Special Collections
Cli-Fi (Climate Fiction)
Description: Cli-Fi, otherwise known as climate fiction, is a relatively new subgenre of science fiction that explores the cataclysmic effects of climate change in imagined dystopias in near or not so near future. #adult
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The Year of the Flood
by Margaret AtwoodNATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments—the second book of the internationally celebrated MaddAddam trilogy, set in the visionary world of Oryx and Crake, is at once a moving tale of lasting friendship and a landmark work of speculative fiction. The long-feared waterless flood has occurred, altering Earth as we know it and obliterating most human life. Among the survivors are Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, who is barricaded inside a luxurious spa. Amid shadowy, corrupt ruling powers and new, gene-spliced life forms, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move, but they can't stay locked away.
The Windup Girl
by Paolo BacigalupiWinner of the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel, a new edition of the break-out science fiction debut featuring additional stories and a Q&A with the author. Anderson Lake is AgriGen's Calorie Man, sent to work undercover as a factory manager in Thailand while combing Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature.
Emiko is not human; she is an engineered being, grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in this chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe. What happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits and forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution?
Bacigalupi delivers one of the most highly-acclaimed science fiction novels of the twenty-first century. In this brand new edition celebrating the book's reception into the canon of celebrated modern science fiction, accompanying the text are two novelettes exploring the dystopian world of The Windup Girl, the Theodore Sturgeon Award-winning "The Calorie Man" and "Yellow Card Man." Also included are course-work questions for use in the classroom, and an exclusive Q&A with the author describing his writing process, the political climate into which his debut novel was published, and the future of science fiction.
The Water Knife
by Paolo BacigalupiWATER IS POWER In the near future, the Colorado River has dwindled to a trickle. Detective, assassin, and spy, Angel Velasquez &“cuts&” water for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, ensuring that its lush arcology developments can bloom in Las Vegas. When rumors of a game-changing water source surface in Phoenix, Angel is sent south, hunting for answers that seem to evaporate as the heat index soars and the landscape becomes more and more oppressive. There, he encounters Lucy Monroe, a hardened journalist with her own agenda, and Maria Villarosa, a young Texas migrant, who dreams of escaping north. As bodies begin to pile up, the three find themselves pawns in a game far bigger and more corrupt than they could have imagined, and when water is more valuable than gold, alliances shift like sand, and the only truth in the desert is that someone will have to bleed if anyone hopes to drink.
Trail of Lightning
by Rebecca RoanhorseOne of the Time 100 Best Fantasy Books Of All Time 2019 LOCUS AWARD WINNER, BEST FIRST NOVEL 2019 HUGO AWARD FINALIST, BEST NOVEL Nebula Award Finalist for Best Novel One of Bustle&’s Top 20 &“landmark sci-fi and fantasy novels&” of the decade &“Someone please cancel Supernatural already and give us at least five seasons of this badass Indigenous monster-hunter and her silver-tongued sidekick.&” —The New York Times &“An excitingly novel tale.&” —Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse and Midnight Crossroads series &“Fun, terrifying, hilarious, and brilliant.&” —Daniel José Older, New York Times bestselling author of Shadowshaper and Star Wars: Last Shot &“A powerful and fiercely personal journey through a compelling postapocalyptic landscape.&” —Kate Elliott, New York Times bestselling author of Court of Fives and Black Wolves While most of the world has drowned beneath the sudden rising waters of a climate apocalypse, Dinétah (formerly the Navajo reservation) has been reborn. The gods and heroes of legend walk the land, but so do monsters—and it is up to one young woman to unravel the mysteries of the past before they destroy the future.Maggie Hoskie is a Dinétah monster hunter, a supernaturally gifted killer. When a small town needs help finding a missing girl, Maggie is their last best hope. But what Maggie uncovers about the monster is much more terrifying than anything she could imagine. Maggie reluctantly enlists the aid of Kai Arviso, an unconventional medicine man, and together they travel the rez, unraveling clues from ancient legends, trading favors with tricksters, and battling dark witchcraft in a patchwork world of deteriorating technology. As Maggie discovers the truth behind the killings, she will have to confront her past if she wants to survive. Welcome to the Sixth World.
