Famously in his essay “Supernatural Horror in
Literature” (1925-27), Lovecraft suggests that “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is
fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is of the unknown” (vi). This focus on the
unknown, or unknowable, is paramount in Weird, and subsequently NW, fiction.
The Weird fiction of the early-twentieth century defamiliarizes readers by placing these
ineffable or unknowable monsters in an often rural yet realistic and familiar, corner of the world.
The defamiliarizing elements of the narrative then stand out to the reader against a backdrop of
familiar tropes. This is made clear by the tone of the narrative in texts like “The Call of Cthulhu”
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This kind of defamiliarizing monster is clear in Perdido Street Station with Miéville’s
description of Mr. Motley, and in Annihilation with VanderMeer’s ‘Crawler.’
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(1928) and AtMoM as the expeditions are not the first of their kind – expeditions investigating
the farthest corners of the globe were common in the early-twentieth century. There is even the
inclusion of a fictional established scholarly discourse about the monsters – The Necronomicon
– as a way to legitimize or familiarize the plainly obscure or bizarre. Miéville suggests of Weird
fiction that
The specifics of this grotesquerie were, in the day, utterly new to the genre.
Lovecraft resides radically outside any folk tradition: this is not the modernizing of
the familiar vampire or werewolf …or garuda. … Lovecraft’s pantheon and
bestiary are absolutely sui generis. There have never been any fireside stories of
these creatures; we have neither heard of nor seen anything like them
before.(xiv)
Miéville refers to the things seen in Lovecraft’s fiction as those of “astonishing novelty” (xiv)
because they were purely created rather than being based on the pre-existing mythos of things
like vampires and werewolves. Put simply the Weird style was new in the early-twentieth
century.
Lovecraft’s novellas also experiment with defamiliarization in their narrative structure.
AtMoM, and subsequently Cthulhu, is focused more on description of setting and on building
suspense with regards to the fragmentary description of the monsters. Miéville writes of the
narrative in AtMoM that “the initially sedate unfolding of the story, in its careful scientific tone,
builds pace brilliantly, inexorably hooking the reader in. But though what story there is emerges
with astonishing power, Lovecraft’s is not a fiction of carefully structured plot so much as of
ineluctable unfolding: it is a literature of the inevitability of weird” (xii). This is also the case with
Cthulhu as the narrative is given as a set of collected letters and papers. The withholding of
information, as is the case with the description of the Old Ones themselves, is a common tool in
AtMoM. This obfuscation of information is continued in the NW.
China Miéville – The Tain (2002)
M. John Harrison first used the term New Weird to describe Miéville’s The Tain
(Weinstock 183). While Miéville’s earlier novel, Perdido Street Station, is now considered more
central to the New Weird genre and style, The Tain represents an interesting bridge from the
Old Weird to the new. The Tain is set not in an imagined world, but rather in an imagined version
of London. While Lovecraft’s settings tended to be in unexplored parts of the globe, no such
places exist anymore. Instead, the setting is wholly familiar, yet defamiliarizing in that there has
been a kind of monstrous alteration to London. The narrative takes place several years after a
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mysterious change occurred regarding light and reflection. In The Tain, the reflections we see
on the other side of mirrors and reflective surfaces are in fact distinct beings bound and trapped
by the reflections they are forced into. This results in a horde of these creatures breaching the
surface of reflections – the reflective surface itself is the eponymous Tain. The beings in full
human form are referred to as vampires, the rest are referred to as “Imagos.” Many Imagos are
only fragments of reflections which have become sentient – often hands, or lips, or other
fragmented body parts.
NW takes the concept of defamiliarization further than Weird fiction by defamiliarizing the
reader through not only the monsters and the narrative structure, but through ideas of place and
setting, monster-human relationships, language, and science and magic. But what was once
concealed or ‘undescribable’ in Weird fiction like Lovecraft’s is now described in explicit detail.
The Imagos are literal fragments rather than only being described in a fragmented way.
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Kate
Marshall notes that “New Weird is the embedded ambivalence towards its literary precursors.
While claiming writers such as Lovecraft as the genre’s literary inheritance, VanderMeer wants
to place the New Weird as a kind of rejection of what often remains unknown or unsaid in the
older weird tales” (K. Marshall, “The Old Weird” 636). The grotesque and horrific features of the
Old Weird have, by the early-twenty-first century, become familiar. NW defamiliarizes the reader
by developing the Old Weird tropes of omitting information about indescribable monsters. It
instead endeavours to explain the grotesque and the horrific directly. Rather than stopping at
simply indicating that something is unexplainable, NW aims to explain the unexplainable.
The Tain is also noteworthy as a defamiliarizing NW text for its relationship to narrative
structure and point of view. As stated earlier, many traditional weird texts are less concerned
with plot, and the narratives are more disjointed or fragmented. The Tain very much has a plot
and reaches a climax when Sholl reaches the final enemy, the “Fish of the Mirror” who has
made his stronghold the British Museum. The “Fish of the Mirror” is the leader of the “fauna of
mirrors” – the Imagos and the other disembodied fragments of reflections – on Earth. The
reflections seek vengeance for having been trapped for millennia behind the glass, forced to act
out humanity’s stupidities. The primary enemy in The Tain is a literal reflection of humanity.
Miéville makes the trope of holding a mirror up to society particularly horrific by making our own
reflections vengeful and grotesque.
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Miéville also uses literal fragmentary monsters in his counterfactual novella The Last Days of
New Paris (2016) as surrealist art has, as the result of a ‘surrealist bomb’, become sentient
manifestations – manifs.
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The novel does, however, defamiliarize the reader with its narrative structure by
introducing the reader to alternating narrative voices. Most of the narrative is told from a third-
person perspective following Sholl; however, there are odd first-person interjections from an
unnamed Imago. Miéville makes a point of utilizing a nonhuman narrator who represents the
literal opposite of the human perspective as the Imago speaks from the other side of the mirror.
The first of these chapters begins with the words “It was a humiliation and a punishment” (240)
written in reversed typescript as though they have been reflected in a mirror. This indicates to
the reader that this section of the narrative is being told from the perspective of the Imagos from
the other side of the Tain. This experimentation with the narrative perspective defamiliarizes
readers in that they are reading words which can be clearly deciphered, however they are
presented in reverse. Further, and in much the same way that Lovecraft invites a kind of
sympathy towards the Old Ones in AtMoM, Miéville uses the first-person narrative voice from
the perspective of the Imagos to create a similar sentiment towards their race. The Imago states
that “It was a humiliation and a punishment. I would not want to minimise that. We have told
stories and stories about our imprisonment, for centuries. … We were trapped” (Miéville,
Looking for Jake and Other Stories 240). “For thousands of years you trapped us imperfectly,
and each of your jails gave us our little freedoms” (241). It speaks directly to humanity and
explains the suffering of its people. By having the Imagos themselves interject into the otherwise
human narrative, the reader is forced to view the situation from their perspective and to
sympathize with them.
The Tain develops what was started in the Weird in terms of its description of the
indescribable monsters; its use of an imagined, alternative London for its setting; and its use of
narrative perspective tools and interjections from the Imagos themselves. Despite being literal
fragments of beings, the Imagos are described in explicit detail. This is a progression from the
Old Weird which would merely provide fragmented descriptions of monsters. The setting itself is
defamiliarizing, and indeed uses a real-world setting as the starting point. The London of The
Tain is dulled and muted without the reflections in which the Imagos lived. The narrative
structure, like Lovecraftian weird and gothic fiction which often relies on the found manuscript
trope, is also defamiliarizing,
40
as is the literal reverse typescript used for passages from the
other side of the Tain itself. Miéville’s NW novella literalizes the ‘mirror being held up to society’
40
“From its origins in chivalric romances through to experiments with the device in the early
nineteenth-century novel, the trope of the found document or manuscript has typically cloaked
fictional stories in a guise of historical truth and functioned as a metafictional device for tracing a
story’s origins” (Dicuirci 812)
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and invites sympathy towards the monsters who have had enough of the way that civilization
behaves. This perspective is perhaps indicative of the ecological themes which appear in his
other NW texts discussed in this chapter. The Tain invites readers to confront their behaviours
directly by asking what we might see in the mirror if we were to take an honest and objective
look.
China Miéville’s Bas Lag World – Perdido Street Station (2000) and The Scar (2002)
NW fiction includes intricately detailed descriptions of setting, and the narratives are
based in immersive and often bizarre storyworlds. Within these alien worlds and spaces are the
indirect signposts and signals of the current climate crisis on Earth. This is largely because
garbage is such a prevalent theme in the urban squalor of many NW settings. As mentioned
above, Morton suggests that the climate change hyperobject, the Anthropocene signpost, could
be a single Styrofoam cup in the ocean or humanity’s collective pollution. Each is indicative of
the massively scaled hyperobject in its entirety. Additionally, each is indicative of human action
and the impact of that action on the environment. In Bas Lag, it is garbage which indicates the
Anthropogenic impact on the cities of New Crobuzon and Armada, but through a defamiliarizing
lens it is a reminder of the impact on our own world. These novels are characterized by their
pervasive relationship with garbage, and equally the pursuit of energy. PSS and The Scar are
typical NW texts based on the VanderMeers’ definition of the subgenre. The Bas Lag world
subverts romanticized ideas of place with regards to its depiction of garbage in the central cities
of New Crobuzon and Armada.
The Garbage Aesthetic in Bas Lag
Firstly, China Miéville’s work is often characterized by the garbage aesthetic in his
imagined worlds. The process of salvage and reclamation of garbage and detritus appears in
many of his novels.
41
These two central NW texts – PSS and The Scar – are alert to
environmental issues and are indirectly climate-oriented in that they engage with the
relationship between nature and culture. They blur the line between the industrial and the
natural by turning landscape into literal trashscapes. It is important to note that while these
novels are not directly concerned with the climate crisis, they can be examined from an
ecocritical perspective. In Ecocriticism (2004), Greg Garrard explains that while “Ecocritics
generally tie their cultural analyses explicitly to a ‘green’ moral and political agenda” (3), “no
41
This is thematic in, PSS, The Scar, his YA novel Railsea (2012), Un Lun Dun (2007), and his
counterfactual novella The Last Days of New Paris (2016)
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single or simple perspective unites all ecocritics” (15). So, while these novels’ “green moral and
political agenda” is not foregrounded, they do include climate signposts. These texts’ depiction
of the refuse, garbage, and pollution left by human activity is key to the construction of the NW
settings. In Bas Lag, there is a constant state of construction and decay. Garrard is particularly
interested in “the demarcation between nature and culture, its construction and reconstruction”
(179); he suggests that this is what Ecocriticism itself is all about. The cities of New Crobuzon
and Armada go through continuous construction and reconstruction. The garbage scenery and
landscape in these NW texts is often simultaneously grotesque and aesthetically appealing. The
sprawling landscapes of garbage which are indicative of Anthropogenic activity – and
subsequently climate change – are also romanticized throughout these works. There is a
definite focus on the impact of human (and sentient nonhuman) activity on the environment –
that is, on the demarcation between nature and culture.
Importantly, these texts’ relationship with garbage is not exclusively apocalypse-oriented
or to do with the end of the world(s). Garrard remarks on the limitations of depicting the climate
crisis through apocalypse-oriented narratives alone as “the rhetoric of catastrophe tends to
‘produce’ the crisis it describes” (105). Miéville’s work instead engages with garbage in a non-
apocalyptic manner and focuses on the garbage aesthetic to bring it into the reader’s conscious
field of vision. Instead, these novels include garbage and urban decay as an omnipresent or
underpinning theme that coexists with the primary narratives rather than being what the texts
are explicitly about. This works to bring garbage into a reader’s conscious mind, moving it out of
the periphery or unconscious where it often remains for many. The cities are in a constant state
of simultaneous decay and salvage, with New Crobuzon slipping into the sludge and grime
reminiscent of a turn-of-the-century industrial London, and Armada being the literal
amalgamation of myriad vessels moored together to comprise a mobile city-sized platform. The
Bas Lag world is intricately constructed, and Miéville takes great care to describe the central
cities in detail. Garbage, salvage, pollution, and decay – all Anthropocene signposts – thus
underpin the narrative in PSS.
