Staff Picks: Captivating Climate Fiction Reads

Wed, 07/24/2024 - 10:10am by walkerk

If you've read Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and wondered where to find more stories like that, I have great news: climate fiction is for you! Climate fiction (cli-fi) comes in many forms—some narratives explore dystopian futures and their methods of dealing with environmental collapse. Other narratives focus on the present personal and societal impacts. Alongside engaging characters to empathize with, these diverse stories often explore potential consequences and solutions around climate change. Here are four titles to get you started:

The Moonday Letters by Emmi Itäranta | Request Now
Lumi is an Earth-born healer whose Mars-born spouse, Sol, disappears unexpectedly on a work trip. Lumi sets out to find them, searching the wealthy colonies of Mars, and the remnants of Earth, which were ruined by vast environmental destruction. Each clue she uncovers leads to another mystery, be it about herself, Sol, or an underground environmental group called the Stoneturners, who might have something to do with Sol's disappearance. 

This climate fiction thriller with an LGBTQIA love story is told through a series of letters and extracts, such as newspaper quotes and encyclopedic entries, making for a poetic and anthropologic experience that offers you a front-row seat to this adventure. Readers have described this as an enchanting and lyrically written story with a sense of wonder and hope among its dystopian features. If you enjoy the gentle and human quality of letter reading, paired with interplanetary lovers and explorations of environmental ethics, myth, and a mystery that slowly unravels, this is the book for you.

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu | Request Now  
Dr. Cliff Miyashiro arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue his recently diseased daughter's research. There, he discovers a virus newly unearthed from melting permafrost. The plague caused by this virus impacts and reshapes life on Earth for generations, but even while struggling to counter this destructive force, humanity stubbornly persists in a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy.

Told in a series of vignettes, this novel explores the lives of the generations of people impacted by the pandemic: a widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter embarking on a cosmic quest to locate a new home planet; a cynical employee falling in love with a mother desperate to hold on to her infected son, and more. How High We Go in the Dark is concerned with immersing us in the intimate details of its characters' everyday lives and individual struggles.

Sequoia weaves these stories together with empathy and curiosity, underlining them with a hopeful and cathartic edge. But in many, many ways, this novel is about grief and the struggle of dealing with loss and change. Many readers would describe this as a heartbreaking but worthwhile read that leaves you to reflect in the end. I would definitely make sure you're in the right headspace before delving into this beautiful but tragic world.

The Annual Migration of Clouds by Premee Mohamed | Request Now
Set in post-climate disaster Alberta, the world has drastically changed: climate disasters have wracked the continent, causing food shortages, ending industry, and leaving little behind. Then Cad, a mind-altering fungi, invades the bodies of the now-scattered citizenry. Reid, a young woman who carries this parasite, is given the chance to move to one of the last areas of pre-disaster society, but she can't bring herself to abandon her mother and the community that relies on her. When she's offered a coveted place on a dangerous and profitable mission, she jumps at the opportunity to set her family up for life, but how can Reid ask people to put their trust in her when she can't even trust her mind? 

The Annual Migrations of Clouds is a hopepunk novella that focuses on Reid's decision and the tension it creates within her relationships. It reflects on questions such as the meaning of community and what we owe to the people who have helped us and lifted us up. Readers have described this book as being rich and biting in prose while leaving room for hope; it's a story that explores more than just than just the bleak possibility of a post-apocalypse life, but refuses to patronize readers with insincerity. Falling somewhere in between, this story is unafraid of asking difficult questions.

What Storm, What Thunder by Myriam J.A. Chancy | Request Now
At the end of a long, sweltering day, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-Au-Prince. This story follows the inner lives of characters affected by the disaster, including: Richard, an expat and wealthy water-bottling executive with a secret daughter; the daughter, Anne, an architect, who drafts affordable housing structures for a global NGO; a small-time drug trafficker, Leopold, who pines for a beautiful call girl, and many, many more. Despite the wealth of characters, Myriam J.A. Chancy artfully weaves their lives together and explores the desolation wreaked by this event. 

What Storm, What Thunder is a historical climate fiction based off of the very real earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12, 2010, which changed many Haitians' lives forever. Chancy, a Haitian writer herself, spent time talking with and listening to testimonies from survivors. She uses this book as a way of bringing awareness to the event, observing what went wrong in the process of aiding citizens after this disaster, and asking what we can learn moving forward. 

Readers describe this book as an unforgettable page-turner with prose that is haunting, stunning and compassionate all the same. While it not an easy read emotionally, many readers couldn't put the book down and felt as though they'd come away with a clear picture of the earthquake and the potential lives of the victims.