0 When Writers Try to Predict the Future - David Thorpe

I'm very excited because this month I am to achieve a long-time ambition of being on stage at a literary festival. Not just any literary festival, but Hay, and not just once but twice! I'm not at all nervous, no.

Both events are part of the festival's 'green' strand.

The first will be about my new non-fiction book The One Planet Life where I will be in conversation with Jane Davidson, director of INSPIRE and a fellow patron of the One Planet Council.

The second will be to do with children's writing and climate fiction, where I will be joined by Saci Lloyd, Jane, and climate change campaigner George Marshall. I hope other members of the Facebook group of cli-fi authors will be there, too.

Saci, plus other cli-fi authors, took part in a week of activity on the Guardian's children's books website last month about writing about ecological and environmental matters for children, culminating in a Twitter chat [#GdnEcoChat] on the evening of World Book Night with Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Kate Kelly, Sarah Holding, Tony Bradman and others.  The Guardian's record of it is here.

One of the questions that was asked was: is cli-fi just a passing fad? My answer, which was favourited a few times, was: 'NO! We've only just begun! One day all books will contain an element of cli-fi. They'll have to.'

It's now recognised by almost everybody that climate change is real and happening and caused by human beings burning fossil fuels. Any story that is set in the future which paints a picture of a world that hasn't been affected by climate change in one way or another will just look daft, especially if read in a few years' time.

It doesn't have to have disasters in it, it doesn't have to be a dystopia and it doesn't have to be science fiction. The lives of any characters, whether living 10, 50 or 200 years in the future, will have been affected in one way or another, whether it is how they get about, what the technology is like, what their home is like, or where they live.

I usually write about the near future. Stormteller and Hybrids both take current trends and extrapolate them, but the former is almost exclusively cli-fi and the latter only contains one tiny nod to it: a description of a swollen River Thames in London.

The novel I'm writing now is set in 2089-2104 and, while it is not about climate change at all, I still have to describe the ways that people get about (in their self-driving electric cars, rapid transit buses, or high-speed trains), the buildings that people live and work in (where attempts have been made, successfully or not, to retrofit them to save and/or generate electricity and to bring nature back into cities), the food they eat and where it comes from, the energy they use (all kinds of renewables), where the coastline happens to be (usually not where it is now) and what has happened to former seafronts.

This is a radical reimagining of life. It's neither dystopic nor utopian, just looking at how life and society might have to adapt in one way or another.

In this election there has been little talk of climate change, but all of the main parties (even UKIP, but with the striking exception of the DUP) recognise the huge contribution the low carbon or clean technology sector already makes to the UK economy, employing as it does close to one million people. Inevitably this contribution will continue to rise. Some parties (LibDems, Greens) attach more importance to the way that green jobs can make life better and improve the economy generally. It's a win-win-win scenario.

Yes, predicting the future is notoriously difficult, but the predictions about climate change have, ever since 1993, been consistent in saying that a certain list of impacts is likely to happen; exactly when is less certain.

We also know that human nature tends to leave everything to the last minute, only responding to disasters when they are imminent or actually happening.

Put the two together and you begin to get an idea of the way things might go; except that climate change is not one disaster but a whole succession of transformations with all sorts of ramifications that will continue for the next few centuries.

In the past, quite a few writers who have tried to predict the future have found life imitating art, such as Ray Bradbury's description of “little seashells… thimble radios” that brought an “electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk” in Farenheit 451; John Brunner’s description of electric cars powered by fuel cells and Detroit as an abandoned wasteland in Stand on Zanzibar; tablet computers in Arthur C Clarke's 2001: A Space Oddysey; Google Glass type goggles in Willliam Gibson's Neuromancer; not to mention ubiquitous people watching (CCTV) in Orwell's 1984.

Not written for kids? Actually, almost all of these books I read as a teenager.

I will leave you with two thoughts: encouragement to contemporary writers not to ignore developments that are consistent with a world predicted by climate science, and the infographic below that I discovered, which records many predictions made by writers that have come to pass.

David Thorpe is the author of cli-fi YA fantasy Stormteller and the YA SF Hybrids.

Detail: When Writers Try to Predict the Future - David Thorpe

0 Too Good for Children - Cathy Butler

It’s a regular irritant. A literary novelist writes a fantasy or science fiction novel, and the reviewers fall over themselves to assure their readers that it isn’t reallyfantasy or SF. No, this novel (by Margaret Atwood or J. G. Ballard or, now, Kazuo Ishiguro) is taking those formulaic genres’ tired old tropes and subverting them, or ironizing them, or finding a new context for them that changes their meaning entirely. So, Marie Arana, writing in The Washington Post about Ishiguro’s latest, suggests that:

It would be too easy to call what Ishiguro is undertaking ‘fantasy’ or ‘magical realism.’ Critics will summon such phrases to describe this book, but they would be wrong to do so. Such facile labels – suggesting that the author is relying on literary devices pulled from old bags of tricks – have no meaning here. Instead, what we are given in The Buried Giant has the clear ring of legend, original and humane as anything Ishiguro has written.

In fairness to Ishiguro, he denies any disdain for the ‘F’ word, but the attitude exemplified in Arana’s words is widespread and of long standing. There are many good reasons to object to it, but the one I wish to highlight is the circular special pleading of its argument, which effectively runs as follows:

A: All fantasy is a formulaic “bag of tricks.”

B: But look at this example of fantasy! It’s beautifully written, has deep characterization, is philosophically provocative, and has all the qualities you profess to admire!

A: I agree. That’s how I can be so sure it’s not fantasy. As I said, all fantasy is a formulaic “bag of tricks.”

