Book picks similar to
Fragment by Craig Russell
cli-fi
young-adult
climate-change
eco-lit
Greenwood
Michael Christie - 2019
It's 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, fallen from a ladder and sprawled on his broken back, calling out from the concrete floor of an empty mansion. It's 1974 and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series of environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father's once vast and violent timber empire. It's 1934 and Everett Greenwood is alone, as usual, in his maple syrup camp squat when he hears the cries of an abandoned infant and gets tangled up in the web of a crime that will cling to his family for decades. And throughout, there are trees: thrumming a steady, silent pulse beneath Christie's effortless sentences and working as a guiding metaphor for withering, weathering, and survival. A shining, intricate clockwork of a novel, Greenwood is a rain-soaked and sun-dappled story of the bonds and breaking points of money and love, wood and blood—and the hopeful, impossible task of growing toward the light.
A Children's Bible
Lydia Millet - 2020
Contemptuous of their parents, the children decide to run away when a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, embarking on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside. Lydia Millet’s prophetic and heartbreaking story of generational divide offers a haunting vision of what awaits us on the far side of Revelation.
Migrations
Charlotte McConaghy - 2020
Leaving behind everything but her research gear, she arrives in Greenland with a singular purpose: to follow the last Arctic terns in the world on what might be their final migration to Antarctica. Franny talks her way onto a fishing boat, and she and the crew set sail, traveling ever further from shore and safety. But as Franny’s history begins to unspool—a passionate love affair, an absent family, a devastating crime—it becomes clear that she is chasing more than just the birds. When Franny's dark secrets catch up with her, how much is she willing to risk for one more chance at redemption?Epic and intimate, heartbreaking and galvanizing, Charlotte McConaghy's Migrations is an ode to a disappearing world and a breathtaking page-turner about the possibility of hope against all odds.
Memory of Water
Emmi Itäranta - 2012
Wars are waged over water, and China rules Europe, including the Scandinavian Union, which is occupied by the power state of New Qian. In this far north place, seventeen-year-old Noria Kaitio is learning to become a tea master like her father, a position that holds great responsibility and great secrets. Tea masters alone know the location of hidden water sources, including the natural spring that Noria's father tends, which once provided water for her whole village.But secrets do not stay hidden forever, and after her father's death the army starts watching their town-and Noria. And as water becomes even scarcer, Noria must choose between safety and striking out, between knowledge and kinship.Imaginative and engaging, lyrical and poignant, Memory of Water is an indelible novel that portrays a future that is all too possible.
The Bear
Andrew Krivak - 2020
They own a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb. The father teaches his daughter how to fish and hunt and the secrets of the seasons and the stars. He is preparing her for an adulthood in harmony with nature, for they are the last of humankind. But when the girl finds herself alone in an unknown landscape, it is a bear that will lead her back home through a vast wilderness that offers the greatest lessons of all, if she can learn to listen. A cautionary tale of human fragility, of love and loss, The Bear is a stunning tribute to the beauty of nature’s dominion.
The End We Start From
Megan Hunter - 2017
Days later, the family are forced to leave their home in search of safety. As they move from place to place, shelter to shelter, their journey traces both fear and wonder as Z's small fists grasp at the things he sees, as he grows and stretches, thriving and content against all the odds.This is a story of new motherhood in a terrifying setting: a familiar world made dangerous and unstable, its people forced to become refugees. Startlingly beautiful, Megan Hunter's The End We Start From is a gripping novel that paints an imagined future as realistic as it is frightening. And yet, though the country is falling apart around them, this family’s world – of new life and new hope – sings with love.
The Carbon Diaries 2015
Saci Lloyd - 2008
As her family spirals out of control, Laura Brown chronicles the first year of rationing with scathing abandon.
