I remember coming into the first day of class not knowing what to expect. All I knew about English 104 was that it was an Intro to Fiction class that would have an assigned topic on which we would focus, and on which our class would be revolved around. To my surprise the topic was Climate Change and I had no idea what to expect.

My initial thought was to get myself out of the class as soon as possible. All of my knowledge about global warming and climate change could be wrapped up in a couple Al Gore videos I had to watch in high school, and even then I couldn’t tell you much other than the fact I remember him saying the words “global” and “warming.” Yes I knew to recycle and to walk as much as possible and leave the lights off when I wasn’t using them and all that jazz.

I knew that global warming was in fact a real thing, and I knew that it was/is happening, but at the same time in my mind, I kept thinking “but nothing is happening.”

But still, I wasn’t sure as to what global warming really was, and to be completely honest I’m still no expert. But this I do know, after reading and being involved in a class that focuses on post-apocalyptic settings having experienced the consequences of something that has happened DUE to climate change, today, I sit up a little straighter and pay attention when I hear the words “global” and “warming.”

Since being introduced to Cli-Fi, I’ve found myself thinking about some serious issues that I’d never thought about before. Not actively thinking in a state of paranoia like protagonist Mitchell Zukor in Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich (the novel we just read in class), but at random times, zoning out in class, drifting in thought in the comfort of my own home, I would think;

“What if I had to hunt, like physically sneakily hunt, for WATER?”

“What if something bad happened, an accident, a fire, a night when I’d had one too many, and I needed to seek medical attention, and there were no hospitals?”

“What if they were unable to create a vaccine for this strain of meningitis that has recently hit our campus and already killed on of our students?”

All very real illustrations of things that have happened and that are happening in these pieces of climate fiction. And the worst part? No one is able to do anything about it except keep on carrying on until they eventually die, or there is some form of resolution.

That is another thing that has ignited some sort of response in me, the lack of a resolution.  A lot of theses stories end with a message of hopelessness. It seems in most genres of literature, and in most forms of entertainment, there is an ending where everything falls back into place and for the most part, everything is “how it should be” again.

That is the issue with cli-fi, it makes you feel as though something is missing. But when you think about it, that makes sense because nobody knows how to totally resolve the issues that have arisen from global warming. So when writing about it, it would be untrue and a bit too fictitious to have a “and they all lived happily ever after” ending.