Our Still Angry Earth: The Asimovian Approach to Cli-Fi

Although cli-fi is generally considered a post-2008 genre, this dissertation will bring to light the relevance of earlier authors such as Isaac Asimov, Frederick Pohl, and Kim Stanley Robinson within a twenty first century climate crisis as well as discussing how realistic scientific topics can be hypothetically scrutinized and solved through science fiction. With a prominent focus on scientific fact and fiction written by Isaac Asimov, this paper acknowledges the significance of Asimov and Pohl’s 1991 polemic text Our Angry Earth during a modern-day climate crisis due to the fact that the accurate predictions and observations written within the text ring as true today as they did thirty years ago. In addition to Asimov’s and Pohl’s fictional works, this dissertation also analyses Kim Stanley Robinson’s Science in the Capital trilogy and the ways in which Robinson humanizes the scientist which in turn allows for the science to be brought down to an understandable level. Through observing fiction from multiple decades, we are able to examine the ways in which climate change and its impact are presented and how this representation has evolved over time.