Beyond Cli-Fi: Visionary Fictions, Futures Thinking, and a Cosmovisionary Archive

To deepen conversations about future thinking and to juxtapose discussions of climate fiction with those of Indigenous storytelling that took place at the United Nations’ 2024 Summit of the Future, this essay introduces the term cosmos thinking, an idea grounded in dialogues surrounding Indigenous cosmovisions and articulated in the working group papers drafted in April 2010 during the World People’s Conference on Climate Change in Cochabamba. The essay discusses both The Day After Tomorrow (2004), the celebrated, and still controversial, climate blockbuster film, and Solar Storms (1994), an Indigenous-authored novel, in connection with what scientists have observed to be the weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or Atlantic current system. Analysis of The Day After Tomorrow explores the value of tipping-point science and “futures thinking,” an anticipatory skill set honed by futurists and humanists over the last seventy years to help humans meet the challenges of such ecosystemic disruption. Analysis of Solar Storms illustrates how Indigenous cosmovisionary stories “archived” for thousands of years or written into contemporary novels are employed to cultivate understanding of Earth as a living system. Based on long understood observational data gathered by Indigenous knowledge keepers, the essay shows how cosmovisionary stories are buttressing “tipping point” science and creating the conditions for climate researchers to learn from and support Indigenous knowledge frameworks.