Fiction that centers climate change as a driving force of the narrative, exploring its causes, effects, or aftermath.
Cli-fi (climate fiction) places climate change at the center of the story rather than treating it as background. It can be near-future speculation, present-day realism, or post-climate-catastrophe survival narrative. The genre gained traction as climate change moved from abstract threat to lived reality, and it ranges from hard science extrapolation to deeply personal stories about loss and adaptation.
Climate change is the defining crisis of this century, and fiction that engages with it directly is finding a growing, passionate audience. Cli-fi teaches you to write about real-world stakes with nuance, avoiding both nihilism and false hope. It's also one of the most agent-sought categories in literary and speculative fiction right now.
A sprawling, multi-perspective novel imagining the political, economic, and social work of actually fighting climate change.
A thriller set in a drought-ravaged American Southwest, where water rights are worth killing for.
Literary fiction anchored by the eerie arrival of monarch butterflies in Appalachia, a sign that ecosystems are unraveling.
Set a scene 20 years from now in a place you know well: your hometown, your campus, your neighborhood. Change one climate-related thing (the river is dry, the winters are gone, a new species has arrived). Write a character going about a normal day in this changed world. Let the change be ordinary to them but unsettling to the reader.