Dystopia Archives - ClimateCultures - creative conversations for the Anthropocene

Finding the Tipping Points with Thrutopian Fiction

Sustainability researcher and writer Denise Baden discusses the challenges of thrutopian fiction — writing stories to entertain, raise awareness of effective climate action and inspire sustainable behaviours — and her latest thrutopian novel, The Philosopher and the Assassin.

1,645 words: estimated reading time = 6.5 minutes

In his recent ClimateCultures post, Rod Raglin casts doubt on the claims of thrutopian fiction to set out a roadmap to a better future — “writing our way to a future we’d be proud to leave to the coming generations”, as thrutopian champion Manda Scott puts it. In his article Rod sets out the practical, political and economic realities that would need to be addressed before we have any chance of a better future. Many of these seem intractable and the charge levelled at the thrutopian fiction produced so far is that it fails to address these. Another charge is that when it tries to, it comes across as “more didactic than entertaining.”

Rod is right that it is very difficult to write fiction that is both entertaining and will raise awareness of climate policies that are likely to work and/or inspire more sustainable behaviours. I know because I have tried it.

Showing the cover of 'Habitat Man', a novel by Denise Baden. — ‘Habitat Man’, by Denise Baden (2021)

Thrutopian fiction — changing behaviours

The first draft of my novel Habitat Man was appalling — everything I wanted the reader to know went in and it was didactic and clunky. I needed to write it then edit it out, just to get it out of my system. But by the final draft, I believe I pulled it off. An award-winning radio drama writer liked it so much she asked to put it in for a BBC Radio 4 adaptation and it got to the final round. It was the best seller in my bookshop for two years and reviews on Amazon are genuine and enthusiastic. In terms of behaviour change, research found that of 50 readers surveyed one month after finishing the book, 98% had adopted more pro-environmental attitudes and 60% had adopted at least one of the green alternatives mentioned in the book. These ranged from simple things like home composting and wildlife-friendly gardening, to campaigning. You can see the results in a link in the notes below.

Another novel, Visco, winner of the 2020 Green Stories novel competition sets out a quite plausible means by which a new society emerges from an old one. David Fell, himself a sustainability consultant, tells the story of a music festival on a small island within the UK that sets up a side festival for those who need care and their carers as part of an inclusivity drive. When the music ends, no one wants to go home and so they don’t. Step by step and overcoming one challenge after another, a more sustainable community based on the values of care emerges, attracting even the wealthy and powerful to its cause. Importantly, it’s also a damn good read!

I would claim that every story in the anthology No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet is thrutopian fiction. Several have been expanded into other forms. For example, one story imagined the ocean being given nation status and was developed into the novel Fairhaven, written by chemical engineer Steve Willis and writer Jan Lee. This sets out in fiction form a roadmap to how Malaysia could mitigate and adapt with respect to climate change.

The Philosopher and the Assassin: the evolution of a work

Another short story in the anthology was written as a standalone novella The Assassin, which is available also an audio book and as a play, Murder in the Citizens’ Jury. It imagines eight people in a citizens’ assembly debating climate solutions. The whodunnit element provides the drama and mystery. The context raises awareness of this emerging form of participative democracy, which I believe is an essential first step to real change. It also allows climate policies to be explored from the perspective of a variety of people, each of whom relates to them in different ways. Murder in the Citizens’ Jury was performed in 2024 in a sellout run, and later, a school put on an abridged one-hour version. It was interactive and the audience voted for their favourite climate policies. The director told me people were still debating the ideas days later. You can see reviews, details and feedback at the Green Stories link in the notes below.

Professional theatre companies can access it via Lazybee scripts, but it’s available royalty-free for any school/college drama groups and amateur theatre companies to stage if they approach me direct.

Thrutopian fiction: showing the cover of 'The Philosopher and the Assassin', a novel by Denise Baden (2025)

Inspired by the success of the theatre production, and wanting to reach a larger audience, I’ve included the ideas from the play as a story within a story in a novel, which was published by Habitat Press on 1^st October: The Philosopher and the Assassin. A script version won the 2024 Writing Climate Pitchfest, and it is literary fiction: think campus novel meets moral philosophy meets murder mystery! The goal is thrutopian — it aims to entertain and suggest some of the key leverage points that could tip us in the direction of a sustainable future. Here is a brief description:

There’s no more important job in the world than educator, and no subject as necessary as moral philosophy. The trick is getting the students to turn up. So, when the Dean proposes the controversial concept of education entertainment, Professor Iris Tate goes all in with a moral philosophy course based on a whodunnit that all assume is hypothetical — a murder in a citizens’ assembly on climate. A variety of characters provide an entertaining source of ethical dilemmas, but what the students don’t know is that the ultimate dilemma is very real, and their conclusions will have far-reaching consequences.

