Dammit, I've Written Sci-Cli Fiction

So there's this new thing going around, climate-change science fiction, called Sci-Cli by some, god help them.

The idea is that climate change is going to fuck us up so thoroughly that science fiction writers HAVE to write about it. Judging by the way climate scientists are running around screaming about it like their hair is on fire, it's gonna be HUGE. I mean, the coral reefs are already dying out RIGHT NOW. Not someday, not in the future, right fucking NOW.

Unfortunately, in my experience science fiction that's written to further a cause is pretty awful stuff. It's not that SF can't have opinions about the future, or that it can't advocate for this or that, but the story has got to rule.

Utopia, for example, started out as the name of a science fiction novel written by Thomas More in 1516. It was about wonderful people who lived on a great fictional island and it's described as being similar to life in some religious monasteries, so you know it was one rockin' read! Well, for 1516, maybe. I think by modern standards, reading it is probably a lot like having dental work without anesthesia. Certainly, that's what reading most advocacy SF is like.

So advocacy SF, utopian or dystopian or somewhere in between, sucks. This is known. But thing is, climate change is happening now. I mean, back in the 1950s and 60s if you were writing about computers based on this nifty thing called a transistor that would someday give you the power to do differential equations with a device the size of a home refrigerator that weighed only half a ton, well you're writing SF, son. You're ahead of the curve.

But if you're writing about personal computers on a fucking Commodore-64 in the mid-80s, you're not doing SF, you're just fucking around. You are behind the curve, buddy.

And that's the thing, the coral reefs ARE dying off, right now. Scientists are coming up with panicky attempts to save them and even the morons that run governments are giving them money to give it a try, because coral reefs are worth fucking money. If you're not including climate change in your stories of the future, you're fucking up. You are behind the curve.

Even if you want to have things be about the same a century from now, you have to at least do some hand-waving to explain why your grandkids aren't living in underground silos trying to stretch a small bar of wobbly tofu into a meal and cursing the memory of their grandparents who couldn't be bothered to deal with climate change when it would have been doable. You have to say “The atmo-stabilizer plants cured the atmosphere and made everything good in 2065, to everyone's great relief” or something along those lines.

Thing is, I'm already writing sci-cli (god I hate that term, I hope it never catches on). In my sequel to “Visitor from Incel World” the people from Collar World have figured out how to open crosstime gateways to Incel World, and they're just fucking horrified at what they find, and I'm not just talking about all the vanilla sex. They figure our world has maybe a century before things really go to shit, with plenty of unpleasantness along the way that could accelerate things. They think we're violent (because of all the wars, you know) and we're run by corrupt thugs (because current events).

So I'm doing my part, so there! No grandkids swearing over their tofu at me!