Friday, June 14, 2013

陳榮彬 writes about CLI FI in the CHINA TIMES newspaper in Chinese - June 15, 2013

UPDATE:
THIS BLOGGER REPLIES: BRAVO BRAVO DR CHEN. ''YOU DID A LOT OF RESEARCH FOR A VERY IN-DEPTH REPORT. BRAVO,SIR!''
美國奧克拉荷馬州日前遭超大龍捲風襲擊,造成24人死亡。宛如電影情節的巨大天災喚醒世人對於氣候變遷問題的重視,氣候變遷小說再度成為眾所矚目的焦點。

By REPORTER CHEN -- 陳榮彬 in TAIPEI
http://www.chinatimes.com/newspapers/%E8%8B%B1%E7%BE%8E-%E6%9B%B8-%E6%88%BF%EF%BC%8D%E5%A4%AA%E9%81%8E%E7%9C%9F%E5%AF%A6%E7%9A%84%E8%99%9B%E6%A7%8B-20130615000751-260116

From Hurricane Sandy to the recent tornaodoes in Oklahoma, USA, the climate appears to be changing and now a new literary term CLI FI is helping readers and writers around the world see all this in a new light.



來自美國波士頓的 [丹布隆](Dan Bloom EMAIL: danbloom@gmail.com
)-- http://danbloom888.blogspot.com -- 已於台灣定居十幾年,2007年他負責科幻小說《極地城市警戒》(Polar City Red)的製作行銷工作時,自創「氣候變遷小說」(''CLI - FI'' = climate fiction,或簡稱cli-fi)一詞,來傳達小說所隱含的理念。《極地城市警戒》一書的作者是Jim Laughter,故事背景設定於西元2075年,那時阿拉斯加的北極圈已不再是攝氏零下48度的酷寒極地,而是人類在幾乎滅絕之餘僅存的居住地,但各種潛在的威脅仍考驗著倖存者們。

Dan Bloom, a freelance reporter, former newspaper editor and climate activist from Boston Bloom (Dan Bloom) was settles in Taiwan ten years, and in 2007 he was responsible for science  novel titled "Polar Cities alert" (Polar City Red) written by Jim Laughter making marketing work, own "Climate Change Fiction" (climate fiction, or simply cli-fi) term to convey the idea implied by the novel. "Polar Cities alert" author of the book is Jim Laughter, the story is set in AD 2075, when Alaska's Arctic is no longer the cold of minus 48 degrees Celsius polar, but almost extinct humans apart from remaining residence, but a variety of potential threats is still a test of the survivors.






不只是科幻小說

Not just science fiction





Dan Bloom had created the CLI FI TERM for "Climate Change fiction," the term, some people have been dismissed as superfluous, but now after six years, it is not only in the Amazon bookstore, Wikipedia and other sites are listed as search terms, April and May of this year, the United States public Radio Books Online (NPR Books) and the British "Guardian" and other media have reported another author, science fiction, it pointed out many differences.

當初丹‧布隆自創「氣候變遷小說」一詞時,曾被部分人士斥為多此一舉,但如今事隔6年,它不但在亞馬遜書店、維基百科等網站被列為可搜尋的詞條,今年4、5月,美國公共廣播電台的圖書網(NPR Books)與英國《衛報》等媒體也陸續撰文報導,指出它與科幻小說的許多不同之處。



首先,氣候變遷小說往往以天候異象為發揮題材,給人一種毛骨悚然的熟悉感──例如麗茲‧簡森的《預見末日的女孩》(商周)裡快讓人融化的高溫,毀掉里約、伊斯坦堡等城市的龍捲風、颶風與大地震等,都像是新聞快報裡可能出現的事件。此外,科幻小說令人津津樂道之處,往往在於預測未來與發掘科技的可能性,但氣候變遷小說卻以警世為首要題旨,這也是令許多科學家肯定之處:它可以在提供閱讀樂趣的同時傳達警訊,這是學術研究報告做不到的。

First, climate change, weather visions of fiction often play themes, giving a thrilling sense of familiarity ─ ─ such as Ritz Jenson, "foresee doom Girl" (Business Week) in the high-temperature melting fast people, destroying Rio, Istanbul and other cities, tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquake, etc., there may appear like a breaking news event. In addition, science fiction admired place, often lies in predicting the future and to explore the possibility of science and technology, but the climate change in the novel but cautionary primary Theme, this is definitely the place to many scientists: it can read the pleasure in providing Meanwhile convey warning, this is academic studies can not.

