Writing the Human Element Into Climate Change Via Those Most At Risk
by Claire Holroyde, plus Marissa Slaven and Bill McGuire discuss their eco-thrillers
It was easy to be distracted at the start of 2017 when I was writing a manuscript about a potentially cataclysmic event. It wasn’t the one I feared, nor was it the one lying in wait at the turn of 2020. I focused on a plot with cosmic collisions; comets and asteroids are fascinating, after all. They held my attention until I couldn’t ignore current events that read more and more like the science fiction I was crafting.
That year, the incoming Trump administration removed all mention of climate change from the White House website in January, and ordered the US Environmental Protection Agency to do the same. The following month, Trump acted with his majority in Congress to revoke the Stream Protection Rule, which had placed certain restrictions on the disposal of mining waste in waterways, and confirm Scott Pruitt as the new head of the EPA. While he was Oklahoma’s acting Attorney General, Pruitt had often sued the agency to challenge its regulations. All around me, there was a backlash against environmental protection, science, and truth itself.
Writing a novel about saving the only known life-sustaining planet in our galaxy compelled me to save the Earth in our own timeline. So I began researching the last wild places on Earth: the Amazon and the Arctic, where the last battles against the climate crisis will be waged. For humanity to survive, it must stem the burning of the Amazon, halt the melting of the Arctic, and prevent the further rise of global temperatures and the extreme weather that results from it.
I studied first-hand accounts of those landscapes in writing, photography, and video because I couldn’t physically travel to the South American equator and the northern pole (I had a full-time job and those ecosystems would likely kick my ass; being hostile to human habitation is how they survived in our Anthropocene age). But I had to tread carefully; as The Economist has stated, “Climate change is a notoriously tough subject for novelists,” a fact that is as real to me now as it was in 2017.
One big reason for that: A story about climate change needs an ambassador for the cause. For many people, the facts just don’t make a difference; ecocide, deforestation, and the loss of species that are evolutionary marvels just don’t register. At least, that has usually been the outcome of my own discussions around climate change. Only when humans are affected directly, do others feel compelled enough to act. I needed a real human story as a basis to inspire empathy and show the threat of extinction to a people, as well as the creatures that surround them.
That was when it became clear to me that my story needed to feature the Wayãpi of the Nipukú River, one of the last Indigenous tribes to exist completely independently of modern technology. Most other such tribes had been wiped out or forcibly assimilated by 1974, the year that anthropological linguist Alan Tormaid Campbell arrived in the Wayãpi village by the Nipukú in his account Getting to Know Waiwai. These Wayãpi came close to extinction when their numbers dwindled down to only one village with 152 people. Here was the potential permanent loss of a people, a culture, and a language; here were my ambassadors.
I couldn’t find any current information on the Wayãpi, although the different spellings of their name—Wayapí, Waiapi, Wayampi, Wajãpi, etc.—made research difficult. I feverishly hoped that they were still living in the northeastern forests of Brazil and surviving invasion from illegal gold panners, loggers, missionaries, disease, and deforestation. Today, the forest where they lived was burning at such magnitude that the astronauts on the International Space Station could see the fires at night.
As I wrote a chapter about those astronauts, the Wayãpi hit the news after almost four decades. Michel Temer, Brazil’s president, issued a decree that removed protection from a large area of Amazon forest that included eight conservation parks and two Indigenous land reserves. Environmental activists alerted the international press and journalists followed up on the story. With the world watching, a federal judge blocked the decree. Temer was not a king, but a president that needed approval from his National Congress.
However, this was only one victory among the many environmental defeats in Brazil. From 2006 through 2017, the country lost around 91,890 square miles of forest, which scales to an area larger than New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Connecticut combined; mass destruction had happened in just in ten years, and fires kept spreading into the future. In the fall of 2018, Brazil elected Jair Bolsonaro as its 38th president. He wasted no time on his agenda, announcing, “Where there is Indigenous land, there is wealth underneath it.” Bolsonaro attacked the legal protection granted to Brazil’s 305 ethnic groups, the last stewards of the Amazon forest.
This is what the Wayãpi ambassador in my story faced. He has two names—Gustavo, a Brazilian name given by a missionary, and his Wayãpi name, Wanato—and I hope he can bear witness to this destruction.
