‘Cli-fi’ is the elegantly named sub-genre of speculative fiction set after what is about to go wrong has gone wrong
From top left: Kim Stanley Robinson, C Pam Zhang and Paolo Bacigalupi
I have to write somewhere other than at home. If I’m at the kitchen table, my stream of consciousness is one long “don’t forget to load the dishwasher, ooh that’s an interesting new book that came in yesterday, look, one of the dogs needs a belly rub, has that mole on the back of my hand got bigger?”. So, as I write this, I’m looking out of one of the huge glass windows of the beautiful Lexicon library in Dún Laoghaire.
I’m sitting in a study space. I’m probably not supposed to be here, but they don’t seem to have “rambling old man writing about books space” yet. The view out of the window is of a vast blue sky, puffy clouds and late evening sun shining down on quiet gardens, tall windswept trees, kids playing and the choppy sea all the way across to Howth.