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Subgenres/Sci-Fi/Climate Fiction

Climate Fiction

Climate fiction imagines the world reshaped by a changing climate. Floods, droughts and migration set the stage for stories about adaptation and survival.

Parent genre: Sci-FiNamed in the late 2000s445 books classified in Saga

Where climate fiction came from

Writers imagined drowned and parched worlds long before climate change had a name in public debate. J. G. Ballard's The Drowned World (1962) flooded London under a tropical sun, and Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower (1993) set its story in a California of drought, fires and collapse in the 2020s.

The name “cli-fi” was coined around 2007-08 by the journalist and activist Dan Bloom, reached the mainstream press in 2013, and caught on as a shelf in the 2010s. Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl (2009) and The Water Knife (2015), about a fight over the Colorado River, were touchstones, alongside Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior (2012).

Kim Stanley Robinson has become one of the form's best-known voices, with New York 2140 (2017), set in a half-submerged Manhattan, and The Ministry for the Future (2020), a novel about how the world might actually respond. Richard Powers' The Overstory (2018), about trees and the people who try to save them, won the Pulitzer Prize, and Charlotte McConaghy's Migrations (2020) followed the last of the Arctic terns.

What separates it from neighbouring subgenres

Climate fiction is defined by its subject: a world changed by the climate, and people living with it. It overlaps with other speculative shelves but brings its own urgency.

Post-Apocalyptic

Post-apocalyptic fiction is set after collapse, whatever the cause. Climate fiction is often set during the change, before or without collapse, and many of its stories are about adaptation.

Dystopian

Some climate fiction imagines societies that answer crisis with control and exclusion. Climate fiction is defined by the cause; dystopia, by the society that results.

Hard Sci-Fi

Climate fiction often draws on real climate science, and some of it is meticulous about it. It is more often literary than technical.

Utopian

Some climate fiction, often called solarpunk, imagines hopeful responses to the crisis. It's the utopian strand of the form.

Climate fiction is science fiction whose premise is already underway. Only the details are speculative.

How it reads

Expect near-future settings that look like extrapolations of the present: flooded coastlines, water wars, failing harvests, climate refugees. Many books follow ordinary people adapting, and the politics of who suffers and who escapes are often central.

The shelf spans genre thrillers, literary novels and hopeful solarpunk. Many climate novels are shelved as general fiction, and some readers come to them looking less for escape than for a way to think about the future.

Frequently asked

What is cli-fi?+

Short for climate fiction: stories about a world shaped by climate change. The term was coined around 2007-08 and became a common label in the 2010s.

Where should a new reader start?+

Parable of the Sower is a powerful, prescient classic. For a hopeful and ambitious recent novel, try The Ministry for the Future.

Is climate fiction always science fiction?+

Not always. Many climate novels are near-future or even present-day literary fiction. What unites them is the subject, not the genre.

Is climate fiction always pessimistic?+

No. Much of it is bleak, but a growing strand, often called solarpunk, imagines how communities might adapt and even thrive.

Is The Overstory climate fiction?+

It's often included. It's about trees, forests and activism rather than future climate disaster, but its environmental urgency places it near the centre of the shelf.

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