The city of New Crobuzon itself is characterized by the damaging Anthropogenic (and
sentient nonhuman) activity and the resulting discard and refuse. New Crobuzon appears to be
in a constant state of squalor and decay. In the opening pages of PSS, the reader is given a
rudimentary map of the city –reminiscent of a map of London. The names of the boroughs and
districts of New Crobuzon are distinctly grimy as if they are named after the garbage, detritus,
and grotesquerie within them. The main body of water running through the city – the Gross Tar
river– also appears to adhere to this aesthetic of grime. The description of Spatters most directly
Andrews 142
encapsulates the grime as Miéville writes that “the area had acquired a name, Spatters, that
reflected the desultory randomness of its outlines: the whole stinking shantytown seemed to
have dribbled like shit from the sky” (Miéville, PSS 144). The description of the foul, putrid runoff
that ends up in the waters surrounding Spatters is an assault on what was once natural:
the trench was filled with a noisome gelatinous soup of shit and pollutants and
acid rain. The surface was broken with bubbles of fell gas and bloated animal
corpses. Here and there bobbed rusting tins and knots of fleshy tissue like
tumours or aborted foetuses. The liquid undulated rather than rippled,
contained by a thick surface tension so oily and strong that it would not break.
(146-147)
The grime in Spatters, and New Crobuzon more generally, is normalized to its inhabitants. Isaac
and his gang often remark on the decay, but this acknowledgement is always made in passing
rather than as a key obstacle to their endeavors. The inhabitants of New Crobuzon appear to
have accepted their circumstance and adopted the grime as part of the city’s allure and
reputation. Isaac remarks that “putrefying houses loomed over the courtyards, wooden
walkways seemed to self-generate, linking them together, connecting them to the streets and
mews” (96). There is a distinctly organic feeling to the self-generating walkways, as there is to
the growing hills of garbage in the dumps at Griss Twist. The characters simply live and operate
within the crumbling and grimy city. The characters in New Crobuzon and Armada exhibit a
sense of awareness regarding the grime and squalor, but with it a kind of wilful ignorance
towards it – a kind of unconsciousness or passivity. The characters’ unconsciousness and
apparent indifference towards the garbage reflects society’s unconsciousness towards the same
issues in reality, but the narrative forces the reader to confront it by bringing it into their direct
consciousness so starkly.
Other areas of New Crobuzon include Gross Coil, Rust Bridge, Low Falling Mud,
Murkside, Canker Wedge, Dark Water, and the less overtly grotesque in name Griss Twist. The
description of these settings is fundamental to the reader’s understanding of and relationship
with the story taking place in New Crobuzon, and the novel begins with Yagharek’s stream of
consciousness monologic description of the city:
It is not the current which pulls us but the city itself, its weight sucks us in. …
Railways trace urban anatomy like protruding veins. Red brick and dark walls,
squat churches like troglodytic things, ragged awnings flickering, cobbled mazes
in the old town, culs-de-sac, sewers riddling the earth like secular sepulchres, a
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new landscape of wasteground, crushed stone, libraries fat with forgotten
volumes. (Miéville, PSS 1-2)
In this passage, Miéville uses human anatomy to reflect the sprawling rail network, again
blurring the boundary between nature and culture – it is as though the city, and its garbage and
grime, is a sentient being. Terms like the “wasteground,” the “trashscape,” and “wastescape”
replace terms like landscape throughout the novel. It is important to note that Yag’s description
of the city comes on the first page of the novel indicating that Miéville intends to foreground this
gritty, grimy aesthetic for the city from the outset. The novel is not directly concerned with
climate change, but climatic language consistently bleeds into the descriptions of the perpetual
ruin and decay of New Crobuzon. He writes that the “Smokestacks punctured the membrane
between the land and the air and disgorged tons of poisonous smog into that upper world as if
out of spite. In a thicker, stinking haze just above the rooftops, the detritus from a million low
chimneys eddied together…The clouds swirled in the city’s filthy microclimate” (64). Miéville
also refers to the heat of the Summer as if it is “clotting” over the city and compares the warm
night air to being as “hot and thick as an exhaled breath” (349), again highlighting the familiar
Anthropocene in the otherwise unfamiliar fantasy world.
Both New Crobuzon and the pirate city of Armada introduced in The Scar are in a
constant state of simultaneous development and decay. Despite the grotesquerie, there is a
positive aesthetic to the garbage and the ruins of the city. Miéville calls for the reader to re-
evaluate their relationship to what would typically be considered grotesque. There are frequent
references to the state of decay and development in the same breath: “Over in Gross Coil and
Skulkford the city’s sitting on layers of older buildings. For hundreds of years they sunk into the
mire, and they’d just build new ones on top of them. … Over there, the sewers feed into old
basements and bedrooms. … Rotten houses under a brick sky. Straight up. The shit flows along
channels and then through windows and doors” (419).
42
The city is breaking down and being
rebuilt at the same time. This is reminiscent of some of the more positive outlooks of the climate
catastrophe in cli-fi, most notably in Kim Stanley Robinson’s NY2140 in which the outer city is
constantly decaying and sinking into the rising sea, while Manhattan continues to throng and
thrive. In The Scar the same is true of the floating pirate city of Armada. It is an amalgam of
shipwrecks and barely floating vessels which have been conjoined and grafted together to form
a sprawling floating community with distinct boroughs and districts. The pirate city of Armada is
42
This layering of buildings over time is indicative of what the Anthropocene represents – that
is, the impact human activity has had on the environment in a measurable way which can be
viewed in the layers of sediment in the earth. This is a repeated theme in his later work Railsea.
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an act of cumulative salvage, and the city of New Crobuzon is constantly in a process of
salvage as it sinks into the muck and mire of the destroyed landscape.
The ‘trashscapes’ and dumps in New Crobuzon, and more specifically Griss Twist,
become increasingly central to the narrative. Miéville writes that “The Griss Twist dumps
interspersed the deserted remnants of factories. Here and there one still operated, at half- or a
quarter- capacity, chucking out its noxious fumes by day and succumbing slowly to the ambient
decay by night” (PSS 445). The dumps in Griss Twist are a microcosm of the larger salvage-
scape of New Crobuzon and subsequently Armada.
The “ruinous trashscape” comprised of remains and pieces of decades of discarded
constructs have ended up in the dumps of Griss Twist and coalesced to form the sentient,
nonhuman ‘Construct Council’, and this is developed through a combination of organic and
inorganic metaphors in Miéville’s descriptions of the city. It is as if there is a new form of life
emerging from the detritus of civilization, and it happens whether humanity likes it or not. The
construct council is an amalgam of rudimentary robots and automata designed for basic tasks
such as cleaning and organizing which has become sentient both individually and collectively.
The construct council has assembled itself from the refuse and garbage in the dumps of Griss
Twist, an area characterized solely by garbage. Miéville writes that “the rubbish was a body. A
vast skeleton of industrial waste twenty-five feet from skull to toe” (Miéville, PSS 449). This is
reflective of what Ken Simpson suggests in “The Aesthetics of Garbage” as he writes that
“garbage is the random accumulation of discarded objects, but it also constitutes a grotesque
body capable of renewing and overturning the reader’s or a character’s ideological assumptions
about the sacred and its incoherent materiality, anomalous textures and objects, and unstable
temporal and ontological boundaries” (Simpson 366).
With the construct council, Miéville is literalizing what Jane Bennett suggests in Vibrant
Matter (2010) when she asks “How, for example, would patterns of consumption change if we
faced not litter, rubbish, trash, or ‘the recycling,’ but an accumulating pile of lively and potentially
dangerous matter?” (viii). She takes a material ecocritical perspective towards garbage and
views it, similarly to Morton and Harman’s object-oriented view, as equally important to humans
and that which deserves our conscious attention. Miéville writes that “It was a construct, an
enormous construct, formed of cast-off pieces and stolen engines. Thrown together and
powered without the intervention of human design” (450).
43
To communicate with the group, and
43
This amalgam of pieces resembles the “manifs” in The Last Days of New Paris (2016). Most
notably, the ‘exquisite corpse’ is literally a human avatar for surrealism as it is made up of
random discarded objects to ultimately become a sentient piece of art.
Andrews 145
further humanize the construct, it uses a human avatar – the human too is salvage. He “was
nude and horrifically thin. His face was stretched into a permanent wide-eyed aspect of ghastly
discomfort. His eyes, his body, jerked and ticked as if his nerves were breaking down. His skin
looked necrotic, as if he was submitting to slow gangrene” (450). Miéville explains that “His skull
had been sheared cleanly in two just above his eyes. The top was completely gone. … The
cable hauled up into the air, dangling down into the man’s skull” (451). It is this odd amalgam of
organic trash – the human body – and mechanical garbage that coalesces to form the sentient
construct council.
With Griss Twist and the construct council more directly, Miéville literalizes and
humanizes the presence of garbage with which the city of New Crobuzon is so commonly
associated. Miéville’s garbage aesthetic in Bas Lag literally makes this wasteland-trashscape a
sentient creature with agency. The Anthropocene waste is embodied as a nonhuman “actant” in
the narrative. Jane Bennett writes that the “term is Bruno Latour’s: an actant is a source of
action that can be either human or nonhuman; it is that which has efficacy, can do things, has
sufficient coherence to make a difference, produce effects, alter the course of events” (viii).
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The garbage in New Crobuzon becomes an actant, an assemblage of things, and gives rise to
the construct council. This forces the reader to engage with the garbage directly rather than it
becoming something passively dismissed or rendered simply another part of the “Ecocidal
Unconscious” (Oziewicz) or the “Anthropocene Unconscious” (Bould). The garbage itself is
given agency through the “construct council” character in PSS. The construct council is literally
conscious. This again forces the reader to move from experiencing garbage, and the
Anthropocene, unconsciously, to engaging with it directly.
Miéville’s Bas Lag world is estranging and defamiliarizing to the reader in myriad ways.
The many different creatures, the mythical and magical abilities that some possess, the
oversight of the governing body based in PSS itself, and the bizarre intervention of the
interplanar Weavers are undoubtedly strange and unfamiliar. Despite this, the city bears some
striking resemblances to the grittiest and grimiest depictions of real-world cities. There are clear
references to London in many of Miéville’s works – even the Bas Lag novels which are intended
to be set in wholly imagined worlds. The ruin, garbage, decay, and grime are ubiquitous in New
Crobuzon and Armada.
44
Bennett also explains what she calls “The agency of assemblages” and interestingly uses an
electrical grid blackout as an example to demonstrate the agency of things. This is reflective of
the construct council and its control over the city of New Crobuzon’s power grid.
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Pursuit of Energy in Perdido Street Station (2000)
Both PSS and The Scar are driven by the distinctly familiar Anthropocene pursuit of
energy. The reader is first introduced to this pursuit in PSS by way of renegade physicist Isaac
Dan der Grimnebulin’s research into Unified Field Theory and crisis energy while trying to
manufacture a way for Yagharek the Garuda to fly again. Throughout PSS there is also
reference to torque, a mysterious force of nature which has been harnessed dangerously in the
past. This force resembles nuclear energy as there have been accidents in the past resembling
Chernobyl or Fukushima. The Bas Lag world is a world in which laws of nature exist, and thus
the study of physics and those laws of nature is still an academic undertaking. In both PSS and
The Scar – and later Embassytown – the endless pursuits of energy are ill-fated and ultimately
unsuccessful. They demonstrate our inability to assert dominance over the natural world and its
resources.
PSS begins with Isaac being asked by Yagharek the Garuda (a humanoid eagle
creature) to help him fly again. Yag has had his wings removed as a punishment in his home
realm of Cymek. Isaac hopes to grant Yag flight by developing what he calls crisis energy.
Isaac’s research prior to his employment by Yag is focused on Unified Field Theory. That is, a
theory that provides an explanation of how all forms of energy function in relation to one
another. His endeavor can be loosely related to the physics community’s pursuit of a unifying
‘theory of everything’ or a quantum theory of gravity. Crisis energy becomes Isaac’s primary
pursuit. While working on his research to provide Yag flight, Isaac focuses on harnessing
potential energy to make it limitless.
Isaac explains crisis energy in relation to potential energy; when an object is held in a
state in which it may fall, move, or otherwise gain momentum based on its location or position, it
carries potential energy. Isaac’s ‘crisis energy’ is based on taking potential energy into a
perpetual or infinite state:
See, potential energy’s all about placing something in a situation where it’s
teetering, where it’s about to change its state. Just like when you put enough
strain on a group of people, they’ll suddenly explode. They’ll go from grumpy and
quiescent to violent and creative in one moment. The transition from one state to
another’s affected by taking something – a social group, a piece of wood, a hex –
to a place where its interactions with other forces make its own energy pull
against its current state.