Reviews so far have been reassuringly positive:

“At once a commentary on the looming responsibility of the climate crisis and our ever-shrinking opportunity to enact meaningful change, and a far from conventional whodunnit, the book plays with the notion of what is moral and what is right. Complicit in the book’s central sprawling philosophical dilemma, the reader finds themselves judge, jury and executioner in the case of the century. While the novel tackles prescient and troubling themes and poses difficult questions (how far should we go for the greater good?), it does so with a sense of dry humour and a delightful eye for the absurd. Above all, the warmth and resilience of its ineffable protagonist suffuses the narrative and, as the story ends, we struggle to leave her behind. Not only is this a timely, thought-provoking and essential story in an age of urgent, innovative climate action that demands the attention of us all, it is a thoroughly enjoyable read. Funny, memorable, characterful and original.”

— The Literary Studio

“Denise Baden’s campus novel/whodunnit is so much more than just an up-to-the-minute academic locked-door mystery, it’s a philosophical treatise wrapped in an exposition of the polycrisis, embedded in a love story, threaded through with alternative democracy and grounded in explorations of grief, motivation and drive. Full of sharp ideas, subtle humour and grounded in the harsh realities of our world, you’ll come away with a whole new understanding of our world and what it takes to change it!”

— Manda Scott, author of Any Human Power and Boudica series.

“If facts are ignored, fiction may be our next best hope. With its story-within-a-story, The Philosopher and the Assassin cranks up the dramatic tension around whether we will achieve the carbon transition, or not. Ultimately, a surprisingly hopeful read.”

— John Elkington, author of Tickling Sharks: How We Sold Business on Sustainability

“A sharp, witty take on the climate crisis – from someone who knows what they’re talking about.”

— Wren James, founder of the Climate Fiction Writers League

Rod, I welcome your feedback!

I’d love to meet some fellow ClimateCultures members and readers, so if you’d like to come to the The Philosopher and the Assassin book launch in Winchester, UK on 11^th October, you will find details below.

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Denise’s novel The Philosopher and the Assassin was published on 1st October. The book launch is on 11th October in Winchester, UK: details and booking here.

Denise mentions Manda Scott, whose novel Any Human Power (2025) is published by September Books. Manda discussed thrutopian fiction and more in a recent episode of the Life Itself podcast, and she and Faith Tilleray run the Accidental Gods podcast and programme “exploring how we can create a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations to come.”

You can find thrutopian stories and features at Bending The Arc — “towards a thriving future on Earth”, and Green Stories runs a series of writing competitions across various formats to solicit stories that showcase what a sustainable society might look like.

Denise’s novel Habitat Man (2021) and her novella The Assassin are published by Habitat Press and are available in paperback and as ausiobooks amd eBooks on all major platforms, including Amazon (where you will find the reviews Denise mentions). Denise summarises the research into readers’ responses in Habitat Man in Research on her website.

Visco by David Fell, No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save our Planet (edited by Denise Baden and Steve Willis), and Fairhaven by Steve Willis and Jane Lee, are also available on all major platforms. You can find reviews and information about the performances of the play Murder in the Citizens’ Jury here.

In his ClimateCultures post, Thrutopian Fictions: Ways to a Better Future?, fellow writer Rod Raglin asks if thrutopian fiction’s solutions-focused approaches to our climate predicaments address the real challenges: how to overcome our reluctance to make the sacrifices needed to get through the hardest times and towards a better future?

Denise Baden

A professor of sustainability and a writer, who founded the Green Stories project to create a cultural body of work that entertains, informs and inspires transformation ...

Thrutopian Fictions: Ways to a Better Future?

Writer Rod Raglin asks if Thrutopian fiction’s solutions-focused approaches to our climate predicaments address the real challenges. How to overcome our reluctance to make the sacrifices needed to get through the hardest times and towards a better future?

1,180 words: Estimated reading time = 4.5 minutes

Thrutopian is described as literature that avoids the pitfalls of both dystopian – paralyzing by depicting bleak futures – and utopian narratives – disconnected from the realities of current challenges. Instead, thrutopian stories are rooted in plausible solutions for getting through difficulties and towards a better future.

But do these thrutopian stories take into consideration economic realities, political expedience and an electorate that only considers their immediate needs? Do they address the reality of climate change that is already having a devastating effect on many parts of the planet?

