Utopian and Dystopian Outcomes of Climate Change in J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World and The Drought

J.G. Ballard (1930-2009), one of the most significant English novelists in climate fiction, deals with environmental devastation and its impact on human beings in his novels The Drowned World (1962) and The Drought (1965). In these novels, while the condition of human society is depicted after the environmental disaster which takes place in the future, the roles of human and non-human and their relationship with one another are reflected. It is observed that nature prevails over humans in these novels. Humans, who were once at the center, have lost their privileged positions and their superiority has been replaced by non-humans. Both in The Drowned World and The Drought, the ascendency of nature over humans is stressed. In this article, the effects of industrialization and climate change on human society will be explored and the possible future scenarios regarding the environment, humans and non-humans will be questioned in the light of these two novels. Thus, it will be emphasized that these novels portray the impact of climate change on society from a different perspective; while in The Drowned World the setting turns out to be a utopian one, in The Drought a dystopian environment appears. This article focuses on these two novels comparatively in terms of utopian and dystopian outcomes of climate change.