Now he’s 65 and
working on what he calls a very Jewish project, Jewish because it
comes out of ideas and values about having a vision and being a
dreamer that he picked up on his way to becoming a bald, goateed
senior citizen.

Bloom lives in Asia now working as a public relations writer and doing
his best as a climate activist to push a new literary genre to the
fore. He calls it “cli fi,” from the earlier sci fi term, and it
stands for climate fiction novels and movies.
It’s more than just a daydream or an idle thought. Cli fi is actually
catching on with the likes Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood backing
the idea and a host of newspapers and websites agreeing that its time
has come.

Wired magazine discusses it on page 33 of its December 2013 issue in the Jargon Watch corner edited by Jonathon Keats.

Post-Sandy and post-Haiyan, cli fi literature resonates as a literary
term, Bloom says, adding that promoting the genre is ”now my life’s
work, come what may.”

Earlier this year, two major news outlets in the U.S. and
Britain, NPR (National Public Radio) and the Guardian, ran stories
about the term. While some
commentators have said it is a new genre, others have said it is just
a subgenre of science fiction.

NPR put it this way: “Over the past decade, more and more writers have
begun to set their novels and short stories in worlds, not unlike our
own, where the Earth’s systems are noticeably off-kilter. The genre
has come to be called climate fiction — cli fi, for short.”

British writer Rodge Glass noted in his piece in the Guardian that the
literary world is now witnessing the rise of cli fi worldwide.

After the NPR and Guardian news stories went through the usual social
media stages of tweets and retweets, a literature professor at the
University of Oregon, Stephanie LeMenager, announced that she had
created a seminar that she will teach early next year titled “The
Cultures of Climate Change” using the cli fi theme as a main theme of
the class.

Bloom says that cli fi is a broad category, and it can apply to
climate-themed novels
and movies that take place in the present or the future, or even in
the past. And cli fi novels can be dystopian in nature, or utopian, or
just plain ordinary potboiler thrillers.

With carbon dioxide emissions in terms of parts per million (ppm) now
hovering at around 400ppm, cli fi writers have their work cut out for
them, Bloom says.

Post-Sandy and now post-Haiyan, there has never been a more opportune
time than now to
pay attention to the emergence of this newly-minted literary genre dubbed
“cli fi.” Not sci fi, but cli fi – for ”climate fiction” novels.

From Barbara Kingsolver’s “Flight Behavior” to Nathaniel Rich’s “Odds
Against Tomorrow,” and with over 300 novels already on a growing list,
including some that take a contrarian view of global warming,
cli fi novels are increasingly becoming a part of the literary
landscape. Short stories, novels, movies: cli fi is an apt term for
what’s coming down the road year by year as the 21st Century heads
towards the 22nd Century — in terms of coming to grips with climate
change and global warming issues, and from various points of view as
well.

In “State of Fear,” Michael Crichton’s 1994 cli fi novel, the author
used his story to criticize climate activists and dissed global
warming as a non-issue. Bloom says all points of view are welcome in
the cli fi stable, even though he himself does not agree with
Crichton’s thesis.

”Just as sci fi has had a variety of themes and practicitioners, cli fi
novels cannot be bundled into one convenient bookstore shelf. In fact,
like Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” cli fi novels will
also rest on authors’ individual perspectives, and not every author will toe the
line. That’s to be expected. Literature should be open to all.” he says.

But post-Sandy, and post-Haiyan, cli fi arrived in its own quiet way.
And the next
100 years, we will see more and more of this kind of
literature, Bloom says, adding that Hollywood movies will follow the
trend as well.

Expect cli fi movies like Jewish director Darren Aronofsky’s “Noah,” set in the
distant past of the Hebrew Bible story and scheduled for a March 2014 release
and
expect literary critics and academics to turn cli fi into a
much-talked-about genre.

Does cli fi have a
future?

“Yes,” says the travelling PR man. “Yes.

http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

danbloom@gmail.com

bubbie.zadie@gmail.com


LOS ANGELES — With films like “Noah” and “Into the Storm” and “Snowpiercer” — and
“Interstellar” coming in the late fall — Hollywood has seen the
handwriting on the wall and embraced climate themes in full
technicolor. Call the movies ”cli fi” or disaster thrillers,
whatever. There’s more to come in the film world.

