An idea is gaining traction that science fiction writers cannot ignore climate change. They should include our unpredictable climate in their worldbuilding even if only in the background to the main narrative. Or they should at least clarify whether, in their fictional world, science has solved our current climate catastrophe. Charlie Jane Anders made a strong case in her article Why Science Fiction Authors Need to be Writing About Climate Change Right Now.
Historically, science fiction has led the way within literature as a whole in responding to the evidence of a warming world. SF writers have achieved this by placing climate at centre-stage in their stories. The first novel I encountered in this field was J. G. Ballard’s deeply surreal dystopia The Drowned World (1962), which imagines a world of melting icecaps and a London that is totally submerged. Ballard wrote two more climate novels back in the 1960s—The Wind from Nowhere and The Burning World.
