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A Cli-Fi Story: Winter Solstice in Antarctica

A Cli-Fi Story: Winter Solstice in Antarctica

Antarctica deglaciated and uplifted, as it could appear ten thousand years after the Great Warming of the 21st century (from global warming art). 

The text below is part of my cli-fi novel “Queen of Antarctica” that one of these days I might be able to publish, somewhere. The novel takes place in a remote future and it is based on the idea that, after the runaway climate change of the 21st century, the survivors managed to colonize the extreme North and the extreme South of the planet, including Antarctica. And here is how their remote descendants living in Antarctica would tell the story. Note that the story assumes a relatively warm Antarctica, but it reflects the peculiar conditions of a civilization living near the South Pole that would experience six months of light followed by six months of darkness.In this world, people would spend the dark winter in a sort of hibernation. For them, seeing the stars in the dark sky would be something special, worth celebrating. 

Children, come. Come here, because this is a special night. It is the night when the Moon is highest in the sky, and the night when the Moon starts to go down and, slowly, to let the sun come back, and give us light again after the long winter night. And we call this night the night of the winter solstice.

So, children, you have been sleeping through the long winter night, but now you are awake, and it is good that you are awake because this is a very special night. It is the night when we all wear heavy clothing and we go out to look at the stars! Yes, children, the sky is dark during the solstice night, and this night is darker than all the other nights of the year.
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Cli-fi is all the rage

Cli-fi is all the rage

Apocalypse_vasnetsov

The Four Horsemen: Eco-apocalypse appeals to writers  and readers.
Image: Viktor M Vasnetsov via Wikimedia Commons

Need a last-minute present? Stuck for some new year reading material? Then how about a thriller on a world in climate-caused turmoil?

LONDON, 26 December, 2015 – It’s some time in the not too distant future. The American mid-west has turned into a dust bowl. Birds are dropping out of the sky. Cities are encapsulated in domes so that people can breathe clean, if recycled, air. 

Billions of refugees, victims of drought and famine, are on the move. The streets are full of violent gangs and human traffickers. Pandemics are breaking out. 

Welcome to a new literary genre – climate fiction, or cli-fi. 

Some of it might be sensational, some of it not exactly great literature, and some downright depressing, but there’s little doubting cli-fi’s growing popularity. 

Cli-fi – along with its elder brother sci-fi – is now considered part of modern literature’s classification system. Though some titles make only a passing reference to climate change, while others are more concerned with murder, mayhem and sex than with global warming, others are more thoughtful, science-based works. 

Well-established novelists have used climate change as a backdrop in their books. 

“Whether fictional or factual, the coming decades don’t sound like a picnic. It’s a scary scenario, and we’re largely unprepared”

The prize-winning writer, Ian McEwan, in his 2010 novel Solardescribes the world of physicist Michael Beard – a man of apparently insatiable sexual and culinary appetite – and his invention of a system for solving the global energy problem. 

Margaret Atwood, the Canadian poet and novelist, has often used environmental catastrophe as a theme in her work: her trilogy MaddAddam graphically describes global floods and battles with criminals. Ultimately civilisation – and the environment – is rebuilt.

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