When Amitav Ghosh's PR team asked the Guardian newspaper in the UK to publish an excerpt on literary matters from his new essay collection titled THE GREAT DERANGEMENT, the PR people and the publishers (University of Chicago Press) probably thought this was a great PR boost, but in fact it backfired. Over 225 comments came in in the first 24 hours and most of them were negative and anti-Ghosh. Why? Because in the excerpt the Guardian published, Ghosh came across as an elistist VIP holier than thou writer of "serious mainstream fiction" and he called genre novels in the sci fi and cli fi and spec fic camp as low rent, gutter, outhouse genres. This did not go over well with Guardian readers.
Among the many [225+] comments, this one was upvoted the most: "J G Ballard is the first name that springs to my mind when thinking of writers who write presciently of climate change, particularly The Drowned World and The Burning World. Literary fiction may simply be the wrong genre, but in science fiction it's not exactly an unusual theme. Strange use of the word 'relegate' there, as though science fiction is somehow an unworthy genre."
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nospater fifth 19h ago
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Absolutely. That the Ghosh excerpt from his book article ignores Ballard's 1960s climate fiction seems extraordinary - and Ballard isn't even a ghettoised sci-fi writer, he's about as literary mainstream as they come.
Not that Ballard's fiction was about climate-change as a human-inspired phenomenon (any more than High Rise was about class warfare), but that hardly disqualifies it...
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Hawkfish fifth 18h ago
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Yes, he's pretty sneering about science fiction, which is apparently a generic outhouse surrounding the manor house of literary fiction. He seems to have forgotten that aristocrats living in manors are rarely the first to see the future coming, especially when they don't pay attention to what's going on in the outhouses.
He seems to have completely missed David Brin's Earth and Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, as well as the Ballard novels you mentioned.
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DoctorLiberty Hawkfish 18h ago
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Pretty much all of Bacigalupi's stuff deals with climate change, read them this year. Also read Peter F Hamilton's first trilogy which is set in an England that's mostly underwater. I'm not even looking for climate change related fiction but I can't seem to avoid it!
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MattAndrews 20h ago
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I think the problem is amplified by limiting the field to the somewhat arbitrary constraints of what is regarded as literary fiction. Given that climate change is a nightmare whose worst episodes are yet to come, the genre of cli-fi (speculative fiction that is focused on climate change) is where the action is... and there is some marvellous work happening in that field.
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DoctorLiberty MattAndrews 18h ago
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"I want to read SF but I don't want to do anything so crass as reading SF."
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ReallyThink MattAndrews 17h ago
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Sure yeah worst episodes are yet to come... just like global cooling (70s), acid rain(80s), ozone layer depletion(90s) and various other fictions that we seem to have survived ok.
Did I miss the article in the Guardian this week covering... "According to an investigation by David Rose for the Mail on Sunday, the Centre for Climate Change Economics (CCCEP)at the London School of Economics (LSE) has snaffled £9 million in UK government grants by claiming credit for studies it had not funded and for papers published by rival academics." ??
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peccadillo ReallyThink 17h ago
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Do you really think that acid rain and ozone layer depletion are fictions? The reason we have survived them is that reasonable people accepted the evidence for them and enacted legislation to reduce the emissions which cause them. Unfortunately, reason seems to have gone out of the window as far as climate change is concerned, because the action required to get it under control sounds the death knell for fossil fuels. For crude financial benefit, some extremely influential lobbyists are determined to prevent that event, regardless of the cost to humanity.
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Linda Ellis 18h ago
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By definition a story that deals with extrapolation of current events or "what if" ideas is Science Fiction .
It is intellectual snobbery to consider such work as being relegated to some second division. Some of the most interesting writing is going on in this genre and if you wouldn't read it because of the label then you are the loser.
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WalkerRN 19h ago
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Isn't most of the stuff written by Deniers fiction?
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CriticallyPrompt WalkerRN 18h ago
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No; the opposite.
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JulesBywaterLees CriticallyPrompt 17h ago
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oh, you mean it is supposed to be parody?
