In an age where climatic disruption has become the new norm, it seems fitting to admit that recognising global warming requires much more than assenting to scientific data. As Adam Trexler notes in his book Anthropocene Fictions, the recognition of global warming brings with it the recognition of human implication in the geological and climatological transformation of our planet. But how to make that recognition comprehensive to the contemporary human imagination?

If culture can be used to denote human styles of building, interacting with, and relating to the world, the Anthropocene also indicates a cultural transformation that cannot be described through a rubric of belief. – Alex Trexler

There have been attempts to explore the meaning and consequences of climate change through documentaries, films and non-fiction books. However, they lack the novel’s capacity to interrogate the emotional implication of these events. As Trexler emphasises throughout his work, the collective networks of complex ideas and meanings that conform novels about climate change – what he calls ‘Anthropocene fictions’ – can provide a way of describing the patterning of and help us make sense this enormous cultural shift. However, up until this moment, there are very few novels tackling the physical and psychological challenges of this man-made phenomenon.

In fact, more often than not, novels or short stories dealing with this topic will not be taken seriously by literary journals or the media, and will end up relegated to the genre of science fiction. In fact, the media have identified, in the past few years, a new genre of science fiction they have named ‘cli-fi’ or ‘climate fiction.’ This is plagued by apocalyptic stories of the future destruction of our planet, instead of the real climate-related events and anxieties of the present. As Amitav Ghosh cries out in his impassioned The Great Derangement, ‘it is as though in the literary imagination climate change were somehow akin to extraterrestrials or interplanetary travel.’ Which leads us to the question: are the customary frames of literary fiction too constrictive for this sort of narrative? Is science fiction, in fact, the genre best equipped to address this new era we are faced with?

There seems to be this small movement of ‘Anthropocene fictions’ – books on climate change recognised as literary fiction – that are now being published, such as Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh, The Overstory by Richard Powers, Weather by Jenny Offill, Bad Island by Stanley Donwood, and The End of the Ocean by Maja Lunde. Are these the works challenging and reshaping the rules and constraints of literary fiction? And is this a new cultural awakening to the realities of climate change?

Sources:

• Anthropocene Fictions by Alex Trexler.
• The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh.