In an essay for Lit Hub, science and environment writer Heather Houser suggests that fiction on environmental and climate themes is becoming moribund. She identifies three “tics” that are close to being clichés.
- The Hopeful Ending. “Even the most alarming of essays must conclude with reassurances to the reader that catastrophe is not inevitable; you, frightened reader, can do something,” Houser says. “It’s hard to be the killjoy who reminds people that their happiness is delusional or comes at the cost of others’ suffering.”
- The Ecocide Aside. “To spot this microconvention of climate writing, look for parentheses or dashes: inserted in the flow of a passage that may have little to do with climate collapse, the narrator pauses to take note of it nonetheless,” Houser explains. “As a parenthetical, an aside, it reads as noncommittal or even dismissive; not quite worth being the main event but meriting mention, ecocide briefly deflects from the story or argument and can even deflate it.”
- The Catalog of Despair. “The catalog often comes in fragments or staccato declarative sentences in the present tense, situating the reader in the destruction as much as possible,” Houser writes. “Catalogs of despair dwell in the now through another feature—think of it as a sub-tic of these others—the trope of ‘by the time you’ve finished this sentence/paragraph/book, these awful things will have transpired.'”
Houser believes these tics are emblematic of society’s inaction on climate. “Climate tics don’t produce these outcomes; they presage them by showing where climate action stands,” she says. “While nothing will be solved by writing alone, climate microconventions are barometers of states of mind that speak as loudly as the more overt visions and policies on the page.”
