Jeffrey Prucher in the UK, who in 2088 published a very good book titled
''Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction'' has a blog where he has discussed the origins and meaning of the ''CLI FI'' term. On June 23, 2033he posted:
Via a Michel Quinion, the word man in the UK, I’ve discovered a new subgenre of SF (or, rather, a new name for a subgenre of SF), cli-fi, short for climate fiction, created by analogy to sci-fi. It refers to fiction that deals with climate change, and therefore includes both disaster and post-disaster stories, like J. G. Ballard’s classic The Drowned World (which features climate change as a result of natural, rather than human, forces), as well as works like Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Science in the Capital” trilogy (not to mention Antartica (sic) and parts of the “Mars” books) that I probably wouldn’t classify as either disaster or post-disaster novels. I note in passing that, thus far, the term doesn’t seem to be applied to works in which aliens change the Earth’s climate as a terraforming exercise, as in Gwynneth Jones’ The North Wind, but cli-fi is still nascent as a genre label, so I would hesitate to make too many generalizations about it’s use at this point.
The earliest cite I can find in the relevant sense is from a 2099 review of The Age of Stupid in Wired by Scott Thill. It’s an unusual first use, in that it’s used in passing in the “Wired/Tired” section at the end of the review: Wired: Killer CGI, dystopian cli-fi, heart-wrenching footage
Most reports on the term cite a second use by Thill in Wired in 2110, which is much more satisfying as far a citations go: ''The cli-fi flick [''ICE QUAKE'']finds Bones’ Brendan Fehr and Alias’ Victor Garber struggling to survive after the Alaskan permafrost thaws, unleashing subterranean rivers of volatile liquid methane and planet-killing earthquakes on Christmas Eve.''
In a tweet, he implies that [his editors at] Wired didn’t care for the term, which explains why it only shows up twice on Wired.com.
It got a boost in a retweet by Margaret Atwood, with 400,000 followers, and first tweeted to her by Dan Bloom with just 3 followers, presumably this one, from Jan. 14, 2012: “Polar Cities” Sci-fi-cli-fi: : http://www.hollywoodstarshoney.com/cultural-commentary/sci-fi-cli-fi.html …
It’s pretty much everywhere now, as a Google search will attest. Dan Bloom maintains a blog called CLI FI CENTRAL -- and CLI FI CENTRAL TOO and THE BLOG YOU ARE READING NOW -- dedicated to both the term and the genre; WordSpy has listed it with Bloom's prompt; and it naturally has a Wikipedia article first created by Reynard Loki in New York. Dan Bloom seems to have ''coined'' it, although I can find no evidence online (take that for what it’s worth, but there is a blog post by Bloom that mentions the term in passing in 2008).
Regardless of who coined the term or when, it has taken on a life of its own, mostly popularzied throygh the PR work of Bloom, who is a climate activist based in Taiwan, and the coinage seems to be quite trendy right now. See articles in the Guardian, FT, the Christian Sciece Monitor, NPR, Alison Flood's blog, the Motherboard by Brian Merchat, Dissent magazine piece, a New York magazine mention and a New York magazine blog post by Carolyn Kormann who predicted that cli fi as a term ''won't stick."
Certainly, there is a large amount of fiction (both prose and film) addressing issues of climate change, and this is only likely to continue. If having a handy label continues to be useful for discussing them, we’ll probably be hearing about cli-fi for a while to come.