真實或虛構?REAL OR IMAGINARY?

Climate Change fiction often showing incredible realism, Nathaniel Rich's  (Odds against Tomorrow) can be said is that the two most well-known examples. Rich in 2007 Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans shortly after moved to settle in the land, and proceeded to "Tomorrow vitality" creation. In the novel, he depicts his hometown New York City hurricane genesis almost drowned, did not expect the 2012 novel of the editing and proofreading work is nearing completion, the New York Hurricane Sandy really was, not only power plant explosion, Manhattan, soaked in water, the whole city is more almost paralyzed. "Tomorrow vitality" cover depicts the Empire State Building and other famous skyscraper scene almost drowned, as if recorded Yorker fear memory.

氣候變遷小說往往呈現出不可思議的真實感,Nathaniel Rich的《明日生機》(Odds against Tomorrow)可說是這兩年最知名的例子。Rich在2007年卡崔娜颶風肆虐紐奧良過後不久搬到該地定居,並著手《明日生機》的創作。在小說中,他把家鄉紐約市描繪成因颶風而幾乎滅頂,沒想到2012年小說的編校工作即將完工時,紐約果真遭珊迪颶風侵襲,不僅電廠爆炸,曼哈頓泡在水裡,整個都市更幾近癱瘓。《明日生機》的封面描繪著帝國大廈等知名摩天大樓幾乎滅頂的景象,彷彿記錄了紐約客的恐懼記憶。



這種水漫大地的小說其實由來已久,英國科幻小說家詹姆斯‧巴拉德在以《超速性追緝》(商周)與《太陽帝國》(上海譯文)等小說聞名於世之前,就曾於1962年推出《水淹世界》(The Drowned World)一書,敘述太陽輻射融化了南北極冰帽,海面上升導致世界幾乎滅絕,可說是最早期的氣候變遷小說之一。至於近年來,這類創作更是不勝枚舉,光是今年4、5月,就出現了Lee Penney的

北極冰帽,海面上升導致世界幾乎滅絕,可說是最早期的氣候變遷小說之一。至於近年來,這類創作更是不勝枚舉,光是今年4、5月,就出現了Lee Penney的《暴風騎士》(Riders of the Wind),以超強颱風幾乎摧毀東京為故事主軸;另外,G Thomas Hedlund的《當地球只剩夏日》(Summer Reign)與Rachel Meehan的《水的邊緣》(Water’s Edge)則同樣是以洪水、熱浪、暴風與乾旱等極端天災為故事背景。這3本都是小說家的處女作,顯示氣候變遷已成為新世代小說家的試金石。

Kind of water diffuse the earth's novel is actually a long time, the British science fiction novelist JG Ballard ‧ Ballard in order to "speeding of hunting" (Business Week) and "Empire of the Sun" (Shanghai Translation) and other famous novels before, had in 1962 launched the "flooding the world" (The Drowned World) a book, describing solar radiation to melt the polar ice caps, rising sea levels lead to the world almost extinct, can be said to be one of the earliest novels of climate change. As in recent years, this kind of creation are too numerous, April and May of this year alone, there have been Lee Penney's




Arctic ice caps, rising sea levels lead to the world almost extinct, can be said to be one of the earliest novels of climate change. As in recent years, this kind of creation are too numerous, April and May of this year alone, there have been Lee Penney's "Storm Rider" (Riders of the Wind), to super typhoon almost destroyed Tokyo for the story of the spindle; another , G Thomas Hedlund's "When the Earth only summer" (Summer Reign) and Rachel Meehan of the "water's edge" (Water's Edge), again, as floods, heatwaves, storms and droughts and other extreme natural disasters background for the story. These three are the novelist's debut, shows climate change has become a touchstone for the new generation of novelists.