Facing up to power …

For years, Canada has been struggling to meet the commitments it made in the 2016 Paris Agreement, involving reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The major policy initiative of federal government was to implement a carbon tax, a mechanism that puts a price on carbon emissions, aiming to encourage individuals and businesses to reduce their carbon footprint. A charge is levied on fuels like gasoline, diesel, and natural gas, increasing their cost to consumers to incentivize fuel efficiency and the use of lower-carbon alternatives.

In addition, it responded to public pressure about the environmental hazards of pipelines and introduced a strict environmental review process that discouraged further expansions.

That was until Donald Trump got elected and declared economic war on his neighbour.

In response to Trump’s tariffs and the impact on the Canadian economy, the first piece of legislation passed by newly elected Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, was to eliminate the carbon tax. His rationale for axing the tax was to “make sure our companies are competitive, and the country moves forward … it’s focused on building this economy.”

Also being reviewed (and likely modified), is the government’s policy to have all Canadian car sales powered by a battery, fuel cell or plug-in hybrid system by 2035.

In addition, old plans to build other energy projects are being revived by giving provincial governments “the environmental authority to approve pipelines”.

Before you could say “what the frack!”, the BC provincial government had passed The Infrastructure Projects Act, giving itself broad powers to override existing environmental regulations and authorities and expedite approval of major projects, public and private. “We’re not in the business of turning away investment in British Columbia,” said the premier of the province, David Eby.

Just to make sure no investment is being turned away, The Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions is undergoing a review of the policies and programs of CleanBC, the province’s climate strategy.

How do environmental principles stack up against economic realities? They don’t.

Nearly three-quarters of Canadians supported getting rid of the carbon tax and the renewal of pipeline projects. Apparently, the threat of becoming the ’51^st state’ far exceeds that of a climate catastrophe.

… and climate realities

Though wildfires are a natural part of the Canadian boreal forest life cycle, higher temperatures and drier conditions, caused by climate change have resulted in more frequent and severe fires and a longer fire season.

Showing Haze sun, a photograph by Rod Raglin — Haze sun. Photograph: Rod Raglin © 2025

This year’s fire season — the second worst since 2023 — has seen 3,092 wildfires that have consumed 5.17 million hectares (as of July 12, 2025). Officials with Public Safety Canada say the greatest fire danger is still to come and expected to be in the Northwest Territories, the Yukon and southern British Columbia.

I live on the west coast, and regularly wildfire smoke drifts in from the interior, making the sun appear as an orange ball and creating a haze that burns the eyes and throat. On some days, the air quality in Vancouver is the worst on the planet, and we’re advised to close windows and stay indoors. For inland communities, it’s far worse.

While Canadians worry about how tariffs will impact our economy generally, and their livelihood specifically, it’s not an existential threat, like having breathable air.

Like alcoholics, who must hit bottom before they’re motivated to sober up, Canada appears to not be there yet – environmentally speaking. As the results of our last federal election proved, we are still a society that prefers to pay less to fill up the family SUV than contribute to the mitigation of global warming.

Writing towards a better future

In the midst of this ‘reset’ of environmental priorities has emerged thrutopian literature with its “plausible solutions for getting through difficulties and towards a better future.”

A quick look at a few of the titles suggests that other than the name there’s little difference between this genre and eco-fi or cli-fi – other designations that have emerged for environmental fiction since I began writing it in 2010.

The difference between my books and these newer ones appears to be issues of subtlety and practicality. In my novels, environmental issues are not in the forefront but presented only as a subplot that must eventually be addressed in practical ways for the protagonist to achieve their goal. The few thrutopian titles I’ve reviewed flip this around, presenting the environmental problem foremost and the characterisation secondary. In my opinion, this approach makes the narrative more didactic than entertaining – usually a turnoff for the reader, though time will tell.

And though this new fictional category attempts to present possible solutions to mitigate the environmental crisis, I saw no evidence it addresses how to overcome our reluctance to make the sacrifices necessary to implement them.

This was the issue I set out to answer when researching my novel, The Triumvirate – Love for Power, Love of Power, the Power of Love. What I discovered was it’s a lot harder to create a better future than envision one – human beings notwithstanding. Political and economic issues take precedence over the environment, and it is only when “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”*, do we realize we’ve made the wrong choice.

I’m sure this new sub-genre will thrive. Who doesn’t want to choose hope over despair, the positive over the negative, delusion over reality? It’s easier to suggest that we still have time to prevent the worst-case scenario even while that scenario is playing out in front of us.

This is the reality of thousands of wildfire evacuees every Canadian summer (actually, fire season is now April through October, depending on where you live) as they idle away the hours in evacuation centres worrying if they’ll have a home, or for that matter, a community to return to.

