Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly bookish meme created by Rukky @ Eternity Books and co-hosted by Aria @ Book Nook Bits and Dini @ Dinipandareads! Every Friday they have a different topic for participants to write about and discuss, e.g. like this post.

This week’s prompt is as follows:

Climate fiction is an increasingly popular genre, and has grown from being seen as a sci-fi subgenre to a broader category of its own — its own literary prize even being established in 2025. Have you read climate fiction (‘cli-fi’) or books centred around environmental issues? Do stories about the climate or the environment make you feel hopeful, anxious, or something else? Do you think cli-fi can influence how people think about the environment?

I haven’t really thought of it as a genre on its own, since most of my experience of climate fiction has been in science fiction (where it’s long been a concern, either covered in the main plot or just part of the worldbuilding). I’m not sure how much recent cli-fi that’s written solely as such I’ve actually read, but I’m thinking about stuff like N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season (which is stunning though also horrifying) and A Psalm for the Wild-Built (which is really post-climate disaster and more soothing/hopeful). It haunts other stories, like Malka Older’s The Mimicking of Known Successes… this assumption that we ruined Earth, and had to leave.

(Even when this is for reasons other than climate change, I think it’s reflecting on the same anxiety about the outside impact humans can have on the planet, and it’s coming from the same place, linked with an anxiety about war and destructive weaponry.)

I think whether cli-fi makes me hopeful, anxious or angry is very much down to the book in question, but I think I’m a little bit inured to it because it’s been haunting the fiction I’ve read for so long. There’s a fair bit of science fiction which assumes we’re going to wreck the planet as part of the setup for why we’re out in space or on another planet, and I think that’s generally left a pessimistic mark on me when it comes to fiction.

Out in reality, I do what I can, so I don’t think that stops me — though it might have added to my cynicism about it, given many of the drivers of climate change are completely out of individuals’ control and in the hands of corporations. My small impact by using a renewable energy supplier, cycling and walking when I can, paying for carbon capture, investing in solar and wind farms, using sustainable products… it’s all tiny compared to the damage many corporations are doing.

I don’t really know whether I think cli-fi can make a difference. Given that scientists’ warnings don’t, I’m sort of pessimistic on that too — but then, fiction moves different levers sometimes. So, maybe? I’d be curious if anyone feels like it has for them!