Mark Algee-Hewitt

Truth in Fiction: the Discourse of Embedded Scientific Facts in Climate Fiction

Recently the rise of “climate fiction,” or “cli-fi” has demonstrated that fiction can be more effective in convincing a skeptical public of the necessity of immediate action than well-intentioned science communication. Given the complicated relationship of fiction to truth, it has become more urgent than ever to understand the ways in which novels are able to couch fact within the fabric of their fiction. When so much science communication studies has been concerned with false or misleading narratives about climate change, how do we grapple with deliberately false accounts that seek to spread pro-scientific messaging? Recent work on science communication has revealed models of language use that can differentiate between factual or misleading statements about climate change: how can such models help us understand truth claims embedded within an overtly false narrative? In this project, I turn to similar computational methods to explore a corpus of recent cli-fi genre fiction comparing the kinds of truth claims that these novels make with both popular science writing and climate disinformation.

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