Cli-Fi, the climate and ecology-centered cousin to sci-fi, is a genre of fiction that has been steadily growing as the effects of climate change loom large on the public consciousness. While we can only imagine the what-ifs of an ecological disaster, writers of this genre go beyond the abstract predictions of scientists and show us the possible-and often painful-realities of what could be. If cli-fi sounds too gloomy for you, know that many of the titles I've listed here feature the enduring will and spirit of people to thrive in the face of adversity.
The honey farm : a novel
Harriet Alida Lye
FICTION Lye Harriet
Fiction
The drought has discontented the bees. Soil dries into sand; honeycomb stiffens into wax. But Cynthia knows how to breathe life back into her farm: offer it as an artists’ colony with free room, board, and “life experience” in exchange for backbreaking labor. Silvia, a wide-eyed graduate and would-be poet, and Ibrahim, a painter distracted by constant inspiration, are drawn to Cynthia’s offer, and soon, to each other. But something lies beneath the surface. The Edenic farm is plagued by events that strike Silvia as ominous: taps run red, scalps itch with lice, frogs swarm the pond. One by one, the other residents leave. As summer tenses into autumn, Cynthia’s shadowed past is revealed and Silvia becomes increasingly paralyzed by doubt.
Blackfish City
Sam J. Miller
SCIENCE FICTION Miller Sam
Science Fiction
After the climate wars, a floating city is constructed in the Arctic Circle, a remarkable feat of mechanical and social engineering, complete with geothermal heating and sustainable energy. Now crime and corruption have set in, the contradictions of incredible wealth alongside 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. She 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.
This ambitious novel uses detailed world-building and a relatable ensemble of characters to tell the story of urban corruption and humanity's last rebellion.
- Lyndey
The overstory : a novel
Richard Powers
FICTION Powers Richard
Fiction
A novel of activism and natural-world power presents interlocking fables about nine remarkable strangers who are summoned in different ways by trees for an ultimate, brutal stand to save the continent's few remaining acres of virgin forest.
The twelfth novel by National Book Award-winning author Powers, a saga of interweaving narratives, is an ode to the power of activism and an admonition to all of us that have become separated from the verdant, ancient sovereignty of nature.
- Lyndey
American war : a novel
Omar El Akkad
FICTION Elakkad Omar
Fiction
A second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle--a story that asks what might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons upon itself. Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, and that unmanned drones fill the sky. When her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she begins to grow up shaped by her particular time and place. But not everyone at Camp Patience is who they claim to be.
This brutal novel imagines a terrifyingly possible near-future to knit a narrative that is equal parts family saga and cautionary tale.
- Lyndey
Borne
Jeff VanderMeer
SCIENCE FICTION Vanderme Jeff
Science Fiction
A young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a ruined city half destroyed by drought and conflict. The city is dangerous, littered with discarded experiments from the Company, a biotech firm now derelict, and punished by the unpredictable predations of a giant bear. Rachel ekes out an existence in the shelter of a run-down sanctuary she shares with her partner, Wick, who deals his own homegrown psychoactive biotech. One day, Rachel finds Borne during a scavenging mission and takes him home. Borne as salvage is little more than a green lump, plant or animal, but exudes a strange charisma. Borne reminds Rachel of the marine life from the island nation of her birth, now lost to rising seas.
Fans of VanderMeer's acclaimed Southern Reach trilogy will welcome this altogether weird and playful journey, with inventive imagery and surreal characters, through the warped ruins of an apocalyptic society.
- Lyndey
The end we start from
Megan Hunter
FICTION Hunter Megan
Fiction
As London is submerged below floodwaters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, she and her baby are forced to leave their home in search of safety. They head north through a newly dangerous country seeking refuge from place to place. The story traces fear and wonder as the baby grows, thriving and content against all the odds.
Hunter's slim debut hauntingly depicts the poignant desperation and hope of motherhood in the midst of disaster with intimate, luminous prose.
- Lyndey
Walkaway : a novel
Cory Doctorow
SCIENCE FICTION Doctorow Cory
Science Fiction
Hubert, Etc really has no where left to be. After falling in with Natalie, an ultra-rich heiress trying to escape the clutches of her repressive father, the two decide to give up fully on formal society—and walk away. After all, now that anyone can design and print the basic necessities of life—food, clothing, shelter—from a computer, there seems to be little reason to toil within the system. It’s still a dangerous world out there, the empty lands wrecked by climate change, dead cities hollowed out by industrial flight, shadows hiding predators animal and human alike. Still, when the initial pioneer walkaways flourish, more people join them. Then the walkaways discover the one thing the ultra-rich have never been able to buy: how to beat death. Now it’s war – a war that will turn the world upside down.
Doctorow envisions an amusing and almost plausible world that is at times both physical and philosophical.
- Lyndey
Gold fame citrus
Claire Vaye Watkins
FICTION Watkins Claire
Fiction
Unrelenting drought has transfigured Southern California into a surreal, phantasmagoric landscape. With the Central Valley barren, underground aquifer drained, and Sierra snowpack entirely depleted, most "Mojavs," prevented by both armed vigilantes and an indifferent bureaucracy from freely crossing borders to lusher regions, have allowed themselves to be evacuated to internment camps. In Los Angeles' Laurel Canyon, two young Mojavs, Luz and Ray squat in a starlet's abandoned mansion. Holdouts, they subsist on rationed cola and whatever they can loot, scavenge, and improvise. The couple's fragile love somehow blooms in this arid place. Yet, ghosting after them are rumors of a visionary dowser a diviner for water and his followers, who whispers say have formed a colony at the edge of a mysterious sea of dunes.
Dreamy yet devastating, Watkins's debut novel sets a love story against a doomed landscape that is both beautiful and terrifying.
- Lyndey
The water knife
Paolo Bacigalupi
SCIENCE FICTION Bacigalupi, Paolo
Science Fiction
In the American Southwest, Nevada, Arizona, and California skirmish for dwindling shares of the Colorado River. Into the fray steps Angel Velasquez, detective, leg-breaker, assassin and spy. A Las Vegas water knife, Angel “cuts” water for his boss, Catherine Case, ensuring that her lush, luxurious arcology developments can bloom in the desert, so the rich can stay wet, while the poor get nothing but dust. When rumors of a game-changing water source surface in drought-ravaged Phoenix, Angel is sent to investigate.
This vivid thriller tells its bleak cautionary tale of organized crime and resource scarcity through wicked characters and brutally violent details.
- Lyndey
Clade
James Bradley
SCIENCE FICTION Bradley James
Science Fiction
On a beach in Antarctica, scientist Adam Leith marks the passage of the summer solstice. Back in Sydney his partner Elllie waits for the results of her latest round of IVF treatment. That result, when it comes, will change both their lives and propel them into a future neither could have predicted. In a collapsing England Adam will battle to survive an apocalyptic storm. Against a backdrop of growing civil unrest at home, Ellie will discover a strange affinity with beekeeping. In the aftermath of a pandemic, a young man finds solace in building virtual recreations of the dead. And new connections will be formed from the most unlikely beginnings.
This unexpectedly hopeful entry into the Cli-Fi genre is a stunning family drama overlaid atop a convincing and prophetic near-future.
- Lyndey
Lye's haunting and sensuous debut is sure to transfix readers with its ominous atmosphere, otherworldly biblical allusions, and mounting suspense.
- Lyndey