* ‘The Second Coming’ by W. B. Yeats

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Rod writes about his novel The Triumvirate in his previous ClimateCultures post, Power, Love, Religion & Climate Fiction: Life Imitating Art, discussing how a story about power, love and religion finds echoes in our unfolding climate crisis and how we try to come to grips with a hostile and uncertain future.

You can read a Writers Rebel interview with novelist Manda Scott about her thrutopian novel, Any Human Power. And ClimateCultures member Denise Baden writes about her own approach to writing to a better future in Social-science fiction or Thrutopia?

Rod Raglin

A journalist, publisher of an online community newspaper, photographer and writer of novels, plays and short stories that address the human condition and serious environmental issues ...

Spellcasters – a Dance with the Real and the Uncanny

Author Rajat Chaudhuri discusses the backstories and inspiration for his most recent book, Spellcasters, and how they connect to the plot of this novel, which is part psychological thriller, part climate adventure with a twist of the occult.

1,470 words: estimated reading time = 6 minutes.

The most common question that authors get asked at literary events is the genesis question. Where did you begin a particular work, what was your inspiration or some variations of the same. I find coming up with a response difficult, because there is obviously no single starting point and beginnings are also part of a flow.

Spellcasters: Showing Rajat Chaudhuri at the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival (2024). Screenshot. — Rajat Chaudhuri at the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival (2024). Screenshot.

The writing of Spellcasters, which is my most recent climate novel, had been in a large part influenced by the opening up of the Indian economy to global economic forces and the rising tide of conspicuous consumption it unleashed, aggravating the climate crisis, driving resource exploitation, and affecting the environment. In this book, my attempt has been to weave together elements of fantasy and magic with a story of mental illness to portray the impact of this opening up on individuals and society.

A flavour of these changes brought on by globalisation and the human costs of unfettered growth can be found in this description near the beginning of the book, when the scientist Vincent Dutta drives to his lab outside the city of Aukatabad, where he is conducting secret experiments with psychedelics under orders of a shadowy corporate entity:

‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ pulsated through the car speakers, as the first of the flyovers zipped by. Glassy shopping malls, the steel and chrome geometries of mega corporations flashed past, shimmering in the heat. The burning air echoed the howls of farm labourers whose bones were turning into buttery dust under the newly-sprung city of glass. In hoc signio vinces!

Showing the cover of Rajat Chaudhuri's novel, 'Spellcasters' (2024) — Cover of Rajat Chaudhuri’s novel, ‘Spellcasters’ (2024)

Psychedelics in certain ways are quaint and old-world, but think of our social media addiction, which is mediated through a dopamine rush, and how this can affect mental-well being. So the story can be considered to be an allegory of such modern addictions (consumerism being another) that is driving people crazy.

Later on, as we are introduced to the main character, business reporter Chanchal Mitra, who gradually gets affected unpredictably by these changes, his transformation, much of which drives the narrative, is echoed in the ways the cities of Anantanagar and Aukatabad, partly modelled on Calcutta and Delhi, are transforming because of the onslaught of globalisation:

It is around this time of the attack on the Chief Minister that it begins. We grow feet, more and more feet, like centipedes. Jet engines thunder above us in droves, desire kisses the stratosphere, dirt’s swept away, miasma vacuumed. They even demolish the hovel where Akbar lived near the river bank, but I manage to get him a place in an abandoned warehouse belonging to the rail company.

Frenzy, feverish frenzy overtakes us all. We move at a dizzying pace. Steel, concrete, cement, stock market pulse beats, exotic vacations, infotech gurus and aerodrome-sized establishments to lose freedom, win it back again.

Within the storyworld, this unbridled growth impacts the planet as the burden of aspirations also begins to have an effect on minds. In Chanchal’s city, Anantanagar:

The immense heat of the afternoon is an attack on civilisation. This year, it is worse than the last. The avenues of Anantanagar shimmer in the fiery blaze, tar melts like liquid nightmares, the art-deco mansions hiss and crack while hulking SUVs climb mirror-clad avenues swooping up into jannats of petroleum dreams. Unnoticed in the mountains, the glaciers melt away, drop by drop—like the terminally ill shuffling along till the end, glioblastomas growing, the teardrops of a future waiting in the wings. Sorcerers crouch at every corner, casting spells, selling hope and tricks.

Here onwards it is a story of how globalisation and limitless growth not only changes the familiar and impacts the environment, but also affects the mind of Chanchal.

Spellcasters – a shadowy realm

While researching mental illness, I was lucky to be granted extended interviews with the well-known psychiatrist Anurag Mishra who also happens to be a student of the great psychoanalyst-author Sudhir Kakar, who recently passed away. And the fact of my character’s mental afflictions is also nuanced by my readings of Kakar, especially where he compares Indian and Western healing traditions in Shamans, Mystics and Doctors. Which is perhaps how the element of occult and secret societies enter the story, invoking a shadowy realm where the uncanny and the improbable dance in step with the real.

