About

My thesis argues that a place-specific analysis of climate fiction can illuminate the lived experience of the Anthropocene: a name for our proposed epoch, denoting humanity as the dominant geologic force on Earth. I use California as a regional case study because the state has exemplified and epitomised both the drivers (gargantuan petrochemical infrastructure, oil extraction, capitalistic overdevelopment, deforestation) and effects (extreme wildfire, drought, storms) of the Anthropocene and its best-known symptom, climate change. More specifically, I contend that fiction is uniquely suited to exposing the psychological and philosophical impacts of the Anthropocene, as it enables access to human interiority in a much more direct way than other art mediums. By examining the inner worlds of the characters of California climate fiction as they move through the Anthropocene world, my place-based analytical approach can help towards demystifying the contemporary condition. My thesis is split into two parts, focusing respectively on the spatial and temporal dimensions of our proposed epoch. Part one analyses four recent examples of Los Angeles climate fiction: Amitav Ghosh's Gun Island (2019), Maria Amparo Escandon's L.A Weather (2021), Alexandra Kleeman's Something New Under the Sun (2021) and Paul Beatty's The Sellout (2016). I argue that these novels evoke the planetary scale of climate change from a regional perspective, thereby showing how the local and global are intrinsically connected in the Anthropocene. Part two scrutinises fiction set elsewhere in California: Richard Powers' The Overstory (2018), T.C Boyle's When the Killing's Done (2015) and A Friend of the Earth (2000), Claire Vaye Watkins' Gold Fame Citrus (2015) and Edan Lepucki's California (2011). I contend that these novels shed light on the temporal dislocation of the Anthropocene, and particularly the ways in which the physical effects of climate change collapse the distance between past, present and future. Ultimately I argue that the Anthropocene causes a profound shift in common understandings of space and time, and that a regional reading of climate fiction can illustrate this ontological change.