I want a... climate change novel
Authors are using fiction to explore the anxieties and possibilities of our changing climate. Check out some new, favourite and notable works below.
A children's bible by Lydia Millet
Millet's allegorical tale of the end of the world pits a group of teenagers and children against their drug taking and apathetic parents as a hurricane bears down on their summer house. Millet's critique of the ennui of previous generations translates into a nail biting novella that reflects the impatience young people feel towards their elders as the climate crisis becomes a reality.
Joseph is a new Defender, tasked with defending his country against the duel threats of an encroaching ocean and a wave of climate refugees in boats - the Others. Any failures will result in the Defender being put to sea himself. Lanchester captures the fear of those who have for those who have not in a book that isn't set too far in the future, one thinks.
All the water in the world by Eiren Caffall
Nonie, a young girl with an almost supernatural connection to water navigates a drowned New York City from the relative safety of the roof of he American Museum of Natural History, hunting and farming in Central Park and guarding the remnants of civilisation in the museum below. But when a "hypercane" hits and floods the city, Nonie and the other survivors to flee north in a canoe, carrying precious records of salvaged knowledge.
Parable of the sower by Octavia E. Butler
Set in an America of the 2020s which is ravaged by climate change, extreme social inequality, and lawlessness, Lauren Olamina, a young Black woman with hyperempathy is forced onto a perilous journey north after her walled community is destroyed. As relevant now as it was when it was first published over 30 years ago, Butler's classic predicts the political instability in today's America as well as the increasing gap in social inequality brought about by climate change and the rise of authoritarianism. A must read.
In a future Australia, an unnamed narrator, a fugitive with a child, is forced to tell his life story to a captor. Revealing a planet destroyed by elite greed, leading to a paramilitary group called The Service taking power as the narrator joins the hunt for the descendants of the fossil fuel moguls responsible for the fall. Winton uses revenge to highlight the profound intergenerational injustices brought on by climate change.
The stone wētā by Octavia Cade
Kiwi science communicator Octavia Cade's novella is a powerful eco-thriller about a desperate, underground network of female scientists struggling to preserve critical climate change data against anti-science governments and corporations. The scientists, operating under code names derived from unique organisms like the titular Stone Wētā, are selected because they are often underestimated and overlooked, allowing them to discretely smuggle and cache data across diverse, isolated locations—from Antarctica to the International Space Station—as the cost of truth escalates to murder. Cade's novella is utterly unique and compelling and will leave you wanting more.
Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller
Qaanaaq is a massive floating Arctic city built after climate change devastated the world. Run by AI but riddled with social decay, vast inequality, and a memory-sharing disease called "the breaks," the city is a powder keg. A mysterious woman, an "orcamancer," who is psychically bonded to an orca and a polar bear arrives in the city with a mission of revenge and reconciliation which draws together four marginalised residents—a privileged but unhappy young man, a nonbinary courier, a disgraced fighter, and a politician's assistant—to challenge the corrupt power structures and unravel shocking truths about Qaanaaq's dark origins and their own interconnected fates.
