The coronavirus pandemic has upset nearly every person’s life, but nothing really has changed on the longer-term threat to humanity, climate change. As a writer, I’ve specialized in putting climate change themes in my fiction, but I haven’t touched the pandemic, at least not yet.
Last winter, an upcoming anthology called Terraforming Earth for Aliens, edited by award-winning fantasy novelist David Harten Watson, accepted one of my cli-fi flash fiction pieces, “The Great Greenland Quilting Bee.” Submissions were closed several weeks ago, but last week, I got an email from David saying he was opening up submissions for a brief period to accept stories with a specific theme: “pandemic climate fiction.”
According to his website, he’s looking for “cli-fi stories about an epidemic or pandemic that’s caused or exacerbated by global warming.” One of the expected effects of climate change is an explosion in outbreaks of infectious disease as global warming expands the range, for example, of mosquitoes that transmit tropical illnesses. That means there’s lots of opportunities for science-based storytelling.
I’m not going to submit again to this anthology in order to give other writers a chance for publication. This is a paying market, so there will be a lot of competition. But if you think you have a great idea for a pandemic story that’s also a story about climate change, now’s your opportunity to share your work.
Deadline for submission to David’s anthology is June 30, 2020.
J.G. Follansbee 