Steve Asselin @DisasterScholar on Twitter has offered a 1-2 note into the ongoing cli-fi discussion started a few days ago online by author William Gibson @GreatDismal.
re:
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-climate-change-fiction-or-cli-fi-forces-us-to-confront-the-incipient-death-of-the-planet
Dr Asselin wrote first: "It's really a matter of definition. If you define 'cli-fi' as a movement, a quantifiable upswing in climate change fiction arising out of a moment of ecological crisis at the turn of the 21st century, then sure. A little tautological, but what definitions of movements aren't? " [1/2]
Followed by: ''If you define 'cli-fi' as a subject, then you have notable precedents, other numerically significant aggregations of literature/film after WWII, during the pulp age, and as we are finding out, in the late Victorian/Edwardian and possibly even one during the Romantic period.'' [2/2]
James Downson Twitter then noted to Dr Asselin: James Downs @James_AL_Downs
''That's a really good point, actually, and a helpful distinction to make.''
William Gibson had written in 3 tweets earlier in the month, with over 700 "likes" following the discussion:
1. Re the cli-fi discussion, I think it should be kept in mind that very little 20th Century sf anticipated anything even remotely like what we must now recognize as the greatest single unanticipated effect of human technology.
2. This single vast predictive fail will only become more evident with time. What we've caused to happen to our planet's climate is literally the biggest thing we've done, as a species, and all unknowingly.
3. So the urge to distinguish a science fiction of the Anthropocene, which consciously doesn't partake of that extraordinarily massive genre-wide failure of predictive imagination, actually seems quite natural to me.
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