If you start browsing the Web for ebooks and novels about climate change issues, within minutes you will come upon the webzine Clifibooks.com, which has “Cli-fi lists” for dozens of climate-themed ebooks and novels, with a submit button promising the addition of more cli fi novels listed there in the future.
The website is the brainchild of Canadian writer and editor Mary Woodbury, a Cli-fi novelist herself who runs Moon Willow Press in Coquitlam, British Columbia.
Woodbury says that her list of Cli-fi novels (with cover art) is a work in progress, and that anyone can contribute a title. She is carrying books in both traditional print editions and as ebooks and Kindle Singles, she said.
“Moon Willow Press is a micro press committed to helping sustain forests while celebrating the written word,” Woodbury told TeleRead. “We supplement book publishing with our nature blog at BCRainforest.com and with our project exploring climate change themes found in literature at Clifibooks.com.”
Woodbury hopes to document the rise of climate novels and archive a long list of Cli-fi books, both earlier releases and current new ones.
From Ian McEwan’s “Solar” to Kingsolver’s “Flight Behavior,” there are dozens, if not hundreds of cli-fi novels to discuss and archive on the Cli-fi Books website, according to Woodbury.
“Cli-fi Books explores climate change themes found in novels, prose, short stories, and other fiction,” Woodbury says. “Cli-fi is a genre of literature that encompasses climate change fiction, which may be merely speculative or full-out futuristic science fiction. Genres are bendable, however, unlike prescriptive labels.”
She adds: “Cli-fi is not necessarily always set in the future nor always apocalyptic. Look at Kingsolver’s ”Flight Behavior”, for instance, which tells a present-day story of monarch butterflies that have migrated to the Appalachian mountains rather than to their normal Mexican winter habitat. Cli-fi should be seen as wildly creative and inventive. It is both reactive and proactive. It is open-ended.”