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Aufgabe 1.2

Tasks

1
Outline the features of climate fiction and the reasons why cli-fi has become so popular.
(30 %)
2
Analyze how the author conveys her attitude towards cli-fi and its potential impact on readers.
(30 %)
3
Choose one of the following tasks:
3.1
“In times of intense worry and rampant uncertainty, [cli-fi novels] almost seem to hold out the promise of a how-to manual – how to handle crisis, how to deal with calamity, how to simply muddle through.” (ll. 23-25)
Using the quote as a starting point, assess to what extent reading literature helps people in their search for direction in life.
(40 %)
3.2
Using the information on the novel “Dreamland” from the book cover and the article to illustrate your point, write a blog entry for www.goodreads.com in which you discuss whether reading cli-fi in schools contributes to raising students’ awareness of environmental issues.
(40 %)
bb abi en
https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Dreamland/Rosa-Rankin-Gee/9781471193842
Accessed July 18, 2023.

Text: Excerpt from the article

The rise of apocalyptic novels

By Hephzaibah Anderson
1
Imagine you're enjoying much-needed time away with your family, staying in a luxurious Long Island holiday rental,
2
miles from anywhere. Then comes a late-night knock at the door and strangers bearing news of a sinister power outage
3
in New York City. The internet has gone down, phone service has been severed, and when you switch on the TV, every
4
channel shows the same blank screen. Your children are asleep down the hallway, and you've no way of knowing what's
5
going on, or even whether these people are telling the truth.
6
Hooked? You wouldn't be alone. It's the premise of Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam, a propulsive, penetrating
7
new novel about race, class, and climate change. Because while the true nature of what's going on remains obscure –
8
could it be a terrorist attack, the actions of a rogue only did this profoundly unsettling novel make the shortlist of the US
9
National Book Award, it's also become a bestseller. 1 state? – clues scattered throughout hint heavily at a climate event.
10
Comfort has been at a premium during the current pandemic, and it hasn't always come from expected sources. Never
11
mind cosy home-baking and box sets: readers have turned not just to beloved classics but also to the often-dystopian
12
genre known as cli-fi-novels in which environmental devastation is a driving force, catapulting protagonists into an
13
apocalyptic "after" or else pinning them in the fast-vanishing "before", with disaster bearing down, inaction endemic and
14
anxiety soaring.
15
Short for climate fiction, cli-fi is a relatively new term for a trend whose long roots extend back to sci-fi. Think JG
16
Ballard's The Drowned World or Ursula K. Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven, both written at a point in history when
17
frequent wildfires and regular flash floods belonged to the realm of the speculative. In the past couple of decades,
18
contributions from titans of literary fiction, including Margaret Atwood and Cormac McCarthy coming months include
19
Rosa Rankin-Gee’s Dreamland, depicting Britain in 20 years' time, a place of rising sea levels and populist tides. 2, have
20
brought cli-fi into mainstream storytelling. Worsening scientific projections are keeping it there. […] This trend isn't about
21
to lose momentum anytime soon, either – novels poised for release in the
22
It might seem masochistic to turn just now to tales of havoc and wrenching loss, yet these cautionary narratives also
23
offer catharsis, a degree of hope, sometimes humour. In times of intense worry and rampant uncertainty, they almost
24
seem to hold out the promise of a how-to manual – how to handle crisis, how to deal with calamity, how to simply
25
muddle through. […]
26
Climate fiction feels less and less like fantasy, its fever-dream visions increasingly begging questions not of "if" but
27
"when". Even so, it wouldn't be entirely prudent to look to its pages for practical tips on how to survive an apocalypse.
28
Not that they aren't there. Lie low until the initial mayhem subsides. Follow the animals for safe drinking water. Always
29
be ready to run.
30
As a child, Rankin-Gee took dystopian novels very seriously. "As soon as I read Z for Zachariah of my future in
31
Dreamland are not future at all – they are things that have already happened.", I packed my Karrimor backpack with odd
32
tins of food, spare underwear and some rope. I was ready to go at any minute," she recalls. Her own novel, Dreamland,
33
which will be published in April, stars Chance, a heroine born just four years from now. Sea levels are rising, but it's also
34
hotter. "That's the scary part," she tells BBC Culture. "Many elements
35
Plenty of cli-fi novels, she notes, jump-cut to the moment after the catastrophe has occurred, giving protagonists the
36
benefit of hindsight. "I wanted to write the 'during'. The characters are not nostalgists, they don't have a great deal to
37
romanticise. At the same time, they're not bleak or despondent – they're just continuing to live with what they're faced
38
with."
39
Though quick to point out that this isn't a book intended to yield clues on how to survive, Rankin-Gee believes that "in
40
the writing and reading there can be a stoic working through of things. And that sense we look for in all books, film, art –
41
connection, that we are not alone." It's one of the recurring themes of cli-fi: not only are we not alone, we're vastly
42
stronger together. Even with zombies and monster rats on the rampage. […]
43
There is a necessary limit to the succour that cli-fi can offer. While it shows us that even in the midst of a global
44
pandemic, things could always be much worse, the problem is that our being distracted from it hasn't made looming
45
environmental collapse go away. For Rankin- Gee, there's a worry that a genre that eyes humanity's extinction risks
46
"normalising" climate breakdown, painting pictures so bleak that we're left with an unintended – and wholly false –
47
sense of reassurance. "Then I remember the climate deniers, and the fact that a basic normalisation is still a crucial part
48
of confronting the problem," she says.
49
Optimism is a different matter. As Alam insists, "I have to find optimism, you've no choice but to go on." He finds it in the
50
next generation, in the ability of children to see with clarity rather than turning away, to act decisively rather than pretend
51
that buying the recycled coffee filters will have an impact. That same belief in the future is embedded in his novel, a
52
book that – like so many other excellent examples of not only this genre, but of literature in general – reminds us of
53
something else, just as vital to survival: there is always a place for art, no matter how grave the crisis.
Source: Anderson, Hephzibah. "The rise of apocalyptic novels". BBC Culture. January 11, 2021.
Accessed January 11, 2021 from https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210108-the-rise-of-apocalyptic-novels.

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