Imagine 2200Grist’s Climate Fiction Contest, four stories that offer vibrant, hopeful, diverse visions of climate progress. Discover all the 2024 winners. Or sign up for email updates to get new stories in your inbox.
This is Grist’s third year running a Imagine 2200 climate fiction game. Each year, as we prepare to release 12 new stories depicting hopeful, intersectional climate futures, I reflect back on what this initiative has meant to me personally. We hope that these stories start readers on a journey of rediscovering hope for what the world can be, and start imagining what our future might look like. For me, that journey was profound.
When I first started working on Imagine 2200, back in 2020, I was skeptical about the value of hopeful stories. After all, the seeds of this initiative took root at the beginning of the pandemic, in the midst of the rise of far-right extremism, and during an uprising that challenged systemic racism. Things felt bleak. Here I was charged with developing and leading an initiative based on hope and solutions, but I myself was angry, slightly depressed, and beginning to believe that we were all doomed.
Working at Grist, I began to read, discuss, and fellowship with people who reported on people working to build a better future. They had hope, they were invested in solutions, and they pushed back against the status quo. Grist’s reporting and focus on climate, justice and solutions has become something of a balm. Something in me took root. I started to find my old self. I realized that hopeful stories are not about ignoring the problems we face. Instead, it’s about imagining a better future and giving us the courage to fight for it.
During the pandemic, I sought work from Afrofuturists, indigenous futurists, Latinx futurists, Asian futurists, disabled futurists, feminist futurists, queer futurists, hopepunks, and solarpunks. These movements create stories that envision a future free from oppression, dispossession, and colonial systems of harm, and often the most powerful weapon the characters in these stories have is their community and hope. These movements and genres offered me a glimpse of a brighter future, and helped me find the part of myself that was slipping away and turning to pessimism and darkness.
We are not doomed. It is fatalistic to think so. It is not too late for our species and all the other creatures on earth. There is still a chance to prevent the worst effects of climate change if we take action now, and climate fiction and climate storytelling are essential tools in our toolbox of solutions. People need stories. Stories are central to building community, communication and vision. Hopeful future visions and narratives help motivate us to take action and build a better future.
These are the values that guided Imagine 2200, and that drive the competition every year. I know firsthand the power that stories have to rewire our thinking because I was part of that journey.
This year’s collection of stories features a diverse range of characters and perspectives, from beekeepers and cooks to families and communities. But they all share a common thread: a belief in the power of hope to overcome even the most daunting challenges.
In one story, a beekeeper finds a new sense of purpose after helping develop a flood warning system. [Read: To Labor for the Hive]
In another, an art show forces a cook to reflect on the importance of community in the face of disaster. [Read: Accensa Domo Proximi]
These stories are not afraid to explore the challenges ahead. But they still offer us a glimpse of a better future, where we work together to build a more sustainable and just world.
They also show us many cultures that exist in that future world, drawing on authentic experiences to create rich characters deeply embedded in place and tradition.
Culturally authentic stories can help us see the world through different lenses and imagine new possibilities. They help us build empathy and understanding for different cultures and perspectives, while also making room for everyone to see themselves in future visions. Science fiction and futurism often leave behind or emphasize our world’s cultures. Imagine 2200 offers a different type of futurism, where cultures are emphasized and celebrated.
As the artist and cultural producer Alisha B. Wormsley said, emblazoned on a billboard in Pittsburgh, “There are black people in the future.”
Climate change is a global crisis, but it does not affect everyone equally. Marginalized communities, such as indigenous communities, black communities, queer people and people with disabilities, are disproportionately affected by climate change. Climate fiction and climate storytelling must center the voices and portrayals of marginalized communities. We also believe that intersectional characters are more relatable and believable. When we see characters that are complex and multidimensional, we are more likely to connect with them and their stories.
That authenticity, representation and richness is something we hope you find in this year’s collection. From “Cabbage Koora“after”A cedar in Siberia” and “To Labor for the Hive,” many of these stories show a future where our diverse cultures not only survive, but thrive.
I hope the three finalists and nine runners-up published in this year’s Imagine collection help you find inspiration in climate futures, and rekindle your journey to hope and empowerment.
Read the full collection now: Imagine 2200, the 2024 collection