The Wall
John Lanchester - 2019
Joseph Kavanagh, a new Defender, has one task: to protect his section of the Wall from the Others, the desperate souls who are trapped amid the rising seas outside and are a constant threat. Failure will result in death or a fate perhaps worse: being put to sea and made an Other himself. Beset by cold, loneliness, and fear, Kavanagh tries to fulfill his duties to his demanding Captain and Sergeant, even as he grows closer to his fellow Defenders. A dark part of him wonders whether it would be interesting if something did happen, if they came, if he had to fight for his life.
After the Flood
Kassandra Montag - 2019
After years of slowly overtaking the continent, rising floodwaters have obliterated America’s great coastal cities and then its heartland, leaving nothing but an archipelago of mountaintop colonies surrounded by a deep expanse of open water.Stubbornly independent Myra and her precocious seven-year-old daughter, Pearl, fish from their small boat, the Bird, visiting dry land only to trade for supplies and information in the few remaining outposts of civilization. For seven years, Myra has grieved the loss of her oldest daughter, Row, who was stolen by her father after a monstrous deluge overtook their home in Nebraska. Then, in a violent confrontation with a stranger, Myra suddenly discovers that Row was last seen in a far-off encampment near the Arctic Circle. Throwing aside her usual caution, Myra and Pearl embark on a perilous voyage into the icy northern seas, hoping against hope that Row will still be there.On their journey, Myra and Pearl join forces with a larger ship and Myra finds herself bonding with her fellow seekers who hope to build a safe haven together in this dangerous new world. But secrets, lust, and betrayals threaten their dream, and after their fortunes take a shocking—and bloody—turn, Myra can no longer ignore the question of whether saving Row is worth endangering Pearl and her fellow travelers.A compulsively readable novel of dark despair and soaring hope, After the Flood is a magnificent, action packed, and sometimes frightening odyssey laced with wonder—an affecting and wholly original saga both redemptive and astonishing.
Loosed upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction
John Joseph AdamsCraig DeLancey - 2015
Join bestselling, award-winning writers like Margaret Atwood, Paolo Bacigalupi, Kim Stanley Robinson, Seanan McGuire, and many others at the brink of tomorrow. Loosed Upon the World is so believable, it’s frightening. Contents 01 - Paolo Bacigalupi, Shooting the Apocalypse (2014 novelette, p1)02 - Seanan McGuire, The Myth of Rain (2015 short story, p25)03 - Toiya Kristen Finley, Outer Rims (2011 short story, p39)04 - Karl Schroeder, Kheldyu (2014 novelette, p52)05 - Jean-Louis Trudel, The Snows of Yesteryear (2014 novelette, p88)06 - Nancy Kress, A Hundred Hundred Daisies (2011 short story, p111)07 - Tobias S. Buckell, The Rainy Season (2012 short story, p129)08 - Jim Shepard, The Netherlands Lives With Water (2009 short story, p143)09 - Sean McMullen, The Precedent (2010 novelette, p172)10 - Robert Silverberg, Hot Sky (1990 short story, p203)11 - Alan Dean Foster, That Creeping Sensation (2011 short story, p229)12 - Kim Stanley Robinson, Truth or Consequences (2015 short story, p240)13 - Vandana Singh, Entanglement (2014 novella, p269)14 - Angela Penrose, Staying Afloat (2013 short story, p323)15 - Chris Bachelder, Eighth Wonder (2009 short story, p341)16 - Gregory Benford, Eagle (2011 short story, p362)17 - Nicole Feldringer, Outliers (2015 short story, p386)18 - Jason Gurley, Quiet Town (2015 short story, p399)19 - Charlie Jane Anders, The Day It All Ended (2014 short story, p407)20 - Chen Quifan, The Smog Society (2015 translation of 2010 short story, p419)21 - Craig DeLancey, Racing the Tide (2014 short story, p435)22 - Sarah K. Castle, The Mutant Stag at Horn Creek (2012 novelette, p453)23 - Cat Sparks, Hot Rods (2015 novelette, p487)24 - Paolo Bacigalupi, The Tamarisk Hunter (2006 short story, p511)25 - Tobias S. Buckell & Karl Schroeder, Mitigation (2008 novelette, p527)26 - Margaret Atwood, Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet (2009 short story, p556)Afterword - Ramez Naam, Science Scarier Than Fiction
Blackfish City
Sam J. Miller - 2018
The city’s denizens have become accustomed to a roughshod new way of living; however, the city is starting to fray along the edges—crime and corruption have set in, the contradictions of incredible wealth alongside direst poverty are spawning unrest, and a new disease called “the breaks” is ravaging the population.When a strange new visitor arrives—a woman riding an orca, with a polar bear at her side—the city is entranced. The “orcamancer,” as she’s known, very subtly brings together four people—each living on the periphery—to stage unprecedented acts of resistance. By banding together to save their city before it crumbles under the weight of its own decay, they will learn shocking truths about themselves.Blackfish City is a remarkably urgent—and ultimately very hopeful—novel about political corruption, organized crime, technology run amok, the consequences of climate change, gender identity, and the unifying power of human connection.