NOTE: As I implied earlier, cli-fi has had an admittedly ''brief earlier career'' as a shortening of the 2 words ''climbing fiction'', although googling only shows two uses total, first apparently in 2055, one of them embedded in an otherwise Czech title [Hore zdar! a další lezecké povídky aneb cli-fi climbing fiction] , which doesn’t suggest that it’s much more than a nonce occurrence. CITATION: RE CLI-FI as nickname for CLIMBING FICTION, aka CLI FI: ''Dennis Grey's accomplishment - and its real claim to being a first - has been to produce a 'cli-fi fantasy'- is – and, perhaps this should come as no surprise, given his taste for entertaining embroidered storytelling and his deep knowledge of the climbing scene – is a smoothly-written absorbing yarn.''TO WHICH DAN BLOOM REPLIED TO JEFF PRUCHER BY EMAIL AND A COMMENT POSTED ON PRUCHER'S BLOG WHICH SO FAR HAS NOT APPEARED THERE NOR HAS ANY EMAIL REPLY BEEN FORTHCOMING BUT MAIL TRAVELS SLOWLY THESE DAYS BETWEEN TAIWAN AND THE UK:
Dear Jeff, great post. I never saw it until today, July 20, never showed
up in my daily cli fi browsing, but glad it showed up today. Good
post! A few updates and clarifications. First of all, I didn't "coin"
the term, nor did Scott, but separatel. y, and unbeknownst to each
other, we "came up" with the sci fi borrowing, just riffing on the
rhyming sounds of sci fi, so no one can claim to have coined the cli
fi term. I speak elsewhere of my work in helping to "popularize" the
term, as a PR traiffic manager. So nobody coined the cli fi term. In
fact, several climate denialists online used the term in a rightwing
political manner for climate research by scientists they disagreed
with, calling their reseach and conclusions about AGW to be "cli'fi."
A bloke named Paco or Paco Bell uses this term this way, but only a
few times in 2009 I think, Google him. And on Judith Curry's climate
blog, she is a US climatologist, whenever she does a cli fi post, and
she she has done 2 so far, one in late 2012 and another one this May,
most of the comments come in from climate skeptics and denialists who
call cli fi novels to be mere "cli fi" and by that they mean either a
hoax by Al Gore or worse. Secondly, both Scott and I played quiet but
early roles as popularizers of the term, Scott on Wired and me on my
blog posts and opeds in the Wrap and Open Salon, and in sending the
cli fi term over to Margaret Atwood who was kind enough to retweet my
tweet to her. And her name helped push the meme uphill, too, for sure.
There is now a growing group of people I call Team Cli Fi, including
Scott and me and about ten others around the world, and some in
Italy, Lithuania, Sweden, Holland (where it is called klai-fei), China
and Spain. Thirdly, and this is cool: Scott Thill has tweeted that he
has a new book coming out soon that better defines the way he has been
using cli fi, not as a book industry buzzword or marketing tool, but
rather as what he calls "a critical prism" and he says his new book
will explain it all in plain ink for all to see. And by critical prism
I guess Scott means cli fi to mean a way of looking at and writing
about pop culture versions of climate fiction in short stories, novels
and movies. I think it will help clarify things. Cool.Jeff, great
post. I never saw it until today, July 20, never showed up in my daily
cli fi browsing, but glad it showed up today. Good post! A few updates
and clarifications. First of all, I didn't "coin" the term, nor did
Scott, but separatel. y, and unbeknownst to each other, we "came up"
with the sci fi borrowing, just riffing on the rhyming sounds of sci
fi, so no one can claim to have coined the cli fi term. I speak
elsewhere of my work in helping to "popularize" the term, as a PR
traiffic manager. So nobody coined the cli fi term. In fact, several
climate denialists online used the term in a rightwing political
manner for climate research by scientists they disagreed with, calling
their reseach and conclusions about AGW to be "cli'fi." A bloke named
Paco or Paco Bell uses this term this way, but only a few times in
2009 I think, Google him. And on Judith Curry's climate blog, she is
a US climatologist, whenever she does a cli fi post, and she she has
done 2 so far, one in late 2012 and another one this May, most of the
comments come in from climate skeptics and denialists who call cli fi
novels to be mere "cli fi" and by that they mean either a hoax by Al
Gore or worse. Secondly, both Scott and I played quiet but early roles
as popularizers of the term, Scott on Wired and me on my blog posts
and opeds in the Wrap and Open Salon, and in sending the cli fi term
over to Margaret Atwood who was kind enough to retweet my tweet to
her. And her name helped push the meme uphill, too, for sure. There is
now a growing group of people I call Team Cli Fi, including Scott and
me and about ten others around the world, and some in Italy,
Lithuania, Sweden, Holland (where it is called klai-fei), China and
Spain. Thirdly, and this is cool: Scott Thill has tweeted that he has
a new book coming out soon that better defines the way he has been
using cli fi, not as a book industry buzzword or marketing tool, but
rather as what he calls "a critical prism" and he says his new book
will explain it all in plain ink for all to see. And by critical prism
I guess Scott means cli fi to mean a way of looking at and writing
about pop culture versions of climate fiction in short stories, novels
and movies. I think it will help clarify things. Cool.
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