Can stories change the world?

In September 2021, my first novel Landfill Mountains was published by Onwe Press. It was about a teenage boy, living in a climate dystopia, discovering a secret magic based on storytelling.

Now it would be labelled as “Climate Fiction” or “Cli-Fi”: fiction concerned with the climate crisis. At the time of writing, I hadn’t heard that phrase.

The launch was a heady time. I appeared on the BBC World Service, interviewed youth

climate activists, and wrote articles for various outlets like Reader’s Digest. Throughout all of this publicity, the same topic kept coming up: the ability of stories to change our world, Even in the face of a problem as vast as climate change.

So the question I’m asking myself, in this far flung future of 2025, is do I still believe a story can change the world?

And as the brief for this blog was to speak about how we consider the environment and

climate justice in our own work, I’ll also ask the more difficult personal question: has my own work made a difference?

The Evidence

Firstly, and this is hardly a huge admission, I don’t think Landfill Mountains has moved the needle whatsoever on the climate crisis. Sorry team!

Nor was that my aim in writing the book - I was simply writing about what mattered to me, and what I thought would matter to readers as well.

But then, if it doesn’t make a difference, what’s the point of all the work?

Landfill Mountains might not have impacted a global crisis, but the book did find its own

small audience, and for a select few people it was significant in their lives for one reason or another; a private message from someone who told them it helped them find joy in reading again is something I’ll always treasure.

It also led to me publishing my next books, which were a Middle Grade series (for 7-11 year olds) about Young Carers meeting aliens. I’ve been lucky with The Late Crew series to receive fairly concrete evidence around how writing can change the world.

Schools have let me know how reading about young carers has led to kids realising they are carers and coming forward for support, as well as the joy young people find in discovering characters like them in books. I’ve even had teachers commenting on how it’s made them think differently around the reasons behind why a young person might be late.

So yes, I believe books can make a difference to societal issues, and yes, I believe in my

own little way I’ve written books that have made positive impacts here and there, especially around young carers with The Late Crew series.

While I acknowledge that I’ve not been able to achieve change for the environment with my own work (besides some tree-planting with Landfill Mountains pre-orders!), the larger question is can fiction impact climate change at all?

Can a story cool a planet?

It’s a difficult question to answer, seeing as we’re seeing record temperatures and

insufficient action. It’s tempting just to say nothing is working to prevent climate change, as climate change is clearly not being prevented.

But I believe in hope. And what has brought me most hope in recent years have been the youth protests and protestors – young people willing to fight for the future. And when we look at the stories those young people were brought up on, from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games, there’s an awful lot of rebellion against seemingly insurmountable odds.

Those of us who loved stories as children, know the impact stories can have on the

formation of our own identity. So I don’t think it’s so much about whether stories do or don’t feature climate change. Instead, maybe it’s more about how stories influence who we are, and what we do.

The relationship between humanity and stories is complex - but both need the other in order to survive.