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Sixteen ''cli fi'' things to look forward to in Two Thousand Sixteen
Hot links included!
1. Dating the Anthropocene Era: An Oslo meeting in late April 2016 will set the stage but the Anthropocene Working Group [AWG] only issues a 'recommendation' and then later on the wider stratigraphic community then weighs AGW rec (and the final decison probably won't come for a long while to come). [Hat tip to Andy Revkin at the NYT DOT EARTH blog for this] info.
2. io9 editor Charlie Jane Anders publishes her debut novel titled
''All the Birds in the Sky'' - a stunning story about the end of the world, and the beginning of the future. In a tweet to Scott Thill, she noted that "there is some 'cli-fi 'in my new novel too."
The book is described as blending literary fantasy and science fiction, telling the story of the decades-long, on-and-off romance between a sorceress and a computer genius, beginning in childhood and proceeding against a background of increasingly catastrophic climate change. NOTE: Tor Books editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden said:
“It’s great. It’s a science fiction and fantasy novel. It’s about magic and technology and the great myths that try to control us and the small ways we fight free. It’s not like anything else. As a friend of mine who read it said, ‘I suddenly realized I was reading a kind of storytelling that’s younger than I am.’
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3. Scott Thill, former Wired reporter and daily #CliFi blogger on his Twitter feed, author of an overview on his take on Cli-Fi in Cinema at the Huffington Post in November 2014, titled ''Cli-Fi is real'' publishes his long-awaited nonfiction overview of the entire cli-fi meme, from A to Z.]
4. The Cli-Fi Movie Awards announce the winners of the annual awards program at the end of December 2016. One of the movies in contention already is the French cli-fi movie ''EXPIRE'' by director Ms. Magali Magistry: ''Le réchauffement climatique au cœur d’un film de SF français.''
5. A variety of ''cli-fi'' classes, hosted in classrooms across the country, turn 2016 into ''THE YEAR OF CLI-FI IN ACADEMIA,'' with courses in full swing in spring, summer and fall semesters at Pomona, Tufts, Holyoke Community College, Brooklyn College, Middlebury, Vanderbilt, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and over 50 other colleges and universities. Expect a news report on this in the Chronicle of Higher Education in Washington DC as well.
6. Arizona State University announces the $10,000 award winner (and two runners-up) in the ASU cli-fi short story contest. judged primarily by cli-fi writer Kim Stanley Robinson and a panel of ASU experts as well. [Announcements expected in April 2016.]
7. As the Oscars telecast gets underway in February, the alternative Cli-Fi Movie Awards announces its winners for the 2015 awards program, with "Taklub" by Brillante Mendoza in the Philippines taking the gongs for best picture, best actor, best screenplay, best director and best child actor.
8. ''GEOSTORM,'' a cli-fi movie set for a December national release, puts Hollywood in the cli-fi mood again, with the producers thinking "this could be something big."
9. A new novel by cli-fi novelist Nathaniel Rich (''Odds Against Tomorrow'' - 2013) is released with the book carrying with it undercurrents of cli-fi underpinning the story, according to Rich's lecture at Vanderbilt University last fall.
10. Meg Little Reilly debuts her ''cli-fi'' novel.
11. An academic workshop in April in Germany gathers academics froun around the world who are studying the rise of cl-fi novels and movies.
12. In February, Florida University runs an international semimar and workshop with author panels and lectures, under the direction of Proessor Terry Harold.
13. Producer and screenwriter Marshall Herskovitz, a leading climate activist in Hollywood, sets up a production process to greenlight more cli-fi movies and TV dramas in Tinseltown.
14. Reporters Elizabeth Kolbert, Michelle Nuihuis, Andrew Revkin and Pamela Ferreia report on the ongoing dating the Anthrocene Era drama in the pages of the New Yorker, The New York Times and Motherboard, with reporters at Grist, Salon and Slate addding their takes to the reportage.
15. Sunbury Press in Pennsylvania announces the release of a Cli-Fi Short Story Anthology, edited and produced by CEO Larry Knorr.
16. Natioal Public Radio (NPR) interviews Oregon author Gregg Kleiner about his captivating children's picture book titled "Please Don't Paint Our Planet Pink!" -- which imagines a scenario whereby the usually colorless CO2 which in massive abundarnce due to man-made global warming is now helping to overheat our planet. By imaging CO2 as a pink gas, the story serves as a powerful wake-up tool for children and their adults.
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17. Bonus item: Australian literary critic and novelist James Bradley posts a few more blogs and oped pieces throughout the year about ''cli-fi'' in the grand scheme of things, from sci-fi to cli-fi to all things literary and discussing the meme with all the power of an insightful media critic and public intellectual.
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