小說大師的氣候變遷之作 CLIMATE CHANGE WRITERS



氣候變遷小說的重要警訊之一就是「後人類」(post-humanity)的問題:人類有可能因為氣候變遷而滅絕嗎?在《啟示錄》般的末日中,屢遭試煉的人性會有什麼改變?加拿大小說家瑪格麗特‧愛特伍陸續以《末世男女》與《洪荒年代》(皆天培)等小說來面對上述問題。在《洪荒年代》書中,洪水奪走大多數人類的性命,倖存者置身於到處是基因改造動物的世界,牠們大多外型離奇醜陋,或者性格兇殘,人類扮演造物主的角色不成,反受其咎。



美國小說家麥克‧克萊頓的《恐懼之邦》(遠流)與英國小說家伊恩‧麥克尤恩的《追日》(上海譯文),則同樣從負面與爭議的角度去探討氣候變遷這個高度政治性的環保議題。已逝的克萊頓擁有哈佛醫學博士學位,能以扎實的科學根柢進行論理敘述,《恐懼之邦》一書把氣候變遷問題推到極致,描繪某個激進環保團體企圖以控制天氣來說服民眾接受其關於全球暖化的主張,即使犧牲許多人命也在所不惜,顯示科學理念被誤用而產生的恐怖後果。



與愛特伍同樣曾獲曼布克獎肯定的麥克尤恩,在《追日》中描繪一名中年諾貝爾獎得主:他的事業日薄西山,婚姻岌岌可危,最後靠剽竊已故學生的學術成就來開發太陽能發電廠,眼看即將成為解決全球暖化危機的英雄,但在最後一刻剽竊罪行遭揭發,事業夥伴離他而去,讓他欠下幾百萬巨債,太陽能發電板也遭破壞,美夢轉瞬間變成悲劇。麥克尤恩的故事看來雖憤世嫉俗,但他與克萊頓為氣候變遷小說提供了反向思考的空間:科學與「偽科學」往往只有一線之隔,氣候變遷雖可能是一事實,將其無限上綱的後果,卻是把它變成一種意識形態。

Climate change is one of the novel's important warning "post-human" (post-humanity) questions: human beings have become extinct because of climate change might do? In the "Revelation" as the last days, repeated trials will change in human nature? Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood ‧ succession to the "end of the world men and women" and "Prehistoric Age" (all day training) and other novels to face these issues. In the "prehistoric era of" the book, floods claimed the lives of most humans, survivors of exposure to genetically modified animals everywhere in the world, most of them bizarre ugly appearance, or brutal character, not a man to play the role of God, anti by blame.






‧ American novelist Michael Crichton's "State of Fear" (Yuan-Liou) ‧ with the British novelist Ian McEwan's "Chasing Day" (Shanghai Translation), the same negative and controversy from the perspective of climate change this highly politicized environmental issues. The late Clayton medical doctorate from Harvard, able to carry on a solid scientific foundation in narrative logic, "State of Fear," a book of climate change issues to the extreme, depicting a radical environmental groups in an attempt to control the weather to convince public acceptance of its claims about global warming, even sacrificing the expense of many lives, showing the scientific concept of misuse arising from terrorist consequences.



And won the Man Booker Prize Margaret Atwood same affirmative McEwan, in the "DAY" depicts a middle-aged Nobel Laureate: twilight of his career, marriage precarious, and finally by the late student's academic plagiarism to develop solar power plants, seeing solutions to global warming crisis is about to become a hero, but at the last moment plagiarism offenses were discovered, business partners away from him, so that he owed ​​millions in debt, solar panels have been destroyed, dream suddenly turned into tragedy. McEwan's story, although it seems cynical, but he and Crichton novel climate change provides a reverse thinking space: science and "pseudo-science" is often only a thin line, although climate change may be a fact, it exaggerate the consequences, but it is to turn it into an ideology.

===========

UPDATE
Dr Richard Chen, who wrote the news article for the CHINA TIMES tells this blog today:

''I write for China Times once a month,
and the cli-fi coverage is my 9th world literature report since last September.

''Last week, when I talked to my editor-in-chief, Miss Chou, about the idea of covering cli-fi,
she agreed with me right away, and said that it will be very informative for readers in Taiwan.

''Actually, I got the idea from [a news blog by Rodge Glass whose ] [CLI FI] coverage was published in the Guardian, the famous UK newspaper.

''But what I have done is more than the report, because I made extensive research about this genre,
and analysed it in detail.

''Cli-fi, for me, is indeed too important to be ignored by readers.
So I am pretty happy to be a part of its promotion.''

