Cli-Fi (Climate Fiction): Home
Recommended Cli-Fi book titles
Cli-Fi (Climate Fiction)
"Cli-fi" (rhymes with sci-fi) is speculative fiction that addresses climate change. Although authors have been speculating about what life might be like on a warming planet for decades, there is currently an explosion of great new cli-fi novels. Many are dystopian, set in harsh, violent landscapes. Some cli-fi is utopian, imagining how the crash of old systems might allow better ones to flourish. Many cli-fi novels ground their speculations about the effects of our warming climate and the technologies that could address it in hard science.
Novels provide an alternative to dreary data and graphs as we grapple with the implications of human life on a warming planet. See below for some recommendations of engaging, thought-provoking climate fiction stories and novels.
Cli-fi with utopian themes
The Fifth Sacred Thing by Post-apocalyptic, Wiccan, feminist utopian society set in 2048 in a harsh California landscape. Full of love and vivid characters, and an epic battle between two clashing worlds, one based on repression, the other on tolerance and care.
Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers An AnthologySolarpunk stories envision an optimistic future based on renewable energies.
Multispecies Cities : solarpunk urban futuresSet primarily in the Asia-Pacific, these stories engage with the serious issues of justice, inclusion and sustainability that affect the region, while offering optimistic visions of tomorrow's urban spaces.
Afrofuturism
Afrofuturist fiction reimagines worlds from a Black perspective.
The Fifth Season by Hugo Award winning novel takes place on a planet in which every few centuries inhabitants endure the "fifth season" of catastrophic climate change. First book in the Broken Earth trilogy.
Parable of the Sower by In a harsh world beset by intense climate change and social inequality, a young woman works to survive and teach the tenets of a new religion known as Earthseed.
Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy
Bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale projects us into a near future dominated by bioengineering corporations and a desperate fight for the future of humanity.
Oryx and Crake by Book 1 of MaddAdam trilogy
The Year of the Flood by Book 2 of MaddAdam trilogy
MaddAddam by Book 3 of MaddAdam trilogy
Kim Stanley Robinson
Readers of Kim Stanley Robinson's "hard" science fiction are educated while being entertained and engaged.
The Ministry for the Future by This thriller offers a vision honest to the scale of the climate crisis while providing a plausible path to addressing it.
Green Earth by Near future eco-thriller trilogy with a focus on biotechnology and politics. Intelligent and suspenseful.
New York 2140 by New York is submerged, its streets canals and its skyscrapers islands. Everything has changed except for the humans who live there. Includes Solarpunk themes.
Paolo Bacigalupi
Science fiction and fantasy writer Paolo Bacigalupi explores themes of genetic engineering and a post-fossil fuel future in dystopian settings.
The Water Knife by When water is more valuable than gold, alliances shift like sand, and the only truth in the desert is that someone will have to bleed if anyone hopes to drink.
The Windup Girl by In this world, calories are currency and bio-terrorism is a tool for corporate profits which creates genetic drift that forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution.
Highly recommended Cli-fi novels
- Parable of the Sower by This ground-breaking 1993 novel begins in a 2024 beset by climate disasters, intense violence and brutal economic inequality. Black American teenager Lauren Oya Olamina, who was born with the uncontrollable ability to feel others’ pain, sets out to create her own enclave which will weather the tough times and sow the seeds of a better world.
- The Ministry for the Future by The "Ministry for the Future" has been given a daunting task: to advocate for the world's future generations and to protect all living creatures, present and future. This near-future thriller offers a vision honest to the scale of the climate crisis while providing a plausible path to addressing it.
The Overstory by Nine characters’ lives interweave in ways they cannot imagine, through their collective action in preventing a forest from falling to industrial harvesting and ruination. Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
Cli-Fi titles
American War by What might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons upon itself? Set in a Louisiana that is half under water when the Second Civil War breaks out.
Blackfish City by After the climate wars, a floating city is cobbled together in the Arctic Circle, one that mirrors all the inequities of our current world. A stranger arrives riding an orca, with a polar bear at her side, and stages unprecedented acts of resistance.
Blue Skies: a novel by Denied a dog, a baby, and even a faithful fiancé, Cat suddenly craves a snake: a glistening, writhing creature that can be worn like "jewelry, living jewelry" to match her black jeans. A satirical yet ultimately moving take on contemporary American life in the glare of climate change.
The Carbon Diaries 2015In 2015, when England becomes the first nation to introduce carbon dioxide rationing in a drastic bid to combat climate change, sixteen-year-old Laura documents the first year of rationing as her family spirals out of control. Young adult novel.
A Children's Bible: a novel by Twelve children are essentially abandoned by their debauched parents while on a group family vacation. A cataclysmic thunderstorm causes severe flooding and the children must survive without help from the adults.
The Collapse of Western Civilization : a view from the future by Writing from the Second People's Republic of China on the 300th anniversary of the Great Collapse, a senior scholar presents a gripping and deeply disturbing account of how the children of the Enlightenment―the political and economic elites of the so-called advanced industrial societies―failed to act, and so brought about the collapse of Western civilization.
