Climate Change Fiction

[close] This group is open to all those who are reading books passed forward by other readers. This was initiated at a live reading at Malmö University Climate Action Weeks 2025.

[close] The term "Climate Fiction" (CF) was first used by Australian novelist James Bradley in 2010 on his online blog Cityoftongues, where he claimed that realistic novels are “hopelessly inadequate” to discuss the implications of climate change, for they would violate the urgency and difficulty of the problem for the sake of coherence. In CF, climate crisis occur in what literary critic Darko Suvin calls novums: fictional worlds validated by cognitive logic. Usually, CF depicts extremely dystopian scenarios characterised by the anthropogenic nature of the environmental threats, which will eventually lead to an apocalyptic scenario. Climate Fiction is at the core of my PhD project at University of Ferrara and I would love to discuss instances of CF with all members of the club.

[close] This list focuses on centering the imaginations of authors on the margins for the purposes of inclusion, representation, and from which so much can be learned about resiliency and how to shape the future. “Fiction that centers those who are currently marginalized – not to be nice, but because those who survive on the margins tend to be the most experientially innovative – practicing survival-based efficiency, doing the most with the least, an important skill area on a planet whose resources are under assault by less marginalized people.” – adrienne maree brown

[close] Join the UC Berkeley Libraries 2019 Climate Fiction Reading Challenge.