Just as growth picks up, so do emissions and other environmental impacts, many borrowed from reality, and we have unnatural rains in a desert, blinding smog blanketing Aukatabad, landslides in the Himalayas, all of which in turn advance the plot of the novel. In this process, the settings and the environment of Spellcasters almost become characters, or actants, shaping the story in particular ways.

Showing the Inside cover of ‘Spellcasters’ (2024) — Inside cover of ‘Spellcasters’ (2024)

All along, climate change and an altered environment play important roles in driving the narrative as the fortunes of the simple man Chanchal and a powerful business tycoon are affected by the planetary forces. The city of Aukatabad, much like the real city of Delhi, remains blanketed in smog:

Morning tastes like a scrapyard. Morning smells like a farm fire. The yellow-grey walls of smog had grown darker. For days and weeks the dust of the desert, swept by freak and untimely storms, had thickened the haze and now the city was suddenly engulfed in coarse dust. It holds the streets in a stranglehold, blurring the borderland between night and day.

We know very well that the pursuit of limitless growth, in the absence of environmental justice and social safeguards, can have devastating effects. The weak and the vulnerable without proper state intervention get left out of the growth story while also suffering the most from climate impacts. When Chanchal loses all his money and has to skip meals he thinks:

I imagine heaps of rice on banana leaf plates and the aroma of fish frying in the wok. Mustard oil, that’s what we prefer. But now I could even do with a dal fry, but it is not for me. Food is not for me tonight. I am not for food tonight. I slide the menu below the carpet. There will be thousands all over this unhappy land who will go without food tonight, and many more nights. I will join their ranks, this last night in the city of kings.

Elsewhere, in Chanchal’s hometown:

The poor of Anantanagar, who had set up small shops everywhere—and those from the villages whose lands had been snatched by the smart cities and tech academies—creep and crawl all over, overflowing into the shopping malls, fighting with the uniforms, snatching careless cappuccino cups of dreamy-eyed duos sitting in sidewalk cafés on the boulevard that heads towards the river.

Limitless growth, planetary illness

Spellcasters is really about the spells cast by powerful ideas like limitless growth, our material aspirations and the indulgence in conspicuous consumption which together are not only ‘infecting’ the living planet, one of its symptoms being climate change, but also affecting our minds. The mirroring and interactions between this planetary illness and individual illness, portrayed through mental affliction, forms the conceptual background of the novel.

In between there is the business tycoon, who goes by the name JRK, with a world domination plan fuelled by the power of psychedelics. As the story progresses, conflicts arise between Chanchal and this tycoon, which put both their lives in great danger. Besides, there is also the ever present possibility of a secret society of occultists who may or may not be working to save humanity from the wicked designs of the businessman. If we look around us, we will find how the plot of Spellcasters often seem to mirror realities of our times.

Having been a climate activist for many years it was natural for me to create the character of JRK presiding over a global business empire, as a personification of the ambitions that drive resource exploitation and endless growth. But JRK has many shades, and a very dark past, all of which propel this story of planetary crisis towards its denouement.

Will it be magic and the occult that is decisive in the story or is it the planet itself that will strike back at human ambition, and restore some balance, symbolic or otherwise? Read the book to find out!

Find more

Spellcasters is published Olive Turtle an imprint of Niyogi Books and is available from bookstores and online.

A review by Kousik Guhathakurta for Scroll (January 2024) described Spellcasters as “a modern saga blending climate fiction with a sardonic take on city-bred consumerism.” And author Amitav Ghosh calls the novel “a phantasmagoric journey through an alternative reality of collapsed time, hallucinatory visions and spectral visitations: an unexpected and unsettling rollercoaster ride.”

You can find more of Rajat’s work at his website, and his new middle-grade work of climate fiction will be published in June 2025: Wonder Tales for a Warming Planet.

Rajat featured as part of the ClimateCultures Quarantine Connection series in 2020. We shared his piece, Heat or the Iceberg Chill – a translation of a poem by Novera Hossain, and part of Rajat’s project to translate 100 Bengali poems by non-mainstream poets – on Day 23 of our 40-day series.

Rajat Chaudhuri

A writer of climate novels and co-editor of solarpunk collections, closely involved with the climate movement, who writes and speaks about climate, literature and possible futures.

School Strike For Baby Hope

Writer David Thorpe introduces his forthcoming climate fiction collection, School Strike For Baby Hope, and explores how our imagined futures must include the costs and dilemmas of better pathways, even where we avoid the worst of climate change.

