After the deadly hurricanes, come the ‘cli-fi novels’ and movies

People often ask me what’s the use of the cli-fi genre term? If all it’s good for is teaser headlines and eyeball-grabbing subheadlines, in addition to academic papers and conferences around the world, what good can cli-fi actually do?

Good question.

The answer is this: after the deadline hurricanes and typhoons and floods and heatwaves, cli-fi novels will begin to appear in print in many countries, and not just in English. French writers and German writers and Italian writers and a few Japanese and Chinese writers will pen cli-fi novels and a few Hollywood producers will adapt the novels into screenplays that will reach movie theaters worldwide in the mid-2020s, around 2025 of 2028.

We still have a long way to go.

At the moment, for the time being, cli-fi is going nowhere. It’s just a term, good for magazine editors and marketing mavens and academic workshops and tweets. There’s even a hashtag for cli-fi novel #CliFi designed and created by Lisa Devaney in London.

But until the novels and movies follow, cli-fi will amount to nothing. Cli-fi is not about marketing or PR or headlines or college workshops. It’s about novels, movies, poems, stage plays, operas, you name it. The arts. Cli-fi is for the arts.

So in the aftermath of a spate of deadly super-storms in Asia, Taiwan, Japan, Canada and the USA, the novels will flow, the movies will be produced.

But wait, this takes time. Give cli-fi another 10-15 years to produce results. The results are coming. If you’re a reader, be patient. If you’re a writer, start writing now! And if you’re are concerned about global warming and climate chaos, find out more about cli-fi and start reading up on it. Cli-fi is here and it’s coming soon. Give the writers time!