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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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.
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 Carbon Diaries 2015
by Saci LloydIt's the year 2015, and global warming is ravaging the environment. In response, the United Kingdom mandates carbon rationing.
When her carbon debit card arrives in the mail, sixteen-year-old Laura is just trying to handle the pressure of exams, keep her straight-X punk band on track, and catch the attention of her gorgeous classmate Ravi.
But as multiple natural disasters strike and Laura's parents head toward divorce, her world spirals out of control.
With the highest-category hurricane in history heading straight toward London, chronicling the daily insanity is all Laura can do to stay grounded in a world where disaster is the norm.
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!
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?
The Bone Clocks
by David MitchellFollowing a terrible fight with her mother over her boyfriend, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her family and her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: A sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.
For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics--and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly's life, affecting all the people Holly loves--even the ones who are not yet born. A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting on the war in Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list--all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.
Rich with character and realms of possibility, The Bone Clocks is a kaleidoscopic novel that begs to be taken apart and put back together by a writer The Washington Post calls "the novelist who's been showing us the future of fiction." An elegant conjurer of interconnected tales, a genre-bending daredevil, and a master prose stylist, David Mitchell has become one of the leading literary voices of his generation. His hypnotic new novel, The Bone Clocks, crackles with invention and wit and sheer storytelling pleasure--it is fiction at its most spellbinding.
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.
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.
Fifty Degrees Below
by Kim Stanley RobinsonBestselling, award-winning, author Kim Stanley Robinson continues his groundbreaking trilogy of eco-thrillers-and propels us deeper into the awesome whirlwind of climatic change.
Set in our nation's capital, here is a chillingly realistic tale of people caught in the collision of science, technology, and the consequences of global warming-which could trigger another phenomenon: abrupt climate change, resulting in temperatures. . .
When the storm got bad, scientist Frank Vanderwal was at work, formaliz...
Forty Signs of Rain
by Kim Stanley RobinsonThe bestselling author of the classic Mars trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt returns with a riveting new trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of global warming as they are played out in our nation's capital-and in the daily lives of those at the center of the action. Hauntingly realistic, here is a novel of the near future that is inspired by scientific facts already making headlines.
When the Arctic icepack was first measured in the 1950s, it averaged thirty feet thick in midwinter. By the end of the century it was down to fifteen. One August the ice broke. The next year the breakup started in July. The third year it began in May.
That was last year.
It's an increasingly steamy summer in the nation's capital as Senate environmental staffer Charlie Quibler cares for his young son and deals with the frustrating politics of global warming. Charlie must find a way to get a skeptical administration to act before it's too late-and his progeny find themselves living in Swamp World. But the political climate poses almost as great a challenge as the environmental crisis when it comes to putting the public good ahead of private gain.
While Charlie struggles to play politics, his wife, Anna, takes a more rational approach to the looming crisis in her work at the National Science Foundation. There a proposal has come in for a revolutionary process that could solve the problem of global warming-if it can be recognized in time. But when a race to control the budding technology begins, the stakes only get higher.
As these everyday heroes fight to align the awesome forces of nature with the extraordinary march of modern science, they are unaware that fate is about to put an unusual twist on their work - one that will place them at the heart of an unavoidable storm.
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.
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.
Greenhouse Summer
by Norman SpinradThe world of the future is in a lot of trouble. Pollution, overpopulation, and ecological disasters have left the rich nations still rich, and the poor nations dying. Still, for international businesses it is business as usual. It is better to be rich. But is it all coming to a terrible end? A scientist has predicted Condition Venus, the sudden greenhouse end of the planet - but she can't say when. So the attention of the world is on a UN conference in Paris, where all hell is about to break loose.
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.
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.
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 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