1,440 words: estimated reading time = 5.5 minutes

In November, just in time for Christmas, my new collection of climate fiction short stories will be published by Android Press. The ten stories have been published elsewhere, often in obscure places. For example, the title story, School Strike For Baby Hope, was published by Extinction Rebellion on one of their websites.

Cautionary tales and possible futures

If a citizen living in pre-20th century Britain were to be told that in the future they would be able to travel anywhere in the world in a few hours, to buy any food from anywhere in the world at a local shop throughout the year, have free healthcare, most likely live until their 90s, and hold a device in their hands which could give them any kind of knowledge they asked and permitted them to talk to anyone in the world, and to see their faces, they would think the future was some kind of paradise. Well, we live in that age and we know different. We have threatened ourselves with the end of life on Earth — including our own end — in order to have these unnatural luxuries. We know the cost.

It seems to me that in imagining a future free from climate change we must be careful to imagine what kind of costs that might have. Every decision presents a dilemma. The purpose of governance is damage limitation; minimising the negative consequences of any decision. Unintentional consequences must be thought through. Climate fiction consciously does this.

Some of these stories are about the unintended consequences of action on climate change, so they serve as cautionary tales. These stories – At the Crux and For the Greater Good – reflect my interest in ‘one planet’ thinking – the ecological footprint as a measure of sustainability. I asked myself: if the country set itself the same task as one planet development in Wales – of satisfying the needs of inhabitants within the confines of a global fair and equal distribution of environmental impact – what could be the implications for the population? Living like this would demand monitoring of the entire ecological impact of the country and dividing it by the population each year.

School Strike for Baby Hope and Beacon arose from my experience of being in my local Extinction Rebellion group. We had many successful actions in Swansea and joined the national demonstrations in London. School Strike For Baby Hope appeared in Teens Of Tomorrow: Stories of Near and Far-Flung Futures, which explored possible futures through the stories of twelve courageous teens.

Showing the cover of 'Teens of Tomorrow' - published by Odd Voice Out Press © 2021 - featuring David's story 'School Strike for Baby Hope' — Teens of Tomorrow – published by Odd Voice Out Press © 2021 – featuring David’s story ‘School Strike for Baby Hope’

What else is cli-fi? If you read the Wikipedia entry it cites Jules Verne’s 1889 novel The Purchase of the North Pole as an early harbinger, which imagines a climate change due to tilting of Earth’s axis. His Paris in the Twentieth Century, written in 1883 and set during the 1960s, has Paris have a sudden drop in temperature, which lasts for three years. Wikipiedia lists J. G. Ballard’s climate extremism novels from the early ’60s and then, as knowledge of climate change increased, says fiction about it really started coming out, one of the earliest being Susan M. Gaines’s Carbon Dreams.

Should we always go with our imagination?

Imaginative works can be used to reinforce people’s prejudices, too, such as Michael Crichton’s State of Fear (2004), which was pounced upon by climate sceptics for reinforcing their view that climate change was some kind of conspiracy.

Then we encounter lots of dystopic films. From Fritz Lang’s 1927 Metropolis and Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 Modern Times, through George Orwell’s 1948 book Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Lucas’ 1971 film THX 1138, Mega-City One from Judge Dredd, conceived in 1977, to Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner, and The Day After Tomorrow (2004). They have all set the template for many other stories and films, such that in the popular imagination the sprawling mega-cities of the future will largely be over-populated, polluted, broken places, featuring dark towers, high levels of surveillance and crime, their citizens treated little better than battery-reared animals, and no room for nature.

But is the dystopic metropolis a self-fulfilling prophecy, subconsciously, if not consciously, reinforcing the mindsets of planners and architects? Does it soften up the public, preparing them to acquiesce in the face of grim and unimaginative design, polluted air, poor policing and service levels, corrupt or inefficient governance, long commute times, constant noise, high levels of personal danger?

Is this the reason why people do nothing despite being bombarded by the truth about the future and climate?

I think we need comedies about climate change and the future. For this reason, I have included The Chernobyl Effect and The Last Laugh in the collection. These are stories from my body of work about the character Doc Chaos, a darkly satirical character in the tradition of William Burrough’s Doctor Benway and Alfred Jarry’s Doctor Faustroll. This is dark comedy, exaggeration for comedic effect. Making people laugh is a way of slipping things under their radar.