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Paul F. Getty 15h ago
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Remember that global warming is all but ignored in the mainstream media, except by the Guardian. It just isn't on people's minds, including writers. The fossil fuel industry has worked hard to keep it that way.
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newellalan Paul F. Getty 14h ago
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And the 1%, their media and politicians have worked hard to avoid the verboten discussion of human numbers that fuel many environmental ills. The 1% need an eternal increase in consumers. The only part of life they can see is the bottom line--and it is driving the 99% over an environmental cliff.
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peggyschuyler Paul F. Getty 12h ago
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really? i come across it a lot. it bores me now, mostly, because i think that the ship has sailed. all those ridiculous, tiny measures proposed while keeping the economy aka capitalism going.
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GreatCthulhu 15h ago
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the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction
and
it arises out of the peculiar forms of resistance that climate change presents to what is now regarded as serious fiction.
And therein lies the problem with this article. The problem isn't the cultural impact climate change or its effect on the literary zeitgeist, it is the application of such a hackneyed and reductionist literary view. Arguably, Cormac Mac Carthy and Margaret Atwood's dystopic speculative fiction as evidenced in "the Road" Oryx and Crake" and Margaret Atwood's excellent accompanying novels fit the citeria to be classed as science fiction. Please try and accept this. I hope the realisation doesn't make you choke on your cornflakes.
Some of the acknowledged greatest "serious fiction" writers of the canon have engaged in writing speculative fiction.; H.G. Wells; Trollope; Orwell; Huxley; Vonnegut; etc. etc. etc. and I think that writers such as Jo0hn Wyndham or P.K. Dick (and many others)could easily rank aside them. The problem isn't the engagement of "serious fiction writers", it is the lack of engagement by certain critics with "serious fiction writing" that strays beyond their general understanding or the limited world view of the themes and tropes that "serious fiction writing" should possess.
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GreatCthulhu GreatCthulhu 15h ago
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Sorry about all the typos. I was sad and angry!
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JamesValencia GreatCthulhu 14h ago
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To cheer you up a little: I liked the piece. I didn't see what you did, obviously, in particular I didn't see the division in genre you're hinting at there, since the piece covers a very wide range of fiction going from period drama to sci-fi.
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Fliz4b GreatCthulhu 13h ago
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Yes, the damaged environment--and the wealthy's adaptations to it-- are frequently mentioned in Atwood's Oryx and Crake.
Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, with its Ice 9, is another strong example of post apocalyptic fiction on the environment.
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DWGism 18h ago
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"the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction. It is as though in the literary imagination climate change were somehow akin to extraterrestrials or interplanetary travel."
'Relegate'? Interesting insight into the author's view of science fiction, especially when we're regularly sending probes to other planets. Of course SF, which has long been a literature set on exploring contemporary trends, has amassed a substantial body of work on climate change, some of it going back to before the current thinking on the subject, when the possibility of a new Ice Age was still being discussed, most memorably in Arthur C Clarke's "The Forgotten Enemy" (1949).
But moving to contemporary views of climate change, we see it featured in books like David Brin's Earth (1990), Bruce Sterling's Heavy Weather (1994) and Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 (2012), the Science in the Capital trilogy (2004, 2005, 2007) and arguably Green Mars (1994). In contemporary works by other SF authors, climate change is simply part of the accepted background, but then SF/F has always been a literature accepting of change.
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JulesBywaterLees DWGism 17h ago
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Scifi is one of the few genres where really big issues can be explored on a more personal level- with the exception of survival which is pretty stock in much fiction.
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congenialAnimal DWGism 17h ago
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I was going to say, I can think of a number of novels that deal both explicitly and implicitly with climate change. You have mentioned them all here. I would also add in Baxter's Proxima and John Christopher's works such as the Death of Grass and the World in Winter. We could also at a stretch include Frank Herbert's Dune novels but as that is non terrestrial perhaps that one is questionable.
As you say, this analysis says more about the conceits of the author and the somewhat myopic view of what constitutes literature.
