Friday, May 20, 2016

A recent boom in “cli-fi” and “apoca-lit” lends an ethical urgency to the threats of global warming. Louise Fabiani explains why novels are still the best way to clarify our planet’s hopes and fears. [EXCERPTS]

 
[UPDATED AND EDITED: SUNDAY 10 am, May 22, Taiwan Time]:

A recent boom in “cli-fi” and “apoca-lit” lends an ethical urgency to the threats of global warming, a recent magazine article says. Insightful Canadian literary critic Louise Fabiani in Montreal explains ''why novels are still the best way to clarify our planet’s hopes and fears' in a very good piece for Pacific Standard magazine in California.
ONE SHORT EXCERPT from Fabiani's 1600-word article that this blogger underlines:
 
 
 
In the commercial camp, Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife is the highly accomplished, action-packed counterpart of Vaye Watkins’ more poetically envisioned (yet still-brutal) near future. Both warn about the consequences of current West Coast weather patterns and (mis)management of resources. Given very real water shortages, these books are trenchant and timely, and portend further titles within [a new independent literary genre that's been dubbed] “cli-fi”. As climate change and human population growth continue alarmingly but incrementally, cli-fi and post-apocalit have the power to scare us into action.
 *  [NOTE: THIS BLOGGER'S IMPORTANT EDIT *HERE ABOVE*  INSIDE THE  BRACKLETS TO MARK AN IMPORTANT CORRECTION WHICH WE HOPE FABIANI WILL MAKE IN THE ONLINE VERSION OF HER ARTICLE. IN THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE, FABIANI INCORRECTLY CAND MISTAKENLY CALLED ''CLI-FI'' A ''SUB-SUB-GENRE'' OF SCIENCE FICTION. IT IS NOT A SUB-SUB-GENRE OF ANYTHING AND IS NOT A SUB-GENRE OF SCIENCE FICTION, EITHER. CLI-FI IS A SEPARATE, INDEPENDENT LITEARY GENRE OF ITS OWN AND GATHERING STEAM WORLDWIDE NOW ON ITS OWN AS WELL.]

 

 

 
AFTER-ARTICLE NOTES: This blogger at Anthrocene Fictions adds: [As an aside, readers here might remember that Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 novel titled ''THE ROAD'' was not specifically about climate change or global warming impacts events but as McCarthy has said  in earlier interviews about the book and the reasons for his writing it, it came about after a very vivid dream the author had about a comet strike on Earth, and that is basically, beneath it all, what the novel was about, according to McCarthy himself.]

One last short excertpt. Fabiani wrote in her article, and we quote her here: "Most novels in the idiom, like McCarthy’s, feature minimal explanations as to how the hero(ine) became a survivor of Something Really Bad; writing that shifts between spare and devastatingly beautiful; and characters with little to no inner life — as if it has been bleached out of them by the very struggle to live. While most commercial post-apocalit is no fun-fest, high-literary examples tend to be especially grim."

Very well said, Professor Fabiani!

Read the full article at https://psmag.com/

SEE ALSO: ''DROUGHTLANDIA'' at the same magazine:

https://psmag.com/droughtlandia-47c0cd3a29d6#.ibj21svpr
 
 
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For more information see The Cli-Fi Report at Cli-Fi.Net
 
 
 
 


 

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