DR CHEN

BLOGGER DAN BLOOM REPLIES: BRAVO BRAVO DR CHEN. YOU DID A LOT OF RESEARCH FOR A VERY IN-DEPTH REPORT. BRAVO,SIR!

Evidence of climate change is so clear it has even sparked a new genre in literature called “cli fi.”

iona braverman IS  Newsroom Manager with the corporate communications team. Prior to moving to Zurich, SHE spent over a decade writing, producing, marketing and production coordinating for Fox News in New York City. When SHE  am not working, or enjoying all of the beautiful cities around me, SHE IS busy dancing, cooking or probably making everyone around HER howl with laughter.

Arnie's back! And this time, he's fighting his new enemy, climate change.

Floods in Europe; catastrophic tornadoes in Oklahoma; record reductions in Arctic summer sea ice, the list of climactic disasters seems to be endless. And let’s not even talk about the hottest 12 months in the U.S. since records began.

Evidence of climate change is so clear it has even sparked a new genre in literature called “cli fi.”

To be honest, it looks bad. In May, for the first time in human history, the average daily concentration in the atmosphere of carbon dioxide reached 400 parts per million. If that level is sustained, average temperatures could rise by more than 2 degrees compared with pre-industrial times – the level beyond which scientists project potentially catastrophic consequences. It’s enough even to make a former climate-change skeptic like me sit up and take notice.

At U.N. conferences there’s been a call for targets to lower greenhouse gases. And some countries have listened: Britain has committed itself to cutting greenhouse gas emission to 20 percent of 1990 levels by 2050. South Africa, a big emitter because of its dependence on coal-fired electricity, is striving to meet future power needs through renewables. And last month, red China – previously a hardliner on emissions reduction – said it would set an absolute cap on greenhouse gases from 2016.
But real action by the U.S. on climate is blocked by political gridlock in Washington, D.C., whatever Barack Obama’s green leanings, and progress globally remains mired in arguments about how much newly industrialized nations should share the burden.

The problem is so serious, that big names are chiming in. This week, former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard published a joint opinion piece, begging the world’s politicians to put politics aside and act, saying “taking action on climate change can no longer be delayed and that such actions can succeed beyond partisan politics.”

What actions are needed to make the difference?  The International Energy Agency published a report this week laying out a detailed road map for reducing energy-related emissions. Savings in transportation and in buildings and infrastructure are two areas with potential. After all, it’s said that energy efficiency improvements could deliver half the cuts in emissions needed to slow global warming over the next 25 years. Conveyor belts and many automation systems, for example, are powered by dozens of electric motors. Combining them with smart drives can manage their power needs and reduce consumption.

Spending on infrastructure isn’t always a vote winner, but power grids are outdated and need modernization. Beefing up national electricity systems  and international interconnections would seem like a good investment for growth, to harness renewables and for energy security.
It’s great to recycle and turn off the lights (which I do). But at this point those are just drops in the ocean. It’s time to make leaps.

Looking over the agenda for the G-8 summit scheduled for next week, I see that the topic of the environment didn’t make the cut. Perhaps it should have.

As Schwarzenegger said in the end of the movie “Predator” – “Do it! Do it now!” Before it’s too late.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

The Novel Way: A Discussion on Genre by Tanya Kaur




2013 is seeing the new literary term ‘cli-fi’ (climate-fiction)

trending. On Friday May 31st 2013 The Guardian’s Rodge Glass gave a

concise history of the genre cli-fi which has been said to have been

the cause of debate regarding its place in the literary world.



Glass considers all literary terms to be reductive and all labels

simplistic and questions just how far the new term can go to encourage

people to read fiction on the subject of climate change. The debate

revolving around the confinement of (fictional) literature to a genre

or multiplicity of genres has been of great interest to me and I will

go on to discuss how cli-fi can work within the general debate. Some

(non cli-fi) literary novels that fuel the debate for me in particular

are:



1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte





Classified by some as a Victorian novel and by others as a romance

novel, as well as many other options, there is no clear cut genre in

which this novel is placed in. Critics often choose to focus their

views on the novel’s most popular genres (these possibly being

Romance, Bildungsroman and Victorian as well as a consideration of

Gothicism being present.) Critic Jessica Cox notes that a response by

Bronte to G. H. Lewes’s “offers one possible explanation for the

confusion of genres in Jane Eyre, and suggests that while Bronte

favoured realism, she was forced to adopt the conventions of more

sensational genres in order to find favour with publishers.” As a

female writer Bronte was faced with patriarchal opposition with

regards to her career and not only did she have to write under the

alias of a man (Currer Bell) but also had to impress publishers by

writing about subjects that would be favourable with male readers.



