OPED
Earlier this year, two major news outlets in the US and Britain, NPR
(National Public Radio) and the Guardian, ran stories about a new
literary term making the rounds among writers and publishers overseas
called “cli fi,” for climate fiction. While some commentators have
said it is a new genre, others have said it is just a subgenre of
science fiction.
Peter Heller, author of a popular book titled "The Dog Stars," writes literary fiction -- and he writes well!
"I think of 'The Dog Stars' as literary fiction, straight up, but it was one of 6 finalists for the Arthur C. Clarke
Award, which shocked me, since it's about a guy surviving with his old dog and an antique Cessna," he told
this blogger in a recent email. "But I guess it's sci fi if they say it is. Speculative fiction might be more
accurate. In my novel, climate change has killed a lot of the forests in Colorado, the creeks are warming
and the trout are gone, and drought is a major threat. These things have already begun to happen here. Cli fi
is a new term to me, but if the shoe fits I'm glad to wear it."
After the Guardian piece ran in Britain, Richard Chen (陳榮彬), a
professor of comparative literature at National Taiwan University,
wrote an article for the Chinese-language China Times newspaper,
explaining the cli fi term for Taiwanese readers.
Cli fi has already arrived in the country’s literary circles. Taiwan’s
entry into the new genre, The Man with Compound Eyes, published in
Mandarin in 2011 by Taipei nature writer and novelist Wu Ming-yi
(吳明益), will be published in English in New York and London, in
September.
His novel fits neatly into the category because it takes place in the
future — 2029 in Taiwan — and encompasses themes of environmentalism
and climate change issues.
NPR put it this way: “Over the past decade, more and more writers have
begun to set their novels and short stories in worlds, not unlike our
own, where the Earth’s systems are noticeably off-kilter. The genre
has come to be called climate fiction — cli fi, for short.”
British writer Rodge Glass noted in his piece in the Guardian that the
literary world is now witnessing the rise of cli fi worldwide.
After the NPR and Guardian news stories went through the usual social
media stages of tweets and retweets, a literature professor at the
University of Oregon, Stephanie LeMenager, announced that she had
created a seminar that she will teach early next year titled “The
Cultures of Climate Change” using the cli fi theme as a main theme of
the class.
According to Chen, two universities in Taiwan already offer classes in
what is called “eco-fiction,” or novels about the environment. He told
me that he expects cli fi courses to catch on here, too.
Cli fi is a broad category, and it can apply to climate-themed novels
and movies that take place in the present or the future, or even in
the past. And cli fi novels can be dystopian in nature, or utopian, or
just plain ordinary potboiler thrillers. Wu’s novel, set in 2029, is
set to take the world by storm once translated into English and
French, with some already comparing it to Life of Pi by Canadian
novelist Yann Martel.
With carbon dioxide emissions in terms of parts per million (ppm) now
hovering at around 400ppm, cli fi writers have their work cut out for
them. Wu Ming-yi’s cli fi novel will be part of this new genre and his
success should help pave the way for cli fi novels and films to find a
place in Taiwan’s literary culture, too.
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