The Guardian view on climate fiction: no longer the stuff of sci-fi
A new prize recognises the power of storytelling to address the biggest issue of our time N o novelist should ignore the climate emergency, Paul Murray, author of the bestselling novel The Bee Sting, told the Observer last year : It is the unavoidable background for being alive in the 21st century. In recognition of the vital role of literature in responding to the Anthropocene moment, this week the inaugural shortlist was announced for the Climate Fiction prize. The five novels include Orbital by Samantha Harvey , set during one day on the International Space Station and the winner of last years Booker prize; time-travelling romcom The Ministry of Time from debut novelist Kaliane Bradley; eco-thriller Briefly Very Beautiful by Roz Dineen; And So I Roar , about a young girl in Nigeria, by Abi Dare; and a story of migrants in an abandoned city in Tea Obrehts The Morningside . All the shortlisted authors are women. Climate fiction is not new. Margaret Atwoods MaddAddam dystopian trilogy, Cormac McCarthys post-apocalyptic The Road, Barbara Kingsolvers Flight Behaviour and Richard Powers Pulitzer-prize-winning The Overstory are just some of the landmark literary novels to have taken on the crisis. Science fiction, inevitably, has become the genre of ecological catastrophe, with hits like Kim Stanley Robinsons The Ministry for the Future (Barack Obama was a fan), which opens in 2025 with all the inhabitants of a small Indian town dying in a heatwave. The late Ursula K Le Guin wrote that the job of sci-fi was to extrapolate imaginatively from current trends and events to a near-future thats half prediction, half satire. The job of the realist novel is to reflect the world in which we live. For a long time, the possibilities of environmental breakdown were largely considered too wild for the realism. As a result, climate fiction hasnt been taken seriously enough. In The Great Derangement in 2016, Amitav Gosh argued that the failure of so many novelists, including himself, to address the most urgent issue of the age was part of a broader cultural failure at the heart of the climate crisis itself. Freakish weather events are no longer the stuff of speculative fiction global weirding is upon us. What was once dubbed cli-fi is simply contemporary fiction. Ecological anxiety is as much a part of the fictional worlds of a young generation of novelists like Sally Rooney as the internet and mobile phones. The novels on the Climate Fiction prize shortlist do not conform to dystopian stereotypes. Some arent explicitly about the crisis. Some are even hopeful. Far from being a portrait of a world ravaged by disasters, Orbital, for example, is a hymn to the awe-inspiring beauty of our planet. It could be argued that having a Booker prize winner on the shortlist suggests there is no need for a specific award, which might marginalise climate fiction as a niche genre. There is no shortage of literary gongs. The Wainwright prize , set up in 2014 to celebrate the best nature books, now includes an award for writing on global conservation. Yet awards amplify the message and reach of books that might otherwise be overlooked. Scientists have been warning about global heatings dire consequences for decades. Governments and industry havent listened. Now novelists are taking up the challenge. Stories can create an impact far greater than data alone. They can inspire change. In a world where reality has become stranger than fiction, this new prize is necessary and important. There is no bigger story. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here .