How Can We Channel the Urgency and Fear of the Climate Crisis Into Speculative Fiction?

There’s a reason we’re seeing more climate-related books in speculative fiction. Lindz McLeod looks at how the climate emergency is driving evermore writers—include herself!—towards writing worlds as warnings of what’s to come.

Our relationship with nature has changed drastically over the course of human history; we began, like any other, as a species beholden to the whims of our environment. If it was cold, we shivered. If it was hot, we sweated. Animals migrated according to their seasonal desires and ingrained patterns of behaviour, and we humans followed on their heels like lithe shadows, running down our prey until they fell exhausted. These days the world feels much smaller, quashed under the mighty weight of our collective endeavours. You can travel almost anywhere digitally without leaving the comfort of your chair, and physical travel—even to remote locations—is possible as long as you have the money and/or gumption. 

Dominion, certainly, but at what cost?

My particular interest lies in eco-horror; in an article for MUBI, Danielle Burgos described this subgenre as “nature becomes uncanny and maliciously turned against man”.

Worse, we caused this catastrophe in the first place—in fact, we’re still causing it even as I write this post—and so if the world is our enemy, it’s only because we moulded it that way. We plundered the globe for minerals and nutrients, and in return poured toxic waste into the sea and did the chemical equivalent of salting the earth. If the planet was the fabled goose that laid the golden egg, then we didn’t just cut it open; we tore it apart, bone by bone, feather by feather. I’d argue that eco-horror isn’t simply the fear of a malevolent world, but of a monster of our own creation, holding a mirror up to the worst excesses of human nature. Eco-horror doesn’t simply reveal a reflection; it shows us an x-ray.

My forthcoming SF climate-change novella, We, the Drowning, follows a young man who seeks to stitch the divide between his own survivalist tribe and the suicidal sea-cult taking over what’s left of the world.

We, The Drowning will be published in 2026 by Android Press, who have been doing wonderful work in the sci-cli-fi space. Their cousin magazine Solarpunk, which focuses on utopias, is also well worth a read.

Since the effects of climate change are more evident than ever—worsening weather events such as flooding and hurricanes, incredible heatwaves, and devastating earthquakes—it’s clear that our window of opportunity to do something about it is closing rapidly. This sense of urgency, as well as the creeping fear of the unknown future, has been channeled into incredible contemporary fiction. Whether that’s literary with a dash of mystery like Ruman Alaam’s disquieting Leave The World Behind, Jeff Vandermeer’s atmospheric Annihilation, or Chana Porter’s compelling alien novella, The Seep, there are a thousand different viewpoints from which to watch the world crumble. Eco-horror also offers an interesting kind of stress-test; under the kind of conditions found in Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic masterpiece The Road or Naomi Booth’s pre-apocalyptic Sealed, how far can a character be pushed? What can be revealed about our deepest desires or fears under such extreme duress? 

Through Soph, I explored hedonistic desires and privileges, often taken at other people’s expenses or at the cost of their lives, as well as what other characters consider their essential humanity and why they refuse to give it up without a fight. 

Sunbathers will be published by Hedone Books, an imprint of Darklit Press, in September 2024.

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Lindz McLeod will be part of a virtual panel of writers talking about climate and eco-fiction and how writers can inspire meaningful, authentic change at Writing the Occult: Connection to Land on 15 June. Full event details here.

Images by: Patrick Perkins, Li-An Lim, Muhammad Numan, Patrick Hendry, Mika Baumeister on Unsplash