I’m talking about taking things to the point of crisis. (169)
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Given its name, ‘crisis energy’ can be viewed as an echo of our ongoing climate crisis, and
‘energy crisis.’ In much the same way as the typescript in The Tain is reversed when the
unnamed Imago speaks, in PSS Miéville is reflecting a major contemporary crisis back to the
reader. It is also noteworthy that Isaac uses people in the above example as a metaphor for
potential energy and crisis energy. This is reflective of the strain on society when a particular
concern reaches its crisis – which applies to the slow burn of the climate crisis as is depicted in
Beckett’s AC with his metaphor of the boiling or breaking point – and further reflects the blurred
boundary between nature and culture in that humans are literally thought of as the energy
source as if we are a natural resource to be mined.
Isaac suggests that this kind of energy could be useful in helping Yagharek to fly again,
but also suggests that there could be further implications and applications of this kind of
discovery: “this is much bigger than that. If I can really unlock crisis energy for you, then your
case becomes, frankly, a pretty paltry concern. We’re talking about forces and energy that could
totally change . . . everything . . .” (170). Crisis energy in PSS is the primary driver of Isaac’s
narrative; the narrative depends on Isaac’s discovery. This is reflective of the climate crisis being
the ultimate concern in that the discovery of a clean, unlimited, and renewable energy source
would be the ultimate solution.
While crisis energy is a potentially controllable force of nature, torque is a force of nature
which is uncontrollable and dangerous. Torque is undoubtedly the most ominous and ineffable
source of energy used and discussed throughout the Bas Lag books. It is usually discussed
cautiously and without great specificity. It is referred to in Iron Council (2004), the third Bas Lag
book, as a “feral cancerous force” (Iron Council 270) and an “ineffable bad energy” (IC 407).
The reader is left in a state of only partial understanding with regards to exactly what Torque is
or does. The most well-known examples of torque energy’s destructive force in PSS are the
mysterious instances of the Cacotopic stain and Suroch. Some similarities to nuclear energy
and the atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki become clear with references
to a place – Suroch - which was obliterated by Torque bombs. When looking at some old
pictures – “heliotypes” – of Suroch, Isaac explains “That’s where they dropped the colourbomb
in 1545. That’s what they said put an end to the Pirate Wars, but to be honest with you, Yag,
they’d been over for a year before that, since New Crobuzon bombarded Suroch with Torque
bombs” (PSS 229). The similarities to Hiroshima and Nagasaki are made clearer still with a
description of the landscape itself after the use of Torque energy: “Those things in the
background like melting statues used to be houses,” he said levelly. “The thing you’re looking at,
as far as they could work out, is descended from the domestic goat. Apparently they used to
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keep them as pets in Suroch. This could be second, tenth, twentieth generation post-Torque,
obviously. We don’t know how long they live” (PSS 229). The Cacotopic Stain and Suroch
indicate the uncontrollable nature of torque energy. Its similarities to the dangers of nuclear
energy when misused are clear. The energy itself causes mutations and medical conditions
reminiscent of those caused by nuclear energy. Yagharek describes the energy as that which is
a literal cancer to the earth itself. Despite torque clearly being dangerous and uncontrollable,
there are still ongoing efforts to utilize or harness it. The Lovers in The Scar literally drive their
entire city to the brink of destruction when they head towards the Scar itself to attempt to tap the
endless possibility emanating from it. The implication is that the possibilities are literally endless
with unlimited power. It is noteworthy that the symbol for this kind of energy is an indication of
harm – a scar.
Pursuit of Energy in The Scar
As indicated earlier, in The Scar, the characters are driven by the emanating power of
the eponymous scar in the surface of the Earth. They aim to tap or siphon the possibility it
exudes despite how dangerous it is: “If the scar exists… and by some gods-fucked miracle we
survive, then they’ll still destroy us. We are not an expeditionary force; we are not on some
fucking quest. This is a city … We live; we buy; we sell; we steal; we trade” (The Scar 569).
Their drive to tap such energy in the face of the obvious harm and destruction of such a pursuit
is again reflective of the current global climate crisis and the political attitude towards energy
production and consumption. The Scar is set primarily in the floating pirate city of Armada. The
city is first introduced as a myth or fairytale for the inhabitants of New Crobuzon until Bellis – the
story’s protagonist – is captured at sea and trapped on the floating city as a prisoner. Armada is
an amalgam of salvaged ships moored together to create a city-sized raft of vessels. These
ships comprise various districts inhabited by numerous species including the Khepri, the
humans, the vampirs, and the many remades and vodyanoi. The city, under the government of
the Lovers, appears to have a revivified purpose when the idea of raising an Avanc – a giant
interplanar sea-dwelling creature of immense power and potential, not unlike Lovecraft’s
Cthulhu – becomes a possibility. The city and its inhabitants require a source of energy like any
other city. The narrative in The Scar is driven by a constant and never-ending search for energy
sources.
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Pursuing and eventually raising the Avanc takes power, but once they have it, they strive
for more.
45
This endless pursuit of more and more energy seems so counterintuitive as each
pursuit requires more energy to produce more energy. Prior to the pursuit of the Avanc, the city
of Armada draws its power from rockmilk. It is essentially speculation for accumulation: “It was
therefore no great surprise to Bellis, who had started to understand the tussles of Armadan
politics, when The Flag and Council’s Call began to raise doubts about conjuring the Avanc.
‘The Summoning would be a triumph of science,’ read the editorial in The Flag, ‘but there are
questions. More motive power for the city can only be good, but what will be the cost?’” (The
Scar 244). The characters understand the potential dangers of meddling with these forces of
nature, but only after having mined oil and rockmilk for months and draining the life from the
mystical Avanc. This pursuit for energy in The Scar is cyclical and omnipresent within the NW
environment of the city of Armada. The pursuit of the Avanc with the eventual goal of reaching
the Scar is borne out of an energy scarcity in the city. The pursuit of energy in The Scar echoes
our own pursuit of energy and resources and prompts readers to confront this destructive cycle
through recreating it in a fantastical and exaggerated way.
Reaching the Scar itself is the Armadans’ goal. The Lovers guide the city through
uncharted and otherworldly waters to the open fissure in the planet’s surface which emanates
possibility. Miéville describes the Scar as a place in which “The sea throngs . . . It spurts through
the pores of reality, seeping back in dangerous washes, leaving fissures through which
displaced forces can emerge” (1). Miéville uses distinctly organic imagery to describe the Scar
as something natural and essentially alive itself. The possibility of the Scar compels the
Armadans to attempt to tap it. The application of the power that the Scar could offer is abstract
and unclear – the possibility it emanates can best be understood as the ability to do the best
possible outcome in any given situation as the wielder of this power would be able to experience
every possibility to know which outcome was best.
To demonstrate this power, Miéville uses an object which acts as a conductor for the
possibility that the Scar emanates. It is the micro-scale referent to the larger hyperobject, just as
a Styrofoam cup is the referent to the larger hyperobject of climate change because of garbage
and human activity. This object is a sword carried by the mercenary Armadan, Uther Doul. Bellis
sees Doul fight using this sword in impossible ways. The speed and precision at which he
moves are inhuman, as though he can pre-empt what attacks his opponents will make. Doul
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The act of “raising” the Avanc resembles the raising of Cthulhu in Lovecraft’s novella.
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later explains the power that the Scar offers by explaining to Bellis the power and properties of
his “possible sword”:
‘If I were to toss a coin, most certain it would land on one side or the other; it’s
just possible it might land on its edge. But if I were to make it part of a possibility
circuit, I’d turn it into what the Ghosthead would have called a coin of possible
falls – a Possible Coin. And if I toss that, things are different.’ . . . ‘This-’ He
indicated his sword again, seeing Bellis begin to understand. ‘-is a sword of
possible strikes. A Possible Sword.
46
It’s a conductor for a very rare kind of
energy. It’s a node in a circuit, a possibility machine.’ (The Scar 436)
It is this power on a grander scale that the Lovers and the city of Armada try to harness by
capturing the Avanc and sailing to the broken fissure in the planet – The Scar itself. “‘The Lovers
want to get to the Scar; they want to tap possibilities’” (444). They refer to such energy as
“Naked power” (445), indicating that whoever harnesses this source of energy becomes
essentially all-powerful. Christopher Palmer writes that the Armadans’ goal is “a material project:
mining oil and rockmilk” and that it is a “domination of nature… symbolized by the harnessing of
the avanc” (230). He remarks upon the hubristic nature of this pursuit and suggests that it “is
both a wounding of nature and a narrowing of the diverse energies on Armada” and that “it may
be perilously hubristic” (231). This is reflective of the control of energy in reality; when natural
resources become scarcer, those who control the access to resources have the most power.
This is analogous also to the control of nuclear weapons. The characters’ circular relationship
with various sources of energy is their primary motivation throughout The Scar. Prior to raising
and capturing the Avanc, the Armadans commandeer the giant rig to fuel the city, which allows
them to mine for rockmilk to further fuel the city. Their pursuit of energy is perpetual. They use
energy to find means of harnessing more energy, and they continue to be destructive towards
(and literally ‘scar’) the natural world throughout this process.
The Bas Lag storyworld includes many different intelligent species living and working in
human-like ways with human-like tendencies. As the VanderMeers suggest, NW uses traditional
fantasy worldbuilding as a jumping off point for the creation of unique storyworlds. Bas Lag is an
almost wholly defamiliarizing environment in which readers are given nodes and points of
reference which are familiar alongside the grotesque, the weird, and the impossibly fantastical.
Amidst this fantasy exists the distinctly familiar – and distinctly human – pursuit of resources at
46
The concept of the ‘possible sword’ resembles the “Probability Drive” in Douglas Adams The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979) and the ‘possibility scopes’ owned by the Worldbuilders
in Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the Dark (2022)
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the expense of the natural world, and indeed the safety of its inhabitants. This Anthropocene
pursuit underpins the Bas Lag books and is continued in the locomotive and industry-focused
third instalment of the series, Iron Council.
Annihilation (2014) and Beneath the World, A Sea (2019) – Defamiliarization, Exploration,
and Pursuit of Energy and Resources
As indicated in the opening section of this chapter, New Weird literature defamiliarizes
readers by using a multitude of estranging factors which make the familiarities of human life –
such as the pursuit of energy and resources, or the presence and buildup of garbage and
detritus – appear more starkly, more apparently for readers. In this section I discuss two works,
one of which is particularly central to the NW subgenre – VanderMeer’s Annihilation – and one
which is less widely discussed as a part of this subgenre – Beckett’s Beneath the World, A Sea.
In his work on “Ecology without Civilization,” Jack Dudley remarks of the Southern Reach trilogy
that “VanderMeer’s uncanny cosmic trauma also shows why the generic mixture of realism and
the weird in cli-fi is in fact best suited not only to make visible climate change and its effects but,
in the neglected and more important follow-up to that predominating aesthetic issue, also to
offer political possibilities for action in the present” (Dudley 94). What Dudley suggests of
Annihilation is also true of BTWAS in terms of the mixture of the uncanny, the weird, and
elements of cli-fi. These two novels are important in an ecocritical examination of the NW
subgenre in that they force readers to confront their complicity in the climate crisis with regards
to our engagement with nature and question whether nature is better off without us. Both are set
on Earth but are centered around distinctly NW and estranging spaces which are entered and
explored by characters who are fundamentally altered by their weirdnesses. What I call NW
spaces, Graulund refers to as “zones of exception,” and suggests that they are “Weird, limited,
and temporary to begin with, zones of exception threaten to overflow and in time disturb and
subvert the landscapes of normality” (46). It is within these NW spaces, the zones of exception,
that authors can utilize fantasy devices to depict the climate crisis in novel ways.
In Annihilation, the characters, led by the unnamed Biologist, lead an expedition into the
anomaly known only as Area X. It is noteworthy that VanderMeer leaves the area itself with only
a placeholder name like ‘X’ as if it must be solved first to be understood for its value. This
expedition is reminiscent of those undertaken in the early-twentieth century in H. P. Lovecraft’s
stories in which unexplored corners of the globe are ventured into by intrepid adventurers and
academics who uncover various horrors and monstrosities like the Old Ones of AtMoM or
Cthulhu itself. In BTWAS, Ben Ronson is sent to the Submundo Delta, an imagined area in
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South America, to investigate the murders of creatures called Duendes who have recently been
considered human by international tribunals.
