Climate fiction and Neurodivergent narratives — The rise of conscious storytelling

 Something’s shifting in the novels I’ve been picking up lately. The stories feel sharper somehow, as if they know they’re not just here to entertain. They’re here to nudge us. Sometimes to provoke us. Occasionally, to jolt us out of complacency.

Two currents stand out in this tide of literary urgency: the rise of climate fiction (or “cli-fi” if you like your genres neatly abbreviated) and a richer, more authentic representation of neurodivergent characters. These aren’t new themes in literature, but they are being handled with a depth and immediacy that feels uniquely 2025.

The swell of climate fiction

Eco-literature has always had a niche audience, but recent releases are hitting the mainstream with startling force. Partly it’s because climate anxiety is no longer an abstract dread; it’s a daily headline. But it’s also because the best of these novels understands something crucial. Readers don’t want lectures. They want stories that make them care.

Take Téa Obreht’s The Morningside. On the surface, it’s a magical-realist near-future tale of climate refugees in a decaying high-rise. But at its heart is an 11-year-old girl searching for a sense of belonging. It’s in the quiet moments, not the sweeping catastrophes, that the ecological unease takes hold.

Then there’s Kenechi Udogu’s Augmented, a YA eco-sci-fi debut in which biodiversity exists only inside guarded biodomes. Its heroine, Akaego, can accelerate plant growth with her voice. A gift that’s both beautiful and dangerous. And Samantha Harvey’s Orbital takes the conversation above the atmosphere, following astronauts watching a climate disaster unfold from the International Space Station. The distance somehow makes the danger feel closer.

Neurodivergent narratives at the centre

Alongside this, we’re seeing a surge in fiction written by neurodivergent authors, or by those working closely with lived experience. The difference is palpable. Gone are the one-note “eccentric genius” tropes. Instead, we’re reading stories where neurodivergence isn’t a gimmick or a subplot — it’s simply part of a fully realised human life.

This thoughtful representation broadens empathy. It offers readers an opportunity to see things from another perspective without turning it into spectacle. For neurodivergent readers, it can be quietly revolutionary to see themselves reflected accurately without distortion.

Where they meet

What’s striking is how often these two threads intertwine. Climate fiction told through neurodivergent voices feels different — more acute in its observations, more resistant to tidy narrative arcs. Perhaps because both kinds of storytelling resist the easy answers we often crave. They force us to linger in the complexity.

Stories won’t save the planet on their own, nor will they dismantle centuries of misunderstanding about the brain. But they can open doors. And perhaps, if we’re lucky, keep them open just long enough for us to step through.