Cli-fi

//ˈklaɪfaɪ// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A subgenre of ecofiction with issues about climate change as the main focus. uncountable

    "Perhaps the most high-profile cli-fi author is Margaret Atwood, whose 2009 The Year of the Flood features survivors of a biological catastrophe also central to her 2003 novel Oryx and Crake, a book Atwood sometimes preferred to call "speculative fiction"."

Example

More examples

"Perhaps the most high-profile cli-fi author is Margaret Atwood, whose 2009 The Year of the Flood features survivors of a biological catastrophe also central to her 2003 novel Oryx and Crake, a book Atwood sometimes preferred to call "speculative fiction"."

Etymology

From climate + fiction (modeled after sci-fi). Coined by Dan Bloom in 2006.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.