What on Earth Can Atlantis Teach Us?

Sarah Holding

doi:10.31273/eirj.v8i2.582

Abstract

This article presents and contextualises my recently completed cli-fi novel, Chameleon, which is set during the fall of Atlantis and presents a scenario of extreme climate change some 12,000 years ago. I argue that by referring back to our pre-history we have much to learn and uncover about our earlier experiences of surviving climate change, and of coming to terms with its devastating impact, which has caused us to couch flood stories as myth and legend. Cli-fi has the potential to go beyond narratives of fear and humiliation to show us hope that our planet can survive a climate catastrophe as did our predecessors and live to tell the tale, just as the Atlanteans did.

Highlights

This article presents and contextualises my recently completed cli-fi novel, Chameleon, which is set during the fall of Atlantis and presents a scenario of extreme climate change some 12,000 years ago
This led me to realise the need for climate fiction above all to instil among readers a sense of hope as well as urgency in relation to the plight of our planet, a precept which came up in an article published earlier this year on Literary Hub, entitled ‘Can Climate Fiction Be Hopeful?’ (DiFrancesco & Shelby, 2019)
Six years on and everything has changed: cli-fi has burst into the mainstream with articles about its ambiguous relation to ‘climate fact’ popping up everywhere from the BBC (‘The Cultural Frontline, What is CliFi?’) (2019) to Phys.org (‘Scarier than fiction: climate worry driving 'cli-fi' boom’) (Marhic, 2019) to CNN (‘Cli-fi on the big screen changes minds about real climate change’) (Christensen, 2019)