vulnerability, thereâs also something reassuring about imagining the end of the world, a sense in which it absolves us of the responsibility to imagine alternatives.
Imagining alternative futures has traditionally been the preserve of science fiction, so perhaps itâs not coincidental that one of science fictionâs luminaries, Neal Stephenson, recently issued a challenge to his contemporaries, calling on them to give away their passion for dystopias and rediscover the belief in technologyâs transformative power that underpinned science fictionâs Golden Age.
But it is also a reminder that genuine imaginative engagement with the meaning and effects of climate change demands writers do more than imagine devastated worlds and drowned cities. We need to find ways of representing not just the everyday weirdness of a world transformed by climate change, but also the weirdness of the everyday, find ways of expressing the way the changing climate affects not just the natural world but our own worlds, our own imaginations, find forms and modes capable of making sense of the enormity of what is happening around ourselves. Or, as the narrator of Ben Lernerâs 10:04 puts it as he looks out over Manhattan, âIâll project myself into several futures simultaneously ⦠work my way from irony to sincerity in the sinking city, a would-be Whitman of the vulnerable gridâ.
In many ways, that is a revolution that has already begun, visible in the flood-haunted visions of novels as different as Australian author Kathryn Heymanâs comic yet tender Floodline and Simon Ingsâ bleakly brilliant vision of near future Britain, Wolves , both of which explore the way the changing environment infects our consciousness, dissolving social bonds and altering our sense of who we are, as much if not more than it alters the world around us. But it is equally visible in Barbara Kingsolverâs most recent novel, the deeply impressive Flight Behaviour , in which a swarm of monarch butterflies whose migration has been disturbed by climate change descend upon a community in Americaâs rural Midwest, throwing the lives of the locals into disarray.
With its careful dissection of the contradictions of class and privilege (and and indeed its extraordinary final imageâs reminder of the worldâs capacity for sudden and transformative change), Flight Behaviour underlines the extent to which the challenges climate change presents are inextricably interwoven not just with a series of much older questions about wealth and power.
This awareness of the interconnectedness of these questions is also present in books such as Ruth Ozekiâs Man Booker Prizeâshortlisted A Tale for the Time Being , which explores time, loss and globalisation, and science fiction author Monica Byrneâs dazzling debut, The Girl in the Road , in which the main character elects to walk from India to Africa along a floating wave power installation, a structure that symbolises both the possibilities of the future and the way history divides the rich from the poor, the fortunate from the unfortunate. For despite their differences, both seek to open up a conversation about the degree to which our thinking about climate change is framed by the privilege of our lives in the West, the way our wealth inoculates us from the consequences of our lifestyle.
Auden famously said that poetry makes nothing happen. Yet people tend to forget he also said it survives, giving voice to our experience, bearing witness. And when it comes to climate change, that isnât nothing: we need ways to articulate the despair so many of us feel about what is happening around us, about the world we are bequeathing our children, about the species we are condemning to extinction.
But fiction can also help us repossess our future, take imaginative control of it. In time that might mean big change: as Ursula Le Guin observed recently, âWe live in
Imagining alternative futures has traditionally been the preserve of science fiction, so perhaps itâs not coincidental that one of science fictionâs luminaries, Neal Stephenson, recently issued a challenge to his contemporaries, calling on them to give away their passion for dystopias and rediscover the belief in technologyâs transformative power that underpinned science fictionâs Golden Age.
But it is also a reminder that genuine imaginative engagement with the meaning and effects of climate change demands writers do more than imagine devastated worlds and drowned cities. We need to find ways of representing not just the everyday weirdness of a world transformed by climate change, but also the weirdness of the everyday, find ways of expressing the way the changing climate affects not just the natural world but our own worlds, our own imaginations, find forms and modes capable of making sense of the enormity of what is happening around ourselves. Or, as the narrator of Ben Lernerâs 10:04 puts it as he looks out over Manhattan, âIâll project myself into several futures simultaneously ⦠work my way from irony to sincerity in the sinking city, a would-be Whitman of the vulnerable gridâ.
In many ways, that is a revolution that has already begun, visible in the flood-haunted visions of novels as different as Australian author Kathryn Heymanâs comic yet tender Floodline and Simon Ingsâ bleakly brilliant vision of near future Britain, Wolves , both of which explore the way the changing environment infects our consciousness, dissolving social bonds and altering our sense of who we are, as much if not more than it alters the world around us. But it is equally visible in Barbara Kingsolverâs most recent novel, the deeply impressive Flight Behaviour , in which a swarm of monarch butterflies whose migration has been disturbed by climate change descend upon a community in Americaâs rural Midwest, throwing the lives of the locals into disarray.
With its careful dissection of the contradictions of class and privilege (and and indeed its extraordinary final imageâs reminder of the worldâs capacity for sudden and transformative change), Flight Behaviour underlines the extent to which the challenges climate change presents are inextricably interwoven not just with a series of much older questions about wealth and power.
This awareness of the interconnectedness of these questions is also present in books such as Ruth Ozekiâs Man Booker Prizeâshortlisted A Tale for the Time Being , which explores time, loss and globalisation, and science fiction author Monica Byrneâs dazzling debut, The Girl in the Road , in which the main character elects to walk from India to Africa along a floating wave power installation, a structure that symbolises both the possibilities of the future and the way history divides the rich from the poor, the fortunate from the unfortunate. For despite their differences, both seek to open up a conversation about the degree to which our thinking about climate change is framed by the privilege of our lives in the West, the way our wealth inoculates us from the consequences of our lifestyle.
Auden famously said that poetry makes nothing happen. Yet people tend to forget he also said it survives, giving voice to our experience, bearing witness. And when it comes to climate change, that isnât nothing: we need ways to articulate the despair so many of us feel about what is happening around us, about the world we are bequeathing our children, about the species we are condemning to extinction.
But fiction can also help us repossess our future, take imaginative control of it. In time that might mean big change: as Ursula Le Guin observed recently, âWe live in
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