With Hope and Horror, Climate Fiction Writers Depict the Future

Hailed by Rolling Stone as "the first great climate change novel," Odds Against Tomorrow is at the vanguard of a new genre of fiction called climate fiction -- or "cli-fi" -- that sets its human protagonists against the onrush of planet-altering global warming.  At times humorous, hopeful and terrifying, these stories offer a wider lens on a subject long dominated by hard science.

And while the struggle between humans and nature is one of the oldest tropes in literature, cli-fi can deliver a peculiar form of angst.

"There's something uniquely unsettling about a force that's both shaped by us and shaping us in really dangerous ways," said Shane Hall, a doctoral student at the University of Oregon who teaches a course on imagined climate futures.  "It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion, only we're in the engineer's seat and we can't do anything to stop it."

With Hope and Horror, Climate Fiction Writers Depict the Future