Things We Didn't See Coming
by Steven AmsterdamOpening on the eve of the millennium, when the world as we know it is still recognisable, we meet the nine-year old narrator as he flees the city with his parents, just ahead of a Y2K breakdown.
In the next chapter he is a teenager, already a delinquent, in a world transformed by battles over resources, taking his grandparents for a Sunday drive and teaching them how to steal.
In time, we see him struggle through strange, horrific, and unexpectedly funny terrain as he goes about the no longer simple act of survival - protecting squatters (while trying to sleep with them and steal from them) as a biblical rainstorm floods the land; travelling from disaster site to disaster site, giving out government grants to survivors while trying to find a little love; living the high-life in a three-way relationship with his girlfriend and a wealthy senator; leading adventure tours for the terminally ill.
Despite the chaos of his world, he keeps his eyes on the exit door, his heart open and his mind on what he thinks is going to happen next. Even as the world is spinning out of control, we learn that essential human impulses still hold sway - that we never entirely escape our parents, envy others' success and, chiefly, that we crave love.
Things We Didn't See Coming is haunting and vividly imagined - a stunning, dark, and darkly comic debut.
Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog
by Doris LessingDann is grown up now, hunting for knowledge and despondent over the inadequacies of his civilization.
With his trusted companions--Mara's daughter, his hope for the future; the abandoned child-soldier Griot, who discovers the meaning of love and the ability to sing stories; and the snow dog, a faithful friend who brings him back from the depths of despair--Dann embarks on a strange and captivating adventure in a suddenly colder, more watery climate in the north.
The Stone Gods
by Jeanette WintersonThe Stone Gods is one of Jeanette Winterson's most imaginative novels about love.On the airwaves, all the talk is of the new blue planet - pristine and habitable, like our own 65 million years ago, before we took it to the edge of destruction. And off the air, Billie and Spike are falling in love. What will happen when their story combines with the world's story, as they whirl towards Planet Blue, into the future? Will they - and we - ever find a safe landing place?
Jeanette Winterson OBE, whose writing has won the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize and the E.M. Forster Award, is the author of some of the most purely imaginative and pleasurable novels of recent times, from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit to her first book for children, Tanglewreck. She is also the author of the essays Art Objects. Visit her website at www.jeanettewinterson.com
Station Eleven
by Emily St. MandelNATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FINALIST • Set in the eerie days of civilization&’s collapse—the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity. • Now an original series on HBO Max. • Over one million copies sold!One of the New York Times&’s 100 Best Books of the 21st CenturyKirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end. Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band&’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.Look for Emily St. John Mandel&’s bestselling new novel, Sea of Tranquility!
State of Fear
by Michael CrichtonIn Paris, a physicist dies after performing a laboratory experiment for a beautiful visitor. In the jungles of Malaysia, a mysterious buyer purchases deadly cavitation technology, built to his specifications.
In Vancouver, a small research submarine is leased for use in the waters off New Guinea.And in Tokyo, an intelligence agent tries to understand what it all means.
Thus begins Michael Crichton's exciting and provocative technothriller, State of Fear. Only Michael Crichton's unique ability to blend science fact and pulse-pounding fiction could bring such disparate elements to a heart-stopping conclusion. This is Michael Crichton's most wide-ranging thriller.
State of Fear takes the reader from the glaciers of Iceland to the volcanoes of Antarctica, from the Arizona desert to the deadly jungles of the Solomon Islands, from the streets of Paris to the beaches of Los Angeles. The novel races forward, taking the reader on a rollercoaster thrill ride, all the while keeping the brain in high gear. Gripping and thought-provoking, State of Fear is Michael Crichton at his very best.