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catch18 13h ago
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I am reminded of the 1968 Mel Brooks film "The Producers". The play being produced was: "Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden.
In the play, Roger De Bris (the director) says in despair: "The whole third act has got to go. The Germans are losing the war!"
I bring this up facetiously. But we are in the third act as to our time on this planet. And we are losing the war. Every time I bring the subject up of climate change, no one and I do mean no one, wants to talk about it. Sorry about the loose connection with Mel Brooks but it seemed apt - IMHO. And if people won't even talk about the subject it's easy to figure they don't want to read fiction on it.
Our time of waiting for the end of the third act will not be so long.
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snowwalling 19h ago
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Sadly Dr Ghosh who lives in the VIP elite mansion of "literary" fiction, as opposed to those outhouse gutter low rent genres of "illiterary" fiction like sci-fi and spec fiction and clifi and ecofiction which he so loathes from his mansion in Broolyn, sadly Amitavji is proscriptive about what kinds of fictions novelists in the West can deploy to talk about climate change issues. For him, "it's my way or the highway. " He is so wrong. JG BALLARD started the ball rolling in the 1960s. Wake up Dr Ghosh. Do you homework. Genre fiction rocks and can dance circles around so called literary fiction.
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leonzos snowwalling 18h ago
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Genre fiction rocks and can dance circles around so called literary fiction.
Both is the very weather
(not either)
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chatrobinson snowwalling 18h ago
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Damn right. Snowwalling, You beat me to it with Ballard, he was ahead of nearly everybody on climate change. And lots of other stuff too. When you look at the world at the moment Super Cannes and Cocaine Nights don't seem too far removed from current reality.
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TheSphincter snowwalling 16h ago
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Like it or not scifi is niche fiction. Not a reflection on scifi itself merely the reality of modern media.
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EGriff 20h ago
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Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Green Planet' is a novel covering the practice of science and the effects of climate change... highly recommended
It is also the most optimistic book I've ever read - even in the face of catastrophic weather induced by climate change, the protagonist meets each challenge with ingenuity, compassion and resolve.
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PhiKappa EGriff 17h ago
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Also his trilogy beginning with 40 Days of Rain.
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Levitation32 17h ago
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Such a long article from someone who clearly can't see outside of the ghetto of Literary Fiction, meanwhile publishers put the vast number of novels set in a future affected by climate change into the category of Science Fiction. Open your eyes and make some effort
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camulan Levitation32 17h ago
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Totally agree. I just looked at the title and thought "what?"
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Mark Palmer 15h ago
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What an utterly inane, pointless article.
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JamesValencia Mark Palmer 14h ago
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Really ? Glad you liked it too.
I was quite a read, but most interesting I thought. Lots of thoughts about fiction through the ages, and concluding with some convincing and novel thoughts about why fiction doesn't deal with this impending doom much.
We appreciative readers need to make a noise here BTL :)
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unclestinky JamesValencia 11h ago
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Have to say I thought it windy and a bit dull, especially from the author of the splendid non-fiction In an Antique Land
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Fossilised 17h ago
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The Grapes of Wrath?
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Erik Frederiksen 13h ago
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A facebook post about a cute pet will get orders of magnitude more "likes' than a post about global warming.
People are definitely avoiding this subject. The subject won't avoid them.
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KenFine 18h ago
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With a few exceptions, the literary mind doesn't 'do' science very well. We can see the worst examples of this in what happens when film scriptwriters attempt to tackle climate change - Waterworld and The Day After Tomorrow being the most egregious efforts.
That said, I was impressed by The Road. We aren't told what the cataclysmic event was in the film, but an asteroid strike is the most likely explanation, given the environmental depiction. This would have caused huge climatic upheaval, including a global shut down of photosynthesis. A supervolcano eruption is another possible explanation.
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JulesBywaterLees KenFine 17h ago
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I think there is a line where the old man mentions that we could see it coming but did nothing about it - a bit of a cover all.
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Pagey KenFine 15h ago
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It was clear to me it was nuclear war in the film.