Even Philip Pullman, despite writing a classic fantasy trilogy as replete with talking animals, magic and witches as anything featuring Lucy Pevensie, once famously declared that he was engaged not in fantasy but in “stark realism”, on the grounds that – well, here is his own explanation:

I have said that His Dark Materials is not fantasy but stark realism, and my reason for this is to emphasise what I think is an important aspect of the story, namely the fact that it is realistic, in psychological terms. I deal with matters that might normally be encountered in works of realism, such as adolescence, sexuality, and so on; and they are the main subject matter of the story – the fantasy (which, of course, is there: no-one but a fool would think I meant there is no fantasy in the books at all) is there to support and embody them, not for its own sake.

So, His Dark Materials is fantasy per accidens, as it were; fantasy is present not as a “bag of tricks” but as a way of talking about real, human things. By implication, the avowed fantasies of other writers – such as Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea books, perhaps, or Diana Wynne Jones’s Fire and Hemlock, or Frances Hardinge's Gullstruck Island – take little account of such matters. Or if they do, then they must to that extent be stark realism rather than fantasy too. Pullman’s quotation is almost 20 years old now and perhaps it’s unfair to dust it off, but it retains its power to annoy, and besides, new dishes seasoned with its particular brand of chopped logic just keep being served up.

Of course, the very same tactic is also sometimes used against children’s books. If you look up the Wikipedia entry for ‎Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, for example, you will read: “Though ostensibly styled as a children's book, The Little Prince makes several observations about life and human nature.” Well, if it does that it can’t possibly be for children, can it?

However, the more common practice when it comes to children’s books is to declare that the best ones are simply “too good for children.” This ploy is all the more insidious because it’s always presented as a compliment, as in this list of “5 books too good for children” (a list that includes His Dark Materials, incidentally, although to do him justice Pullman has always spoken doughtily of the importance of children’s literature).

But isn’t this “too good for” line very strange? It tends not to happen with other genres, even ones that are looked down on by literary reviewers. “Chick lit” may be sneered at, but have you ever read a review of a chick lit novel that declared it “too good for women”? Nor is the same device used with other children’s products. Imagine an review of, say, a car safety seat, reading: “This car seat is well designed, is made of durable materials and meets all safety standards. In fact, it’s too good for children!” Or, take this description picked at random from a well-known children’s clothing catalogue:

A fabulous gingham shirt which doesn't need to be ironed for that ‘fresh from the washing line’ look. Pure woven cotton which has been peached for softness at the front. It’s far too good for children!

I made the last sentence up, of course. People who make and promote children’s clothing seldom feel the need to put their consumers down in that way. It’s only when children appear in their role as readers that this happens. I wonder why?

I’m not sure, but I do know it’s been going on for a long, long time. The earliest example of this practice of praising a children’s book by insulting its readers that I’ve been able to find dates from 1831, and a notice in the newly established Metropolitan magazine:

The Metropolitan’s anonymous reviewer also scores another first, however. He or she not only declares Mrs Watts’s The New Year’s Gift “too good for children”, but then immediately answers in the most sensible way possible: “and yet why should children not have the best?”

Why not, indeed?

Detail: Too Good for Children - Cathy Butler

0 Verne in Vigo - Maeve Friel

I love coming across literary sculptures, whether they are the slew of Paddington Bears which recently appeared in London, a dapper James Joyce leaning on his cane on Earl Street in Dublin or Don Quijote and Sancho Panza trotting through the Plaza España in Madrid.

This curious monument of a man sitting amid the tentacles of a giant octopus is also a literary monument. It is in Vigo, in Galicia in North-Western Spain - but what is it?

It is a homage to the French novelist Jules Verne, often described as the inventor of the genre of science fiction, and to the Galician references in his much-loved adventure Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. 

First of all, the sculpture reminds us of the terrifying chapter in which Captain Nemo and the crew of the submarine Nautilus are attacked by giant squid, as in the English translation, or more correctly by giant octopus (les poulpes, in French). Galicia, renowned for spectacular seafood, is particularly in thrall to the octopus and Pulpo a feira, octopus in the style of the fair,  is its signature dish - boiled in huge cauldrons by the pulpeiras, specialist octopus cooks, the tentacles snipped up with massive scissors and sprinkled with olive oil and pimentón.

But there is another chapter of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea which takes place right in the Ría de Vigo, the Bay of Vigo. This was the real life location of a major naval disaster in 1702 when English ships burnt and scuttled the French and Spanish fleets which were returning from the Caribbean laden with treasure from the New World. In the novel, Captain Nemo comes to Vigo to loot the ships´treasure.

Around the Nautilus for a half-mile radius, the waters seemed saturated with electric light. The sandy bottom was clear and bright. Dressed in diving suits, crewmen were busy clearing away half-rotted barrels and disemboweled trunks in the midst of the dingy hulks of ships. Out of these trunks and kegs spilled ingots of gold and silver, cascades of jewels, pieces of eight. The sand was heaped with them. Then, laden with these valuable spoils, the men returned to the Nautilus, dropped off their burdens inside, and went to resume this inexhaustible fishing for silver and gold.

I understood. This was the setting of that battle on October 22, 1702. Here, in this very place, those galleons carrying treasure to the Spanish government had gone to the bottom. Here, whenever he needed, Captain Nemo came to withdraw these millions to ballast his Nautilus. It was for him, for him alone, that America had yielded up its precious metals. He was the direct, sole heir to these treasures wrested from the Incas and those peoples conquered by Hernando Cortez!

Don´t miss the monument to M. Verne if you are visiting this less well known corner of Spain, a place redolent with stories of shipwrecks, smugglers, fishermen´s tales and foot-weary pilgrims, the furious music of bagpipes and an all-pervading smell of octopus and sizzling sardines.  And of course, I recommend that you read the book too!

www.maevefriel.com

Detail: Verne in Vigo - Maeve Friel