In this section I discuss the estranging and defamiliarizing nature of each of these two
texts by explaining the NW qualities of the specific settings, and I unpack the narratives’
relationship to energy. In Annihilation, the overseeing government research body known as the
Southern Reach knowingly sends expeditions to almost certain deaths to understand the force
emanating from the epicentre of Area X. In BTWAS, the oil tycoon Tim Dolby aims to extract the
natural resources from the Submundo Delta by building a rail system into the area to cross the
Zona del Olvido in which people lose their memory. In both cases, the pursuit of energy and
natural resources is a flawed and dangerous endeavor. A further underpinning motif in both
novels is their shared focus on how mysterious locations can disrupt thoughts and memory. I
argue that this can be read as an indirect comment on humanity’s failure to engage with climate
change, a phenomenon described by Ghosh as a “great derangement.” As explained earlier,
Bould and Oziewicz both engage with climate change in literature from an indirect perspective,
using the term “unconscious” to explain humanity’s relationship with the ongoing crisis. Both
Annihilation and BTWAS centre around characters who, upon immersion in new ecologies,
question their own sense of reality and their place within it. Area X literally alters the Biologist
such that she becomes an entirely different being which is a part of the Area itself. In BTWAS,
Ben Ronson’s memory is compromised by the Zona del Olvido, and his thoughts are mangled
by the Duendes and the forest in the delta by bringing forth his innermost thoughts and fears.
Both characters’ minds are altered by the ecology in the respective NW spaces.
Jeff VanderMeer – Annihilation (2014)
While there are fewer direct representations of energy that humanity tries to harness or
consume within the text, Annihilation is characterized by humanity’s engagement with ineffable
and uncontrollable forces of nature. Area X is depicted as a pristine albeit deadly ecological
space. The expedition, led by the Biologist, is at odds with Area X as it unravels the characters’
mental states and physically mutates and transforms them. Grauland remarks on how the Area
itself has become the monstrous enemy to the human as he writes that in “Annihilation, the
monstrous has made itself home in what was once a human landscape” (56). Here I focus on
two components of the narrative in Annihilation: the defamiliarizing and estranging qualities of
Area X which are also reflected in other facets of VanderMeer’s narrative, and the Anthropocene
desire to understand and control the forces within Area X at the expense of the natural, pristine
wilderness and the cost of human lives lost.
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VanderMeer gives the reader only fractional and fragmentary images of the characters
around whom the narrative is based, and while there is an abundance of description of the
setting within Area X, the image the reader gets of the area is still wholly unfamiliar and
estranging. The characters are known only by their professions – the protagonist being simply
“the Biologist” – and very little background information about the other central characters is
provided. Within The Southern Reach, the secretive government organization set up to
understand and experiment on the anomaly, the figures in control are referred to only as
“Control” and simply “the Voice” – this information is provided only in the second book of the
trilogy, Authority (2014).
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Similarly to Area X itself, many things about the Southern Reach are
intentionally mysterious and estranging for the reader. It is as though the Southern Reach itself
aims to be as clandestine as the anomaly. The Biologist engages with this directly as she states
that “Estrangement, in all of its many forms, was nothing new for these missions” (23). It is
unclear in this instance whether she is referring to the Southern Reach and its lack of openness
or the anomaly itself and its ineffable nature or both. This demonstrates VanderMeer’s intention
to make the novel wholly estranging and defamiliarizing to readers. The reader is continually
caught off-guard and left without answers to Area X’s weirdnesses. As a result, the
Anthropocene signpost of the pursuit of energy appears more clearly for readers, and the
disintegration of the protagonists’ state of consciousness is indicative of VanderMeer trying to
reorient the reader’s consciousness towards the climate crisis which so often resides in our
unconscious.
Area X has a multitude of strange effects on everything within it and every expedition
member who enters it. “Few people who enter it come out alive, and those who do are often
irrevocably altered in some way. Annihilation… seems to present a biologically transformed
world surrounded by a ‘border’ that demarcates a space often deeply traumatizing for the
human members of the Southern Reach’s expeditions” (Dudley 95). In her paper on
“(Dis)Locating Ecological Hope” in VanderMeer’s work, Gry Ulstein explores how “the weird …
can productively question spatial categories like environment, nature, and wilderness, and
thereby challenge readers to resituate their ‘normal’ way of thinking in the increasingly weirded
time of the Anthropocene” (131). The same is true of the Bas Lag world, as Miéville utilizes NW
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This trend of referring to characters only by their professions is also used in part in Beckett’s BTWAS as
each chapter is introduced by the profession of the character around whom it centers. For example, for Ben
Ronson, the chapters are introduced with the heading “The Policeman” while Hyacinth’s chapters begin
under the heading “The Anthropologist.”
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storyworlds to provoke readers to think about Anthropocene behaviours by focusing on
signposts like garbage and resource management.
An important effect that the Biologist notices during her expedition is that everything
within the area becomes refracted
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and blended such that the makeup of all things, even at the
molecular level, is altered. This ‘refraction’ in Area X, like light shone through a prism, not only
changes the biological, geological, and physical makeup of everything within it, but in doing so it
brings those humans within the area to the same level or state as everything else inside Area X
– they are rendered nonhuman. Heather Houser refers to this amalgamation as a form of
“ecosickness” as she remarks that “In ecosickness fiction, humans and the more-than-human
world do not only interact but, more importantly, are co-constituted. Everything is merely an
object and is rendered as nonhuman as everything else” (Houser 3). Jon Hegglund writes that
“The narratological analysis of VanderMeer’s novel calls for an openness to the ways in which
narrative actively and dynamically constructs distinctions between subjects and objects, figure
and background, characters and storyworld” (30). The Biologist and the Area become as human
and nonhuman as one another as the Biologist undergoes her metamorphosis. She becomes a
part of the area, so it makes sense that she remains as nameless as Area X itself.
VanderMeer’s decision to leave the characters nameless is reflective of this objectification of
humans.
Area X is a representation of the demarcation between the human and the nonhuman,
the altered and the unaltered; while at the same time, its broken, refracted, and mutated
contents represent the comparative brokenness and mutations of an Anthropocentric world.
There is a clear boundary between ordinary space and NW space. The NW space mutates
everything within it from a purely material perspective – it does not care if the object is human or
nonhuman. Grauland writes that “VanderMeer’s novel is … in line with a general trend in
environmental humanities” regarding the Anthropocene, and it is a “recognition of the necessity
to shed former supposed boundaries between nature and culture, human and nonhuman,
individual and environment” (60). In Area X, “the ecosystem, and, in turn, all forms of life and
nonlife, are mutations that reflect the damaged world of the Anthropocene” (Sperling 251). I
argue that Area X mirrors what damage humans have done to the environment, by directly
damaging them back. The Area has no regard for human intentions or goals, it mutates what is
inside it so that it may most effectively persist. It is important to note that the third book in the
Southern Reach trilogy, Acceptance, takes place 30 years before the events of Annihilation and
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This idea of refraction is made more apparent in the 2018 movie adaptation of the novel, also
entitled Annihilation (dir. Alex Garland).
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tracks the ecological transformations of the area along the “Forgotten Coast,” the name given to
the area in the second book, Authority. While I focus just on Annihilation here, Dudley does
remark that “To read the series through Annihilation is to grasp only one incomplete part of the
trilogy’s radical ecological possibilities, how it seeks to upend anthropocentrically shaped
expectations about the potential of the uncanny and trauma” (92). That is, reading just
Annihilation gives the reader only glimpses or fragments of Area X’s capabilities. The creation of
Area X itself though, is intentionally fragmentary and incomplete, and the reader understands it
through the narrative relayed from the Biologist’s journals. She experiences the environment
without the knowledge of what happened on the Forgotten Coast 30 years prior.
Importantly, the novel’s title represents not the annihilation of the ecology within Area X –
which is described frequently as a “pristine wilderness” – but rather the annihilation and
destruction of the humans within the area. I suggest that it is a depiction of ecology fighting back
against an invasive predator – humanity. The code word “annihilation” itself refers to the
hypnosis-induced suicide command that the Psychologist can force upon the other members of
the expedition. Dudley writes that rather than being about the destruction of ecology,
“VanderMeer confirms this reading of Area X as a restorative process returning nature to a
pristine state without Anthropogenic destruction. He imagines the enigmatic Area X not as the oil
spill itself or as an ontologically and biologically contaminated ecology but as a sort of answer to
the ecological trauma of the spill, one whose strangeness serves natural ends” (97). So, Area X
is reflective of how the world may heal itself at the expense of human impacts, and this reads as
a horror from the human perspective. The developments within Area X hint at a climate future
thousands of years from the present. Area X is a reminder that the world will be fine, it is
humanity which may not persevere. Miéville’s Imagos in The Tain are a literalization of the
‘mirror held up to society’ trope to force readers to confront their complicity in the slow
destruction of society. I suggest that Annihilation similarly reverses the roles of the environment
and humanity by positioning this NW environment as the destructive force against humans.
Chris Beckett – Beneath the World, A Sea (2019)
While Beckett’s 2019 novel Beneath the World, A Sea is less widely known than
Annihilation, it shares many themes with regards to the NW qualities of the imagined space in
which the narrative takes place. Beckett’s Submundo Delta, the surrounding Zona Del Olvido,
and the cities of Nus and Amizad within the Delta, resemble VanderMeer’s Area X in that both
the Delta and Area X are bordered NW spaces in which the biology differs greatly from that of
the outside world. Area X is a far more dangerous and inhospitable environment than is the
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Delta, but the anomalies and variations of the plant and animal life within have similarities. Here
I briefly explore the implications of the Zona Del Olvido and its effect on memory and the
unconscious, and I discuss the pursuit of the strange and abundant resources within the
Submundo Delta. I argue that the secondary narrative of Tim Dolby and his natural resource
interests subverts the Duende-murder narrative before being positioned centrally at the end of
the novel. Beckett ensures that the climate narrative comes second in reader’s minds, and
forces readers to engage with their own conceptions of their unconscious, before centralizing
the natural resource theme at the novel’s conclusion. This novel comes between Beckett’s two
cli-fi novels, America City and Two Tribes, suggesting that this period of writing was greatly
affected by climate concerns for Beckett.
The Zona Del Olvido – “forgotten zone” – surrounds the Submundo Delta in Beckett’s
imagined setting in BTWAS. It is noteworthy that VanderMeer’s Area X is situated in an area
referred to in Authority as the “forgotten coast.” Both authors focus on the erosion and
corruption of memories and consciousness in their respective NW spaces. It is so named
because it causes anyone who travels through it to lose their memory. As a result, it must be
traversed slowly and carefully by boat over several days to avoid a dangerous accident. This
prevents air travel into the Submundo Delta and, like the border of Area X in Annihilation,
ensures that it remains essentially cut off from the rest of the world. Similarly to the narrative in
Annihilation being told through the Biologist’s journals, the protagonist in BTWAS, Ben Ronson,
writes in journals during his time in the Zona. He chooses to read the contents of the journals
later in the narrative as he is concerned about what he may have done during his time in the
Zona. It is this literal and mental boundary which also allows for the experimentation with the
biology inside the area while still having the novel set on Earth rather than in an entirely
imagined universe. The Delta and Zona have a kind of agency over those within their
boundaries. They control inhabitants’ consciousness and sense of self. The Zona and the Delta
cause Ben Ronson to question his own unconscious. As a result, the novel calls the reader to
question their unconsciousness with regards to their environment. This again works to move the
“ecocidal unconscious” (Oziewicz) and “Anthropocene unconscious” (Bould) into the reader’s
direct field of vision. While Ben is grappling with his own unconsciousness, Tim Dolby enters the
narrative with his own Anthropocentric intentions of mining the resources within the area. The
reader thus questions what they are conscious of, and what they may indeed be missing or
leaving to their unconscious mind, while being introduced to this Anthropocene signpost.
Throughout the novel Ben questions his own unconscious mind. The fact that he is
unable to access any memories of his time in the Zona del Olvido causes him to subsequently
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question his sense of self as he is not sure what he is capable of. In his work on “Memory and
the Self,” Conway explains that memory is a major component of the self, as it is how we
construct our lived experience and our expectations of reality. He remarks that “Indeed, it has
often been observed and long been known that memories may be altered, distorted, even
fabricated, to support current aspects of the self” (Conway 595). A distortion of memories, then,
is a distortion of one’s sense of self. Ben is concerned that he may have done something illegal
during his time in the city of Nus which is situated on/in this memory-erasing boundary. The
town is notorious for illicit behaviour, and Ben questions himself throughout the novel until he
reads his final journal and learns that he did not do the things about which he had been worried.
