Monday, July 22, 2013

The Immediacy of Climate Fiction


Yaron Glazer writes:



''Writers of dystopic fiction often whisk their readers away to some arbitrary point in time meant to represent one possible future for humanity, if not always a likely one. More often than not though, the writer remains frustratingly vague about the events that brought humanity from the present to the brink of that particular doom. A few hints might be peppered through the plot, but readers are at the mercy of their own imaginations to fill in the blanks.



For writers whose dark vision is set far enough into the future, this Gray Zone between present fact and future fiction is a friend. Enough time has gone by for just about any old thing to have happened, and readers aren’t likely to strain themselves picking nits. As long the vision maintains internal consistency, the past can be used as mere decoration, or as a trellis for the plot.



But for those writers whose dystopia is close at hand, the Gray Zone is terrifying. Say too little, and readers will refuse to swallow the magic pill that brings them into your world. Say too much, and events unfolding today may render your story obsolete before anyone reads it.



This terror is doubly salient in climate fiction. The Gray Zone almost by definition occupies the near future, but the same uncertainty that renders climate change models so ineffective in political discourse makes the art of dystopic prediction a hazardous hobby. It’s almost easier to avoid the subject entirely.



That was pretty much the approach I took with Statisticity, my forthcoming novel set in post-climate-change Shanghai. The challenge of producing a credible climate narrative was so great that I chose to censor the truth instead.



While the approach did justice to the themes of the novel, it left me feeling unsatisfied. You see, I care more about climate change than just about anything else. Hell, I find it more terrifying than the Gray Zone. I felt like I had missed a chance to say something on the topic. So when the time came to build an audience for Statisticity through social media, I jumped at the chance.



The resulting work, commencing today, is a prequel of sorts called @statisticity. Once a day for the next 60 days, I will post a headline from the future, linked to an article from the present that discusses some trend foreshadowing my future dystopia. @statisticity falls squarely within the climate fiction camp, and chronicles in lurid cli-fi detail just exactly how things go so horribly wrong.''



Tune in and follow along:

https://www.facebook.com/statisticity

https://twitter.com/statisticity




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