The Deluge by “This book is, simply put, a modern classic. If you read it, you’ll never forget it. Prophetic, terrifying, uplifting.” —Stephen King
Flight Behavior by Set in a rural Tennessee that has endured unseasonal rain, the plot explores the effects of a bizarre biological event on a Bible Belt community. Dellarobia Turnbow, a young wife and mother, morphs into the church's poster child for a miracle, an Internet phenomenon, and a woman on the verge of unexpected opportunity as scientists, reporters, and ecotourists converge on her property.
Gold Fame Citrus by In a parched L.A. of the near future, Luz and Ray subsist on rationed cola and water, and whatever they can loot, scavenge, and improvise. When they cross paths with a mysterious child, the thirst for a better future begins.
The High House by A trio of characters find refuge from climate devastation in a country home in England. and the stories of their lives before, during and after cataclysmic events unfold. Beautifully written and thought provoking.
The Man with the Compound Eyes by When a tsunami sends a massive island made entirely of trash crashing into the Taiwanese coast, two very different people—an outcast from a mythical island and a woman on the verge of suicide—are united in ways they never could have imagined. An environmental allegory, translated from the Chinese.
The New Wilderness by Set in a not-too-distant future ravaged by overpopulation and climate change, a desperate mother intent on saving an ailing daughter signs up for an experimental study to live as nomadic hunter-gatherers in the Wilderness State, the planet's only remaining wild area.
Odds Against Tomorrow by Focusing on a mathematical prodigy in a hurricane-damaged Manhattan, "this literary thriller is blessed with a propulsive plot, macabre humor, several richly developed characters, and serious ethical and philosophical issues, all lightly clothed in skillful writing." -- Booklist
The Swan Book by A hypnotic and inventive novel about an Aboriginal girl living in a future world turned upside down, where ancient myths exist side-by-side with present-day realities, by acclaimed indigenous Australian author Alexis Wright.
Termination Shock by A billionaire has an idea for reversing global warming, but will it work? And what will the consequences for the planet be?
Trail of Lightning by After a cataclysm floods much of the earth, the Dinétah - the homeland of the Navajo – is one of the few remaining areas where people survive. Legendary powers have risen among the Diné, and Maggie Hoskie is a supernatural monster hunter.
Two Degrees by Juvenile novel about three children enduring separate climate change disasters--a wildfire in the California woods, a close encounter with a hungry polar bear in Canada, and a massive hurricane in Florida--and how they emerge from their experiences committed to changing the world.
The Wall by Kavanagh, a newly enlisted soldier, has become a defender of the one still-intact island nation in a devastated world that has closed itself off from the rest of the world with a heavily guarded wall. "Beautifully written and chillingly plausible." -- Booklist
Zahrah the Windseeker by Young adult novel combining West African mythology with a fantastical world of plant-based technology to tell the story of a 13-year-old girl who embarks on a dangerous quest to save a friend’s life.
The End We Start From by A new mother and her baby flee a deluge in London, and experience the wonder and thriving of new life against the backdrop of catastrophe. A lyrical tale of endurance.
Cli-fi Short Stories
The New Atlantis by Classic novella by acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin. In a dark near-future, global warming and a ruined ecology are causing the continents to sink into the oceans, just as the towers of Atlantis re-emerge above the sea.
Orange World and Other Stories by Wildly inventive short stories. Includes "The Gondoliers," set in a near-future South Florida underwater; "Bog Girl - A Romance" and "The Tornado Auction."
Afterglow : climate fiction for future ancestorsCall Number: Sylvania and Southeast popular library and onlinePublication Date: 2023Hopeful and forward-looking futuristic short stories that explore how the power of storytelling can help create the world we need.- Multispecies Cities: solarpunk urban futuresSet primarily in the Asia-Pacific, these stories engage with the serious issues of justice, inclusion and sustainability that affect the region, while offering optimistic visions of tomorrow's urban spaces.
Anthologies of climate fiction short stories available free online, from Arizona State University's Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative
- Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction (Vol. I, 2016)
- Everything Change Volume II (2018)
- Everything Change Volume III (2020)
"Imagine 2200" includes the winners of a short story contest asking writers from different backgrounds to create intersectional worlds in which no community is left behind. Sponsored by Grist.
Novellas (quick reads)
From the Caves by PCC English instructor Thea Prieto is the author of this award-winning novella, which follows four characters struggling to survive in a ruined world, and highlights the role of story in sustaining hope.
Weather by “Tiny in size but immense in scope, radically disorienting yet reassuringly humane, strikingly eccentric and completely irresistible. . . . Luminous.”
—The Boston Globe- The End We Start From by In stark, short poetic passages, a young mother narrates how she and her baby learn to live and even thrive after fleeing a submerged London.
About Cli-Fi
- Can climate fiction deliver climate justice?The Grist, Sept 2021
- Can Cli-Fi Fiction Help Us Imagine A Sustainable Future?Pebble, Nov. 2021
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