Tag: creative writing

Environmental Hazards: Five Challenges of Writing Climate Fiction (Part 4)

June 7, 2015

This post is part four of a seven-part series discussing my experience writing climate fiction in my novel, Blue Karma. Challenge #3: Choose-Your-Own-Apocalypse Our present environmental situation offers a smorgasbord of cataclysms for writers to employ: air pollution; mass extinctions; ultraviolet rays roasting us through holes in the ozone layer; a rise in mosquito-borne disease as regions grow … More Environmental Hazards: Five Challenges of Writing Climate Fiction (Part 4)

Environmental Hazards: Five Challenges of Writing Climate Fiction (Part 3)

June 6, 2015

This post is part three of a seven-part series discussing my experience writing climate fiction in my novel,Blue Karma. Challenge #2: Scope and Scale Cli-fi works because we can identify with it. It’s our own world, reflected in a warped mirror of environmental armageddon. If I’d set Blue Karma on a distant planet, it wouldn’t have … More Environmental Hazards: Five Challenges of Writing Climate Fiction (Part 3)

Environmental Hazards: Five Challenges of Writing Climate Fiction (Part 2)

June 5, 2015

This post is part two of a seven-part series discussing my experience writing climate fiction in my novel, Blue Karma. Challenge #1: Packaging Prophecy Sometimes I think “science fiction writer” is a euphemism for “hack prophet”. We see the future in our mind’s eye and set down the vision before it comes to pass. But a setting … More Environmental Hazards: Five Challenges of Writing Climate Fiction (Part 2)

Environmental Hazards: Five Challenges of Writing Climate Fiction (Part 1)

June 4, 2015

Climate fiction, like the global average temperature, is on the rise. If you haven’t heard of this genre, you’re probably not the first. Themes of climate change and ecological disaster have appeared in contemporary fiction since the mid-20th century, but the concept of these as an independent genre is relatively new. The term climate fiction … More Environmental Hazards: Five Challenges of Writing Climate Fiction (Part 1)

Ink-Stained Cassandras: When News Steals Your Sci-Fi

February 12, 2015

New climate analysis, published today in the inaugural issue of Science Advances, indicates the drying of the US will be much more extreme than expected, bringing the worst droughts in a millennium. And our current water strategies may not be sufficient to manage the change. Severe drought a thousand years ago is probably what drove ancient Americans to abandon … More Ink-Stained Cassandras: When News Steals Your Sci-Fi

Grounds for Hope: Science Fiction as Literature

November 20, 2014

At yesterday’s National Book Awards, celebrated science fiction author Ursula Le Guin received an award honoring her literary achievements. Once small step for the legendary Le Guin, one giant leap for science fiction authors. Two key points in her speech resonated deeply with me both as a writer and a devotee of science fiction: the undervaluation … More Grounds for Hope: Science Fiction as Literature