Climate change is a notoriously elusive crisis to make sense of, particularly compared to other human-impact catastrophes. Drop some toxic chemicals in a river now and you will see dead fish within days, but what do you witness when you release carbon dioxide? And while, in 2018, a report by UN climate scientists stated that we are heading towards a catastrophe, who can truly imagine what that looks like?

This is where fiction comes in: it brings the abstract data closer to home by focusing on the faces and stories in these futures. Show readers a detailed and textured account of a climate-changed future, says Robinson, and they have an easier time imagining it. It feels real: characters in these novels worry about the welfare of their children, meddle in extra-marital affairs and grapple with train schedules, just as readers would on their daily lives.

Abstract futures

“Science fiction gets people thinking in a way that another report on climate change doesn’t,” says Shelley Streeby, a Professor of Literature and Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego. “It helps people feel about what might be coming, but also about the present.”

The numbers for climate fiction, or cli-fi as some people call it, are hard to pinpoint – but they are growing fast. A 2016 review tallied 50 novels dealing specifically with man-made climate change and its effects, with 20 appearing in the previous five years, although this number includes all types of novels. That includes John Lanchester’s new environmental fable, The Wall, which has been described as “disquieting and quite good fun at the same time”.