climate fiction，简称 cli-fi

陈小将

你爱看电影吗？你喜欢大制作的灾难片吗？如果喜欢，那你可能会对 “气候变化类虚构作品（climate fiction，简称 cli-fi）” 感兴趣。这类作品主要围绕哪个题材进行创作？跟随本期 “随身英语” 了解这个新兴的影视文学流派。
词汇：apocalyptic fiction 末日题材虚构作品
If you could travel back in time, which period of history would you visit? It’s a great question to ask your friends, and time travel is the subject of many science fiction films. Of course, sci-fi is familiar to most of us, but what is cli-fi? The simple answer is climate fiction – a genre which focuses on the subject of climate change.
Many of the cli-fi examples we watch tend to be disaster films. It could be solar flares, ice ages devastating the planet, extreme flooding swamping the Earth with water, or super-storms that threaten life as we know it. While films and novels of this genre are often subject to the typical tropes of a hero or heroine battling to save the day, what sets it apart from most sci-fi films is that the plots will often draw on plausible outcomes in the present or near future.
Climate change and the potential threats have long been established. Some believe that the issue of climate change has even led to more fans watching films to learn more about what’s happening to the world – seeing it as a form of edutainment. A study conducted by the Yale programme on Climate Change Communication tested the effects that two climate fiction novels can have on its readers and found “significant positive effects” in terms of their attitudes and beliefs towards the climate crisis – for example, understanding global warming will harm them and future generations.
Most climate films are not only blockbuster action films, but also prey on our fear of what some see as the impending doom of a climate catastrophe. This sounds bad, but according to a study conducted on 310 adults in the US, watching scary films can help us feel more prepared, resilient and less alone in situations such as the pandemic. So, it looks like cli-fi is here to stay – and there seem to be some benefits. Whether it’s there to educate, entertain or prepare you for a climate crisis, it might have a role to play.