One great thing about college, the main reason why we’re all here is to learn new things. Something I learned this term is the literary genre known as “cli-fi”. The thing that I learned about cli-fi stories is this: they are depressing and do NOT excite me about the future at all.

Pretty much every story we’ve read in class has been set in the very near future and seem as though they are in a post-apocalyptic society where the feel is that they’ll get attacked by a zombie at any point or die due to something completely random.

There was only one story this term we have read for this term even had somewhat of a happy ending (happy being used very loosely). The graphic novel was the only story that had the happier ending. The ending being more optimistic with no one dying… at the end of the story. The very end. Contine reading →

Now I know that we have already read the book and that we aren’t really going to be talking about the “Odds Against Tomorrow” novel but I just have a question that was never answered, nor brought up within the novel, and it’s the title of this blog post: What happened to Seattle after the earthquake?

We know with big cities such as New York and Los Angeles, that if they get hit with a major natural disaster then the downtown areas will get fixed and cleaned almost immediately. Since those cities make a lot of money. New York City and LA are both top television markets and for the entertainment industry, they need those cities to be okay because the most money is to be made there.

But what about the case of Seattle? I mean Seattle is still a very big city, population and land mass, so how would the rebuilding project go if Seattle were hit but some sort of natural disaster (for the sake of consistency, let’s just say an earthquake)? How quickly would the government respond to help Seattle? Seattle is one of the biggest cities on the west coast and definitely the biggest north of California. I only ask this question because the book mentions how badly Seattle was hit from the earthquake, even having the ones who watched the disaster strike naming them “Generation Seattle” but they never once mention how Seattle was at the time of the story was taken place.

This also makes me wonder about the city of Portland and if they were hit by some sort of disaster, the what would happen to that city? I know in terms of population, Portland is probably the smallest of the big west coast cities, but has one of the highest population growths among those cities. I read this article over the summer saying that Portland has a ridiculously high growing number of college graduates in the city and Portland is starting to become, somewhat of a destination spot for college grads because it has sort of the same feel as San Francisco and/or Seattle without the cost of living.

So, if Portland got hit with an earthquake, how many people outside of the Pacific Northwest would truly care? Assuming that more people outside of LA and/or NYC would care if those cities got hit with a natural disaster. Because it seemed like no one really cared to help Seattle rebuild after their earthquake because the novel never mentions a rebuild.

I also wonder why the author chose Seattle. Out of all the cities to be affected by an earthquake, he chose Seattle. In the near future, if a city were to be affected by an earthquake or a tsunami or whatever the case may be, does the government just say “oh well” even if close to half-a-million Americans call that city home? The story just made me wonder that point that no one seemed to mention.

When it comes down to climate change and global warming the rich will be the ones afloat when the oceans rise and flood coastal cities.

From what we’ve read in class about cli-fi stories, it seems as though a crucial element of the genre is the separation of rich and poor. How the rich are REALLY rich and how the poor seem as though they are living in a third world country even if they are living in the same backyard as the rich. The story that best represent this narrative discourse is “The Weatherman”.

Contine reading →

David Mitchell’s story “The Siphoners” is probably the one story that I could not truly picture as the future. Contine reading →