Beginning to think of ''Cli-Fi'' as a literary genre for ''Cathedral Thinking.''

 

by Dan Bloom:

 

I'm beginning to think of ''Cli-Fi'' as a literary genre for Cathedral Thinking.

 

I first heard of this term from 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg in Sweden. She was referring to the fire that ravaged part of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in April 2019 and how the building any massive cathedral or cityscape takes time, blueprints, more time, planning, patience and more time sometimes, as in the case of the ancient Cathedral of Notre Dame, as much as 200 years. As you know, the Cathedral of  Notre  Dame wasn't built in two weeks. More like two centuries.

So too with ''cli-fi.'' The planning, the writing, the revising, the editing and finally the publication of cli-fi novels will take a kind of literary ''cathedral thinking.'' Cathedral thinking of the literary kind. 

 

https://cathedralthinking.com/

Cli-fi novels are not written overnight, or in two weeks or two months, not even in two years. The process is long and arduous. There is research, field trips, editing, rewriting, revising. Come publication day, the author will realize that their cli-fi novel was the result of slow, patient yet persistent cathedral thinking. We are in this for the long term, partners!

So think of #Clifi as laying the literary groundwork, the blueprints, the foundations, for building a more sustainable and sane system of harnessing renewable energy platforms to keep the engines of civilization chugging along over the next 30 generations.

So by using cathedral thinking about the entire genre of cli-fi, also referred to as ''climate fiction,'' -- [not ''science fiction'' but a new iteration dubbed ''climate fiction''], -- by thinking of cli-fi under the literary umbrella of catherdral thinking, we can envision these kinds of novels (and movies adapted from these novels) as helping humankind to better imagine where we might be headed in the era of #CAGW  ... that is to say, unchecked runaway global warming.

Read a good ''cli-fi'' lately? Do. 

 

Cathedral thinking with cli-fi novels and movies is not going to happen overnight. It will take time, much time. More than 12 years, more than 30 years. I'm talking about 100 years here, 200 years, I mean real cathedral thinking. To build this new Earth, this new World, this new Humanity will take 30 more generations. We begin now, here. Patience, Grasshopper.

Writers? Start your engines! 

 

-- Dan Bloom

The Cli-Fi Report