This paper focuses on science fiction (including climate fiction and speculative fiction) as a theoretical practice for highlighting injustices in the present and imagining different futures. I think alongside science fiction texts with themes of climate change to highlight the affordances of engaging with literary theory and literature as a form of climate education. Considering the material effects of theory, and stories in creating worlds aligns with feminist literary scholars (Wynter & McKittrick, 2015), science and technology scholars (Bahng, 2017) and Indigenous climate fiction scholars (Whyte, 2018) who argue for the power of narrative in shaping experience, critiquing the present, and positing different futures. Through considering different worlds from our own, science fictions provide the opportunity for critical reflection on aspects of how our world currently is and where we might end up if we continue along certain paths Accordingly, this paper will (1) activate science fiction as a theoretical mode to think through real world news; and (2) think with climate fiction texts as a method to critique the world and posit different futures. Data sources will include literary fiction texts, and contemporary news, and discussion of a cross-curricular project with English teachers around Indigenous climate fiction in Australian secondary school. Through exemplifications of climate fiction as both a method of reading, and form of text in English literary education, the paper will demonstrate how English literary education as an important interdisciplinary site for reimaging social and environmental futures in times of ongoing climate and technological crises globally.

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