Today’s Fiction
Our planet is getting mad as hell and it isn’t going to take it any longer. It’s an old theme but a rich one, and in the 1950s and 60s it provided plots for dozens of science-fiction disaster novels. Cities were drowned, oceans eradicated and pastures killed off as authors subjected civilisation to indignities – apocalyptic literature that mirrored the era’s cold war uncertainties. Today, this kind of storytelling has taken on a harder edge and eco-thrillers have become a more robust genre on the page and the screen. Environmental fiction is moving away from its roots in science fiction and becoming part of mainstream literature – as is revealed by some of the most recent novels to tackle climate change and the like.