Further, Ben’s mind is affected by the Duendes and the mysterious forest in the Delta. The
Duendes are humanoid creatures who only live within the boundaries of the Delta and the
forest. Ben is in the Delta to investigate the killings of the Duendes, as the locals – the
Mundinos – do not consider them human. The Mundinos do not consider it a crime to kill
Duendes and instead they flaunt their killings openly by keeping and drying their heads.
The Duendes seem to unlock people’s thoughts and disorient them by making them
think or feel things that they were perhaps keeping repressed or locking away in the
subconscious areas of their brains. It is as though they can reveal a person’s own secrets to
them. When first meeting the Duendes, Ben seems to reassure himself that he is not capable of
bad things: “‘Mummy’s good boy,’ said a voice inside his head. It was his own voice, but he
heard it as if it was someone else. ‘Mummy’s boy. Mummy’s good good boy. No bad thoughts at
all’” (44). This capacity to unlock one’s thoughts is unsettling. The forest and the Duendes
collectively have this strange ability to affect those within the bubble of the Delta. This unsettling
property is most certainly defamiliarizing. Ben remarks at one point that he was “struck by the
absurdity of his situation: a middle ranking policeman from London, up to his chin in pitch
darkness, debating the nature of mind and matter” (120). Beckett consistently reflects upon
memory and self-awareness throughout the narrative through Ben Ronson. Rather than a
conventional or familiar unreliable narrator perspective, Beckett gives the reader a narrator who
is both unsure of what he has done and unsure of the implications of what his potential past
actions could have on his future. Ronson confronts his own unconscious and subconscious
thoughts because of his interaction with the environment in the Delta. This calls upon the reader
to confront their own unconscious regarding the environment.
Beckett literalizes what Bould and Oziewicz suggest about the Anthropocene
unconscious and the ecocidal unconscious, respectively. Oziewicz explains that “The ecocidal
unconscious denotes our refusal to acknowledge ourselves as agents of ecocide” (59), and
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Bould remarks upon texts which are not explicitly about climate change, but which are perhaps
orbiting the issue indirectly. Oziewicz states that “The unconscious-as-idealization has also
been adapted to discussions of environmental degradation” (59). In BTWAS, Beckett’s
experimentation with consciousness and memory forces Ben to confront his own unconscious
thoughts by having them stripped away for him to review in his own writing. Despite Ben
ultimately being innocent, Beckett’s novel demonstrates the challenges of confronting our
unconscious, our complicity in the ongoing ecocide. Juxtaposing Ben’s experiences with Dolby’s
environmentally destructive ambitions encourages the reader to forge a link between the two
themes.
Making Ben Ronson not only unreliable, but someone who is aware of his own potential
unreliability is also reflective of the Biologist’s continual self-questioning in her account of her
time in Area X. All the characters in BTWAS who journey into the Delta on the same boat as
Ben experience the memory loss and the effects of the Duendes. As in Annihilation, people are
naturally drawn to the area they do not understand as they seek to experience it, understand it,
and ultimately take control of it. Ben’s position of control is borne out of his duty as a police
officer, but it quickly becomes apparent that trying to apply international law to a place like the
Delta simply does not make sense. The same becomes clear of Tim Dolby – the oil tycoon –
and his overtly Anthropogenic goal of trying to build a rail system into the Delta to extract its
natural resources.
The biology of the delta differs greatly to everywhere else on Earth. This makes the Delta
a desirable place for scientists and researchers to visit, and it interests financier and oil tycoon,
Tim Dolby, to consider exploiting the area for its untapped resources. The forest is strange and
unfamiliar simply for its differences to any existing plant life outside the boundaries of the Delta.
Similarly to Area X, there are pathologies and variations that seem unexplainable inside the
Delta. The forest itself is home to plants that sustain the residents of Amizad nutritionally and
spiritually – the golden ‘milk’
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that that comes from the plants in the forest acts as a food source
and a hallucinogen for the people who are drawn into the forest and spend their days wandering
its depths. The direct effects of the forest in the Delta remain ambiguous, but like the Duendes,
it seems to alter people’s minds, albeit more positively than harrowingly. Ben experiences the
‘healing’ and restorative properties of the Delta and the forest specifically first-hand. The golden
milk and the healing properties of the forest are the resources and potential which interest Tim
Dolby.
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The golden ‘milk’ resembles ‘rockmilk,’ the source of energy mined in Miéville’s The Scar
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Another character – Rico, Jael’s hippie boyfriend – experiences a sense of
connectedness to the natural biology of the area and suggests that the “‘forest is the true
democracy,’ Rico said. ‘It strips away all the crap. It doesn’t care about certificates or trophies or
any of that shit. It doesn’t even care about right or wrong’” (85). Ben must at first be convinced
by Justine – his romantic partner – of the forest’s effects on him: “She turned towards him in her
soft pink bed, her hands behind her head. ‘Feel the pull of this forest, Ben! Just stop and notice
how it’s tugging at you right now at this moment, never mind how it is when the duendes are
around’” (101). Ben does address the “absurdity of his situation” (120) and acknowledges the
unexplained power of the forest: “‘It’s true,’ he said, from this strange unexpected place. ‘There
is a gap. And when I’m in the forest, it seems to heal.’ ‘That’s because, when you’re in it, the
forest fills you up with itself’” (204). The forest has an unexplained ability to affect the mental
state of those who spend any time inside it. After swimming in a secluded pool in the forest Ben
acknowledges that “His head was full of energy, from the Duendes, from the forest, from
everything that had happened that night” (117). Like Area X breaking the minds of those within
it, the residents of Amizad in the Delta understand that they are fundamentally changed by the
forest and the area itself: “We’ve left it too late. This place changes you after a while” (70).
Similarly to the Biologist in Annihilation, Ben is fundamentally altered. He is rendered less
human, or even nonhuman, by the ecology in the Delta. This mysterious energy is the source of
Tim Dolby’s Anthropogenic pursuits. While neither he nor anyone else fully understands the
energy source in the Delta, like the Southern Reach’s expeditions into Area X, Tim Dolby hopes
to mine and exploit the area for all that it has to offer. He hopes to harness the forest’s ability to
heal. This is reflective of our own justifications for the destruction of ecosystems. We see short
term benefits to ourselves and disregard the harms we inevitably cause.
Humanity’s drive to exploit and control the Zona and the Delta is brought to the forefront
only in the novel’s final third – the engagement with this Anthropocene pursuit is indirect. While
the novel initially seems to be about the Duende killings that Ben has been sent to investigate, it
devolves into a narrative about the potential of untapped resources. Dolby represents
humanity’s persistent drive to tap, harness, and exploit the resources of the anomaly to such
extremes that his associate flies a small plane across the border to his death as he becomes
disoriented from the effects of the memory zone. Ben’s purpose regarding the Duende killings
quickly seems futile: “Tough assignment. How to stop people you know nothing about from
killing a creature you’ve never encountered” (Beckett, BTWAS 35). Despite this, the primary
narrative sticks with Ben and his many interactions and relationships in the Delta as he is
experiencing it as a newcomer with an external perspective. Beckett makes it clear that the
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narrative has been about Dolby’s presence there rather than Ben’s. Ben is a mere bystander to
what has become the primary narrative: “And into all this… arrived the plan, … coming from the
direction of the outside world” (248). The reader realizes that the primary concern is Tim Dolby’s
resource extraction rather than Ben’s investigation. Ben’s investigation is left essentially
incomplete, whereas Tim Dolby’s endeavour ends at the climax of the novel when his associate
dies trying to fly an airplane through the Zona into the Delta (Beckett). This resembles Mitchell’s
The Bone Clocks in which the primary timeline revolving around Holly’s life and her
entanglement with the world of the Horologists and Anchorites is revealed to be secondary to
the novel’s underpinning climate theme.
Tim openly indicates his interest in harnessing the biological and natural forces which
exist there: “‘Basically this place is a treasure house of organic chemistry, but I’m not talking
about stuff we’d have to mine or drill for, I’m talking about stuff in the trees and the animals
which could be harvested with absolutely minimal environmental impact’” (123). It is not that he
is ignorant of the environmental impacts. Rather, like many modern ‘prospectors,’ his view is
that his impact will not be nearly as harmful as it inevitably is in reality. Dolby’s approach is
reckless and dangerous, much like the Lovers’ quest to tap the possibilities from the Scar. To
Dolby, as to the Southern Reach in Annihilation regarding Area X, the Delta is an anomaly full of
potential:
I’m very excited about the possibilities. We could be looking at vaccines against
cancer. We could be looking at solutions to world hunger . . . I mean, have you
checked out the nutritional content of that yellow milk those flowers produce?
Mind blowing! And then, of course, there’s the way the duendes can unsettle
people’s minds, or the fact that you can’t get here without losing a slice of your
memory, and once we figure out how all of that works, there’ve got to be all kinds
of amazing applications. I just can’t believe how much untapped potential there is
here, and I don’t just mean potential for profit. … the potential I’m talking about is
the benefit to humanity. (123)
Tim’s goal becomes apparent as the latter half of the narrative progresses. He views the Delta
capitalistically in that it has a great deal of possibilities in terms of the physical applications of
the many biological differences within its boundaries. He is driven by the resources and
potential energy stored within the boundaries of the Delta. Ben questions Dolby directly about
the subject of energy: “So there’s oil under the Delta, is there?” (122). This question is the only
overt mention of oil as the resource Dolby seeks, as there are other more curious resources to
exploit within the Delta. Beckett ensures that Dolby’s goal appears secondary to Ben’s until the
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final third. BTWAS does not read like a cli-fi narrative as so many elements of it are NW and
defamiliarizing, and Beckett ensures that the energy-oriented narrative arc is only dealt with
indirectly until the conclusion of the story.
BTWAS calls upon readers to engage with climate change via the unconscious. Its
indirect approach to the issue is structured around an apparent detective story and human rights
investigation. Beckett invokes the climate crisis and humanity’s inability to confront it by
breaking down Ben’s soundness of mind and calling upon him to confront dark corners of his
unconscious mind. He then thrusts the climate narrative into the reader’s field of vision calling
upon them to question their unconsciousness towards the potential ecocide in the Delta which is
reflective of the ongoing ecocide we are experiencing in our climate crisis.
China Miéville – Railsea: Industry, Trains, and Garbage in a Post-Anthropocene World
China Miéville’s YA novel Railsea takes place on a dystopian imagining of future Earth.
Where there were once oceans of water there instead lies a vast, sprawling network of train-
lines referred to as the eponymous Railsea. The characters in the novel live and work on ships
– trains – that cruise the Railsea for various items of salvage that they collect from the debris
and detritus of the civilizations gone by. The Railsea-sailors search for and hunt giant mole-like
creatures that burrow beneath and breach the surface of the Railsea in a Moby-Dick (1851)
infused NW agglomeration of Mad-Max: Fury Road (2014) and Treasure Island (1883). Andrew
Milner remarks that Railsea could indeed be considered cli-fi (Milner, SF and CC 47). Garbage
and salvage are ubiquitous in Railsea. The salvage theme underpinning the narrative is the
indirect reminder of the climate change hyperobject, and the disappearance of the oceans
having been literally replaced by the Anthropocentric network of trains is a further reminder. It is
easy to forget while reading Railsea that the inhabitants of the ships/trains are not actually on
the ocean, and they could literally step from their trains onto the solid ground of the Railsea at
any time. In Railsea, the assumption is that the world has experienced some kind of apocalyptic
disaster which has led to an inversion of the natural and the industrial.
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While not intended to
be an obvious progression or prediction of the current direction of industry, Railsea is a surreal,
satirical expression of the Anthropocene direction. The language we use to describe the oceans
and the natural world has been repurposed with the industrial Railsea in mind; the
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This blurring, or even complete eradication, of the line between the natural and the industrial
reflects what Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour call “natureculture.” In this case, it is a situation
in which the natural and the industrial have been inverted and conflated such that they have
each been fundamentally altered such that there is no longer a clear distinction between them.
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Anthropocene has become a literal epoch of its own. We observe our impact in the layers of
garbage and salvage just as we archaeologically observe the natural landscape that came
before us through its many layers of rock and sediment of the time periods that pre-date human
civilization.