Solar
by Ian McewanA best-selling work of wit from the Booker Prize-winning author, Solar brilliantly traces the arc of a Nobel Prize-winning physicist’s ambitions and self-deception.
Dr. Michael Beard’s best work is behind him.
Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions, and halfheartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming.
Meanwhile, Michael’s fifth marriage is floundering due to his incessant womanizing.
When his professional and personal worlds collide in a freak accident, an opportunity presents itself for Michael to extricate himself from his marital problems, reinvigorate his career, and save the world from environmental disaster.
But can a man who has made a mess of his life clean up the messes of humanity?
Sixty Days and Counting
by Kim Stanley RobinsonThe bestselling author of "Fifty Degrees Below" concludes his intelligent trilogy of suspenseful, near-future eco-thrillers set in world ravaged by global warming.
The Sea and Summer
by George TurnerFrancis Conway is Swill - one of the millions in the year 2041 who must subsist on the inadequate charities of the state. Life, already difficult, is rapidly becoming impossible for Francis and others like him, as government corruption, official blindness and nature have conspired to turn Swill homes into watery tombs. And now the young boy must find a way to escape the approaching tide of disaster.
The Sea and Summer, published in the US as The Drowning Towers is George Turner's masterful exploration of the effects of climate change in the not-too-distant future. Comparable to J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World, it was shortlisted for the Nebula and won the Arthur C. Clarke Award.
Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best novel, 1988
The Rapture
by Liz JensenIt’s a blazing hot summer in the not-too-distant future. Thirty-five-year-old psychologist Gabrielle Fox is painfully rebuilding her life after a terrible accident that has left her a paraplegic, and her lover dead. The effects of incapacitating memories and guilt have led to Gabrielle’s dismissal from her London job. Craving anonymity and a fresh start, she moves to the coastal town of Hadport and accepts the first post she is offered, as an art therapist at a lackluster institution for dangerously psychopathic teens.
Gabrielle’s predecessor is on emergency leave thanks to an unhealthy obsession with Bethany Krall, now Gabrielle’s patient. A punky and precocious wild child with matted hair and kohl-rimmed eyes, Bethany’s claim to fame is that she murdered her own mother with a screwdriver. Aside from a gift for rip-roaring verbal obscenities and a knack for intuiting the inner torments of strangers, Bethany has the uncanny ability to gleefully forecast the environmental catastrophes now befalling the earth at a terrifying rate. Though skeptical at first, Gabrielle finds herself preoccupied with Bethany, her alarm and fascination swelling with every accurate prediction.
Seeking a rational explanation, Gabrielle connects with the big-hearted Scottish geophysicist Frazer Melville, an expert on global weather patterns. Though Frazer is not able to give Gabrielle the easy answer she hopes for, she finds comfort in his presence, and perhaps even attraction.
The two begin a tentative romance as Gabrielle realizes that the door to her sexual life may not be closed after all. Meanwhile, the enormous human cost of each global cataclysm is tallied in advance by a jubilant Bethany, who likes to toss in a few snippets of scripture memorized at the knee of her father, the charismatic fundamentalist preacher Leonard Krall.
Gabrielle suspects Krall of having more to do with his wife and child’s ruin than he admits to, but before she can fully investigate, she and Frazer must put their reputations on the line and find a way to warn humanity of the looming apocalypse.
Raved about inThe Timesas “an unputdownable eco-thriller” and already optioned for film by Warner Brothers, Liz Jensen’sThe Raptureonce again proves Jensen to be a master of page-turning suspense. Readers will be entertained by the pyrotechnics of this hugely intelligent and wholly original voice, while unnerved by the high-voltage ecological horror story that feels all too plausible in our time.
Parable of the Talents
by Octavia E. ButlerAs America rebuilds itself, bigotry threatens a peaceful haven. Lauren Olamina was only eighteen when her family was killed, and anarchy encroached on her Southern California home. She fled the war zone for the hope of quiet and safety in the north. There she founded Acorn, a peaceful community based on a religion of her creation, called Earthseed, whose central tenet is that God is change. Five years later, Lauren has married a doctor and given birth to a daughter. Acorn is beginning to thrive. But outside the tranquil group’s walls, America is changing for the worse.
