Can ecofiction inspire climate action?
While on vacation I wrote my first full piece of ecofiction for a climate fiction writing competition. It’s a short story (5,000 words) that provides a slice of life in New York City in the year 2200, and grew out of the research I did for my University of Cambridge dissertation.
It’s told through the eyes of a journalist walking his dog who by chance meets the 90-year-old former mayor who galvanized the rebuilding of NYC after it was destroyed by floods caused by climate change. Biomimicry figures prominently in it. I tried to incorporate humor, heart, and redemption alongside the heartbreak, loss, and destruction. Ultimately, it’s a story about leadership, community, and vision.
No matter the outcome of the competition, I enjoyed writing it and plan to do more with these characters and in this genre. The predominant channels and messages we’re using for climate storytelling now are not generating the scale and speed of the changes we need. Fiction can play a bigger role is painting the picture of what a world transformed can look like, what it will take to get there, and how we might work together to make it so. The fandoms around fiction can be a unifying force for good, which is exactly what we need, now more than ever.
(I created the images below with AI, inspired by the story I wrote.)