But while Hollywood and studio marketing people (and online social
media reporters covering new film releases) have welcomed ”cli fi” into
the fold, the entrenched powers in the literary world controlled by
book editors in New York and London seem to be aloof to all this and
show little interest in the rise of the cli fi genre term.

I am not sure why, but maybe it has to do with literary critics and
book section editors feeling that literature is a ”sacred calling”
and only the all-powerful editors — as ”gatekeepers” — can decide
what’s real and what’s not in the literary world. So be it.

The more I thought about the disconnect between the literary world of
the book industry compared with the open arms in Hollywood, the more I
began to realize that the print novel is basically dead — in the
rising waters of global warming — and has little power anymore to
influence people or impact society.

The New York and London book review section editors are for the most
part just a bunch of gatekeepers
and the gatekeepers don’t seem to care about climate change. They have
their own agendas. Like
being cool and trendy and avantgarde and the like. Climate change is
apparently not on the menu at the hip restaurants where they dine in
Manhattan and London.

So I now feel that the real power of cli fi to change the world, to wake
people up lies in Hollywood and world cinema, indie cinema as well.
Print book are basically dead in the water, dinosaurs. And Hollywood
and the media covering Hollywood, much more than the
literary gatekeepers in New York and London and Washington and Los
Angeles, are getting the cli fi message much better and much more
directly than the print media gatekeepers.

A sea change is happening: Hollywood and the media covering Hollywood
have really embraced cli fi and that is where the real wake-up call
power of public awareness now lies.


Novels about climate change still will have a place in our culture but
a very limited one, and one getting smaller day by day in this digital
world of 500 channels and multiple YouTube distractions. Speculative
fiction and eco-fiction novels still find readers. Look at Margaret
Atwood; look at Barbara Kingsolver; look at Kim Stanley Robinson; look
at James Vandermeer; look at David Brin.

I’ve noticed this sea change as Hollywood directors and PR mavens have
recently become much more with it, in terms of “getting” the cli fi
message. When Time magazine did a three-page cli fi spread on summer
cli fi movies in its May 19, 2014 issue what went worldwide, I began
to notice the way the print and online media were handling the new,
mushrooming cli fi genre.

After the Time article by Lily Rothman came out, the New York Times
”Room for Debate” forum picked up the Hollywood angle for cli fi
movies, assigning academics and experts to talk about films such as
“Snowpiercer” and “Into the Storm” and the upcoming “Interstellar.”

So I came to realize that Hollywood is where cli fi can have its
biggest impact, since print novels are dead in the water (see above)
and the few that do get published by the major publishers are reviewed
only by the gatekeepers at the New York Times and the Guardian in
London.

I see a big future of cli fi movies in Hollywood. Big.


Look around in the social media world: From Time to the New York
Times, from Mashable’s Andrew Freedman to the New York Post’s Page Six
gossip column, there has been more ink about Hollywood and cli fi than
anywhere else.


The Big Six book industry is blind to cli fi. Books are dying. Few
people read anymore, on a large scale. Novels have little impact
anymore. Movies reign supreme, and this is where I see cli fi blooming
now: in Hollywood. Hollywood players get it, the Hollywood media gets
it, and books are dead and movies rule the day now. Publishers Row is
dithering. London, too.

So I am following my gut instinct and my media radar and hoping to see
cli fi genre turn into a real bonanza in the realm of Hollywood film
directors and producers and writers. There is a big future for cli fi in
Hollywood.

Movie directors get it and they want to wake up the world. And make a
little spare change along the way, sure. It’s a business. So cli fi
has found its true home not on Publishers Row in Manhattan but in
Hollywood, and just in time. And this is a good
development.

Cinema has the power to impact the world over important issues of
climate change and global warming. Novels have no such power anymore.
Print is dying, cinema is alive!

Of course, speculative fiction novels and eco-fiction novels still
have a place in our culture, and many of these novels will be adapted
as screenplays and see the light of day as popular movies, so writers
still have a role to play in all this.

As a climate activist and PR guy, I take the cli fi genre very
seriously, and I now see that Hollywood is where cli fi belongs, front
and center.

Do the math: movies reach millions. Most midlist novels reach 3,000
people, if that many.