Climate change has become an increasingly visible option in fiction, from stories about flooded cities and ecological collapse to quieter novels about families navigating a changing landscape. These books fall under a broad literary category known as climate fiction, or “cli-fi.”The term is modeled on “sci-fi,” the familiar abbreviation for science fiction, but cli-fi isn’t limited to futuristic or dystopian stories. It encompasses literary fiction, thrillers and speculative novels in which climate change plays a meaningful role in the plot or shapes the characters’ lives.Some cli-fi novels imagine catastrophic futures, while others explore environmental changes already affecting communities. The growing body of work gives writers different ways to examine the human consequences of a warming planet—and imagine what the future might hold.Related: What Is New Adult Fiction? The Book Category Between YA and Adult Explained
What Is Climate Fiction?
Climate fiction, shortened to cli-fi, is fiction in which climate change is a central theme or a significant force shaping the story. It can borrow elements from science fiction, literary fiction, thrillers and dystopian novels, among other forms.
Literary scholars don’t all agree that cli-fi qualifies as a distinct genre in the strict academic sense. Unlike genres with recognizable plot formulas and stylistic conventions, cli-fi is primarily defined by its subject matter: climate change and its political, social, psychological and ethical consequences.
The distinction is that climate change does more than provide background scenery. It influences what happens and how characters respond. A story about a hurricane, for example, isn’t automatically cli-fi simply because a storm appears. It becomes a stronger fit when climate change and its consequences are integral to the narrative.
When Did the Term ‘Cli-Fi’ First Appear?
Journalist Dan Bloom is credited with coining the term “cli-fi” around 2007, drawing an obvious parallel with “sci-fi.” The label gained wider attention in the early 2010s, when media coverage brought climate-focused novels to a broader audience.
But climate-focused fiction predates the name. J.G. Ballard’s 1962 novel The Drowned World, for instance, imagines a future transformed by rising temperatures and flooded landscapes. There’s an important distinction, though: the catastrophe in Ballard’s novel is driven by solar activity, not human-caused climate change. The book is often discussed as a precursor to contemporary climate fiction.
By the 2000s, writers including Kim Stanley Robinson and Paolo Bacigalupi were exploring climate disruption, resource scarcity and the social consequences of environmental change. As cli-fi became a more familiar term, it also came to encompass novels that might previously have been described as science fiction, environmental fiction or literary fiction. The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature discusses the development of climate-change fiction as a significant strand of contemporary literature.Related: What Is Romantic Suspense? Where Love Stories and Thrillers Meet
What Are Some Examples of Climate Fiction?
Cli-fi encompasses a wide range of stories, from speculative visions of radically altered worlds to realistic accounts of people confronting environmental change. These four novels show how differently writers can approach the subject.
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
Orbit
Published in 2020, Robinson’s novel imagines a near future in which an international organization works to protect people affected by climate change. The story moves between individual experiences and global efforts to address the crisis, combining speculative storytelling with ideas about economics, politics and climate policy.
It’s a notable example of cli-fi that looks beyond disaster to consider how societies might respond.
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
HarperCollins
Barbara Kingsolver’s 2012 novel follows a rural Tennessee woman whose life changes when an unusual gathering of monarch butterflies draws scientists and public attention to her community. The story explores climate disruption alongside family relationships, economic pressures and the tension between scientific evidence and personal belief.
Rather than imagining a distant apocalypse, Flight Behavior examines environmental change through a community’s everyday experiences.
Weather by Jenny Offill
Penguin Random House
In Jenny Offill’s 2020 novel, librarian Lizzie Benson juggles family responsibilities, work and mounting anxiety about the state of the world. Climate change is part of a wider sense of uncertainty about the future, woven into the fragmented narrative rather than presented as a single disaster driving the plot.
Weather shows how cli-fi can focus on the emotional and psychological effects of living with environmental uncertainty.
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
Macmillan Publishers
McConaghy’s 2025 novel takes place on a remote island near Antarctica, where a family cares for a seed bank as rising seas threaten their home. The arrival of a mysterious woman unsettles their isolated existence.
The novel blends suspense and family drama with a setting shaped by environmental danger. The New York Public Library’s climate-fiction reading list includes the book among recent examples of the genre.
These books differ in setting, tone and storytelling style, but each puts environmental change at the heart of its characters’ experiences.Related: What Is a Locked-Room Mystery? The Classic Crime Setup Explained
Is Climate Fiction Always Dystopian?
No. Dystopian stories are a prominent part of cli-fi because climate change lends itself to imagined futures involving food shortages, mass displacement, flooded communities and social breakdown. But bleak outcomes aren’t a requirement.
Some novels explore adaptation, collective action or the possibility of a more sustainable society. Others focus on relationships and personal decisions in a world where environmental change is already unfolding. A story can acknowledge the severity of the climate crisis without suggesting that disaster is inevitable.
That range is part of the category’s appeal. Readers who enjoy speculative thrillers might gravitate toward visions of ecological collapse, while those who prefer character-driven literary fiction may find cli-fi in stories about grief, family, identity or community.
Why Is Climate Fiction Becoming More Prominent?
Climate change presents a storytelling challenge: its effects unfold over long periods, cross national borders and involve systems too large for any one person to control. Fiction gives writers a way to connect those broad forces to individual lives.
A novel can show what rising seas mean for a family forced to leave home, how repeated drought affects a farming community or how anxiety about the future shapes a young person’s decisions. These experiences can make a complicated issue feel more immediate and personal.
Climate fiction also allows writers to imagine different outcomes. Some stories warn about the consequences of inaction; others explore political, technological or community responses to environmental disruption. The genre has also attracted increasing attention from literary scholars, who examine how these narratives represent climate change and its possible consequences. A 2025 essay in the Australian Journal of Environmental Education, published by Cambridge University Press, considers the category’s literary and educational significance.
Cli-fi doesn’t offer a single answer to the climate crisis, and not every novel aims to persuade readers about a particular solution. Instead, these stories give authors room to explore the human stakes of environmental change—and give readers a chance to encounter those questions through fiction.
Related: ‘Godzilla’ El Niño Has 75% Chance to Become Historic; Here’s What It Could Unleash This Winter
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