Quiet Futures: Climate Fiction

Climate change is ‘the greatest health threat of the 21st century and has significant impacts on physical and mental health and psychosocial wellbeing’ (Australian Psychological Society website), yet there has been little research undertaken as to the ways in which literary representations of the issue have, and continue to, negatively impact our collective feelings. With the climate fiction circulating today relying on dystopian visions of our climate changed future or melancholic depictions of our climate changed present, this project re-positions collaborative writing processes into the production of fictional texts engaging with climate change. This creative-practice-as-research project will counteract the immobilisation of readers inside realities that focus on individual powerlessness and fixed futures.

This project looks at how climate fiction affects the way we imagine our future in a climate changed world.