Climate Across Genre

Hyperobject Reading and Evaluating the “Use” of Climate-Fantastic Fiction

Bibliographic Data

ID21570238
AuthorsRachel Fetherston (0000-0003-4269-0276, Deakin University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume41
Issue3
Pages462-476
Publication date2025-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAustralian Journal of Environmental Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0814-0626 • E-ISSN: 2049-775X
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/aee.2025.10066
OpenAlexW4414063944
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited27

This article examines the representation of climate as hyperobject — described by Timothy Morton as something that is “massively distributed in time and space relative to humans” (Morton (2013) Hyperobjects: Philosophy and ecology after the end of the world. University of Minnesota Press , p. 1) — in fantastique genres (inclusive of fantasy, speculative and science fiction, horror, supernatural and New Weird genres) that arguably characterised climate fiction’s beginnings. By positioning such climate fictions within “the literature of the impossible” (Boucher (2024) The specificity of fantasy and the “affective novum”: A theory of a core subset of fantasy literature. Literature , 4 (2), 101–121), I investigate the difference between what might be considered more speculative climate fictions and the increasingly common, more realist and literary cli-fi narratives. In other words, I discuss what, now, is the “use” of the speculative and the fantastic in climate fiction when climate crisis itself is indeed real and far from “impossible.” Discussing N.K. Jemisin’s fantasy series The Broken Earth (2015–2017) and Jeff VanderMeer’s horror/New Weird series Southern Reach (2014–2024), I argue that “climate-fantastic” novels are well-positioned to narrativise climate change as a hyperobject due to the ability of speculative, fantastic genres to exceed the limitations of Western-capitalist-colonial storytelling practices. I also consider the role of speculative climate fictions in education, including the importance of reading, studying and writing into the speculative alongside the realist when it comes to climate crisis

Climate change · Fantasy · Storytelling · Techno-thriller · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction

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