| Abstract: | In Australian climate change contexts, Locust Girl (2015), a climate fiction (cli-fi) novel by Filipino-Australian writer Merlinda Bobis, reads as a thinly disguised account of human agents and agencies that transformed Australia from a verdant continent with ample sources of water to a sunburnt and parched one after 1788. In global contexts, the novel describes the planet Earth as humans are transforming it from a cool green sphere into a hot red orb. Today, “1% of the world is a barely livable hot zone. By 2070, that amount of space could go up to 20%. The novel asks questions in particular about what specific human agents and agencies in Australia and beyond are most responsible for climate change. In the implicit answers that the novel gives to those questions, it castigates what ecofeminists identify as masculinist beliefs and behaviours. That criticism is the basis of the discussion of this chapter. The second main subject, which precedes the first, relates to questions about the genre of cli-fi. In addressing it, Iris Ralph briefly summarize the origins of literary realism, sci-fi (science fiction), and cli-fi, a genre that is the meeting halfway between literary realism and sci-fi, two genres that traditionally stood at opposite ends on the literary spectrum. Locust Girl exemplifies the new genre of cli-fi in its address of stark climatic realities generated by human activities. Even only half a century ago, those realities would not have been portrayed in most literature outside of sci-fi literary production and include sky-rocketing temperatures, desertification, proliferation of fire, shrinking aquifers, species loss on a massive scale, loss of arable land, and condensation of human populations in and around mega cities. |
