![\"\"](\"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Picture5.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nIf you like your books weird and wonderful, I recommend trying Jeff Vandermeer\u2019s Southern Reach Trilogy which starts with Annihilation<\/a><\/em><\/strong> (yes, it was a book first!). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Set some time in our near future, four scientists set out to explore Area X \u2013 a large (and steadily growing) section of land which has mutated in bizarre and unpredictable ways. As much a comment on the dangers a quickly changing environment poses to our safety as it is an eerily beautiful appreciation for the (un?)natural world, Vandermeer\u2019s novel is a classic example of the cli-fi genre and would appeal to readers who like to be unsettled by their books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Next up is a cli-fi classic \u2013 The Word for World is Forest<\/a><\/em>. Published back in the 1970s and sitting at around 189 pages, this novella is a great introduction to the roots of ecocritical reading. The narrative follows the colonisation of a planet Athshe by humans who enslave the indigenous people and decimate their land. It\u2019s a shocking look at the perversity of humanity in our predisposition to destroy the natural landscape as well as our disregard for those we consider \u2018other\u2019. Through such an intense mirror, Le Guinn forces us to confront our own actions here in our present reality, advocating for a non-exploitative relationship to the environment. I\u2019d particularly recommend this one for sci-fi traditionalists who like the classic space travel plus alien combo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now for one of VERVE\u2019s books! When I first read Saturnalia<\/a><\/em> as a submission back in 2022, I knew it was a tale we needed to share. Saturnalia<\/em> is a story about environmental collapse and class warfare, trauma, rebirth and magic. It speaks to the pervasive ecoanxiety felt by GenZ and millennials alike: What will become of humanity if we continue on our current trajectory? And is there space to feel any kind of optimism about our future?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Feldman\u2019s timely narrative is born out of a hyperawareness of the ways in which environmental collapse is shaping our society. Her protagonist lives her life on the periphery in a hostile environment crumbling under the pressures of climate change \u2013 a world characterised by extreme weather, economic failure and disease carrying mosquitoes \u2013 and one in which she finds herself vulnerable to exploitation. Feldman delicately balances the narrative of sexual assault and environmental collapse, creating a novel which is conscious of the current dialogue surrounding the safety of women in relation to climate change (read more here<\/a>), and she explores this relationship with an original and compelling voice. If you haven\u2019t added Saturnalia<\/em> to your tbr yet, there\u2019s no better time than the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Next up is Neal Shusterman\u2019s Scythe<\/a><\/em><\/strong> from his Arc of the Scythe series. Jenna (our editor) put me on to this about a year ago, and I\u2019m so glad I read it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The narrative follows Citra and Rowan as they undergo an apprenticeship to become Scythes \u2013 state-permitted assassins made necessary in a world where disease, food scarcity and war have vanished, and the human population has grown out of control. While it\u2019s not \u2018traditional\u2019 cli-fi in the vein of Annihilation<\/em> and The Word for World is Forest<\/em>, Shusterman\u2019s novel is a perceptive and harrowing speculation on the pressures that humanity puts on our environment, and the problems that we may have to confront in our future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The series is marketed as YA, but I strongly recommend reading this one no matter your age. Supposedly Universal Studios has a script underway too, so maybe we\u2019ll see this on the big screen at some point!<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, it would be wrong not to include some poetry in this list. While this isn\u2019t technically<\/em> cli-fi, I do think we can comfortably place it as an ancestor to the genre so it deserves an honourable mention. There are so many fantastic contemporary ecopoets writing about climate change at the moment, but some of my favourites lived a little while back. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To read Gerard Manley Hopkins\u2019 poetry is to truly appreciate the dynamism of nature. Through his sprung rhythm and his theories of \u2018inscape\u2019 and \u2018instress\u2019, Hopkins details the intricate relationships between all living things as well as the ecosystem they inhabit, with energy flowing seamlessly from one to the other. It\u2019s hard to read Hopkin\u2019s poetry and not come away feeling a connection to our planet, as well as realising that to inflict damage on our Earth is to inflict damage on ourselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The term \u2018cli-fi\u2019 is a fairly new one. It was first coined by Dan Bloom back in 2011 and is the abbreviation of \u2018climate fiction\u2019, a genre which describes literature that is preoccupied by climate change. While ecocriticism has been a topic of discussion in academia for a good while, it comes as no surprise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"1080","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"a3_pvc":{"activated":false,"total_views":0,"today_views":0},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":734,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726\/revisions\/734"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Word for World is Forest<\/a><\/em> by Ursula K. Le Guinn<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Picture4.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nSaturnalia<\/a><\/em> by Stephanie Feldman<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Picture3.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nScythe<\/a><\/em> by Neal Shusterman<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Picture2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nGerard Manley Hopkins\u2019 Poetical Works<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/11.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n