2. Tomorrow When the War Began by John Marsden (The Tomorrow Series: Book One)





Published by Macmillan Children’s Books, the classification of the

novel as a children’s book is questionable, what with the mention of

group orgies as a possibility on the camping trip at the beginning.

Perhaps classifying it as a novel for young adults is more suitable.



Fictional literature, if any good, is written with a view that it

should be open to a degree of personal interpretation from the reader.

One person might for instance, perceive William Golding’s Lord of the

Flies to be about a struggle to maintain law and order on the island

where a group of boys are confined with little or no hope of rescue.

Another reader might choose to examine the postcolonial aspects (i.e.

the negative perceptions that the colonisers (England) had against

those they colonised) that the text offers. And of course some readers

will not consider the two aspects as mutually exclusive, but see them

as working in tandem. Therefore the same room for personal

interpretation should be allowed to exist for genre classification.



Genre classification does have its place in literature as Rodge Glass

explains that “whenever a literary term gains traction it is a chance

to examine not only what it says about the writers who explore the new

ground but also the readers who buy it, read it, discuss it.”

Understanding the target audience for a novel is important if novels

are to be read and if the writers are to get the credit they deserve.

Genre classification serves this purpose quite well.



Does it look likely that novels dealing with climate change and global

warming will become popular now a label has been attached to them?

Nathaniel Rich whose novel Odds Against Tomorrow appears to be

acknowledged as cli-fi believes that “we will increasingly see more

novels that incorporate ecological themes as more people begin, or are

forced, to contemplate the catastrophic ways in which we have

transformed the planet.” However it seems that some people are

apprehensive that the subject matter presented as fiction will gain

the interest of publishers who have been said to ‘glaze over’ when

climate change is mentioned, according to Caroline Michel. It is hard

enough to sell non-fiction books on the topic!



Both sides of the argument regarding the general necessity for genre

are equally interesting. Personally I believe genre classification

does have a tendency to increase the potential for some novels to go

unread by people who would readily consider reading the novel if they

knew that their favourite topics were covered in the novel but are put

off by certain genre types they personally consider to be

unfavourable. However without some classification of sorts it would be

hard, if not harder, to determine who is reading what and how they

come across what they are reading. This is the case particularly with

the emergence of climate-fiction and it is essential for the survival

of the novels that deal with climate change and global warming to have

a classification in order to give some indication of its popularity or

possible lack thereof. Perhaps our libraries and bookstores need to be

a bit more liberal with where they place their numerous copies of

novels so they serve all the potential genres in one novel and can

reach more people. This ought to be the case with underrated or

emerging novels in particular.



What do you think? Let me know by leaving a comment

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Sci-Fi, Cli-Fi, We All Cry: the End Is Nigh !!!

Sci-Fi, Cli-Fi, We All Cry: the End Is Nigh

Nieuw literair genre: clifi ('klaifai'). Fictieve beschrijvingen van n wereld met n heel ander klimaat.

Gaston Dorren @taaljournalist                TWEETS
      
Nieuw literair genre: clifi ('klaifai'). Fictieve beschrijvingen van n wereld met n heel ander klimaat. 1/2

A review of the cli fi novel FLIGHT BEHAVIOR

Wednesday, 12 June 2013

Flight of the Butterflies

   
As the IEA reports ever-increasing carbon emissions, and Britain's environment minister denies any change in the climate in the last 17 years, what is the response of the truly awake person in the current cultural dissonance? In the summer issue of the radical grassroots magazine,  STIR. I wrote a review of Barbara Kingsolver's novel, Flight Behaviour, the latest 'cli-fi' book that look squarely at our present crisis and whose main protagonist is one of the most extraordinary creatures on earth. 