The Railsea, and the surrounding garbage and salvage, are as much a part of the
narrative in Railsea as the characters themselves. As in PSS, Miéville ensures that the Railsea
is a nonhuman actant in the narrative. In “Unnarratable Matter,” Juha Raipola remarks that “for
material ecocriticism, text includes both human material-discursive constructions and nonhuman
things such as water, soil, stones, metals, minerals, climate, bacteria, toxins, food, electricity,
cells, atoms, and all cultural objects and places” (266) and that “material ecocriticism
investigates the capacity for material objects to act with effectivity – to have agency or even a
“voice” (or several voices) of their own” (263). The literal materials in Railsea, like the Construct
Council in PSS, are granted importance and agency beyond what we would traditionally grant to
garbage. The result is that the garbage and salvage in Railsea are viewed consciously and
directly, moving them out of the reader’s unconscious periphery. While the train-dwellers’
purpose is hunting moles, Sham is primarily concerned with garbage and salvage throughout
the novel. Raipola writes that “One of the key concepts of material ecocriticism is storied matter,
which emphasizes the capacity of nonhuman matter to participate in the construction of stories”
(264). In Railsea, the nonhuman matter is most definitely active in the construction of the story.
The material ecocriticism framework can be applied to all the texts in this chapter for their
engagement with garbage as the material in question. Raipola writes simply that “Material
ecocriticism aims to situate human agency in an ecological field of more-than-human forces and
substances, which often merge with the life of our bodies and environments” (263). In Railsea,
the human characters exist amidst the salvage of the Railsea itself – the garbage and the
human characters are as much of a part of the NW environment as each other.
Garbage is presented in what is at first an odd and defamiliarizing way in Railsea. What
would initially be conceived of as something negative or unwanted is presented as that which
has value in the world in which the protagonist – Sham Yes Ap Soorap – lives. Garbage is
reconceptualized as “salvage” in Railsea. Sham wishes to be a salvor and reminisces about the
times he played games as a child with his friends in which they pretended to be brave salvors
exploring the farthest reaches of the Railsea. While Sham’s vessel is a moletrain concerned
with catching the Moby-Dick-inspired great white moles known simply as “philosophies”, he
watches the salvage trains with great interest.
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They were like no other rolling stock on the Railsea. Patchwork vehicles.
Powerful engines, wicked shunters at the front, train sides riveted with cladding,
bristling with the peculiar tools of the salvor’s trade. Drills, hooks, cranes, sensors
of various unorthodox kinds, to find & sort through the millennia of discarded
rubbish that littered the Railsea. (109)
These patchwork machines are indicative of the value that the garbage has for the molers and
trainspeople like Sham. The garbage is foregrounded throughout the text as something that has
become a prominent and useful part of life rather than a necessary evil associated with human
activity. The salvors pursue these artifacts in the garbage in ways akin to how humanity
searches for natural resources such as metals, minerals, and fuel sources in the present day.
The language used to describe the garbage – or salvage – does not aim to avoid terms
that would be considered negative. Despite knowing that the salvage is trash from generations
gone by, the salvors appreciate its value as part of the world’s history. Sham remarks on the
salvage being sold:
Their antique & reclaimed wares were set on stalls on the dockside, according to
various taxonomies. Pitted and oxidized mechanisms from the Heavy Metal Age;
shards from the Plastozoic; printouts on thin rubber and ancient ordinator screens
from the Computational Era: all choice arche-salvage, from astoundingly long
ago. & the less interesting stuff, too, that discarded or lost anything from a few
hundred years ago to yesterday – nu-salvage. (109)
All such periods, the Heavy Metal Age, the Plastozoic, and the Computational Era comprise
what we collectively refer to as the Anthropocene.
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Sham views the salvors as archaeologists,
historians, and treasure hunters rather than dumpster-divers while still understanding that the
items are simply discarded remnants of usually broken or obsolete things. He is curious about
what the salvage represents, and about what the people who left it must have been like with
regards to the way they treated the world:
This world had been a tip. … The thought of striking out to salvage-reefs
unknown, the burrowing, the mining, dustdiving, the picking through shorelines of
ancient trash – these activities quickened Sham’s blood. … Where did salvage
end up? (110)
Sham uses tip and dump to refer to the landscape in which the trash was discarded over time,
and in the same breath refers to the buildup of such items as reefs with shorelines as if they are
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Such terms could contribute to Bould’s list of terms for the Anthropocene.
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natural structures which have some innate value or beauty. This blurs the line between the
natural and the human and draws attention to the vast impacts that humanity has on the
environment such that language no longer separates nature from the Anthropocentric. In their
work on Donna Haraway’s (2003) concept of “Natureculture,” Malone and Ovenden remark that
“Natureculture furthers the contestation of the once dominant paradigm that privileged the study
of ‘natural’ primate behavior in pristine, untouched environments. There are few, if any,
ecosystems on the planet where humans have no impact” (1). Railsea presents the reader with
a satirical exaggeration of this idea by having the landscape be literally made up of garbage,
industry, and evidence of human activity.
In Railsea, Miéville reconceptualizes garbage as something upon which civilization will
have to be built rather than something that should be cropped from Instagram pictures or
shamed. It has become the reality that garbage is simply omnipresent. The intention in Railsea
is to put garbage – and subsequently the Anthropocene – into the reader’s direct field of vision.
Our default is to engage with garbage as little as possible, or practice ‘unseeing’
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it to ensure
that it remains part of our “ecocidal unconscious” activity. Railsea forcefully moves garbage from
the reader’s unconscious to the conscious.
While climate change is not directly referred to throughout Railsea, its effects underpin
the narrative through Miéville’s depiction of runaway industrialization. As mentioned earlier, this
scenario is clearly absurd and satirical rather than being a literal speculation of what might result
from over-industrialization. In Railsea, the rails have literally replaced the oceans. Morton,
among others, attributes the start of the Anthropocene – and global warming by extension – to
the invention of the steam engine. The mass shipment of goods and people, the localizing of the
planet in effect, all came at the expense of the natural environment. The environmental impact
of the sprawling Railsea in Miéville’s text is not mentioned directly, as the environment has
simply been replaced by industry rather than affected by it. When discussing the Weird
subgenre, and by extension the NW, Guy Witzel remarks that “The weird offers a way to think
through the scalar impasse of global warming found in the environmental humanities, but it does
so through a detour from the obvious routes of thought associated with climate crisis” (561).
Witzel makes this remark about Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom and John Langan’s
The Fisherman (2016), but this assertion that Weird and NW engage with climate change via a
detour applies to the NW texts I discuss in this chapter. Railsea, and the other texts in this
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The practice of ‘unseeing’ is prevalent in Miéville’s The City and The City (2009) in which
inhabitants of each city must ‘unsee’ those who inhabit the other city yet who occupy the same
physical space.
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chapter indeed engage with climate change through less direct, or obvious routes. The
language used to describe the Railsea itself is reminiscent of the way humanity refers to the
current natural world. The molers and salvors find their ‘trainlegs’ and must readjust when back
on areas of hardland. After a while away from the Railsea Sham reacclimatizes quickly to the
motions of the moletrain: “Rocking on his heels on the Medes…. It was amazing how much
Sham felt pleasure at the slide of his feet, the rattle & tilt of rushing rails” (125). The “railgulls”
that follow the moletrain swooping over the ‘rushing’ rails indeed ascribe a nautical and natural
quality to the Railsea. It reads as though it is anything but industrial despite being overt about its
metal, mechanical make-up.
Despite our impact on the natural world, we tend to view its existence as unending. It is
hegemonic that there will be an ever-present natural environment surrounding whatever it is that
humanity is able to do. There seems to be a prevailing belief, regardless of what is known at this
stage about climate change, that the natural world will persist. While in some ways this is true –
it will persist, but likely not in the way that we know it to be today – it is the result of a
longstanding ignorance and naivete about humanity’s place in the world and our control over
our natural environment. Sham views the Railsea as unending and hegemonic just as we view
the natural world. The Railsea, the garbage, and the endless possibilities in the salvage simply
are the natural world. Sham – perhaps aptly named with regards to this view of the Railsea –
discovers that the Railsea itself is not the perpetual, endless body that he had known it to be.
Sham discovers an old photo – or flatograph – of something he had considered to be
impossible: a single railway track with nothing on either side of it but the actual natural
landscape. He stammers to himself while trying to come to terms with what he is seeing:
“& to either side of it –
- either side of that line the train was riding –
- was nothing.
No other rails at all.
Empty earth.” (84)
It is, to Sham, as shocking as it would be for us to behold the Railsea itself in place of the
ocean. This is the result of an extreme example of an Anthropocentric reshaping of the
environment. In “Haunted Languages of the Anthropocene,” Gan et al. suggest that “As humans
reshape the landscape, we forget what was there before. Ecologists call this forgetting the
‘shifting baseline syndrome.’ Our newly shaped and ruined landscapes become the new reality”
(6). Sham’s experience of seeing a single railway line is perhaps as shocking as looking out
over a sprawling city in which the land is clad in concrete and the few green spaces are
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tokenistic gestures of good-will such that they are labelled ‘parks’ rather than simply being. It is
very much an act of mutiny to suggest that what he now knows to be the case is actually true.
Such is the case with what we now know to be true regarding our impact on the natural
landscape. To accept that the Railsea is finite or has an ending would be the same as our
acknowledgement that the natural world is finite, its resources are not endless for us.
Railsea is about industrialization and garbage. It confronts our relationship with the
natural environment by having the characters live off the remains of the Anthropocene period.
Miéville’s inversion of the natural and the industrial is literalized by the replacement of the
oceans with the sea of intertwining rails. The train imagery is indicative of the impact that
industrialization has had on our natural environment, and its ubiquity, along with the ubiquity of
the garbage and salvage within Railsea, is reflective of the ubiquity of the climate change
hyperobject with which we are currently grappling. What is unconscious for so many people in
terms of our understanding of and engagement with the climate crisis is positioned centrally in
the characters and readers’ consciousnesses within Railsea. Readers are prompted to view our
geological epoch from a distant, fantasy future in which our impact on the natural world is the
enduring garbage and industrialization.
Scarce Resources – Language, Aliens, and Hosts in China Miéville’s Embassytown (2011)
Finally, I explore China Miéville’s space epic Embassytown (2011). While most previous
engagements with this novel have focused on the deconstruction of Language between the
Ariekene Hosts
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and the humans (alien to the planet Arieka), I focus here on what Language
becomes. “Language” is written with a capital L in the novel to denote that it is an individual
language rather than being the collective for language more broadly. The Ariekei speak from two
mouths simultaneously, producing two sounds at once to create noises which cannot be
replicated by a single human. As a result, the humans create cloned twins which speak
simultaneously to communicate with the Ariekei. With Embassytown “Miéville … suggests that it
is language and the thinking it facilitates that actually make us human” (Głaz 335). In
Embassytown Language is positioned as a resource which becomes scarce. This scarcity leads
to conflict which mirrors real-world conflicts over scarce resources in the ongoing climate and
energy crisis. While depicting a resource-war leading to apocalyptic fallout, Embassytown uses
language – and Language – to defamiliarize the reader seemingly to all other aspects of the
narrative including place, time, and characterization. Weakland writes that “China Miéville’s
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Miéville consciously avoids referring to the Ariekene hosts as ‘Aliens’ as it is the Bremen
Terre (humans) who are in fact aliens on the planet Arieka.
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recent novel Embassytown (2011) uses what Darko Suvin terms ‘cognitive estrangement’ to
place the properties of human and non- human language under science fictional examination”
(78). Despite the Language/language being defamiliarizing and estranging, the concept of the
pursuit of anything as a scarce resource is a familiar Anthropocene dynamic.
My focus on Language as a resource in this text is not an exhaustive interpretation of the
novel. Embassytown, through its depiction of a human colony on an alien planet, is particularly
amenable to postcolonial interpretations. This approach to Language in Embassytown facilitates
an ecocritical reading of the novel. In “Language Makes and Breaks Worlds: China Miéville’s
Embassytown” Gerard Hynes remarks that “Embassytown is focused on one overarching
concern. Miéville constructs a world defined culturally, physically, and even biologically by
language” (276). In this chapter, my focus is on the depiction of Language as a resource which
becomes scarce and ultimately leads to the downfall of the Ariekene civilization.
The Human colonists on Arieka create Ambassadors to properly communicate with the
Host creatures. Such Ambassadors are pairs of cloned individuals who, when speaking
together, can accurately imitate the Hosts’ Language. The language is depicted in text as a
fraction with one word above the other. For example, the name of one of the Ariekei is
“surl/tesh-echer” which is written on one line, with the first word on the top of the dividing line,
and the second on the bottom (Miéville). The new arrival, Ambassador EzRa, differs from the
cloned Ambassadors in that he/they is comprised of two separate individuals who speak
Language simultaneously. EzRa’s introduction to the Hosts causes a stir as his/their use of
Language causes the Hosts to respond unexpectedly. It is as though they do not understand
how two beings could speak the “cut” and the “turn”
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simultaneously from two places rather
than one being doing all of the work. When bred Ambassadors speak Language, the Language
emerges from their shared sense of mind. When EzRa speaks Language, this is not the case.
