Climate Fiction Reading List

As part of our focus on questions of energy, climate and the environment, we are developing some resources on Climate Fiction.

Here is our reading list:

Ursula LeGuin, The Word for World is Forest

Paolo Bacigalupi, The Windup Girl

Paolo Bacigalupi, The Water Knife


Resources and critical perspectives

The Atlantic Logo“Climate Fiction: Can Books Save the Planet?”, by J.K. Ullrich

A new literary genre that focuses on the consequences of environmental issues is striking a chord with younger generations—and engaging them in thinking about the Earth’s sustainability.

Read the article here: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/08/climate-fiction-margaret-atwood-literature/400112/

The Guardian logoGlobal Warning

Unlike most science fiction, novels about climate change focus on an immediate and intense threat rather than discovery

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/31/global-warning-rise-cli-fi

DIssent Magazine logoCli-fi: Birth of a Genre, by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow

What is the “imaginative repertoire” of climate fiction?

Wired magazine logo

Cli-Fi–That’s Climate Fiction–Is the New Sci-Fi, by Shara Tonn

Popularized by writers like Paolo Bacigalupi and Margaret Atwood, cli-fi takes climate predictions to their logical conclusions and explores how people might survive in a completely messed up world.