Showing the cover for The Chernobyl Effect & The Last Laugh - stories of David's Doc Chaos character — The Chernobyl Effect & The Last Laugh – stories of David’s Doc Chaos character

The End

These days I spend all day in a wheelchair because of cervical myelopathy. I have become unable to feed myself or use both my phone and computer. The only way I can write this article is to dictate it, as a friend is kindly typing it for me. I have written elsewhere that my stroke in August 2021 was caused by high blood pressure and a result of climate change stress.

I now think that my present condition, and the fact that I see no hope in my future again, is a mirror of the present and the future of the planet as a whole. I wish it were not so, but I can’t believe anything else. For example, as the average temperature of the planet has risen, so has the myelopathy of my spine, and just as we find tipping points such as the melting of the ice caps in climate change, there are tipping points in my body when the nerves in my spine become trapped and suddenly I find I can no longer do something, like feed myself, that I could do yesterday. Then I think to myself “What will happen before it ends?”. And I’m glad I won’t be around to see the world shrivelling up as it gets too hot. Unfortunately, my sons will.

Look after yourselves and find something you love and stick with it.

Find more

School Strike For Baby Hope will be published by Android Press in November 2024. As well as other fiction — including novels Stormteller and Hybrids — David has written several books on sustainability, including One Planet Cities: Sustaining Humanity within Planetary Limits and The One Planet Life: A Blueprint for Low Impact Development. Find out more at his website. And you can read David’s blog on Substack.

The Fifth Estate published A personal story about climate anxiety and illness from our UK writer David Thorpe in August 2021: a “personal account of his illness and its connection to his absolute commitment to avoiding the worst of climate change. It’s a sobering and very worthwhile read”, where David talks about the link between climate stress and the stroke he had recently suffered. That article also links to his story Don’t Follow Leaders, which David wrote for the publication.

In previous posts for ClimateCultures, The Rise of Climate Fiction Part 1 and Part 2, David explores how the term ‘Cli-fi’ reveals the tension between our twin fascinations with utopian and dystopian visions, how fiction engages readers with human stories within the climate change one, and writers’ responsibilities — given that “stories are fundamentally how humans understand and spread wisdom as well as entertain themselves.” David also contributed a piece for our Environmental Keywords theme on Environmental Justice.

In 2017, David was one of our inaugural authors at ClimateCultures. He was one of the short story writers, poets and non-fiction writers commissioned to produce new writing at Weatherfronts climate change conferences for writers — two TippingPoint events that also inspired the creation of ClimateCultures. In Utopia and Its Discontents, he explores the thinking that went into his winning story, For the Greater Good, which was included in the free Weatherfonts ebook anthology published by Cambria Books.

David Thorpe

A novelist, scriptwriter and writer of comics and graphic novels, as well as a non-fiction writer on carbon-free energy and sustainable development.

Dystopian Farming: An Inquiry

For animist farmer and author Paul Feather, 2024 brings a creative inquiry into ‘dystopian farming’ as resistance as well as sustenance, and a search for joy and meaning that makes our dire times tolerable: the potential for liberation.

1,100 words: estimated reading time = 4 minutes

I have been farming for twenty years, and I’ve had some success in growing food. Enough success that people ask me lots of questions about it, and that I have several hundred pounds of sweet potatoes, yacón, pumpkins, and potatoes stacked in crates in the cellar alongside shelves full of canned tomatoes, pears, and pickled everything. Enough that I don’t feel overworked in producing all of this. I have been farming for twenty years, yet I still don’t feel like I know how to do it — even less do I know how to talk about it or how to answer your questions about farming.

Farming dystopia. Showing Full Life Farm in the lower piedmont of the Appalachian mountains. — Farming dystopia: Full Life Farm in the lower piedmont of the Appalachian mountains. Photograph: Terra Currie © 2023

Whether I have answers or not, people continue to ask how my farm works. So, in pursuit of these answers that I don’t yet have, in 2024 I will make an inquiry into what I do. I shall call it ‘Farming Dystopia’, because I feel that dystopia best describes our cultural and ecological context. I resonate with the words of Potawatomi scholar Kyle Powys Whyte who points out that “some indigenous peoples already inhabit what [their] ancestors would have likely characterized as a dystopian future” in which settler colonialism has so drastically altered people’s environment that it is harder to obtain the traditional foods and materials that they have relied on for millennia. He emphasizes that in spite of this unfortunate reality, “we do not give up by dwelling in a nostalgic past even though we live in our ancestors’ dystopia.”¹

This dystopia does not only affect Indigenous people (even if it does affect them most severely). We all live in a world of façade and confusion, where every practice, including farming, requires some not-quite-tolerable measure of exploitation half perceived, but partly veiled by the cognitive dissonance that makes it possible to get through the day. The present dystopia is a soul-numbing experience for anyone, at best; and a terrifying and dangerous one for far too many.