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JohnHughes Pagey 14h ago
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It's pretty clear that it doesn't matter -- the problem is the loss of society, not the reasons for the loss.
In Brin's "The Postman" society is destroyed by survivalists -- leading to the death of most people. Death by irony.
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FrostAndFire 18h ago
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It's in science fiction. I know that's not a genre that most literary writers and critics would deign to consider, but it's still there.
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sbw7 FrostAndFire 17h ago
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Also, as he points out in the article, when a writer does make climate change part of the novel, it gets classified as SF anyway.
So the problem lies with literary criticism, not authors, books, or readers. Which is why I don't think its a problem worth bothering with.
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VincentVenger 18h ago
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I refer the panel to Dark Mountain Projects and their writing manifesto. They produce a volume of essays and poetry every quarter I believe. Writing from China, I hope to submit to the forthcoming issues.
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loopine 18h ago
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Almost all modern novels focus on close interpersonal relationships. Climate change doesn't impact much on these and they don't have much impact on climate change. In the few movies about climate change it always reverts to the same cliches, a chase, a father rescuing a child.
One of the few really good books about environmental catastrophy is The Death of Grass. I wont do a spoiler.
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aoidh loopine 17h ago
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I think this goes to the heart of the problem. It seems to prove difficult to explore this immense issue through anything other than a human-interest synecdoche - which inevitably becomes about the human interest first and foremost and not about the issue. In addition, climate change itself can only be framed as collective agency, but fiction thrives in the representation of individual agency.
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peccadillo loopine 17h ago
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A saga that spans several generations should lend itself nicely to this topic. Wish I had the ability to write it.
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loopine peccadillo 17h ago
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You would need more than a few generations. There is a form of women's novel, the one about three women in different times or places and how they are the same or different. This form could be applied on a wider timescale than usual.
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sergeantfox 16h ago
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the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction.
"Relegate" to science fiction? Hmm, no literary bias there by the author at all.
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GreatCthulhu sergeantfox 15h ago
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I wouldn't give him tenure in MY English Department with mid-twentieth century prejudices like that!
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JohnHughes GreatCthulhu 14h ago
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Yes but, GreatCthulu, Miskatonic University is so dank at this time of year.
And as the sea level rises you're going to have some problems with the Deep Ones...
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zavaell 16h ago
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Mankind is in collective denial about climate change, nobody wants to emerge from their cozy cocoon (those in wealthier countries). You only have to look at BBC Question Time to get a sense of the 'unimportance' of climate change - on the BBC's part because they dare not annoy a denialist government, ont eh audience's part because the subject is rarely aired in populist media and, in particular, because David Dimbleby quashes the subject if it ever arises. He finds it 'boring'.
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loopine zavaell 16h ago
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BBB current affairs are obsessed with with Westminister Parish politics and party leadership issues, much like trainspotters and football fans follow their respective obsessions.
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ID130524 18h ago
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Good points-but depends on a narrow definition of 'literary'. Kim Stanley Robinson has spent most of his career writing novels about climate change. He probably reaches many more readers than the 'lit-fict' genre.
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PatLux 20h ago
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Julie Bertagna’s award-winning EXODUS series has introduced many young adults to the consequences of climate change. Ask for her novels at your public library. Use the libraries or lose them.
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snowwalling PatLux 18h ago
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And Liz Jensen, RAPTURE, which Dr Ghosh does mention in his essay book.
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Duxk 13h ago
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The Daily Mail?
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coplani 18h ago
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There is so much misinformation going around today.
I believe climate change is real, simply because of the number of vehicles on the roads and that number is increasing by the day. The scientific evidence is clear.
Burning of fossil fuels will continue as there is no alternative at this time.
Consider for example the hype around electric vehicles being spouted today....
Here’s the thing about Electric Vehicles...
Electricity needs to be generated, fossil fuels don’t.
Car batteries need to be charged, Conventional engines don’t.
Vehicle engines are big...Just as Diesel engines replaced Steam engines size was the same.
