Saturday 29 June 2013

A man of many talents. One of which involves creating a literary term which is being used more and more by readers, publishers, novelists and the media day by day. Dan Bloom created the term back in 2007 because he believed that novels relating to climate change and global warming needed to be recognised in a world which is constantly affected day in day out by these issues.

After reading an article I wrote for The Artifice arts platform, Dan Bloom himself, much to my astonishment, contacted me via Twitter and offered me the opportunity to conduct an email interview with him. I was very glad to speak to Dan and would like to thank him for answering my questions and for allowing me to pick his brain. Here is the interview (with some minute edits to the format of the interview as I've made the transition from email to blog):

TK: Which cli-fi novels would you recommend to someone who has never read one?

DB: There are some famous cli-fi novels written by well-known writers, beginning in 1962 with British writer named JG Ballard whose cli fi novel titled THE DROWNED WORLD would be a good start, if someone wants to go back that far in time. I would also recommend Barbara Kingsolver's recent novel titled FLIGHT BEHAVIOR. And THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD by Margaret Atwood is another cli fi novel to explore. It is part 1 of a three-novel trilogy Atwood has written, with the third part of the trilogy coming out this September and titled MADDADDAM. For cli fi novels that are not famous or bestsellers, but which I feel help introduce the cli fi theme to readers, I recommend Hamish MacDonald's FINITUDE, Gareth Renowden's THE AVIATOR and Jim Laughter's POLAR CITY RED. They all push the envelope and are well worth reading.


TK: How did you gain an interest in novels relating to the climate and global warming?

DB: I have been working quietly in Taiwan as a global climate activist since 2006 when I finally woke up about the ozone hole, the huge amount of co2 emissions we humans are unleashing into the
atmosphere and how climate change and global warming might spell the end of the human species within the next 30 generations of humans, about 500 years. The more I studied climate issues, the more I realized that artists, writers, film directors could have an important role to play in helping wake people up about the dangers we face as a species on this Earth.  I am not a novelist myself, nor a short story writer. My background is in journalism and blogging, and in PR or public relations. So I wanted to use my PR background to help push this CLI FI term up the hill. There has been some resistance but for the most part, it's catching on bit by bit.


TK: Have you any tips for anybody who wants to consider writing climate-fiction and wants to get their work published? How would you suggest they go about it?

DB: First, read a previously published cli fi novel, from Nathaniel Rich's new novel titled ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW to Kingsolver's FLIGHT BEHAVIOR, which I just ordered myself from Amazon. Familiarize yourself with climate issues, study the science and the psychological aspects of climate denialism and create a plot and a time frame for your book or short story and start writing. The main thing is to tell a good story, and not to preach. The story will carry the work to the readers, so make it a good story with believable characters we will care about. To publish it, either find an agent or an editor who is interested or publish it yourself and promote it yourself. The main thing is once you have your theme and your cast of characters and a good plot and outline, dig in and never give up. Even a self-published book will reach readers in this internet age.


TK: What is the funniest reaction you have had about the creation of the term cli-fi?

DB: Some bloggers have joked that the term sounds to them like "clit fi" for clitoris fiction, or clit lit. Both women and men have joked about that. Then another person told me just the other day that at first he thought I was talking about ''CLI FI'' as a ''CLI (Command Line Interface)" in computer tech talk. But most of the reactions to the CLI FI term have been serious and positive, and newspapers and websites in Italy, Spain, China, Sweden, Germany, Holland and Lithuana have been mentioning the term recently, too, in those non-English newspapers and websites. In Holland they call it "Klai-fei".


TK: In the future would you ever consider cli-fi to exist separately from science-fiction instead of as a sub-genre?

DB: Readers and editors will best decide that question and time will tell. For now, I see cli fi as a subgenre of sci fi. But if cli-fi catches on and we see many more climate-themed novels in the future, as I am sure we will, then cli fi could eventually become a literary genre of its own. Time will tell.


Some further intriguing comments from Dan:

Mike Gerra, on his own blog, spoke about cli fi in a very focused way, and I'd like to quote him here: ''The world of fiction is populated with hundreds of different genres — most of which were
invented by clever marketeers anxious to ensure vampire novels (teen /horror) don’t live next to classic works (literary) on real or imagined (think Amazon) book shelves. So, it should come as no
surprise to see a new category recently emerge: cli-fi.'' ''Short for climate fiction, cli-fi novels explore the dangers of environmental degradation and apocalyptic climate change. Not light reading for your summer break at the beach. But, then again, more books in this category may get us to think often and carefully about preserving our beaches — and the rest of the planet — for our kids.''

When Mr Gerra says that ''more books in this category may get us to think often and carefully about preserving our beaches — and the rest of the planet — for our kids," I can only applaud his words. He hit the nail on the head.


I would like to give my thanks once again to Dan Bloom for putting great thought into his answers and for his time in doing this interview. I for one have had my mind opened to how people concerned with literature and its media; develop its content, terminology and its influence on the world.