In many ways dystopias are easier to write than a realist fiction that can look at the awesome forces that are out of kilter on the earth. Most books would rather put their imaginative attention on a post-collapse world, than face the gritty problems of a family or community living out the consequences of neo-liberalism and a globalised industrial culture. How can you create a plot when the conventional “bad guys” – those who wield corporate power - have become invisible? How can you find empathy for people who appear as ignorant victims of circumstance and stand in their home territories, witness to weird weather and species extinction. - subjects which seem better handled by the deeper and more metaphysical forms of poetry, or by non-fiction, unconstrained by a linear storyline?

Although the heroine of Flight Behaviour, Dellarobbia Turnbow, is a far cry from Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, this is a classic tale of a trapped woman yearning to transform and break free from a near-impossible situation. What distinguishes it from these works and the thousands of romances built around the same theme is its mighty big subtext: climate change.

Barbara Kingsolver is known to tackle big subjects in her novels — sometimes successfully, sometimes not: women in the Arizona mine strike of 1983 in Holding the Line, sustainable food production in Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Native American rights in Pigs in Heaven, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky and the Mexican revolution in Lacuna, and, most famously, the impact of colonialism in the Congo told through the eyes of a missionary family in The Poisonwood Bible. All these themes, however, belong to the human and political realm.

Climate change is notoriously hard to talk about, belonging to what some call the 'supernarrative', the massive planetary shifts, that even though caused by human civilisation, we have limited capacity to control as individuals. Our sense of agency in our personal and social lives melts with the glaciers. History we can deal with, war, poverty, and even apocalypse, but eco-systems in feedback loops? These are non-human, non-linear realities normally assigned to science and to ecological campaigns. However human beings are not created from facts and figures, we are the creatures of story - the choices we make and the roads we take. Story is what makes meaning and gives value to our lives. 

  Role of the Novel

I don’t think it is a coincidence that the novel rose to prominence along with industrial civilisation, when people felt their lives to be largely shaped by human forces and therefore responsive to acts of individual will (Askay Ahuja reviewing the short story collection, I’m with the Bears)
 In Flight Behaviour the central ecological dilemma takes place in a run-down sheep farm, in a run-down town where everyone has strange names, goes to church and every turn of the bad luck or weather is attributed to the Lord’s mysterious ways. The book is told from the point of view and in the language of 28 year-old Dellarobbia, who is stuck in a small house among the Southern Appalacian mountains with two small children and a husband she doesn’t love, dominated by harsh and judgemental in-laws. She has no money, no education and no prospects. Her neighbours’ son has cancer and all their peach trees and tomato plants have dissolved in the endless biblical rains. Small wonder you think she wants to throw it all away on an affair and run heedlessly up a mountain one day in ill-fitting boots.

Somewhere, after many long descriptions, the book takes a small flight of its own: the revelatory lake of fire Dellarobbia discovers on the mountain instead of her lover turns out to be millions of displaced overwintering Monarch butterflies. The hero of the book, a dusky well-mannered scientist, arrives from the Outside World with his assistants to live in a trailer on the Turnbow farm and record their destiny. His passion for these insects, his intelligence and grace, affects the smart but unschooled Dellarobbia and Preston, her son, and their world begins to open up. Will this encounter manifest into a relationship? Will the wooded hillside be logged? Will the butterflies survive the on-coming winter? Will redemption come to Feathertown? Will she herself take flight, like the flame-coloured butterflies in Spring? And then? So the old-fashioned devices of story telling kick in and you have to find out the outcome, though the prose does not get any easier for all that.

Kingsolver was originally a scientist and she applies her scientific eye not just to the insects undergoing numerous tests in Turnbow’s barn-laboratory —she puts their whole world under the microscope. Long drawn-out scenes in the local dollar and thrift stores tag every item on display; an exchange with an activist reveals that their “lifestyle” scores very low on the carbon ratings. Numerous rather creaky conversations between Ovid Byron, the entomologist, and his new assistant spell out the behaviour of this extraordinary butterfly and the ramifications of global warming. It’s a right-on subject and you cannot fault the author on facts, Yet this “left hemisphere” fixation on detail makes for a flat Puritanical prose-style, lacking lyricism or feeling. The beauty of the Appalachian mountains is absent, and even Dellarobia, cast as a red-headed Venus by the local TV company, does not come across as beautiful.

