Inside the World of “Cli-fi”

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Originally appears in the Summer 2021 issue.

By Guy Walton; illustrations by Rivers Tarr

Telling stories has been part of the human experience since communication developed among hominins millions of years ago. I’m sure that oral stories fascinated children around campfires when fire was discovered. Of course, stories of hunting and everyday life can be found on cave walls dating back tens of thousands of years. People found that children and young adults learned better and faster through stories because they garnered attention. Once civilization started putting down oral stories or traditions on paper, as was the case when the Greeks wrote about religion and philosophy at the dawn of science, education developed at a faster clip.

This process also led to an explosion of stories leading to books as people were freed to write what they imagined. Science was aided by youthful wonder when the modern age dawned around the year 1500. Leonardo da Vinci used his imagination before drawing his revolutionary pictures of airplanes or submarines, for example.

I looked forward to story time when I was a kid between Kindergarten and third grade more than any other period during my early school days. Teachers weened us off being read stories when they assigned us to book clubs beginning in the 4^th grade. My favorite genre to order was science fiction or “sci-fi.” Elementary sci-fi books got me interested in science facts, leading me to study astronomy and eventually meteorology, which led to a long career at The Weather Channel. I had some good teachers who helped separate any fiction from sound science.