In a recent interview, cli fi "popularizer" Danny Bloom explains how the new term gained traction among global media, from the UK to the USA, and Lithuania, China, Italy, and Sweden included.
INTERVIEWER'S INTRODUCTION: Although much of literature is about imaginary worlds, what people are able to imagine tends to evolve over time as the world changes, new technologies arise, and societies move and shift in location and attitude. One of the newest trends in fiction has been named “cli-fi” – “climate fiction” just like sci-fi is “science fiction.” The increasing concern over climate change and what that may do to the future of humanity (and the rest of the living things on Earth) is giving writers as well as scientists something to think about, talk about, and write about. Danny Bloom, who has helped popularize the name for this trend with PR precision, has created a website where these books and articles are featured. We asked Bloom about his work, and about this new genre.
7S: How do you define the term “climate fiction,” and what makes a book part of this category?
Danny Bloom: “Cli fi” can be seen as either a subgenre of sci fi, or as an entirely new literary genre, too. And cli fi can take place in the present, the near future, the distant future, and even the near past and the distant past. A Hollywood movie director is currently making a cli fi film about the Flood over 5000 years ago, starring Russell Crowe as Noah. A movie or a book becomes part of the cli fi category when it has a climate theme, but it is important to also emphasize that not all cli fi novels or movies support the idea of human-caused global warming. If an author or film director wants to go in a different direction, and create a novel or a movie that says that human-caused global warming is not happening at all, that is okay, too. Cli fi is genre that is open to all points of view.
Cli fi novels or short stories can take place in a dystopia, or a utopia, or just be presented as page-turner, entertaining, escapist climate thrillers. In fact, I now see three sub-categories of cli fi emerging in popular culture: cli fi lite (paperback or Kindle thrillers); cli fi dark (dystopian stories about climate chaos and what it might do to the human species); and cli fi deep (which are novels or movies that are written in a very literary and philosophical style, such as Cormac McCarthy’s 2007 novel titled “The Road,” which also became a movie.
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