Peter Prasad's Blog: Expletives Deleted - Posts Tagged "thrillers"

This fascinates me. I’m a retired Boy Scout and former green guy that rolled the vision uphill at an enviro agency. No names, as a fiction author should, but you can imagine. I’m also a defender of Mother Nature, the bugs and birds and bees, the flowers and trees.

Every hallowed redwood grove I visit feels like a cathedral to me, a Notre Dame with pine needles. I grow plants to feed hummingbirds that zoom and swoop outside my window. So I love it when fiction writers gather to craft stories that amend “stinking thinking.”

EURIKA I said when the NY Times and CS Monitor blessed Cli-Fi as an emerging new category of fiction. It’s eight years old now, so time to take this kid to the Gaia festival in a rainbow headband.

That’s the intention of my next Sonoma thriller, GUT-CHECK GREEN, wherein my PI Jake Knight goes undercover to track down dastardly environmental terrorists that spank a nasty fertilizer company. Oh, I play fair, tell both sides of the story, but maybe my green slip is showing when I wrap with a bang and an afterburner chase - a helicopter racing a train. Hollywood forgive me, but oh Gaia, I loved writing this one.

Here’s what the pundits say about Cli-Fi: The label climate fiction or cli-fi for short serves a purpose, it's an excellent way to focus people on the upcoming challenges of climate change. We are facing an intricate mix of social trends that reinforce each other: Population Explosion; Rapid Urbanization (more people live in cities than in the country); Explosive Industrialization with attendant rising/choking pollution; Globalization that reduces bio-diversity (species are disappearing at such a fast rate that scientists are talking of the Sixth Extinction - in geological times, there were five extinctions before this one, including famously the dinosaurs); Growing Income Inequality (according to the economist Piketty whose book is the talk of the town, we're back to the high inequality levels characteristic of the Belle Epoque and the 1920s before the Great Depression), the implication being that benefits from scientific advances will accrue to the ultra-rich who can afford them, causing a deep cleavage in society. Add Climate Change to the mix, with attendant global warming and rising sea levels, and what you have is surely an explosive mix! (credit: Claude Nougat)

Small wonder novelists are inspired. Peek outside your window to see what we’re playing for. This ain’t penny ante poker, mama. Nathaniel Rich's Odds Against Tomorrow, is considered an excellent example of cli-fi. It has all the right elements (New York under water!) and the plot is focused on the human dimension, on how we can react to such emergencies, which is a key feature of cli-fi. (Ed Note: Please don’t react the way fictional characters in GUT-CHECK GREEN do or FBI will cremate you.)

FOR KIDS says Chriscinthia Blount -- Jo Marshall, author of "Twig Stories" piqued my interest in Cli-Fi and I'm not scientific by any stretch of the imagination! "Twig Stories" is a series which introduces young readers to the natural world and environmental issues. These stories are ingeniously woven around creatures called Twigs who must deal with the consequences of global warming and climate change. Her stories are entertaining and educational for children and adults alike. The series includes "Leaf & the Rushing Waters", "Leaf & the Sky of Fire", "Leaf & the Echo Peak", and my favorite "Leaf & the Long Ice". http://www.amazon.com/Leaf-Long-Ice-T...

Well, there you have it recyclers, Prius drivers, bicyclists of all stripes and gardeners of all faiths. How we treat our planet is a learned behavior. So what will you teach? Conquer the dirt or resonate with sunlight and rain? Gaia awaits the decision of all her wayward children, and she does appreciate that you can read now.

Care to get your Cli-Fi on? To go with the flow and be a burner page-turner? Take a deep breath and start coughing out opinions. We’ve been pumping coal dust since 1830s, car exhaust from the 1920s, and Mother wearies of her works getting grimed. When she shrugs, we lose New Jersey shore; amusement parks; Naw’lins levees and wicked fun jazz clubs; the migration of snowy egrets at sunset over the ‘Glades.

May your garden be greener, your spirit cleaner and your bliss button stuck on full throttle (all-electric or pedal power, naturally). On’Ya, dear readers.