Consider millions of electric cars on the roads , The electricity must be generated by something and that generator is an engine...a steam engine. So an engine is required to generate electricity to charge batteries to drive electric vehicles.
What size of engine is required to drive a million electric engines, or charge batteries to drive electric vehicles.?...Ans...a huge engine powered by...fossil fules or nuclear etc.
We don’t get something for nothing.
The efficiency is no better large scale or small scale when it comes to engines...A million small engines can only be replaced by one almighty big engine or engines powered by you know what....fossil fuels or nuclear and the losses wasted in electicity distribution is also huge. Waste heat is also huge.
Musk hype will go down in history...$Billions spent on electrric vehicles and "Man on mars"....Never before in the history of man has there been so much hype...Mars is uninabitable fullstop....There are vast area here on Earth that at present are uninhabitable and would it not be more sensible to attempt to make those places here on Earth habitable.??
Politicians are drawn into this hype as the money swirling around is huge...But it will not solve climate change.
As far as I can see, there is only one hope and that is carbon capture....But no politician is interested in this idea...Instead they chase after the hype that electric vehicles will be the answer to everything.
Electric cars today are just a rich man's toy to play with, but is useless on a grand scale.
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Noiseformind coplani 18h ago
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... brought to you by The Automakers Association.
(puking...)
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WalkerRN coplani 18h ago
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Electricity is increasingly being produced by renewable energy sources.
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martinRmartin coplani 17h ago
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Large power stations are much more efficient than car ICEs .
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AcquaMinerali 16h ago
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"where is the fiction about climate change?"
The environment section of the Guardian is a good place to look ...
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talkingAtTheSameTime AcquaMinerali 16h ago
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hardy har, you so witty.
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AcquaMinerali talkingAtTheSameTime 16h ago
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I'm here all week.
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talkingAtTheSameTime AcquaMinerali 15h ago
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mores the pity
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OccasionalNewsMedler 17h ago
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If writing of climate change is to relegate a work to science fiction, does that make the Man Booker Prize equivalent to the Rumbleows Cup?
As others have stated the lower leagues have been writing informed and eloquent stories centred around environmental disaster and climate change for quite some time. To the pile I'll add John Brunner's "The Sheep Look Up" and "Stand on Zanzibar", part of his so called "Club of Rome" quartet named for the think tank of the same name.
I like your characterisation of 'realist' fiction as a 19th-century stentorian patriarch disinheriting and exiling those family members who deign to broach his taboos. It's precisely this sense of starched collars, approved haircuts and coverings for the piano legs that bedevil literature and literary criticism. Dare to write of certain subjects in certain ways and they'll write to the TLS and say 'Ugh...' Those stern letters and reproaches do have consequences for editors and for writers. How many ideas and drafts have been rejected by the risk-averse managers of bottom lines for fear of the reaction and subsequent 'relegation' to the pulping installation? Better for all to call it genre where it might sell.
It is interesting that you mention poetry's ability to disregard the boundaries of acceptability. Is it that poetry is rarely about what looks good on a table in Waterstones, or what star rating it'll get in the Guardian, or what will make the shortlists of the annual prizes? Or is it that poetry has always been able to take time to look around itself and take in a landscape for the sake of itself, while literary fiction tends to have its mind on the minds of others? No time to stand and stare, too much time caring about the constraints of a narrative or character development.
To answer your challenge: A crisis of imagination? Definitely not. A crisis of culture? Perhaps, but one that's been going on for a long time and that encompasses a much larger range of subjects than solely climate change.
Maybe literary fiction will end up like Paddy McAloon's broken-hearted lover, seeking the meaning and solace found in the sweet but excessive September rain so much, it ends up drowning in it.
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OccasionalNewsMedler OccasionalNewsMedler 15h ago
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Another couple of strands of thought.
