Science Fiction & Fantasy
Monthly Book Club
This Month's Theme: Climate Fiction
Global temperatures are not the only thing on the rise.
Although the term climate fiction began to heat up in the
2010s, speculative fiction authors have been exploring the effects of
climate change in their work since the 20th century
(and arguably since as early as the 19th!), whether they
imagine it brought about by human endeavors, supernatural means, or
the natural course of time. Now commonly referred to as
cli-fi, these stories touch on more than just climate change
by taking a closer look at our societies and exploring the things that
make us human—our deepest fears and our biggest hopes, the duality of
our natures, the lengths we’d go to for those we love, and even the
hurts we cause others, intentionally or otherwise. This month, we’ve
chosen a diverse selection of fiction published in the last decade
that dives into where we’ve been and where we could be headed.
Picks of The Month
Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover
Hover Over A Book To Learn More About It!
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The Water Knife
The Water Knife
Known for speculative fiction that explores how we could live in a world with extreme scarcity, Bacigalupi sets his tale in the Western United States, in a near future where water is the most valuable resource to be had, the Colorado River is all but dried up, and there is not a soul to be trusted in the desert. This one is not for the faint of heart.
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The Ministry For The Future
The Ministry For The Future
Brimming full of hope and big ideas, this story can arguably be seen as the author’s own treatise on how to solve the problem of climate change. We begin in 2025—not far from our present-day—and we experience the unfolding of events through fictional eyewitness accounts guiding us through the decades to come and showing us what our future could realistically look like.
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Gamechanger
Gamechanger
Cli-fi nestled in a critique on society’s relationship with the internet, this is a high-tech take on a post-climate-apocalypse world where humanity is just trying to pick up the pieces. The author manages to brilliantly blend hope for our future with a realistic look at our flaws in a book that rightfully sits in the burgeoning subgenre of hopepunk.
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The Ice Lion
The Ice Lion
The old world meets the future in this cli-fi novel written by an archaeologist and anthropologist. In it, we explore a frozen world 1000 years in the future where ancient species struggle to survive an apocalyptic Ice Age, a thick coat of algae covers the ocean, and the only way to save life on Earth involves a quantum computer.
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The Past Is Red
The Past Is Red
Tackling the pollution of our oceans with sharp wit in a Candide-style narrative, Valente takes us to Garbagetown, a city floating amid the great blue oceans where excess roars on and the world of old went down in a grim, watery demise. It doesn’t sound so bad, right? Right?
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The Fifth Season
The Fifth Season
The Earth is a disruptive character in this book set on a planet with a single supercontinent where every few centuries, a catastrophic climate event occurs. Jemisin weaves a powerful, diverse narrative speaking out against prejudice and class systems, told through the stories of three women across different time periods.
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A Half-Built Garden
A Half-Built Garden
A woman stumbles upon the first alien visitors to Earth in book that questions whether actions borne of meaning well equal doing the right thing. The aliens arrive to save humanity, convinced that the people of Earth must leave their ecologically-ravaged planet behind and join them among the stars. Releasing July 2022!
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Migrations
Migrations
In a world where most of our species have died out due to climate change, what remains? This story is set in the not-too-distant future where we follow a woman on a journey to Greenland as she tracks the last remaining flock of Artic terns on what could be their ultimate migration to the Antarctic. Soon to be a movie!
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Notes From The Burning Age
Notes From The Burning Age
Can we return from the face of environmental devastation caused by our own hands, or are we doomed to repeat our mistakes? This is the question asked as we follow a former holy man and archivist who begins to rethink everything he knows of the Burning Age, a time of climatic disaster, when approached to translate ancient texts.
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The Book of Koli
The Book of Koli
It’s Man vs. Nature in this post-apocalyptic, coming-of-age tale set in a far-future English village where the trees have decided to fight back following human-induced climate change. Humanity has technologically regressed, barely venturing from their small, isolated villages and likening what little Old World tech they have left to magic.
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Waste Tide
Waste Tide
With a fresh take on the cli-fi genre—tackling e-waste—we find ourselves in a post-2020 dystopian China where bio-engineered workers toil their lives away on Silicon Isle, the world's largest electronic waste recycling site, while pollution wreaks havoc and the rich continue to get richer. A bold addition to the growing genre of modern Chinese Sci-Fi.
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Clean Air
Clean Air
We find ourselves post-climate apocalypse on an Earth where the air outside is unbreathable and humanity lives in airtight domes to protect themselves from a plague of pollen outside. Now, it’s been a decade since the Turning and a serial killer is on the loose, destroying domes and killing survivors in this genre-defying tale.