Now, my manuscript had two potential apocalypses included. But I was going to need heroes to save the planet—lots of them. It’s no wonder that I chose scientists. During a rise in nationalist politics when our new president pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement and walked away from a pact with our allies, I created characters that knew how to reach across borders and collaborate for the greater good.
Most of my characters were invented, like Dr. Benjamin Schwartz from NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, Dr. Maya Gutiérrez from UC Santa Barbara’s Marine Science Institute, and Dr. Zhen Liu from China National Space Administration. Chapter by chapter, these characters demonstrate the cooperation, ingenuity and altruism of our species when the chips are down.
Heroes like these exist throughout history. In fact, some of my characters are modeled after specific instances of them. Dr. Siegfried “Ziggy” Divjak is inspired by Dr. Siegfried S. Hecker, the Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Hecker collaborated with Russian nuclear physicists—former enemies—to secure nuclear arsenals during growing unrest. He’s the perfect example of how scientists have fought to protect our future—sometimes from ourselves.
I had all the characters I needed to save the planet and complete the manuscript. I found a literary agent at the end of the year, and then a publisher in early 2019. Together, we titled the book The Effort for the work that is done by Indigenous peoples like the Wayãpi, environmental activists, and scientists that point to danger and plead: Don’t look away.
This essay was originally published on Lithub here. The Effort by Claire Holroyde is available now.
Claire Holroyde is a graphic designer, writer, and storyteller living in the Philadelphia metro area. Her novel The Effort is sci-fi for readers of Station Eleven and Good Morning, Midnight, an electric, heart-pounding novel of love and sacrifice that follows people around the world as they unite to prevent a global catastrophe.
Mess with the climate and it will bite back
Marissa Slaven and Bill McGuire discuss their eco-thrillers, and how their work as a palliative care physician and UCL Professor Emeritus respectively have effected their fiction writing.
In Bill McGuire's Skyseed, a clandestine attempt to tackle global heating using untried and untested technology threatens to bring about a climate cataclysm. Under constant threat of assassination, three scientists struggle to expose the plot and stop the project in its tracks, but could it already be too late?
Jane Haliwell put her head in her hands. To tell the truth, she was still in shock. All the samples she had taken from inside and around the lab contained the enigmatic spheres in huge numbers. She had only had a brief time to think about the implications, but she was pretty sure already what was going on.
For the first time in the history of the world, it was literally raining carbon. Long before it stopped, the guilty would pay, but so would the innocent...
Marissa Slaven's Code Red is the sequel to Code Blue, which she discussed in a previous issue of the newsletter here. It is set in the not to distant future when the climate crisis is even worse but the nations of the world have truly united in a serious effort to fix things. It picks up with our hero Tic returning to North Eastern Science Academy after her adventures in the North Atlantic. After a hurricane and a big fight with her boyfriend she’s very happy to go with Uncle Al to Montana for school break. There she encounters plenty of natural disasters, but the real danger comes in human form. The secret sect determined to bring about the end of the world is on to her and they are pissed!
A truck. A huge black semi drops out of the sky.
Danny turns hard to the right and slams on the brakes, but we are going too fast. The driver’s side of our pickup slams into it. The momentum throws Uncle Al into me and I press into Danny. There’s a shriek of metal on metal as our truck scrapes along the roof of the semi, lying on its side, until we come to a full stop. After so much violent noise, I can suddenly hear my own screams in the stillness.
Marissa: It’s always interesting to me to see how different cli-fi writers entered the field. You are a Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London. Why did you decide to write fiction?
Bill: Actually, it's been a very natural progression. Over time, my writing career seems to have moved of its own accord, from a focus on scientific papers, through newspaper and magazine articles and popular science books, to short stories and – ultimately – my debut novel, Skyseed. I still write papers and articles, but I feel that telling stories is a far more accessible way of getting across to people the critical nature of the climate emergency. I have to say, it is also a great deal more fun that pulling together a dry journal paper.
As a palliative care physician, you work in a very different field, so I wonder what inspired you to write?
Marissa: I have always been an avid reader. I was inspired to try writing fiction after reading several novels where the heroine saved the world with her physical skills. I kept looking for a girl who could save the world using her intelligence. I came up with the idea that such a hero might be battling climate change and then I had to learn about the climate crisis so that I could write the novel. The more I learned about the climate the more passionate I became and that in turn inspired me to keep writing. Palliative care is all about facing up to very unpleasant realities in order to make the best possible decisions and use of time, so I believe my experiences have better equipped me to learn about the climate crisis.