Does literature has an intimacy problem. Those cultural movements of the past that may have been more at home to the topic of climate change, such as the Romantic movement and Sturm und Drang, were either far more visual or were on stage. Recitation is at the heart of poetry and fairy-tales and children's stories where one is more likely to encounter tornadoes in one's path and where realism can take a hike. Part of what a novel is, is an intimate experience the reader has alone with the book. A retreat from the real, the weather and any notion of change. Perhaps climate change is something to be performed rather than read?
Then again maybe it's a matter of class. Notions of hierarchy inveigled their way into this article in an uncoded manner. Literature is exclusive. The boundaries are hard. The rules apply to everyone, but doubly-so to genre, the punishment being ostracism from the bookshop's main sequence, but for those safe within the walls of the literary, they can be bent and raise only a knowing smirk. As long as one's indulgences are seemly and infrequent. Climate change has the whiff of science. It has its own exclusive rules known to those privy to the arcane conceits of the scientific method. Woe betide those who assume knowledge that cannot be tested and evidenced. The arguments rage, the temperatures rise and storms threaten to consume the blithe and unresearched.
There. Are. Graphs.
Clearly writing about climate change is declasse and fraught with hazard. Take it seriously enough for your protagonist to gaze at the clouds a paragraph too long and the ostrakons with your name on will be flung.
You can tell it's a Friday. I'm taking Guardian opinion pieces too seriously.
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NeverMindTheBollocks 17h ago
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where is the fiction about climate change?
greenpeace.org has a huge stock of it that they keep adding to.
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WaitForPete NeverMindTheBollocks 16h ago
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Another one who can't tell the difference between scientific fact and things the can't comprehend
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Fergus Brown 17h ago
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Err... David Mitchell also springs to mind,with Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks, and John Brunner in the early 70's; The Sheep Look Up, etc.
The main problem is that the environment, the world of a story, is generally the context, not the subject, with Ballard et al providing rare exceptions.
Writing a narrative set in any future world affected by climate change is not so difficult, but making that world the main focus is much harder.
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snowwalling 18h ago
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When Dr Ghosh starts off his cockamamie oped this way, you know he did not do his homework, since every major newspaper or book review in the UK and USA has reviewed climate-themed novels in the scifi and clifi genres: "It is a simple fact that climate change has a much smaller presence in contemporary literary fiction than it does even in public discussion. As proof of this, we need only glance through the pages of literary journals and book reviews. When the subject of climate change occurs, it is almost always in relation to nonfiction; novels and short stories are very rarely to be glimpsed within this horizon. Indeed, it could even be said that fiction that deals with climate change is almost by definition not of the kind that is taken seriously: the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction. It is as though in the literary imagination climate change were somehow akin to extraterrestrials or interplanetary travel.'' Amitavji, my friend, the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), Slate, Salon, Grist, Inverse and even the New York Times has taken note of genre novels about climate since at least 2013, including NPR the USA radio network, and in the UK the BBC and the Guardian itself has published articles, opeds, and reviews about climate-themed novels and movies since 2013 as well. Who are you kidding, sir? Please come down to Earth and deal with what it, not with what you think is. Because as you can see from the many comments here, you are so so wrong about this. PLEASE, SIR, WAKE UP! You are hurting your own cause.
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sherpa_10 snowwalling 18h ago
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Are you serious? He's saying exactly what you're saying. People discuss it when it shows up (as non-fiction or genre fiction) but there are very few works of contemporary literary fiction that deal with the matter.
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JohnHughes sherpa_10 14h ago
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Yes, when you define "contemporary literary fiction" as "not science fiction" you discover that it doesn't deal with the things that science fiction deals with.
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mcgravitas 14h ago
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Where's the fiction anout climate change? It's coming out of the mouths of Conservatives, Republicans and other likeminded geniuses.
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Pagey 14h ago
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What a snobbish piece.
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JamesValencia Pagey 14h ago
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Hi Pagey, long time no read, how's things ? I liked it myself, this piece. A bit long, of course, it was quite a read.
Have a wave from an old cif-before-the-fall person :).
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DrTeeth34 18h ago
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A contemporary dose of CC fiction is provided by the final part of "the Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell. It's very scary, realistic vision.