His/Their Language engages the Hosts differently and they quickly become addicted to hearing
and experiencing it:
The Hosts were swaying as if they were at sea. One spasmed its giftwing and
its fanwing, another kept them unnaturally still. One opened and closed its
membranes several times in neurotic repetition. Three were plugged into their
zelles by flesh skeins that bled in chemicals or energy, and by I suppose
feedback the untoward behaviour of the Hosts infected their battery-beasts.
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The “cut” and the “turn” are the two parts of speech made by the Ariekei from their two mouths. These
vocalizations occur simultaneously, meaning that no single human could speak the language alone.
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The little ambulatory generators staggered, emitted sounds unlike any I’d
heard them make before. (Miéville, Embassytown 93-94)
The Hosts respond to the Language spoken by EzRa in the way that addicts respond to their
drug of choice. Hynes remarks that as “the oratees physically succumb to their auditory
addiction, the city begins to disintegrate, becoming a ‘slaughterhouse of architecture’” (290).
The Hosts begin to become dependent on EzRa’s language. Hynes’s remark brings attention to
the blurred boundary between the structures of the Ariekene buildings and their physical,
organic bodies. Miéville refers to their buildings and their machinery and equipment as
‘biorigging’ which seems to be alive in the same way as the Hosts themselves. This represents
a further example in Miéville’s work of the nature/culture boundary becoming blurred. Miéville
uses language like “plugged in” and “battery-beasts” to describe how the Hosts and their
biorigging consume Language. The vocabulary describing the Ariekei and their biorigging is
simultaneously organic and electrified. The Language itself becomes the energy source. It is
used and consumed organically and electrically by the Ariekei.
It is commonplace that when a resource becomes scarce, its value increases to the point
that it may lead to conflict. Many conflicts in human history have been either directly or indirectly
related to energy and natural resources. We of course do not consider language to be a
chemical or a natural resource in any way at all. Our language, though, as mentioned above,
does not function for us the same way as language functions for the Ariekei hosts. Their
Language is as much a way of thinking and a way of being as it is a basic means of
communication. Thus, to change or alter their Language, is to change their way of thinking or
being. To this end, Hynes remarks that “The Ariekene language crisis arises from the
breakdown of one conceptual domain and can be resolved only by the creation of a new
language model. Miéville constructs a world which explores, and questions, the capacity of
language to itself construct, or destroy, worlds” (277). Language in Embassytown is poised to
become the natural resource over which apocalypse or war could come about. The Hosts reach
a point at which they cannot function without Language, just as our society would struggle to
function without electricity.
The Hosts quickly become dependent on the Language that EzRa speaks, regardless of
what he/they says. The words themselves are irrelevant, the Hosts merely crave the ‘impossible
voice’ itself. Recordings are quickly made of EzRa’s Language onto datchips, and are broadcast
to the city to give the hosts and their biorigged buildings and equipment fuel:
EzRa spoke. They said anything in Language. Their amplified voice sounded
through all the byways. Everywhere in the city Ariekei staggered and stopped.
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Their buildings staggered with them. It disgusted me. My mouth twisted.
Everything beyond Embassytown shuddered with relief. It moved through
pipework, wires and tethers, to every corner of the grid, into the power stations
stamping in a sudden wrong bliss. (179)
Language becomes both a drug and an energy source for the Hosts. While the Hosts become
dependent on hearing EzRa’s voice, Ra – one half of the Ambassador – decides he will no
longer speak. After Ra eventually dies, the two living halves of the former Ambassadors EzRa
and CalVin are merged to create EzCal, and his voice becomes increasingly sought after. The
Hosts become more dependent on the Language to the extent that it becomes a colonizing tool,
a finite resource to be distributed by the humans in the way they best see fit.
After Ra’s death, language becomes scarcer, to the point that the inhabitants of
Embassytown and beyond the city limits are struggling to get their hands – fanwings and
giftwings – on recordings of EzRa and eventually EzCal’s voice. This mirrors the struggle for
natural resources once the knowledge that they are finite becomes apparent. Language, like a
drug, fuels the city. It works its way through the biorigging, it is funnelled through the kind of
biological-electrical-hybrid circuitry of the city to ensure that it reaches everyone and keeps
them alive. The point of dependency upon the resource is clear, and it leads to the eventual
apocalyptic fallout for the Ariekei.
New Weird Fiction and Climate Change – Concluding Remarks
In this chapter I demonstrate that the New Weird subgenre of SFF literature engages
with climate change indirectly by defamiliarizing the reader to myriad other components of their
narratives. This is done by leaving clear signposts of the Anthropocene throughout the
otherwise weird and defamiliarizing narratives. Additionally, NW texts engage directly with
characters’ state of consciousness, awareness, and memory, calling upon the reader to
question their own unconscious thoughts. Combined, these two techniques provoke readers into
reconceptualizing their relationship towards garbage and energy consumption by moving them
from their unconscious minds to the foreground in these narratives.
As explained in Chapter 2, there are limitations to what cli-fi can accomplish alone. As
cli-fi has progressed, its impact has changed, but it is still restricted by its commitment to the
scientific versus the fantastic, and Adam Trexler remarks that “For most of the history of climate
fiction, catastrophic global warming was a distant, hypothetical future” (223). Ghosh, Bould,
Heise, and Trexler among many other critics acknowledge that cli-fi has a remarkably
challenging task to engage with the crisis directly. My focus on New Weird fiction specifically
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begins in the early 2000s after the point at which cli-fi had reached its turning point. Now that
Anthropogenic climate change is undoubtedly occurring, and this fact is known, it is more
challenging to fictionalize climate change as a genre or subgenre of its own.
In The Anthropocene Unconscious, Bould suggests that literature more generally does
engage with climate change, but perhaps – as his title suggests – this is often done
unconsciously and indirectly. He suggests that “The art and literature of our time is pregnant
with catastrophe, with weather and water, wildness and weirdness” (3) and asks “Must fiction be
immediately and explicitly about climate change for it to be fiction about climate change? Is
there no room for the symbolic? The oblique? The estranged?” (4). NW texts exhibit many of the
characteristics applied by Bould with regards to wildness and weirdness, and while they
generally do not engage with climate change directly, they include it as a key presence in their
bizarre and defamiliarizing storyworlds.
I agree with Bould’s position that texts often engage with climate change either indirectly
or unconsciously. I argue simply that it would be challenging to write a text reflective of the
present without at least some acknowledgement of and engagement with the climate crisis. The
climate crisis is happening. It affects everyone daily. Some of these effects are more apparent
and significant while others can go unnoticed or only register with the unconscious, but it is
always there as an omnipresent hyperobject. As a result, we require an updated means of
interrogating SFF for climate themes which lie outside the cli-fi umbrella. James and Morel
remark that “we have told ourselves stories about the environment that permit and encourage
destructive behavior and call for a better understanding of these narratives and the exploration
of new, more environmentally responsible ones” (3). I am by no means suggesting that cli-fi
itself is irresponsible, but rather that it would be irresponsible to look exclusively at cli-fi as the
only area for useful contributions to ecocritical discourse under the broad SFF umbrella. Cli-fi
should not hold a monopoly on discussions of climate change within the SFF genres. In her
work on The Scar, Sherryl Vint remarks on the capacity of SF to defamiliarize our understanding
of the present rather than to predict the future. She suggests that “It is perhaps hybrid genres
which are best able to do this, as they encompass both sides of the dialectic. In conventional
understandings of the split between sf and fantasy…The Scar demonstrates the power of
bringing both sides of the coin together” (Vint, “Possible Fictions” 290). Daniel Baker similarly
writes “That fantasy and sf make use of the unreal and the impossible should not undermine the
integrity or urgency of the images they produce” and that “By juxtaposing the unreal with the
real fantasy can familiarize the former and defamiliarize the latter … offering new perspectives
on what is possible … and lead to alternate subjectivities” (444). NW fiction is one such hybrid
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genre capable of defamiliarizing us to our present and waking readers from their
unconsciousness and somnambulance towards the climate crisis.
This chapter shows how NW fiction effectively engages with climate change indirectly by
defamiliarizing readers to the surrounding components of their estranging narratives. NW
literature provokes readers to confront their own unconsciousness regarding the climate crisis
by moving Anthropocene signposts from the periphery of their field of vision into the center of
these estranging narratives. This chapter has focused on the Anthropocene signposts of
garbage and the pursuit of energy. I argue that it is precisely because climate change is only
obliquely referenced in these texts, that it is indirect rather than central, that NW fiction can
make readers aware of the climate crisis in everyday life. Things which are commonly taken for
granted or sequestered to our unconscious minds, like the accretion of garbage or rampant
energy consumption, are brought into the forefront of these otherwise defamiliarizing and
estranging narratives. These works call upon readers to question our complicity in the dynamics
which have led to the current climate crisis. NW and ATQF are part of this more environmentally
responsible and ecologically cognizant body of literature.
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CONCLUSION – Moving forward with Ecocriticism and SFF
“Mass extinction is so awful, so incomprehensible, so horrible – and at present it’s so invisible.
We hardly know where to start, apart from either ignoring it or electroshocking ourselves about
it.” (Morton, All Art is Ecological 31)
This project represents a significant contribution to counterhegemonic discourse
surrounding climate change in literature. It is time to acknowledge several key factors more
readily. First, that climate change is omnipresent, and therefore appears in a much broader
array of SFF than cli-fi alone. Second, despite the abundance that cli-fi can and does achieve
with regards to bringing the climate crisis into the field of vision of a much wider audience than
environmental policy, there are distinct boundaries to the cli-fi construct which limit its capacity
to effectively engage with the climate crisis with a sufficient degree of verisimilitude when
considered alone within SFF. And third, with that in mind, SFF literature should be
acknowledged more widely for its contributions to ecocritical, and indeed econarratological
discourse. It is in this third component that the central argument of my project sits, as I have
closely examined two subgenres of SFF which engage with climate change indirectly. ATQF and
New Weird fiction take an indirect and defamiliarizing approach to the climate crisis in fiction.
Morton suggests that “All Art is Ecological” in their eponymous 2018 book. They suggest
that “If you think metaphysically, you can apply a sorites logic to global warming. The sorites
paradox is the logical paradox concerning heaps. It’s about how vague heaps are – when does
a collection of things become a heap?” (24-25). Here Morton is asking when something
becomes a problem, when does it become a catastrophe? When does it become so noticeable
that it is entirely unavoidable as it permeates everything? Perhaps a collection of ATQF and NW
texts large enough becomes a trend which can be characterized with a name for a subgenre?
Perhaps such logic can be applied directly to the garbage in NW texts? Perhaps a heap
becomes a heap when it becomes a nonhuman actant such as the Construct Council of PSS.
Perhaps a heap becomes a heap when the journals in Annihilation construct the reality that the
biologist experiences. Perhaps, most aptly, a heap becomes a heap when we notice it, when it
starts to affect our lives directly and moves from the unconscious and into our field of vision.
Whatever the threshold for heaps, “we had better allow heaps to exist if we’re going to be
ecological, because addressing global warming and mass extinction can only be done at a
massive, collective scale” (25). Morton is concerned with addressing the hyperobject in the
room, which requires a reconceptualization of how we engage with climate change in literature.
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It requires a re-evaluation of our complicity in the crisis, and a reorientation of our awareness
and consciousness towards it. This project works towards that reconceptualization of climate
change in literature. Climate change is there in these ATQF and NW texts. They provoke
thought about this familiar crisis by making the surrounding narratives less familiar. When we
surrender to the quasi-fantasy and the weird, we see the climate crisis reflected back to us in
stark contrast.
In “Future Readers,” Pieter Vermeulen writes that “[Tim] Clark … remarks that thinkers
like Morton have a real problem with narrative: seemingly intrinsically connected to the all too
human desire to make sense of things by sequencing them into patterns of action and attention,
narrative seems fatally anthropocentric, and therefore out of sync with the nonhuman rhythms of
the Anthropocene” (868). It is because of this that cli-fi faces an increasingly challenging task.
While it must be made clear that cli-fi is, as it stands, the subgenre of SFF which is doing the
most to directly communicate the climate crisis to the broadest possible audience, it cannot
achieve the goal of educating, changing minds, or even provoking thought when looked at
exclusively or alone. Therefore, this project pays the attention which must be paid to other areas
and mechanisms within SFF for their contributions to climate change discourse in fiction. A more
expansive view of SFF needs to be taken when considering the climate crisis which
acknowledges what cli-fi does achieve while considering the limitations that it, like all fiction,
faces.