Presidential candidate Andrew Steele Jarret wins national fame by preaching a return to the values of the American golden age. To his marauding followers, who are identified by their crosses and black robes, this is a call to arms to end religious tolerance and racial equality—a brutal doctrine they enforce by machine gun. And as this band of violent extremists sets its deadly sights on Earthseed, Acorn is plunged into a harrowing fight for its very survival.
Nebula Award winner.
Parable of the Sower
by Octavia E. ButlerIn 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren's father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others. When fire destroys their compound, Lauren's family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger.
With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Octavia E. Butler including rare images from the author's estate.
The Overstory
by Richard PowersWinner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction Winner of the William Dean Howells Medal Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Over One Year on the New York Times Bestseller List A New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post, Time, Oprah Magazine, Newsweek, Chicago Tribune, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year "The best novel ever written about trees, and really just one of the best novels, period." —Ann Patchett The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of—and paean to—the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.
Oryx and Crake
by Margaret AtwoodNATIONAL BESTSELLER • The first volume in the internationally acclaimed MaddAddam trilogy is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future—from the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The TestamentsSnowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey—with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake—through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.
New York 2140
by Kim Stanley RobinsonNew York Times bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson returns with a bold and brilliant vision of New York City in the next century.
As the sea levels rose, every street became a canal. Every skyscraper an island.
For the residents of one apartment building in Madison Square, however, New York in the year 2140 is far from a drowned city.
There is the market trader, who finds opportunities where others find trouble. There is the detective, whose work will never disappear --- along with the lawyers, of course.
There is the internet star, beloved by millions for her airship adventures, and the building's manager, quietly respected for his attention to detail.
Then there are two boys who don't live there, but have no other home-- and who are more important to its future than anyone might imagine.
Lastly there are the coders, temporary residents on the roof, whose disappearance triggers a sequence of events that threatens the existence of all-- and even the long-hidden foundations on which the city rests.
New York 2140 is an extraordinary and unforgettable novel, from a writer uniquely qualified to the story of its future.
Mr. Eternity
by Aaron ThierA Thurber Prize Finalist of exuberance and ambition, spanning one thousand years of high-seas adventure, environmental and cultural catastrophe, and enduring love.
Key West, 2016. Sea levels are rising, coral reefs are dying. In short, everything is going to hell. It's here that two young filmmakers find something to believe in: an old sailor who calls himself Daniel Defoe and claims to be five hundred and sixty years old.
In fact, old Dan is in the prime of his life--an incredible, perhaps eternal American life.
The story unfolds over the course of a millennium, picking up in the sixteenth century in the Viceroyalty of New Granada and continuing into the twenty-sixth, where, in the future Democratic Federation of Mississippi States, Dan serves as an advisor to the King of St. Louis. Some things remain constant throughout the centuries, and being on the edge of ruin may be one. In 1560, the Spaniards have destroyed the Aztec and Inca civilizations.
In 2500, we've destroyed our own: the cities of the Atlantic coast are underwater, the union has fallen apart, and cars, plastics, and air conditioning are relegated to history. But there are other constants too: love, humor, and old Dan himself, always adapting and inspiring others with dreams of a better life.
An ingenious, hilarious, and genre-bending page-turner, Mr. Eternity is multiple novels in one. Together they form an uncommon work--about our changing planet and its remarkable continuities.
Memory of Water
by Emmi ItärantaAn amazing, award-winning speculative fiction debut novel by a major new talent, in the vein of Ursula K. Le Guin.Global warming has changed the world’s geography and its politics. 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.
Mara and Dann
by Doris LessingThousands of years in the future, all the northern hemisphere is buried under the ice and snow of a new Ice Age.
