The Deluge: notes on a leading climate fiction novel

Posted on July 16, 2023 by Bryan Alexander

How might we imagine the unfolding climate crisis through the creative arts?

I’ve been studying climate fiction (please don’t say “cli-fi”) for several years now, and wanted to share some notes on what strikes me as a leading example.

The Deluge is one of the most impressive examples of climate fiction I’ve read so far. It’s an epic, using dozens of characters across decades of time to sketch out how humanity might respond to global warming, and the damage the crisis could inflict.

It’s a social novel, using a broad canvas to address a topic, and I think it mostly succeeds in that strategy. Markley offers us one charismatic climate activist, her boyfriend, a desperately poor young man, a series of politicians, a bitter climate scientist, an autistic modeler, an eco-terrorist, and that’s just the most prominent people. This gives us multiple points of view on a society in the throes of a complex crisis.

Alongside these characters there are a lot of ideas in the novel, both in terms of understanding climate change and in seeking to adapt to or mitigate global warming, much like in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry of the Future. I’m fond of the proposed “shock collar” law (166) which would fine fossil fuel…