Story of our times

One reason we read, and need fiction is to understand how and why we are living now while imagining our way forward. (Adrian Ayres Fisher reviewing the post-apocalyptic novels, Arcadia and The Dog Stars)
 So this is a personal story and a story about our times. When I left my old city life I stopped reading novels; by the time I returned to England ten years later and joined the Transition movement I had stopped reading books almost completely, unless they were related to work. I realised reading books had become an escape, something that afforded a comfort at the end of the day. Novels belonged to a book club, literary festival culture, the books you took to the beach. They belonged to old ladies at the libraries who checked out ten thrillers at a time to occupy their minds and fill their days. They were not the challenging and inventive works I once studied.

Like many of my contemporaries, when I returned to writing the form I chose was not fiction. We rediscovered the essay, the pamphlet (often in the forms of blogs), creative non-fiction and citizen journalism. In an era where becoming rooted in time and place has become an imperative, many of us sought out the older and vaster forms of myth and fairy tale, radical prose of the commons that challenged the history of the Empire. The impromptu speaker of words on the streets and at festivals took our attention, and fiction receded to a remote drawing room and Sunday newspaper world that seemed increasingly old-fashioned, conformist and slow. Used to squeezing plot into 140 characters or a pithy caption these 437 pages stuck in the Appalachian mud now seemed way too lengthy. Who had the time to read this stuff?

The pursuit of a narrative that can speak of our collapsing times is a mantra of the day, and perhaps it’s worth asking: does this narrative belong to the people who see the future coming, or do we include, as Kingsolver does here, the people who deny it is happening and are most likely to lose out when it does? Who will log their voices and their experience? Can we step in each other’s shoes and imagine what is it like, how it could be different, without the fictive form?

One of the major tensions in Flight Behaviour is the lack of awareness the outsiders (in their designer boots) have about the restrictive and humiliating nature of being dirt poor – of not having the right house, or education. Or indeed shoes.“Most of us have to walk around in our sleep, accepting our underprivileged position,” Dellarobbia tells Ovid:
I’d argue that the teams get picked and then the beliefs get handed-out. Team Camo get the right to bear arms, and John Deere and the canning jars and tough love and taking care of our own. The other side wears I don’t know what, something expensive. They understand recycling and population control and lattes and as many second changes as anybody wants.
 I am not a climate denier and so cannot imagine what the doubters among Kingsolver’s readers might feel about Flight Behaviour. Looking out at equally waterlogged country (in East Anglia) I find myself thinking about that small imaginary house in Tennessee and realise that the book’s strength is linked to its ability to see what is, without any ought to be in the way. And that responding to nature in crisis might just bring things out of us we never thought were there.

When I opened the book I felt I would rather spend two hours watching Jennifer Lawrence in similar bleak conditions in Winter’s Bone. But in the end the novel had greater staying power. Roots, and not screen stars, are what we need right now, wherever we are, if we want to hold ourselves in place on the earth.

Images of monarch butterflies from 2012 documentary The Flight of the Butterflies; STIR is available at selected outlets and by subscription (see their website for details)

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

An open letter to the UK and USA media about choices and consequences in regards to CLIMATE CHANGE

Tim Hollo writes from Australia and it is important:


Dear friends,



You know me, and you know that, although I’ve pestered you for years, I’m not one to join in general press gallery bashing. I respect and understand the work you do. Hey, even the Australian acknowledged me as “the most sensible Green we know” when I left my post as Christine Milne’s Communications Director.



That’s why I hope you’ll read this open letter and think about it.



After a week where, once again, rumours and speculation occupied your attention so completely that you didn’t register a visit to our country by a multi-award winning, globally respected, hugely popular writer talking about an existential threat to our nation, I want to talk to you about the choices you make and the consequences that those choices have.



Understand that I am not saying Kevin Rudd is not a story at all. Of course he is. And of course you have to report on his antics. But is it reasonable, is it balanced, is it fair to your readers, that Rudd gets pages of coverage of barely changing rumours and speculation, while Bill McKibben’s new take on solid science, his economic warnings based on the work of PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the International Energy Agency, his direct commentary on local politics (highly unusual for an international visitor), get nothing – not one sentence from anybody in the Canberra Press Gallery?



