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This article considers the threat of environmental destruction in YA dystopian imagination by providing a close reading of Saci Lloyd’s The Carbon Diaries 2015 (2008) and The Carbon Diaries 2017 (2010) that particularly considers whether these texts espouse radical social change and whether they offer hope or despair. First, the article demonstrates that Lloyd’s novels do not merely portray climate change as a backdrop for human drama, but rather attempt to disentangle the environmental crisis from the post-political sphere (Swyngedouw 2010) where humanity as a whole is under threat. While its protagonists learn to cope with ecological uncertainty and the multidimensional challenges of climate change, indeed, they also come to terms with the social and political dimensions of climate change. Second, the article claims that one of the most important features of these two novels is their attempt to explore the challenges faced by the younger generations when dealing with the contemporary climate challenge. Young people in fact bear a disproportionate burden of the environmental crises the world faces today and are subject to climate anxiety. Moreover, they are not only disproportionately impacted by climate change, but their agency and visions of the future are often placed under erasure discursively. Lloyd’s novels, instead, provide a young adult perspective on the uneven universality of climate change. Finally, the article suggests that the presence of utopian hope at the conclusion of the novels does not provide a consoling and comforting happy ending but helps readers to come to terms with an imperfect world. The article’s close reading of The Carbon Diaries 2015 and 2017, therefore, attempts to underscore the novels’ projection of a possible future where a radical systemic change is envisaged.  

Literary and cultural texts are essential in shaping emotional and intellectual dispositions toward the human potential for a sustainable transformation of society. Due to its appeal to the human imagination and human empathy, literature can enable readers for sophisticated understandings of social and ecological justice. An overabundance of catastrophic near future scenarios largely prevents imagining the necessary transition toward a socially responsible and ecologically mindful future as a non-violent and non-disastrous process. The paper argues that transition stories that narrate the rebuilding of the world in the midst of crisis are much better instruments in bringing about a human “mindshift” (Göpel) than disaster stories. Transition stories, among them the Parable novels by Octavia Butler and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (2020), offer feasible ideas about how to orchestrate economic and social change. The analysis of recent American, Canadian, British, and German near future novels—both adult and young adult fictions—sheds light on those aspects best suited for effecting behavioral change in recipients’ minds: exemplary ecologically sustainable characters and actions, companion quests, cooperative communities, sources of epistemological innovation and spiritual resilience, and an ethics and aesthetics of repair.

This paper explores a range of definitions of guilt, and argues that fiction for young adults which is set after a major disaster that has been caused by humans has surprisingly little emphasis on guilt. Focusing on Brother in the Land by Robert Swindells, Nuclear War Diary by James E. Sanford (Jr), The Last Children by Gudrun Pausewang, The Carbon Diaries 2015 by Saci Lloyd and its sequel, The Carbon Diaries 2017, and Days Like Thisby Alison Stewart, the paper argues that in post-nuclear texts for young adults the emphasis tends to be on the perceived responsibility of the young adult reader's generation to work towards preventing the disaster from becoming reality, rather than on the guilt of the adult generation that caused the disaster. However, in texts dealing with environmental disaster, the young adult reader's generation can be seen to have some measure of culpability, and so the issues of guilt and responsibility become more complex.

The author of the teen fiction Carbon Diaries series, which tells of a future where global warming has become part...

As the literary industry gathers for London Book Fair this week, publishers believe they have seen the future, and it is thoroughly miserable. \"Dystopia is definitely the buzzword at the moment,\" said Emma Young, senior editor at Macmillan Children's Books. \"It was the big thing at the Bologna Children's Book Fair, and we've already had three agents pitch us dystopian titles for the London Book Fair.\" Young adult fiction is big business. Between 2008 - when the last Twilight novel and the first Twilight film were released - and 2009, the market almost doubled in size. This year, despite sales having dropped slightly, the teenage fiction market is worth 48m, according to industry analysts Nielsen BookScan. While the Twilight saga, which has sold more than five million copies in the UK, and the Vampire Diaries series still outsell dystopian titles, the market for \"paranormal romance\" appears saturated. Sarah O'Dedina, children's publisher at Bloomsbury, said the new trend represents a reaction against the escapism of Twilight and its ilk. \"These are edgy, thought-provoking books which raise questions about what we're doing to our society and planet. They put the modern world under the magnifying glass.\"

Ms [Saci Lloyd], 42, of Leytonstone, has signed the Company Pictures TV deal for her book but talks are ongoing with [Johnny Depp]'s team about a future movie version. Dear diary: Saci Lloyd's novel could be made into a film by Johnny Depp's company

Ms [Saci Lloyd], 42, of Leytonstone, has signed the Company Pictures TV deal for her book but talks are ongoing with [Johnny Depp]'s team about a future movie version. Dear diary: Saci Lloyd's novel could be made into a film by Johnny Depp's company

Enter the South African piece. [Lily Herne] is from Noordhoek, Cape Town, and hers is the first book about a \"zombiecalypse\" in Cape Town and, indeed, the first of its kind as a South African zombie novel. During the 2010 World Cup, war gripped the nation, and South Africa was eventually taken over by zombies. Fast-track 10 years later: the last remaining survivors of the human race have caged themselves into secure enclaves, away from the heart of Cape Town, where zombies roam. The enclaves are guarded by cloaked figures, calling themselves the Guardians. The story is narrated by the troubled, but passionate teenager Lele de la Fontein, who has trouble dealing with the death of her mother, who died years ago in the fight against the zombies. She struggles to fit in at her new school, and she hates her stepmother. But as she is beginning to adjust to everything, she is thrown off course, and finds herself among a group of rebels called the \"Mall Rats\", a renegade group who deal in black market supplies. She learns valuable lessons in zombie-killing and basic survival skills, and finally finds a place where she fits in. However, her perceived harmony won't last forever.

Hulick reviews Momentum by Saci Lloyd.