Hummingbird Salamander
Jeff VanderMeer - 2021
Silvina, the dead woman who left the note, is a reputed ecoterrorist and the daughter of an Argentine industrialist. By taking the hummingbird from the storage unit, Jane sets in motion a series of events that quickly spin beyond her control.Soon, Jane and her family are in danger, with few allies to help her make sense of the true scope of the peril. Is the only way to safety to follow in Silvina’s footsteps? Is it too late to stop? As she desperately seeks answers about why Silvina contacted her, time is running out—for her and possibly for the world.Hummingbird Salamander is Jeff VanderMeer at his brilliant, cinematic best, wrapping profound questions about climate change, identity, and the world we live in into a tightly plotted thriller full of unexpected twists and elaborate conspiracy.
When You Had Power
Susan Kaye Quinn - 2020
In sickness and in health.
It’s a legal vow of care for families in 2050, a world beset by waves of climate-driven plagues.Power engineer Lucía Ramirez long ago lost her family to one—she’d give anything to take that vow. The Power Islands give humanity a fighting chance, but tending kelp farms and solar lilies is a lonely job. The housing AI found her a family match, saying she should fit right in with the Senegalese retraining expert who’s a force of nature, the ex-Pandemic Corps cook with his own cozy channel, and even the writer who insists everything is stories, all the way down. This family of literal and metaphorical refugees could be the shelter she’s seeking from her own personal storm.She needs this one to work.Then an unscheduled power outage and a missing turtle-bot crack open a mystery. Something isn’t right on Power Island One, but every step she takes to solve it, someone else gets there first—and they’re determined to make her unsee what she’s seen. Lucía is an engineer, not a detective, but fixing this problem might cost her the one thing she truly needs: a home.When You Had Power is the first of four tightly-connected novels in a new hopepunk series. It’s about our future, how society will shift and flex like a solar lily in the storms of our own making, and how breaks in the social fabric have to be expected, tended to, and healed. Because we’re in this together, now more than ever before.
The Way the World Ends
Jess Walter - 2018
Two of them are the kind of climate scientists no one ever listens to in disaster movies. The third, against even icier opposition, has just moved to the Magnolia State to come out. Soon they’ll all be pushed closer to the edge, where the bracing winds of cataclysmic change can be so wildly liberating.Jess Walter’s The Way the World Ends is part of Warmer, a collection of seven visions of a conceivable tomorrow by today’s most thought-provoking authors. Alarming, inventive, intimate, and frightening, each story can be read, or listened to, in a single breathtaking sitting.
Three Feet of Sky
Stephen Ayres - 2012
with a peculiar talent.After years of destitution, Adam Eden's life is finally on the up. But, whilst out celebrating his recent good fortune, Adam unwittingly chooses death over embarrassment.Awaking in a future of leisure, luxury, and immortality, Adam suffers serious shrinkage and is branded an 'undesirable'. Shunned by family and neighbours for his first-life sins, can he find respect and redemption in this tightly controlled world? Facing a grim eternity, Adam wants out.A randomly chosen day trip changes everything.Though cruel and heartless, they always let you choose your weapon.