In my opinion, Cli-Fi is not yet popular. The first time I heard about a work of cli-fi was the movie 2012. This movie goes through the events of an average American family who wants to survive with the wealthiest and most influential people in the world. The character Charlie Frost played by Woody Harrelson is a theorist who has been predicting all the disasters happening in the movie for years, but no one listened to him. This is like the cli-fi writers and movie directors right now. They are foreseeing the potential danger to our planet. Nobody believed Charlie Frost in 2012 because everyone though he sounded crazy and unstable. Everyone believed that these catastrophes couldn’t actually happen, and I think that is what people think of cli-fi books and movies.
The New York Times “Room for Debate” article answering the question: “Will fiction influence how we react to climate change?” have writers share their opinion about whether works of literature is working to spread to the word of global warming. George Marshall the founder of Climate Outreach Information Network says, “Stories are vitally important for us to make sense of climate change. The rational side of our brain can readily accept that this is a problem. But it needs the alchemy of stories to turn that cold data into the emotional gold it needs to mobilize” (Marshall). His point is very true because people can’t imagine facts and data they can only imagine the stories people share or stories they read. People need to be told what they should expect the future to look like. But that being said, everyone has different opinions of what the future looks like. So stories are different and inconsistent and that makes people not want to listen to them.
In class we left voicemails for the game and website Future Coast. Almost all the voicemails students recorded were negative. The timestream I complied with all the voicemails had family as the main theme because that seemed like the biggest concern. Children and parents were worried about the future and whether they would see each other again. These voicemails are tying to send the same message cli-fi writers are sending to predict what the future will look like for humans. Even though these voicemails were influential the question is how many people are listening to them and actually doing something.
All the writers in “Room Debate” believe that cli-fi is helping. Dan Bloom blog “Dan Bloom’s Cli Fi Dreamin’ Webzine” he states that “novels and movies have the power to change minds” (Bloom). While this may be true it is not changing enough minds fast enough. I agree with the novelist Sarah Stone who Bloom quotes as saying “If we survive, ‘it will be in part because of the books like this one (California by Edan Lepucki), which go beyond abstract predictions and statistics to show the moment-by-moment reality of a painful possible future, the price we may have to pay for our passionate devotion to all the wrong things’”(Bloom). This is a very accurate because many people don’t think global warming is an important enough topic. Most people think that the warm days in December are normal, but they’re not. People are not realizing the danger we are in because not enough people have heard or read the stories writers are predicting.
I agree with you that Cli-Fi is not a very popular genre as of now. I did not even realize that it was an official genre until I started taking this class. I think that it is going to take a couple years and some really big works to come out for it to start making a big difference. I think that we might be able to get to the point where cli-fi is more effective in a few years. Hopefully.
I also agree that this is not a very popular genre, but I think it can grow. We have seen the changes it has made in the film industry especially. That does carry some weight, though most of climate fiction seems to be in copy form. I hope that people will start to realize how big of a deal this is and change their way of life.
I think this is a really important point you make about cli-fi in film! I have a suspicion that if you asked people first about films that have to do with climate change or other environmental crises, they’d likely have more examples to draw from (e.g. Interstellar, The Day After Tomorrow, Snowpiercer, etc). Or in other words, I think, as you all point out, that the term “cli-fi” is not very popular or noteworthy yet, but that people are familiar with cli-fi works (at least in film) whether they know of the term or not. (Unfortunately because of the limitations of this course and a ten week term, we weren’t able to look at any cli-fi films)
I totally agree with your statement, “In my opinion, Cli-Fi is not yet popular.” For my blog, I interviewed two of my closest friends and one of the questions I asked was, “Have you ever experienced Cli-Fi in a book or story?” Both said “no” and said that they hadn’t even hear of Cli-Fi until I told them about it this term. I think that Cli-Fi is a great tool that we could use to educate people about global warming and it’s consequences, however, we need to make it known to the public that it exists first.
While I agree that cli-fi is not an uncommon genre, I believe that this is because our society is currently focused on a future apocalyptic culture. It’s almost as if society has lost hope in all future scenarios. The only positive futuristic movie that I can think of is “Back to the Future,” which is ironic because the second installment of the series is set in 2015. The focus of being in the future is all of the technology advancements that have been made, namely hover crafts, futuristic wardrobes, etc. There isn’t much of a negative connotation with the future.
Whereas when I think about movies today that are set in the future, “2012,” “I Am Legend,” “Avatar,” there is always a negative conflict with how society has developed. Whether it be that there is some sort of disease that spreads, as in “I Am Legend,” or that we have to practically create an entire new world, as in “Avatar,” there’s always a blame on humanity for doing something wrong.
So, even though I believe that cli-fi is not prevalent in today’s movies and literature, I think that it is definitely an issue that is indirectly brought to the table for discussion through the topic of an apocalyptic future.