ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the intersection of environmentalism and theology within climate fiction. Climate fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which climate, and especially climate change, is foregrounded within the story or storyworld. In discussing her own climate fiction trilogy, Margaret Atwood points to the suggestion that environmentalism must become a religion if it is going to accomplish its goals. This chapter will explore the influence of eco-religions or eco-spirituality in Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy and Octavia Butler's Parables series, teasing out whether hope for avoiding (or recovering from) a collapse of the biosphere in the face of climate change can be found in the religious.
