The Best Climate & Environmental Fiction Books
“What are the best Climate & Environmental Fiction Books?” We looked at 17 lists and 118 different books to answer that very question. Of the 118 total books 33 appeared multiple times.
What can be found in a Best Climate and Environment Fiction Books Listicle:
- The phrase “Cli-Fi”
- Trilogies by Kim Stanley Robinson
- Paolo Bacigalupi
- Green and Blue imagery
- Apocalypse’s
- Reminders of scientific facts that should be common sense but somehow still aren’t
The Top 33 Climate and Environmental Fiction Books
33) Back to the Garden by Clara Hume
Appears on: 2 Lists
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32) Breathe by Sarah Crossan
Appears on: 2 Lists
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31) Dune by Frank Herbert
Appears on: 2 Lists
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30) Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach
Appears on: 2 Lists
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29) Exodus by Julia Bertagna
Appears on: 2 Lists
28) Fallen Angels by Larry Niven
Appears on: 2 Lists
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27) From Here by Daniel Kramb
Appears on: 2 Lists
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26) I’m With the Bears: Short Stories from a Damaged Planet edited by Mark Martin
Appears on: 2 Lists
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25) Love in the Time of Global Warming by Francesca Lia Block
Appears on: 2 Lists
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24) Nature’s Confession by JL Morin
Appears on: 2 Lists
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23) River of Gods by Ian McDonald
Appears on: 2 Lists
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22) Snowpiercer by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette
Appears on: 2 Lists
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21) State of Fear by Michael Crichton
Appears on: 2 Lists
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20) The Color of Distance by Amy Thomson
Appears on: 2 Lists
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19) The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
Appears on: 2 Lists
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18) Watermind by M. M. Buckner
Appears on: 2 Lists
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17) Drowned Cities By Paolo Bacigalupi
Appears on: 2 Lists
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16) Drowning Towers By George Turner
Appears on: 2 Lists
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15) 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
Appears on: 3 Lists
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14) A Friend of the Earth by T.C. Boyle
Appears on: 3 Lists
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13) Arctic Rising by Tobias Buckell
Appears on: 3 Lists
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12) The Healer: A Novel by Antti Tuomainen
Appears on: 3 Lists
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11) The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
Appears on: 3 Lists
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10) Far North by Marcel Theroux
Appears on: 4 Lists
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9) The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard
Appears on: 5 Lists
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8) The Sea and Summer by George Turner
Appears on: 5 Lists
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7) Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
Appears on: 6 Lists
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6) Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi
Appears on: 6 Lists
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5) The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
Appears on: 6 Lists
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4) Solar by Ian McEwan
Appears on: 7 Lists
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3) Science in the Capital Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
Appears on: 7 Lists
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2) Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich
Appears on: 8 Lists
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1) Maddaddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood
Appears on: 9 Lists
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The Additional 85 Titles Appearing on a Single List
- A Being Darkly Wise by John Atcheson
- A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Norman Maclean
- A Visit from the Goon Squad
- Alien Species Intervention
- Antarctica
- Arctic Drift by Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler
- Back to the Garden by Clara Hume
- Blood Red Road by Moira Young
- Blue Remembered Earth
- Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest
- Carbon Dreams by Susan M. Gaines
- Climate Changed: A Personal Journey Through Science by Philippe Squarzoni
- Energized by Edward Lerner
- Extinction
- Fifty Degrees Below
- Floodland by Marcus Sedgwick
- Freedom,” Franzen
- Game of Thrones
- Grass, Sheri S. Tepper
- Greenhouse Summer by Norman Spinrad
- Greenhouse: It Will Happen in 1997
- In Patagonia, Bruce Chatwin
- It’s the End of the World As We Know It by Saci Lloyd
- Kamikaze L’Amour: A Novel of the Future
- Lilith’s Brood, by Octavia Butler
- Lonesome No More!
- Make Room! Make Room!
- Maximum Ride” series by James Patterson
- Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta
- Milwaukee the Beautiful
- Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
- Mother of Storms
- My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell
- Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Hayao Miyazaki
- Orleans, Sherri L. Smith
- Out of the Deeps
- Red Rock by Kate Kelly
- Sacred Space
- Shackleton’s Man Goes South by Tony White
- Shadow Country, Peter Matthiessen
- Sixty Days and Counting
- Slapstick
- Snapper
- Starvation Ridge by Risa Bear
- Stormteller by David Thorpe
- The Alchemist and The Executioness, by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias Buckell
- The Art of Fielding
- The Baron in the Trees, Italo Calvino
- The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
- The Call of the Wild, Jack London
- The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future by Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway
- The Coming of the Global Superstorm
- The Death of Grass
- The Doubt Factory
- The Drowning Cities
- The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein
- The Ice People
- The Islands at the End of the World by Austin Aslan
- The Kraken Wakes
- The Lorax, by Doctor Suess
- The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Magic Goes Away” by Larry Niven
- The Monkey Wrench Gang, Edward Abbey
- The New Atlantis” by Ursula K. Le Guin
- The Quiet War, by Paul McAuley
- The Road, Cormac McCarthy
- The Sheep Look Up
- The Shell Collector, Anthony Doerr
- The Siphoners
- The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson
- The Summer Book, Tove Jansson
- The Tamarisk Hunter
- The Twig Stories series by Jo Mitchell
- The Wind from Nowhere
- The World in Winter
- War With the Newts
- Welcome to the Greenhouse edited by Gordon Van Gelder
- When the Killing’s Done, T.C. Boyle
- Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America by Jon Mooallem
- Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier, Wallace Stegner
- Zoogoing
The 17 “Best Climate & Environmental” Book Lists Consulted
- 3/21/2011: Io9 – 10 works of fiction that might change the way you look at nature
- 2013: Dissent Magazine – Cli-Fi: Birth of a Genre
- 4/20/2013: NPR – So Hot Right Now: Has Climate Change Created A New Literary Genre?
- 7/3/2013: New Yorker – Scenes from a Melting Planet: On the Climate-Change Novel
- 12/17/2013: Conservation Magazine – THE RISE OF CLIMATE FICTION
- 4/8/2014: Grist – Climate change: The hottest thing in science fiction
- 8/13/2014: Science Blogs – Climate change fiction is the hottest thing in the book world!
- 8/18/2014: Sierra Club – CLIFI: THE HOTTEST READING TREND
- 9/17/2014: Free Word Center – 12 works of climate fiction everyone should read
- 10/26/2014: Salon – The rise of climate fiction: When literature takes on global warming and devastating droughts
- 4/22/2015: Flavorwire – 25 Novels That Will Turn You Into an Environmentalist
- 4/23/2015: The Guardian – Sarah Holding’s top 10 cli-fi books
- 8/14/2015: The Atlantic – Climate Fiction: Can Books Save the Planet?
- 8/24/2015: Flavor Pill – FREEZE: 3 Chilling Cli-Fi Books to Know
- 12/10/2015: SF Encyclopedia – Climate Change
- Best Science Fiction Books – Ecological Science Fiction Books
- To Be Read Books – 5 Science Fiction Books Environmentalists Should Read