Surely you can appreciate the irony that, after telling us for years that we need a completely new angle every day if climate change is to be newsworthy, you fill pages of newsprint and hours of broadcast with essentially the same story over and over again. That, in this 24 hour news cycle, supposedly constantly hungry for content, you focus on one or two stories each day instead of reporting on the great diversity of issues our parliament grapples with.



It’s not as though there aren’t numerous stories to tell about climate change that are relevant to your beats. How many different angles have many of us offered you that you haven’t found interesting? Never mind stories about threats to lives and livelihoods, security implications that trouble the Pentagon, and the likely extinction of countless species. You’ve dismissed political interest stories about government agencies hiding information; stories about scientists and technology developers bullied into silence in fear of losing grant funding; stories about mismanagement of government resources; stories about accounting systems we all rely on being based on incorrect assumptions that make them the equivalent of the GFC-inducing ratings agencies – only with impacts that, as McKibben says, will make the GFC seem like a hiccup.



Bill McKibben was a trove of stories at the National Press Club. Think about all the questions you could’ve asked this guy! What’s his opinion of the carbon price as against Direct Action? What’s his view of Clive Palmer’s political ambitions? Does his global divestment campaign have implications for both Gillard and Abbott’s aim for surplus? Hey, you could even have asked him what he thought of Kevin Rudd’s actions and rhetoric on climate change as against Julia Gillard’s, if you really wanted to.



Instead, one of the few questions McKibben was asked was whether the lack of media stories on climate change was a sign that people are less interested in the issue than previously.



The irony of saying that to a man whose books are on best-seller lists, and whose public appearances in Australia quickly sold out, with hundreds turned away disappointed, was not lost on the audience. And Bill was in hot demand from ABC, local and community radio, and the Guardian Australia. But they don’t have the influence on Australia’s political debate that you have.



Yes, this is where we come to the vexed question of influence vs reporting.



No, don’t stop reading now, and please don’t get defensive. Many of you like to insist that you only report facts, you don’t influence debates. But consider for a minute Fairfax commissioning and publishing a seat by seat Rudd vs Gillard poll on Sunday complete with the beyond irony line, “The poll is almost certain to fuel further leadership speculation”. The stories you choose to file, and the ones you choose to bin, the polls you commission, the spokespeople you interview and those you ignore – all these add up to a huge influence on the way Australians see our politics. Let’s face it, they influence the way Australian politicians see our politics.



The influence vs reporting question was highly relevant to me when I was amongst you daily working for Christine Milne. I was on numerous occasions told by many of you that your editors or producers had instructed you to leave the Greens out of stories. You will deny that to each other just as Rudd backers will publicly deny being the source of leaks and speculation. But you know it’s true. And you know that, after Senator Milne’s ascent to the leadership, that policy tightened. Media outlets predicting that Milne would be lower profile than Brown actively shut Milne out of the news, creating that lower profile and fulfilling their own prophecy. You report a lot less of Christine Milne and the party’s vote tails off a little.



[As an aside, it's worth noting the old chestnut 'balance'. Balancing climate science with denial, environmentalists with coal industry lobbyists, is like suggesting that every story about political corruption should be 'balanced' with voices saying there's no proof corruption is bad: "These guys are only trying to make a living". It is devastating to public debate that journalists who understand that climate change is a huge story and seek to write on it regularly are shunned, treated as partisan, have their independence questioned, lose their jobs. Think Graham Readfearn, Rosslyn Beeby, Giles Parkinson, Paddy Manning. Meanwhile, journalists who wear their anti-science prejudice on their sleeves are celebrated as independent and balanced.]

As I conclude, I want to repeat that I write this from a position of understanding, respect and hope. What you in the Parliamentary Press Gallery are doing when you make your choices is no different from what the vast bulk of humanity do facing the climate crisis. Far from being deliberately destructive, it is a natural human tendency to focus on the short term and the highly visible, and to stick with the pack. It is hard to break away from that.



But you are different. You are powerful and influential. That is particularly the case given your position of leadership in journalism as the privileged few who inhabit Parliament House. Though you publicly deny it, you shape the world as we see it. If you choose not to report frequently and in detail on the vast array of political stories about the single greatest threat to our future, you ensure that it remains a marginalised issue, peripheral to politics, until it may be too late and we squander our children’s entire inheritance – this beautiful planet – in the name of a quick buck.



This is the choice you face. All I can do is leave it in your hands.



Tim Hollo