Bill: I can definitely see there is a real connection there. What do you hope your novels Code Red and Code Blue might accomplish?
Marissa: I hope that readers might pick up a few titbits of information, but more importantly I want my novels to give readers a bit of hope. In them, I imagine a future that - while still terrible in its climate catastrophes’- is at least striving towards a better future. I also really want readers to be engaged and entertained! What about you?
Bill: Principally, that readers sit back when they have finished and think, 'I enjoyed that'. More than this, the narrative is pretty grim at times, and I would hope that this would arouse deep feelings within the reader. I know that some people have said the book terrified them, and others that it made them cry, which is all to the good.
As is appropriate at the height of the climate emergency, Skyseed also carries an important message, which is: 'mess intentionally with the climate and it will bite back'. As the idea of so-called geoengineering gains credence and support, people need to know that it is a very bad thing.
Marissa: You have way more science creds than I do, so I have to ask, how realistic is your book?
Bill: Well, the self-reproducing nanobots that threaten climate cataclysm in Skyseed don't exist. Nonetheless, I was somewhat shocked to read, recently, that scientists have built self-replicating artificial lifeforms called xenobots, so maybe I should add 'yet' to that statement. Other than this, I think the consequences of a massive, rapid, fall in atmospheric carbon, are pretty accurately portrayed. Code Red strikes me as very authentic too.
Marissa: It really is! I tried very hard to keep every bit of science in my novels accurate even though I don’t have your background. That said, is it realistic that in my novels I imagine governments all working together to fight climate change? Hmmm…well that gets into politics. So let me ask you this, the bad guys in your novel are mostly politicians, tell me about that decision.
Bill: It would be great if politicians around the world worked together to tackle the climate emergency, and I hope that this comes to pass before it is too late. At the moment, however, I feel that politicians – as a body - simply don't 'get' global heating and the existential threat it presents, and most don't want to. The idea that the status quo – meaning unfettered free-market capitalism - must be maintained at all costs is ingrained. They are in thrall to growth and GDP increase and, I believe, will do anything to keep it that way, despite the fact that this is impossible on a small planet with limited resources. It has to be said that, at the moment, politicians are more to blame than any other group for the fact that we can no longer side-step dangerous climate breakdown.
Marissa: But for those of us lucky enough to live in a democracy we elect our politicians so I could argue that we are responsible on that count. I could, but I think that you are correct that the problem all around is capitalism.
Bill: Agreed, but in your novels the bad guys seem to be religious fringe types. Why did you decide to go in that direction?
Marissa: You’re right they are very fringe, but I don’t feel they are actually religious, but rather that they each use religion as a mask or an excuse to serve their own needs and desires. In fact, each of my ‘bad guys’ truly has other deeper, more personal reasons, for their actions. These have to do with greed, with insecurity and ultimately with the need to be loved, which is revealed or hinted at in their back stories and may come out even more if there is another book in the series. There are clearly many religious people in our world who take their responsibilities to all creation very seriously and I give them total credit for that.
Bill: Indeed there are, and we could do with many more of them.
Marissa: I noticed that several of your characters are scientists and academics. Are there any of your characters in SkySeed that you particularly identified with?
Bill: Yes, scientists do play a big role, which I think is inevitable given the technical nature of the plot. Essentially, my characters are amalgams, pulled together from the best and worst bits of colleagues I have known over the years. If I were to identify with one, it would probably be Karl, the only difference being that while I matured over time, he – in many ways – remains unadulterated by the passing years.
Marissa: That’s interesting because Tic matures some between Code Blue and Code Red. She is less naïve and less impulsive, and I attribute this to her significant experiences in Code Blue. I found it very difficult to write about her killing someone. I managed to sidestep it in Code Blue, but realized I wasn’t going to be able to avoid it forever. I have no personal experience, but I can’t help but believe that killing someone, even in self-defence, changes a person. I felt bad about that.
Bill: You're right, killing someone off – even in a book – can be somewhat traumatic. Killing off Jane was certainly hard. It may have seemed a bit harsh, and a number of readers said it made them cry, but it just felt right. Despite her upbeat nature, she had been ground down by events across the decades that followed the murder of her son, and simply had nothing left to live for.