Farming for liberation

If I would honestly describe my farming methodology, acknowledgment of our dystopian context would have to be the jumping-off point. I am farming within a dystopian context. I am inside The Matrix. It is Nineteen Eighty-Four, and this is a Brave New World. Dystopian farming is a means of sustenance and also resistance. It is a frank admission of our dire context, but also — maybe even primarily — a search for the joy and meaning that makes that context tolerable.

This inquiry originates as an attempt to answer questions about my farming methods, and so its initial structure will be blog-like: if I can’t ‘explain’ my methods, perhaps I can narrate them every week or so. However, I would also like to de-center my own methods, because farming is extremely context-dependent. I have no real way to know whether my particular methods will be helpful for people with different access to land, different body types, different social and family structures, different climates … different everything. In the dystopian context, the value of a method is in its potential for liberation, and I don’t know how much my methods can liberate others, especially people with less privilege than I have enjoyed. I would like to be able to answer that question.

If my inquiry is to be successful, it will also have to include other voices, other platforms, and other knowledge. Perhaps it will evolve away from a personal blog to become more like a book, a zine, or a journal article. If there is dialogue, we could even borrow the format of a podcast.

For now, I will inquire and write. My initial reflections have been about the curious mix of liberation and obligation that goats bring into my life. As I make small daily movements in preparation for spring seeding, I will snap pictures and share thoughts about how to coax another round from the dirt. What do I owe the dirt for this?

Dystopian farming in dialogue

As I hope to include others in this inquiry, I think it is helpful to situate dystopian farming in a broad dialogue about global agriculture. Without making prescriptions about what people should or shouldn’t be doing in contexts that I haven’t experienced, I hope I can narrow the scope of the inquiry in a way that invites the participation I am looking for.

I think that dystopian farming should be agroecological and radically holistic. Agroecology is a broad framework that includes dimensions of science, social movement, and practice.² It is true that like many frameworks, the concept of agroecology is partially coopted by institutions³, so for this inquiry we retain the multidimensionality of agroecology and emphasize its roots in peasant social movements such as La Via Campesina.⁴ We also use it as a framework that addresses multiple scales: from the ecology of a single farm plot all the way to the global food system as a whole.

This inquiry will naturally interact with dialogue about permaculture — which along with ‘regenerative farming’ seems to have captured much of the imagination of the ecological farming movement — but we should critique these frameworks for their extraction of Indigenous farming practices while failing to integrate Indigenous critiques of modernity. Permaculture and regenerative agriculture have also failed to credit Indigenous people for their intellectual foundation or adequately address the legacies of settler colonialism. This is not something I will critique on the basis of morals or ideology, but because the approach I describe as dystopian farming is radically holistic and acknowledges that failure to integrate these critiques makes our farming practice more damaging to the land, weakens our social movements, and undermines our scientific foundation.

Full Life Farm. Design: Terra Currie

Finally, dystopian farming is pragmatic. There is room for abstract discussion — and possibly even fiction — but in the end we must have sweet potatoes and a cellar to put them in. Obviously my initial inquiry is personal and fundamentally anecdote, and perhaps that is all it will ever be. But this is also an invitation — or maybe it’s a manifesto to co-create something far more interesting than anecdote or my personal critique of a farming ethos that fails to address the deeper crises of our modern dystopia.

References

[1] Whyte, Kyle Powys, “Our Ancestors’ Dystopia Now: Indigenous Conservation and the Anthropocene”, in The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities (2021, Routledge).

[2] Steve Gliessman (2018) Defining Agroecology, Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 42:6, 599-600.

[3] Omar Felipe Giraldo & Peter M. Rosset (2017) Agroecology as a territory in dispute: between institutionality and social movements, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 45:3, 545-564.

[4] Val, V., Rosset, P. M., Zamora Lomelí, C., Giraldo, O. F., & Rocheleau, D. (2019). Agroecology and La Via Campesina I. The symbolic and material construction of agroecology through the dispositive of “peasant-to-peasant” processes. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 43(7-8), 872-894; Rosset, P., Val, V., Barbosa, L. P., & McCune, N. (2019). Agroecology and La Via Campesina II. Peasant agroecology schools and the formation of a sociohistorical and political subject. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 43(7-8), 895-914.

Find out more

You can find Paul’s Farming Dystopia blog at his website with Terra Currie, where they discuss Full Life Farm — the ecological experiment they established in 2007 on five acres in the lower piedmont of the Appalachian mountains – as well as present their art and writing and health and education work.

Paul Feather

An animist farmer and author whose artistic interests include the courtship of landscapes for food and seed and translating animist thought into the language of physics.