by Maria Kraxenberger
Overview and Definition
Climate Fiction – often abbreviated as Cli-Fi – refers to a diverse body of literature that addresses the causes, consequences, and possible futures of anthropogenic climate change. Rather than constituting a fixed genre, Cli-Fi spans a wide range of narrative modes, including speculative, dystopian, utopian, and realist storytelling. Central to these works are ecological concerns and the evolving relationship between humans and the natural world in the context of global warming, environmental degradation, and potential societal collapse or transformation, confronting readers with both the urgency and ambivalence of societal response to climate change (Wolting 2022, 65). Despite a vast array of narrative foci, most international as well as German-language Climate Fiction tends toward dystopian scenarios—emphasizing collapse, scarcity, and crisis, thus reflecting the asymmetry and urgency of the climate crisis itself. At the same time, Climate Fiction also engages speculative temporality and catastrophe, and opens space for relational ontologies. Thus, rather than merely reflecting empirical reality, Climate Fiction also provides a symbolic and narrative framework through which readers can engage emotionally and imaginatively with the planetary crisis (Wolting 2022, 63).
Historical Background
The term Climate Fiction was popularized by journalist Dan Bloom in the early 2000s, but does not constitute a formal category within literary theory or genre classification. Nevertheless, the term has gained increasing traction in both public discourse and academic criticism. While it first rose to prominence in Anglophone contexts in the early twenty-first century (for an overview on the development of climate (change) fiction, see Schneider-Mayerson 2000, as well as Goodbody & Johns-Putra 2019), it now describes a transnational literary phenomenon that encompasses works from a wide range of linguistic and cultural traditions, including German-language literature. In this way, Climate Fiction crosses conventional genre boundaries, encompassing both high literature and popular fiction. Despite its lack of fixed genre status, Climate Fiction doubtlessly serves the articulation of social and ecological anxieties in the face of global disruption (Wolting 2022, 64); at the same time, the term is applied to earlier literary works that focus on (human-induced) environmental change (e.g. Taylor 2016).
Theoretical Context
Within the Environmental Humanities, Climate Fiction is increasingly recognized as a vital cultural form for engaging with the complex realities of the Anthropocene. As a narrative mode, it enables readers to relate not only to the scientific dimensions of climate change but also to its affective, ethical, and existential dimensions. Scholars such as Adam Trexler (2015), Adeline Johns-Putra (2019), and Eva Horn (2014) have emphasized the genre’s capacity to make abstract, large-scale, and temporally diffuse climate risks narratively and emotionally accessible.
As a conceptual field, Climate Fiction is deeply entangled with other key areas of the Environmental Humanities. It intersects with the Anthropocene both thematically and narratively and is closely aligned with Ecocriticism, Material Ecocriticism, and theories of entanglement. Ecofeminist perspectives, for instance, foreground how gender, care, and justice are central to many Cli-Fi narratives. Questions of place, ecological displacement, and reimagined belonging often structure these texts in response to climate-induced loss and migration. In doing so, Cli-Fi not only reflects but also expands the core concerns of environmental thought.
In the German context, ecocriticism — as developed by scholars such as Gabriele Dürbeck and Axel Goodbody (both 2015) — emphasizes the role of literature, including climate fiction, in shaping ecological awareness and fostering cultural engagement with environmental challenges.
German-language Climate Fiction
In German-language literature, as in most other national literatures, climate fiction encompasses a variety of narrative approaches and literary forms. Dystopian fiction imagines bleak futures shaped by ecological catastrophe and political or dictatorial control, as in Dirk. K. Fleck’s GO! Die Ökodiktatur (1993). Eco-thrillers, such as Frank Schätzing’s Der Schwarm (2004), combine suspense-driven plots with urgent environmental themes. Psychologically orientated forms of Cli-Fi explore individual and collective emotional responses in the context of the Anthropocene, as seen in Ilija Trojanow’s EisTau (2011) or Kathrin Röggla’s short story die zuseher within her collection die alarmbereiten (2010). Climate change also features realist novels and coming-of-age narratives, where it often serves as a narrative backdrop rather than the central theme—for instance, in Theresia Enzensberger’s Auf See (2021).
Particularly for the German context, Evi Zemanek has traced the historical development of ecologically inflected idylls and utopias—from ancient bucolic and pastoral poetry to the Enlightenment’s visions of the ‘state of nature’, and from nineteenth-century agrarian utopias to more recent forms of ecotopia (Zemanek 2015). According to Zemanek, ecotopia emerges as a subgenre of utopian writing whose genealogy can be linked to the negative experiences of advancing industrialization. Because the ideal of ecotopia involves the literary challenge of replacing an anthropocentric worldview with a biocentric one, future-oriented ecological narratives must, in her view, work toward articulating a truly global imaginary—one that transcends isolated environmental systems in favor of planetary interconnectedness. Yet such a comprehensive ecotopian vision—capable of reconciling ecological sustainability with narrative complexity—remains (so far) largely absent from contemporary climate fiction.
References
Primary Texts:
Enzensberger, Theresia. 2022. Auf See. München: Carl Hanser Verlag.
Fleck, Dirk C. 1993. GO! Die Ökodiktatur. Reprint 2019. Murnau: p.machinery.
Röggla, Kathrin. 2010. die alarmbereiten. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag.
Schätzing, Frank. 2004. Der Schwarm. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch.
Trojanow, Ilija. 2011. EisTau. München: Carl Hanser Verlag.
Secondary Texts:
Dürbeck, Gabriele, and Urte Stobbe, eds. 2015. Ecocriticism: Eine Einführung. Köln: Böhlau Verlag.
Goodbody, Axel. 2015. “Ökologisch orientierte Literaturwissenschaft in Deutschland.” In Ecocriticism: Eine Einführung, edited by Gabriele Dürbeck and Urte Stobbe, 123–135. Köln: Böhlau.
Goodbody, Axel, and Adeline Johns-Putra. 2019. “The Rise of the Climate Change Novel.” In Climate and Literature, 229–245.
Horn, Eva. 2014. Zukunft als Katastrophe. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Wissenschaft.
Johns-Putra, Adeline. 2019. Climate Change and the Contemporary Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schneider-Mayerson, Matthew. 2000. “Climate Change Fiction.” In American Literature in Transition, 2010–2020, 309-321.
Taylor, Jesse Oak. 2016. The Sky of Our Manufacture: The London Fog in British Fiction from Dickens to Woolf. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Trexler, Adam. 2015. Anthropocene Fictions: The Novel in a Time of Climate Change. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Wolting, Monika. 2022. “‘Climate Fiction’ in der deutschsprachigen Literatur.” In Utopische und dystopische Weltenentwürfe, edited by Monika Wolting, 61–79. Göttingen: V&R Unipress.
Zemanek, Evi. 2015. “Bukolik, Idylle und Utopie aus Sicht des Ecocriticism.” In Ecocriticism: Eine Einführung, edited by Gabriele Dürbeck and Urte Stobbe, 187–204. Köln: Böhlau.