chapter 14 The Rise of the Climate Change Novel Axel Goodbody and Adeline Johns-Putra One of the readiest pieces of evidence of a new climate imaginary in the Anthropocene is climate change fiction or climate fiction. In this chapter, we consider the parameters of the phenomenon, outlining its emergence and summarising the key means and modes with which fiction has so far represented climate change. While climate fiction started by approaching the issue within the framework of existing popular genres such as science fiction, the thriller, and the disaster novel, authors have broadened the range of approaches in the past ten years, blending these and other genres. We pay particular attention to the extent to which climate fiction has worked within the established conventions of literary realism. 1 In order to capture the complexity of the challenges that climate change poses to individuals and societies, climate change novels must meet the many representational challenges mounted by climate change, confronting not just the invisibility of climate as opposed to weather, but also the gulfs between the standard, quantitative discourses of climate and the imagina- tive language of literature, as well as between the unprecedented scale of climate change effects and the human dimensions of fiction. We therefore discuss examples of literary realism, and consider their ability to render the abstract and intangible phenomenon of climate change visible, and relate it to readers’ lives. However, we argue that there is also a significant body of writing on the subject which turns to alternative forms and narrative strategies in the effort to represent climate change, and manages to over- come some of the limitations of realism. In other words, where climate fiction meets the challenges of representing climate change, it has the potential to provide a space in which to address the Anthropocene’s emotional, ethical, and practical concerns. 2 1 For a more extensive exploration of the relationship amongst climate, time and literary realism, see Chapter 15 by Adeline Johns-Putra in this volume. 2 For a critique of climate fiction’s ability to meet the ethical demands of the Anthropocene, see Chapter 16 by Claire Colebrook in this volume. 229 use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108505321.015 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Surrey, on 03 Aug 2019 at 15:36:55, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of