Climate fiction comes of age

An exciting, expansive shortlist for the inaugural Climate Fiction Prize has been announced.  Remaining true to the global scope, strength and reach of the longlist, the five chosen books prove the diversity of genres sought by the prize and demonstrate how the climate fiction space is expanding across genres, breaking the bounds of its original "cli-fi" home in science fiction. Emerging as a cross-genre theme and influence, it is becoming more inclusive, diverse and reaching a more commercial audience in the process.

Re-examining and reassessing our place in the world, the shortlist encompasses interstellar nature writing, magical realism, real life drama, dystopia and a wild kind of historical, time-travelling science fiction that is genre-busting in itself. Each novel evinces the power and joy of storytelling to show ourselves anew in the light of the climate crisis, illuminating how we might respond to, and rise to, its challenges with hope, courage and inventiveness. As with the quality and range of books submitted prior to deciding the extraordinary, all-women longlist – that encompassed narratives from indigenous Australia, Nigeria and Mars – further tough decisions had to be made to reach the shortlist. 

The judges – Andy Fryers, Hay Festival’s sustainability director, Tori Tsui, climate justice activist and writer, chair of judges Madeleine Bunting, writer and author, and myself (author, campaigner and columnist) – met again in the atmospheric setting of Hawkwood College in Stroud, to debate and discuss the books. 

With vulnerability, joy, the desire for connection, fairness and resilience at its heart, the form prominently features female authors, protagonists and relationships. Mothers, daughters, sisters, female friends and neighbours abound, as does how the climate crisis affects other kinds of family and community: those we seek, find ourselves in, or perhaps are even responsible for. The pressure and unpredictability of wilder weather patterns, of heat, rain, fire and storms, and their disruptive impact, exposes as many issues of trust, support and division as it does cracks of opportunity, exploitation, philanthropy and unifying commonality. Roz Dinneen’s Briefly Very Beautiful explores this in hauntingly poetic language as a mother driven by climate and societal breakdown is forced again and again to act on the question: how do you know when it’s time to leave, and who to trust?

Each novel evinces the power and joy of storytelling to show ourselves anew in the light of the climate crisis, illuminating how we might respond to, and rise to, its challenges with hope, courage and inventiveness.

As the crisis begins, or continues, to break, novels such as these find rich and fertile ground to explain the predicament we are in, to each other – finding myriad creative ways to sustain and galvanise ourselves, and to revisit our own actions and attitudes. Téa Obreht’s The Morningside mingles playful magical realism in a part-flooded world that hasn’t yet learnt from its mistakes. Its underclass of constant displacement, and a child protagonist, utilises the growing zeitgeist of folklore and myth that reflect the eerie, uncanny nature of a planet in unpredictable flux; it is a place where "familiarities you had come to take for granted were transformed by the act of storytelling" (as well as climate change) that give characters somewhere to belong and hang on to.

The female voice also often comes into play in books that deal with the intersection of social inequality, colonisation, racism and climate issues, as with Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy, set in an Aboriginal Australian town, or Chioma Okereke’s Nigerian-based Water Baby (both longlisted) or Abi Daré’s And So I Roar. The latter takes us from urban to rural Nigeria and the heart of climate justice, where women and girls bear the brunt of coercive, traditional patriarchy and the blame for climate breakdown but are also compassionate agents in their community, who act to change narratives pressed upon them and others. With courage, resilience and hope, they confront a climate justice of place, community and situation that we root for.

Other themes, of loss, anxiety and the growing, emotional, interior world of existential angst, is often juxtaposed with love of different kinds: familial, romantic, love of the earth or fellow man, as in Julia Armfield’s Private Rites of dysfunctional relationships, or Samantha Harvey’s stellar and profound hymnal, Orbital. It is there as an entertaining, sometimes wry playfulness in books such as The Mars House by Natasha Pulley, or The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley’s nimble, giddy conversation with the past, and her clever twist on a refugee hangover in real time. This is somewhere the climate crisis lurks subtly: until it acts like a gunshot near the novel’s denouement to ricochet back through the narrative.

The importance of literary prizes such as this to support or lead a cultural shift, cannot be underestimated. The Climate Fiction Prize platforms and celebrates a new coming of age of writing and reading, and asks how we might imaginatively respond to an unfair present and an uncertain future, while recognising a new-found will to build a way through.

Empowering and hopeful, here is creative invention asking fundamental, elevating questions of what it is to be alive in these times.

The winner of the £10,000 prize, supported by Climate Spring, will be awarded in May.