Climate Fiction - James Bradley’s Clade:

Response written By Louise. F

Climate fiction is distinguished as its own genre, with hopeful and pessimistic narratives that

further outline the importance of understanding society’s impact on the environment. Through

reading climate fiction, we as readers are positioned to confront the changing world, and by

extension, critique society's governing bodies and the proposed strategies to combat climate

change or lack thereof. By having a genre dedicated to articulating the daunting developments

within the environment, such as sea levels rising and the ice caps melting, scientists and others

concerned are given a voice to educate readers and hold politicians accountable for the

destruction of Earth’s environment. One such text voicing concerns, is James Bradley’s Clade.

Clade is an outstanding text that follows three generations of a family experiencing the impact

of climate change. A particular notable scene in Clade that allows us a glimpse into what this

text is like, is when character Tom comments to Maddie that the birds have stopped breeding,

“…their eggs aren’t hatching […] the heat is killing the chicks…” (Bradley, 2017, p.57). This

imbues a strong feeling of solastalgia, as the birds are now determined to be a “...ghost

species…” parallel to the death of Maddie’s child and many others that are slowly dying in this

future Australia (Bradley, 2017, p.57). The melancholy-induced tone implies that action must

be taken in a society of influential climate deniers and that society must not let the ‘…old

thinking…’ of the desire to ‘…reproduce, to build power…’ establish itself again; instead,

society must recognise that ‘…we have to change…’ to improve the environments suffering

battle with humanity’s dominant desires (Bradley, 2017, p.19). Despite the uncertainty of the

future embedded throughout the text, I believe Bradley seeks readers to ‘…confront the forces

[…] driving the destruction of our world…’ and embrace hope for the ‘…unknown and the

unknowable… (Bradley, 2017). Clade is daunting read for anyone wishing to confront

humanity’s impact and extinction, and possibly come to terms with it.

Overall, climate fiction texts such as Bradley’s Clade, are vital to informing of current and

future impacts. The authors influence readers to not considered these texts as science ‘fiction’

but instead its own ‘factual’ genre, highlighting that action must be taken in a society content

in our own blind awareness.

References:

Bradley, J. (2017). Clade (First Titan edition.). Titan Books.

Bradley, J. (2017, February 21). Writing on the precipice. Sydney Review of Books.

https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essay/writing-on-the-precipice-climate-change/