Marissa: I found it sad but completely realistic that Jane died. I believed that she was worn by the events and that the world she was living in was very bleak. Do you think your novel is overly pessimistic about the future?
Bill: There is little chance that the outcome I present in Skyseed will come about, but in other ways I don't feel it is pessimistic at all. Burning all fossil fuel reserves will result in a planet with an average global temperature in excess of 30°C (it is currently less than 15°C), which would make most of our world uninhabitable. Without huge emissions cuts in the next seven or eight years, the future does look pretty bleak, and this just doesn't look as if it's going to happen.
Marissa: If I only thought about decreasing or even stopping all emissions, I would say that we are cooked. I think the answer needs to include drawing down CO2 levels and there are already many natural ways to do that. What we are lacking is not the science to keep the planet liveable but the will to implement solutions. Is it overly optimistic to imagine that we can have the will? I don’t think so. Historically, how society organizes itself has changed drastically many times, so I know that it is possible. I’m not saying there won’t be many lives lost but I’m not without hope.
Bill: You are absolutely right, the will to change is critical. If we wanted to, we could easily roll back on emissions as the science demands, but everyone – from individuals to governments would need to be onboard. There is always hope that this will happen before a climate cataclysm is upon us, and I would never want to say otherwise. Hope is an important message, especially for younger readers, who I am guessing you are aiming at?
Marissa: Yes, Code Red is intended for young adults, ages 12 and up. That said I have had readers as young as 8 and as old as 81. One of the things about YA fiction is that it is very accessible to people of all ages. I think it is really important to help empower all people with information but I feel we owe young people a huge debt for the world they are inheriting from us. What about Skyseed? Who do you picture reading it?
Bill: Setting aside any deeper messages, I would describe Skyseed as a fast-paced techno-thriller, at heart, with speculative fiction overtones, and a grim theme. As such, I would hope anyone keen on a good adventure story, science fiction, or even a who-done-it, would enjoy it.
Marissa: I definitely enjoyed the thriller aspect of the novel. I don’t want to give too much away but those characters who speak out against geoengineering often come to bad ends. Have you received any negative feedback around how geoengineering is portrayed in your novel?
Bill: At least for the present, there is an overwhelming consensus that resorting to any form of geoengineering to attempt to put the global heating genie back in the bottle is a very bad idea. Consequently, I have had nothing but support. No doubt this will change when and if support for techie tinkering with the climate builds, as it inevitably will.
[Ed - read our essay on Geoengineering by David Barker here]
Marissa: I really enjoyed Skyseed and have enjoyed this chance to talk with you about it. I’m sure folks are wondering what you are working on next?
Bill: Wearing my popular science writer's hat, I have just finished putting together Hothouse Earth: an Inhabitant's Guide (publishing Aug 22). As you can probably glean from the title, it is not an optimistic book. Based upon the latest research and observation, it starts from the premise that it is now practically impossible for us to dodge dangerous climate breakdown, and goes on to look at what sort of world this will bring. I also have a couple of YA projects on the go. How about you?
Marissa: During COVID I’ve been learning screenwriting and hope to have a few things coming out in the next while. Maybe when I’m good enough at it I will try to tackle the Code books either for a film or television series.
Find out more about Code Red and Skyseed.
Bill McGuire is Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London, a co-director of the New Weather Institute, and was a contributor to the 2012 IPCC report on climate change and extreme events. His books include A Guide to the End of the World: Everything you Never Wanted to Know and Waking the Giant: How a Changing Climate Triggers Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Volcanoes. He writes for many publications including The Guardian, The Times, The Observer, New Scientist, Focus and Prospect, and blogs for the New Weather Institute, Scientists for Global Responsibility, Extinction Rebellion and Operation Noah.
Read his recent article for New Scientist ‘Climate fiction has come of age – and these fabulous books show why’.
Marissa Slaven was born and raised in Montreal by parents who taught her that it was her responsibility to do her part to make the world a better place. She has been helping people in her role as a palliative care physician for twenty-five years and she continues to get great satisfaction from this work. She is the mother of three grown children and two dogs. Marissa loves interacting with her readers and speaking with young people about the environment. She recently completed Code Red, the sequel to Code Blue, and is working on a screenplay account of her great-uncle’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War.
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