Ecocritics agree that there is a disconnect between what cli-fi aims to depict and what it
is ultimately successful in depicting. This, as James acknowledges from a narratological
perspective, is indeed a narrative concern. So, while I do not agree with Morton that a) all things
are inherently ecological, and b) narrative is incapable of engaging with climate change
sufficiently, I have demonstrated in this project that as there are limitations to what cli-fi alone
can achieve, we must critically examine other subgenres within SFF which are also suited to
engaging with the climate crisis. Cli-fi is limited by its primary readership being those who are
already aware of climate change as a global concern, and by the fact that it largely lacks the
capacity to change the opinions of those who do not already hold such views.
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Cli-fi is also
narratively restricted as it tends to be set in a far-flung future which is out of the readers’ primary
scope of concern – put simply, it is far too far away for many readers to care deeply about.
Finally, cli-fi commonly takes a dystopian or disaster-oriented approach to depicting the climate
crisis which relies heavily on dramatizing the real. This tends to become overly didactic in
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As is indicated by Schneider-Mayerson (2018) and Schneider-Mayerson et al. (2023).
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nature, and as Ghosh remarks, it can often read like a seminar. The purpose of this project is
not to suggest that cli-fi has no value, or that it does not communicate useful information in
compelling narratives about the climate crisis. Rather, this project indicates simply that cli-fi
should not be the only area within the SFF umbrella which is worthy of critical analysis for its
engagement with climate change. I suggest that other subgenres within SFF complement that
which cli-fi achieves by taking a less direct approach to communicating the climate crisis in
fiction and encapsulating the ambivalence felt by many towards such a crisis by dealing with it
indirectly. This project is a critique of current ecocriticism which focuses largely on cli-fi
exclusively rather than a critique of cli-fi itself.
I acknowledge the value that comes with genre classification despite the understanding
that genres and subgenres are not exclusive or rigid in terms of their boundaries. In “There is
No Such Thing as Science Fiction” (2009) Bould and Vint acknowledge that genre boundaries
are complex and often overused or misused. They remark, for example, that “SF is increasingly
a generic label for media other than print, and for many now their first or formative experience of
SF will be in film, television, or games” (50) and that “H. P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of
Madness (1931) can only become, respectively, science fantasy and cosmic horror once SF,
fantasy and horror have been made separate categories. Similarly, China Miéville’s New Weird
novel Perdido Street Station (2000) only appears to be a hybrid because of the inertial drag of
such category distinctions” (50). Miéville himself also remarks upon the “Bad practice of
pigeonholing and labelling and how It constrains writers” before suggesting that “by contrast …
the human mind is a machine to organize and make connections. Any act of naming is precisely
an argument, an intervention. It’s a claim about one set or other of those connections, a claim
that’s not a neutral observation” (“New Weird”, 49). I make claims about three subgenres of SFF
within this project simply because genrefication is undoubtedly an effective means of identifying
trends and commonalities among texts which share underlying themes or values. David Shields
remarks that a genre is like a “minimum-security prison” and Bould and Vint suggest that “there
is no such thing as science fiction” as SF “is profoundly enriched by recognizing that genres are
intersubjective, discursive constructs, full of contradictions and constantly in flux” (51). It is
precisely this complexity and fluctuation of genre – and subgenre – boundaries which
necessitates a more expansive observation of SFF with the climate crisis in mind. This project
contributes to the identification of trends in three distinct SFF subgenres. While there are many
other texts to explore beyond the scope of just the handful I explain in my chapter on cli-fi, I
have simplified the cli-fi criteria to help demonstrate what can or cannot be considered cli-fi in a
world in which the climate permeates many different genres.
Andrews 175
Pursuant to my discussion of cli-fi’s scope in ecocritical discourse, I have coined the
term ‘Anthropo-Temporal Quasi-Fantasy’ to refer to an emerging trend in contemporary literature
which, I argue, overcomes some of the narratological challenges faced by cli-fi authors. ATQF
includes texts which are partially fantasy, and which use their fantasy components to experiment
with narrative time to provide a more macroscopic view of climate change over decades,
centuries, and even millennia. These texts are not always directly concerned with climate
change, and often include underpinning climate themes, or turn the narrative more directly
towards the climate crisis only in their final sections. The indirect approach towards climate
change in ATQF reflects societal inaction and ambivalence towards the crisis. It takes what cli-fi
achieves with regards to thought-experiments answering ‘what-if’ questions about hypothetical
outcomes to various models and predictions and instead asks the reader to be both quietly
aware of climate change while simultaneously asking them to maintain focus on a fantasy
narrative. It asks the reader to be both aware of climate change and partially ignore it at the
same time, thus reflecting the ambivalence many feel towards the crisis daily. This ambivalence
in reality “takes the form of the symbolic tree we plant when using transportation high on carbon
emissions or of the organic grapes we purchase, delivered from far-flung, water-scarce regions.
Ecological ambivalence travels with scholars engaged in environmental issues who still fly from
all over the world to far-away in-person meetings” (Müller et al. 4). In ATQF it takes the form of
the fantasy war between horologists and anchorites, the mutation of virus-stricken teens into
nymphs, and the confusing coincidental and cyclical nature of folklore and asks readers to
consider these alongside the backdrops of a disintegrating global climate.
The New Weird subgenre takes what I suggest in Chapter 3 on ATQF and the indirect
approach to climate change further down the fantasy rabbit hole. NW texts defamiliarize readers
in so many ways and subvert so many norms and tropes of SFF, that the Anthropocene
signposts – most specifically garbage and energy – become more apparent, more familiar, and
ultimately more affecting to readers. These NW texts experiment with characters’ states of
consciousness and call upon readers to question their own states of unconsciousness towards
things like garbage and energy, once again reflecting this state of continual ambivalence toward
the growing crisis. The emergence of the NW trend, like ATQF, has occurred over the past few
decades, and its referents to climate change are indicative of a broader trend within SFF:
climate change is present in SFF subgenres other than cli-fi, and a closer engagement with
ATQF, NW, and other subgenres within the SFF umbrella is necessary. Like ATQF, NW texts
utilize narrative tools which allow them to engage with the climate crisis in new ways. Ecocritics,
econarratologists, and philosophers alike are calling for a reconceptualization of climate change
Andrews 176
in fiction. In this project I have demonstrated that we first need to look beyond cli-fi and begin to
include a greater range of speculative fiction genres in ecocritical discourse for their indirect
engagement with the crisis. As Miéville makes clear in his “New Weird” essay, the subgenre
asks the reader to surrender to the weird as the subgenre surrenders to the weird itself. Its
purpose is not to inform readers about the climate crisis, but Miéville also acknowledges that we
will look for, and find, meaning in the texts that we read, and NW is no exception to this. NW
texts immerse readers in grotesque and defamiliarizing landscapes which, as the VanderMeers
remark, often use real-world settings as jumping off points. This tether to the real allows for the
exploration of climate themes which become much more apparent to readers within the
otherwise unfamiliar, weird environments.
Morton remarks simply that “something real is happening” (18) when it comes to the
climate crisis, something which cannot be avoided, ignored, or left to marinate amidst global
ambivalence toward it. Bould and Oziewicz remark on society’s ‘unconsciousness’ towards
climate change in fiction, and Ghosh remarks on our generation and period being one of total
derangement. “At present, the ways in which we talk to ourselves about ecology are stuck in
horror mode: disgust, shame, guilt. Eventually things get so horrifying that someone goes ‘You
gotta be fucking kidding’” (Morton, All Art is Ecological 28). Indeed, you have got to be kidding.
John Clute refers to the ongoing state of the world post 1750 as the “World Storm” and suggests
that fantasy literature – “fantastika” – provides a lens through which we can critically assess our
present reality and project alternative futures. He suggests that “fantastika, with its heated and
cartoon immediacy of response to instability and threat, responds instantly to the vertigo of this
new knowledge. Fantastika vibrates to the planet. It is the planetary form of story” (9). As I have
indicated throughout this project, cli-fi alone cannot do the job of communicating the climate
crisis to readers. Cli-fi fulfils the direct approach, and ATQF and NW begin to address this state
of unconsciousness by taking the indirect approach. ATQF and NW sneak the vegetables into
the meatloaf ensuring that we are ecological without even meaning to be. Thus, the broader,
more expansive view of multiple subgenres within SFF gives readers a more complete view of
the climate crisis by utilizing both direct and indirect approaches collectively.
We do not act logically or rationally toward the impending climate crisis. We know it is
coming, yet we remain ambivalent towards it, and this leads to inaction both at the individual
level, and more importantly at the governmental and policy level. This is largely because the
worst impacts of the climate crisis remain spatially and temporally distant in the mid 2020s.
Even the most shocking headlines about climate catastrophes tend not to spark action or policy,
and when they do, the policy tends to be ignored by industry leaders who instead pay small,
Andrews 177
meaningless fines. Fiction makes the climate crisis more proximate to readers. Mathias Schmidt
remarks that “the transformation toward a climate-neutral and environmentally friendly way of
life and economy is proceeding very slowly and in small steps, and despite articulated
agreement, it often encounters open or hidden resistance or fails due to conscious or
unconscious ignorance or lethargy” (13). This is in large part due to what Clark refers to as an
issue of “scalar complexity.” Schmidt comments on this issue of scalar abstraction as he
remarks, similarly to McIlwaine, that:
regional differences and spatial distances between the causation of environ-
mentally and climate-damaging activities and their consequences make
causalities appear either less obvious or blurred. At the same time, individual
contributions to greenhouse gas emissions, resource consumption, and waste
production are supposedly insignificant in relation to planetary systems. As a
result, individuals experience environmental crises in vastly different ways,
thereby relieving polluters of their responsibility. (13)
He suggests that “at the same time, individual behavioral changes, or restrictions to act in the
most environmentally and climate-friendly way possible, seem insignificant or even irrelevant in
the face of the inertia of climate processes and unstoppable climate change—positive feedback
is not immediately noticeable” (14) and that “psychological distance leads to perceiving climate
change and its impacts as abstract and distant in space and time. Even defining climate as a
30-year average of weather patterns requires a certain degree of abstraction” (22). Müller et al.
suggest that the “Environmental Humanities are hence perfectly placed to embrace
ambivalence as an approach that recognizes the simultaneity of difference and unity, without
leveling global inequality. It can do so in two important ways: first, by fully playing out the field’s
mindfulness of different methods, approaches, theories, and archives and, second, by placing
particular emphasis on its critical ontological approach that seeks to move beyond an
understanding of differences to facilitate collaboration and nourish compromise” (7). Narrative is
uniquely positioned in a twenty-first century context to provide social and environmental
commentary without asking readers to engage with policy documents or challenging academic
texts.
Cli-fi, ATQF, and New Weird reach far wider audiences than policy documents, scientific
reports, or government mandates, and they can make assumptions based on models,
projections, worst-case scenarios, best-case scenarios, hypothetical chance outcomes, and
even fantasy-infused realism. Readers thus see the myriad permutations of climate change in
our near to far future, over time from the past into the near future, and even in fictional
Andrews 178
storyworlds in which the climate crisis is one of the few tethers to the real. Fiction can embody
this state of ambivalence many feel towards the climate crisis.
This research has demonstrated that climate change is everywhere in SFF. It has
demonstrated that climate themes permeate even the weirdest narratives in both conscious and
unconscious ways, and it has shown that it is equally valuable to explore climate change in texts
which engage with it indirectly as this is how it is so often experienced in everyday life. Future
ecocritical research can take what this project suggests with regards to defamiliarization and
immersion, indirection, and hyperobjects and apply this approach to other subgenres within SFF
including magical realism, slipstream, hard science-fiction, or high fantasy. Future research
could also explore the indirect approach to climate change in more ATQF and NW texts. Future
work could also explore literature which includes indigenous and Global South narratives, which
remain underrepresented.
There are monsters in the weird and the NW which defy taxonomy, just as climate
change defies genre boundaries. Research into climate change in fiction should therefore not
be sequestered into solely cli-fi. In this project I have shown that climate change pervades the
quasi-fantastic and the New Weird, and I have demonstrated that these subgenres have
valuable and effective tools for depicting and engaging with the climate crisis. They show
climate change over decades, centuries, or millennia, and illustrate that even when juxtaposed
with fantasy devices or in imagined storyworlds, the climate crisis continues to invade our
consciousness.
Andrews 179
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