Why are so many novels about climate change pursuing myth and fantasy instead of actual solutions?

I am a student of climate fiction, and not surprisingly so, since I write climate fiction. I’ve long rejected the easy story of apocalypse, and not because such stories are uninteresting or a failure as a fun read, but because such stories most often have little to do with the subject of climate other than as a premise for the crisis. Likewise, I’m not a big fan of far-future stories that show mankind changed in response to the climate crisis, while the stories don’t bother to do the work of showing how the change comes about.

Let’s Set the Stage

Climate change is an astonishing event in our human culture. We have altered the climate of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and have already locked in more changes to the climate over the next many centuries. The reasons for our alteration of fundamental Earth systems make sense in that the fossil fuel-based energy provided to societies and their economies has pushed human development forward even as, supported by the energy abundance, the population numbers have exploded. The combination of huge energy use and ever-larger population numbers over the last two hundred years is the mechanism behind climate change.

It is an impressive achievement, really.

The problem is that the resulting change in the Earth’s climate is itself impressive, but darkly so, since we’re altering the stable climate of the last 10,000 years that supported the dominance of humans. The benefits of such a stable climate are now disappearing, increasingly being replaced by significant disadvantages. We’ve exhausted our species’ advantage from burning fossil fuels to power growth and population. In fact, we find ourselves facing a future that presents growing disadvantages for us in the form of horrendous heat waves, devastating deluges, deadly droughts, surging seas, damning diseases, and massive meteorological disasters.

Another important point to keep in mind is that we’ve known of these consequences for many decades. There’s a report titled The Greenhouse Effect, produced by J.F. Black, Scientific Advisor, Products Research Division, Exxon Research and Engineering Company, dated June 6, 1978. This report closely matches—scarily so—the rises in average global temperatures we’re now seeing and expect to see going forward. This is hardly the first such understanding of the greenhouse gas/global warming effect concluded by the fossil fuel corporations themselves in studies starting back nearly three-quarters of a century ago.

In fact, there are a shocking number of earlier studies on greenhouse gases and warming that began in the 1820s with Joseph Fourier identifying the atmosphere’s heat-trapping “greenhouse effect.” This was followed by Eunice Foote’s (1850s) experiments showing CO2’s powerful heat absorption, and John Tyndall’s (1859) confirmation of gases like CO2 and water vapor absorbing infrared heat. In 1896, Svante Arrhenius first calculated that human CO2 emissions could significantly raise Earth’s temperature, linking industrial activity to climate change, a concept later refined by Charles Keeling’s (1950s-60s) precise CO2 measurements.

Look up “Early 20th century newspaper stories about burning coal and the greenhouse effect.” Here’s the AI Search Summary you’ll find (I’ve left the links live):

Early 20th-century newspapers, notably in 1912, published short, syndicated articles linking coal combustion to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and future global warming. These reports, such as a famous August 1912 piece, accurately predicted that burning coal would act as a “blanket” to raise Earth’s temperature within a few centuries. [1, 2, 3]

Key Historical Clippings

• • 1912 Climate Change Article: Originally published in March 1912 in Popular Mechanics, and later in Australian/New Zealand newspapers (e.g., The Braidwood Dispatch and Mining Journal and Rodney and Otamatea Times) in August 1912, this report was titled “Coal Consumption Affecting Climate” or similar.
  • What it Stated: The 67-word article noted that furnaces were burning 2 billion tons of coal annually, adding roughly 7 million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere yearly. It explained that this CO2 acts as a “blanket” that raises temperature, predicting, “This effect may be considerable in a few centuries”.
  • Scientific Context: This was not the first instance of such reporting. It followed pioneering work by scientists like Svante Arrhenius, who predicted this effect in 1896, and earlier studies by H.A. Phillips in 1882. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]

Keep in mind that a number of the big fossil fuel corporations had commissioned their own studies in the 1970s and 1980s, although we don’t know the exact count, and probably won’t until the discovery phases of liability cases against the fossil fuel corporations take place and are made public. Unless, of course, SCOTUS rules that fossil fuel companies are protected against liability lawsuits, and remember, SCOTUS has done this for the gun companies.

Climate Change is a Fantastic Story in the Real World

A recent Substack post in Climate Fiction Writers League, “Imagination, Mythology, and the Return to Earth, by Steve Stine, author of I, Enoch, May 05, 2026, is unfortunately typical of what is found in this Substack. The intro to the post is as follows:

Steve Stine talks about mythology in fiction. His sci-fi novel I, Enoch, is about a race to save the world from the prospect of a sixth mass extinction. Enoch embarks on a dangerous mission with the help of ancient patrons and in the company of those with special knowledge of Earth’s hidden secrets. 

The first thing that set me off is Stine’s use of the manned moon mission as an example of the age of science, setting Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon in opposition to mythic storytelling. “And yet, what we gained that day in the annals of space exploration, we lost in the age-old story-telling traditions that bestowed upon the moon a mythic quality. For countless generations and throughout the world, the moon played a lead role in shaping cultures, aligning belief systems, and influencing human behavior.”

