ABSTRACT
The chapter engages with two types of recent climate novels which, in addition to depicting the climate crisis, do two different kinds of “cultural work.” The first type, here represented by Charlotte McConaghy’s Migrations , seems to take for granted that environmental disaster can no longer be averted and to focus on coping mechanisms. The other type, more central to the argument of the chapter, includes Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future and Stephen Markley’s The Deluge. As transition narratives, both explore potential ways into the future. Drawing on model theory and its applications in literary studies, the chapter shows that these novels are not only conscious of their own function as models but they also, to an unprecedented degree, reflect on the importance of modelling to the climate debate and contain detailed discussions of the achievements and limitations of different types of models. Discussing them as highly complex and multi-facetted representations of the climate crisis and of the debate about how to address it, the chapter again maintains that their potential can only be realized if we read them as fiction rather than mistaking them for thesis novels promulgating blueprints.
