Samantha Harvey
T茅a Obreht
Abi Dar茅
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Kaliane Bradley
Roz Dineen
Climate fiction is, ahem, hot right now. But I am still not sure we know exactly what it is. Certain novels are so obviously about climate change that no one could argue with that classification. One example is Kim Stanley Robinson鈥檚 The Ministry for the Future, which reads like a non-fiction account of runaway climate change in our near future.
But it is rare for a novel to take on climate change in such an upfront manner, so the question of what ought to count as climate fiction remains an open one.
Last year, when the new prize was announced, the organisers devoted a page of their website to this subject. 鈥淒efining climate fiction is no easy task,鈥� they wrote. 鈥淭he climate crisis is so intrinsic to our societies and our place on Earth that there is an argument to say鈥� that 鈥榓ll fiction is climate fiction now鈥�.鈥�
A good point, but one that moves us no closer to a definition. With the first prizewinner due to be announced on 14 May, and for the purposes of this article, I read the five books that made it onto the shortlist to see what might be learned from them.
First up is the Booker prize-winning Orbital by Samantha Harvey, a novella about a group of astronauts on the International Space Station. It is light on plot, but high on literary merit. I guess it makes some sense to label it as climate fiction in that it makes you think about Earth being precious. For me, it is a pretty marginal call, though, just as it was when Orbital was classed as science fiction in 2023, when it was published.
The climate crisis is so intrinsic there is an argument to say that all fiction is climate fiction now
Then there鈥檚 The Morningside by T茅a Obreht. It is a coming-of-age story set in a post-climate change future, with some magical elements, or at least a strong streak of whimsy. Personally, I think it is a big stretch to call it cli-fi, unless we are going to class most dystopian books that way.
Next comes And So I Roar by Abi Dar茅, the follow-up to her hugely popular The Girl With the Louding Voice (do read them in order by the way 鈥� starting with the second one doesn鈥檛 work). The books are about women鈥檚 rights, with climate change as a background element, so, again, calling it cli-fi is pretty marginal.
The fourth book is The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. It is a blast (I will write about it in depth another time), but referring to it as cli-fi is a bit of a nonsense.
In short, until I came to the last book, I wasn鈥檛 sure there was anything on the shortlist that would make sense, to me at least, as cli-fi. But then I read Briefly Very Beautiful by Roz Dineen.
She is a sensationally talented writer and the book grips you from the off. It is the story of a woman called Cass, and the three young children in her care, in a time of rapidly escalating climate crisis. You really root for Cass and the kids, and hope they make it to somewhere clean and safe.
The book isn鈥檛 just about climate change. It is also about motherhood, love, marriage, friendship and narcissistic abuse. It is the story of one woman鈥檚 extraordinary strength (and grace). There are many horrors of the human variety. But the biggest ogre in the story, above all the ghastly human ones that feature, is climate change. It underpins the story and drives it forward.
In my humble opinion, Briefly Very Beautiful is indisputably cli-fi, as well as being a brilliant novel in any genre. But in the end, like all genre questions, the truth is that if a book feels like cli-fi to you, then it is cli-fi 鈥� and that鈥檚 all there is to it.
Emily also recommends鈥�
Tim Winton (Picador)
No one is going to argue about classifying this book as climate fiction since it is about tracking down those to blame for runaway climate change. If I have made it sound boring, I promise it isn鈥檛.
Emily H. Wilson is a former editor of New Scientist and聽the author of the Sumerians trilogy, set in ancient Mesopotamia. The聽final novel in the series,聽Ninshubar, is out in August. You can find her at emilyhwilson.com, or follow her on X @emilyhwilson and Instagram @emilyhwilson1
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