Good to know, I guess. It turns out that the moon is made of straw, not cheese, and that it’s the old straw man in the moon. Stine waxes nostalgic on the role the moon once played in human imagination, and bemoans that now, somehow, we’ve lost what for the ancients was the understanding that “…not knowing [is] fertile ground for story-telling.” There’s mention of the Age of Reason, and Voltaire, David Hume, and Thomas Paine come up, along with their complaints about myths. Stine comments, “…[T]he substance and purpose of mythology suffered a full-frontal assault by those bent on placing science at the centre of our cultural transformation.” The straw man argument here is that “not knowing” and science are oppositional, and if not knowing” is essential for story-telling, then somehow, amid all the test tubes and data sets, we’ve lost the ability to tell a story. “Today, the word ‘myth’ is synonymous with a falsehood,” Stine then claims. Well, it can be, but myth has other meanings and hewing only to the falsehood definition is itself false. Let’s turn to a product of science (and imagination!) to test definitions. Here is the Google AI summary of the definition of myth:

A myth is a traditional, often sacred narrative explaining a culture’s worldview, beliefs, or natural phenomena, typically featuring gods or heroes in a remote era. While commonly misconstrued as a “false story,” a myth acts as a symbolic, foundational truth for a community, rather than a literal historical account. [1, 2, 3]

Key Definitions of Myth:

• • Sacred Narrative: A story of ostensibly historical events that explains a culture’s practices, beliefs, or natural phenomena (e.g., creation myths).
  • Cultural Worldview: A story that defines a group’s identity, often involving divine or supernatural beings, which is revered as true and authoritative within that culture.
  • Common Usage (False Belief): A popular but unsubstantiated belief or false notion (e.g., “the myth of racial superiority”). [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Key Characteristics:

• • Anonymous Origin: Usually told without a known author, passed down through generations.
  • Symbolic Truth: Myths are often metaphorically or symbolically true, even if factually false.
  • Functions: They serve to answer fundamental questions (creation, death) and justify social systems and rites. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Myth vs. Related Terms:

• • Myth vs. Legend: Legends are usually based on historical figures or events, though often exaggerated, whereas myths operate in a, “primordial,” or non-specific time involving gods.
  • Myth vs. Folktale: Folktales are told for entertainment or moral instruction rather than being considered sacred or strictly true. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Myths, Storytelling, and the Modern Age of Climate Fiction

I understand Stine’s interest in supporting the concept of myth—his book, I, Enoch, presents the following description on Amazon:

I, Enoch is an enthralling journey into a world where ancient secrets and modern ambitions collide. Enoch, the protagonist, stands as a guardian of lost truths and protector of the marginalized, battling against forces that hold dominion over the planet. In a race to save the world from the prospect of a sixth mass extinction, Enoch embarks on a dangerous mission with the help of ancient patrons and in the company of those with special knowledge of Earth’s hidden secrets. As he delves deeper, Enoch confronts not only external adversaries but also internal dilemmas about justice, knowledge, and power. This tale weaves together mysticism with gritty realism, creating a tapestry rich with philosophical questions and the perennial quest for understanding one’s purpose. As Enoch wrestles with his responsibilities and the consequences of his actions, the reader is invited into a vividly crafted universe that challenges the conventional boundaries between history and myth, between what is known and what is imaginable. This book promises to leave readers pondering their own place in the history of humankind and the universe.

To be fair, I’ve not read the entire book, just samples from the book as well as descriptive copy, so maybe I’m using I, Enoch as my own straw man.

Storytelling exists across many modalities, where myth, in the word’s various connotations, is but one. I happen to like Carl Jung’s sense of archetypes within the human mind and Joseph Campbell does a great job tying the history of myths into literature. Heck, I took a course as an undergraduate called “Myth in Literature,” where I got to read Eric Neumann’s The History of Consciousness, for pete’s sake, so I’m no anti-myth guy, honest. I also don’t see myth and science as opposites, not when it comes to human imagination and storytelling. What sticks in my craw is the propensity of novels calling themselves climate fiction that focus on fantasy, and that includes altered species or fairies or demi-gods, or far-future distant or dystopian worlds, or radical changes in human nature often focused on gender issues or BIPOC, all the while too often fitting into hyper-genre writing markets instead of having climate change the central focus. There are many fantasy, romance, thriller, or science fiction novels that have some “climate” orientation or other, but that clearly don’t address the clear issues of climate change, either in cause or solution. We’re burning fossil fuels and heating the planet. Isn’t this time and place of crucial threat to the world an interesting enough story? Who needs allegory when the menace and what needs doing to address it is staring us right in the face?

To be clear, there are many excellent climate fiction works. Think Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future; Nicky Singer’s The Survival Game; Richard Powers’s The Overstory; Jenny Offill’s Weather; Omar El Akkad’s American War; Arthur Jeon’s Snowflake; Nick Fuller Goggin’s The Great Transition; Paul E. Hardisty’s The Forcing; Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife; Stephen Markely’s The Deluge; Chuck Colin’s Altar to an Erupting Sun; and J. Underwood’s The Bell Lap, to name some. But out of the 160-plus “climate fiction” novels I’d noted in building a Goodreads list (an effort I abandoned in late 2024 due to the sheer volume and size of the task), the sort of climate fiction I prefer remains a small minority.

And sure, it is a matter of taste, in part. But what sets climate fiction apart from other categories? Might it not be the topic and focus on where we are now and how we address climate change? Any category that is too inclusive ends up losing value as a category. Novels that turn to deus ex machina may be fun, but there’s not much of a real climate change solution being investigated in such stories. Fantasy can be a fun read and teach the reader about the human condition, but unless it is actively focused on climate change, does it fit into the category of climate fiction? Myths and allegories and social criticism can be edifying, and romances and thrillers and crime novels can be entertaining, but maybe climate fiction should directly address climate change and what we might imagine doing about the problem.

There’s this idea of “thrutopia” in climate fiction which I define as climate fiction that shows where we are in the world of changing climate and how we get to where we’re going. I like to quote the old Down Easter joke, “You can’t get there from here,” but getting from where we are today to the world we are heading to—solutions successful or not—seems likely the real focus for climate fiction.