At the southern end of a large landmass called Ifrik, two children of the Mahondi people, seven-year old Mara and her younger brother, Dann, are abducted from their home in the middle of the night.
Raised as outsiders in a poor rural village, Mara and Dann learn to survive the hardships and dangers of a life threatened as much by an unforgiving climate and menacing animals as by a hostile community of Rock People.
Eventually they join the great human migration North, away from the drought that is turning the southern land to dust, and in search of a place with enough water and food to support human life.
Traveling across the continent, the siblings enter cities rife with crime, power struggles, and corruption, learning as much about human nature as about how societies function. With a clear-eyed vision of the human condition, Mara and Dann is imaginative fiction at its best.
MaddAddam
by Margaret AtwoodFor fans of the first two books and readers of Margaret Atwood's fiction in general. Bringing together characters from Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, this thrilling conclusion to Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction trilogy confirms the ultimate endurance of humanity, community, and love.
Months after the Waterless Flood pandemic has wiped out most of humanity, Toby and Ren have rescued their friend Amanda from the vicious Painballers. They return to the MaddAddamite cob house, which is being fortified against man and giant Pigoon alike. Accompanying them are the Crakers, the gentle, quasi-human species engineered by the brilliant but deceased Crake. While their reluctant prophet, Jimmy -- Crake's one-time friend -- recovers from a debilitating fever, it's left to Toby to narrate the Craker theology, with Crake as Creator. She must also deal with cultural misunderstandings, terrible coffee, and her jealousy over her lover, Zeb.
Meanwhile, Zeb searches for Adam One, founder of the God's Gardeners, the pacifist green religion from which Zeb broke years ago to lead the MaddAddamites in active resistance against the destructive CorpSeCorps. Now, under threat of an imminent Painballer attack, the MaddAddamites must fight back with the aid of their newfound allies, some of whom have four trotters.
At the centre, is the extraordinary story of Zeb's past, which involves a lost brother, a hidden murder, a bear, and a bizarre act of revenge.
Combining adventure, humour, romance, superb storytelling, and an imagination that is at once dazzlingly inventive and grounded in a recognizable world, MaddAddam is vintage Margaret Atwood, and a moving and dramatic conclusion to her internationally celebrated dystopian trilogy.
The Lamentations of Zeno
by Ilija Trojanow and Philip BoehmA literary fiction about climate disaster and a scientist imploding on a journey to the AntarcticZeno Hintermeier is a scientist working as a travel guide on an Antarctic cruise ship, encouraging the wealthy to marvel at the least explored continent and to open their eyes to its rapid degradation. It is a troubling turn in the life of an idealistic glaciologist.
Now in his early sixties, Zeno bewails the loss of his beloved glaciers, the disintegration of his marriage, and the foundering of his increasingly irrelevant career. Troubled in conscience and goaded by the smug complacency of the passengers in his charge, he starts to plan a desperate gesture that will send a wake-up call to an overheating world.
The Lamentations of Zeno is an extraordinary evocation of the fragile and majestic wonders to be found at a far corner of the globe, written by a novelist who is a renowned travel writer.
Poignant and playful, the novel recalls the experimentation of high-modernist fiction without compromising a limpid sense of place or the pace of its narrative. It is a portrait of a man in extremis, a haunting and at times irreverent tale that approaches the greatest challenge of our age--perhaps of our entire history as a species--from an impassioned human angle.
Implanted
by Lauren C. TeffeauThe data stored in her blood can save a city on the brink... or destroy it, in this gripping cyberpunk thriller.
When college student Emery Driscoll is blackmailed into being a courier for a clandestine organisation, she's cut off from the neural implant community which binds the domed city of New Worth together. Her new employers exploit her rare condition which allows her to carry encoded data in her blood, and train her to transport secrets throughout the troubled city. New Worth is on the brink of Emergence - freedom from the dome - but not everyone wants to leave. Then a data drop goes bad, and Emery is caught between factions: those who want her blood, and those who just want her dead.