This novel by Jim Laughter (2011) is mostly forgettable, but at least it may be a start for a new genre.
They say that Americans spend almost three hours per day watching TV, which seems to be the world record. That means that a large fraction of their time while awake is spent into a fictional universe which has little to do with reality (that includes most of what is referred to as "news"). That may be the reason why Americans are the least concerned in the world about the threat of climate change. Apparently, fiction easily trumps reality, at least as long as the hurricane doesn't flood your house or the forest fire vaporizes it.
Apart from extreme cases, indeed, fighting fiction with reality is a hopeless task. Scientists know (or should know) this very well. For decades, they have been trying to convince the public that climate change is a serious problem and they have been doing that by writing incomprehensible papers that nobody even tries to read. No wonder that they had no success facing the fossil fuel lobby, which, instead, as been spinning one fancy tale after another; from the "hide the decline" conspiracy, to the "you forgot to take into account water vapor" accusation. Unless the public is hit hard by the consequence of climate change, they will always prefer a fancy tale to hard facts. And, even then, when reality strikes in the form of the various climate related disasters, they have other priorities rather than worrying about reducing their carbon footprint.
So, it seems that in the clash of fantasy and reality, reality usually succumbs, at least in the short run. Then, can we fight fiction with fiction? Could we transform climate change in a tale? Can we spur action on the basis of a tale? In principle, it should not be impossible: people act on the basis of their worldview and this worldview is normally largely based on narrative; just think about the current predominant vision, the one that says that liberism and the free market will solve all problems. Is it based on hard facts? Not at all, it is pure fiction.
So, a number of attempts at a new literary genre that goes under the name of "Climate Fiction", or "cli-fi" may explore the concept that dramatizing climate change could make it understandable to normal people. Does it work? Well, so far the attempts seen in this field have been less than memorable. One example comes to mind; "the day after tomorrow" of which it was said that "This movie is to climate science as Frankenstein is to heart transplant surgery." In terms of Cli-Fi novels, we seem to be gearing up for something interesting but, so far, the list of recent ones is very short and not especially impressive.
A cli-fi novel that I read recently is "Polar City Red", by Jim Laughter, published in 2009 by Deadly Niche Press. As a novel, it is, ahem.... let's say that it is not among the best novels I can think of. It starts from a reasonable - although not very original - premise; the idea that governments secretly created "polar colored cities" (of which the one of the title is the "Red" one) where a small number of people were to take refuge to escape the disaster created by global warming. But the development of the story is all based on cardboard characters and on a plot which goes nowhere and which has holes as big as a Siberian methane crater. If we really want to find something nice about this novel, let's say that if it is to be a start of a new genre, it is not really worse than the pulp fiction of the 1930s, which gave rise to what was later called "science fiction." After all, you have to start from somewhere!
