whimsydearest

In the post-apocalyptic future, much of humanity is scattered and infected with a mind-altering heritable symbiont—a fungus called Cadastrulamyces. Reid is one of the infected, living in an abandoned science building and hunting for survival. However, when Howse University, one of the last bastions of human civilization, invites Reid to join their Environmental Science program, she’s torn between staying to take care of her community or a possible chance at a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The Annual Migration of Cloud s by Premee Mohamed is a thought-provoking and poignant cli-fi novella about inheritance, identity, and family ties. Going into this book, I think it’s important to note that this is a very literary feeling piece of sci-fi. It’s poetic and in parts it reads like a fragmented stream of consciousness, reflecting Reid’s own mental state, which I think works really well. There’s also some wonderful moments of body horror and fungi protruding out of people that'll leave...

In a world devastated by climate change, humanity has come up with a drastic solution to try and reduce carbon emissions: the Offset. For every child born, a parent is executed. As Miri’s eighteenth birthday approaches, she’s faced with the choice of which of her parents to spare. Does she choose the mother who raised her or her brilliant scientist mother who may be the key to saving life on Earth from mass extinction? The Offset by Calder Szewczak is a dystopian cli-fi novel with a harrowing moral dilemma. However, unfortunately, the story drops the ball on what could have been a gut-wrenching and emotionally devastating novel. I personally did not feel the full emotional weight of Miri’s decision that I had been hoping for since she’s a runaway who’s been estranged from her parents for years and doesn’t appear attached to either of them. Also, the end felt jarringly abrupt and left so many questions unanswered. I would have preferred a bit more closure and explanation for my taste. ...

Centuries have passed since robots collectively left humanity and ventured into the wild—never to be seen again. However, when Sibling Dex, a tea monk, begins a pilgrimage to a hermitage, they stumble across a robot named Mosscap. Mosscap offers to act as a guide for the monk in exchange for teaching it about humanity, so together they venture through the wilderness, learning about each other and finding the meaning of life along the way. A Psalm for the Wild-Built  by Becky Chambers is a charming little novella that paints a more optimistic outlook of the future amongst a sea of eco nihilism, and I find that to be beautiful and a breath of fresh air. I think it’s also important to note that this book is essentially a fable. It’s a philosophical exchange between the two main characters. The monk grapples with finding meaning to their life now that humanity has achieved a sort of utopia while the robot finds wonder in watching the natural decay of life, and I found it enjoyable to w...

  Appleseed by Matt Bell is an ambitious, thought-provoking work of eco-fiction that interweaves three interconnected storylines that span across millennia (think something along the lines of Cloud Altas ). 1) The first storyline is highly allegorical and centers around two brothers—one a faun, one a human--who plant an apple orchard. However, as the trees grow and bear fruit, the brothers quarrel over what to do with them. 2) The second storyline follows John, a “Volunteer” for a megacorporation called Earthtrust whose farms produce food for majority of the world. However, social unrest breaks out as a growing resistance wants to redistribute Earth’s resources. 3) The third storyline follows C, a Frankensteinian creature who lives a lonely existence as presumably the last living being on Earth. It dedicates its life to scavenging enough biomass so it can be reborn again. However, the latest version of C may have a chance to break the cycle and revive the rest of life on Eart...

In the not-so-distant future, humanity is afflicted with a psychological phenomenon called the Grief, an overwhelming melancholia brought on by collapse of ecosystems and the mass extinction of species. It manifests in various ways and with various obsessions: one elderly woman tries to bring back the thylacines, another man tries to recreate wrens with robots, and another woman becomes obsessed with plastic and calls herself the Sea Witch. For our main character Ruby, she tries to stave off the Grief by fixating on the ever-resilient jellyfish—all while trying come to terms with her best friend’s suicide and her divorce. The Impossible Resurrection of Grief by Octavia Cade is a beautiful and hauntingly surreal eco novella that blends sci-fi with Anderson fairytales. Without flinching, Cade poignantly tackles not only our relationship with animals, but our relationship with other people as well. This novella asks so many fascinating questions. What is the cost of losing a species and ...

The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He is a poetic work of eco-fiction that’s told from the alternating perspectives of two sisters trying to cross the ocean that divides them. Cee: It’s been three years since Cee washed ashore an island. She has no recollection of how got there or much of her life before. All she knows is that she has a sister named Kay and that she must get back to her. Kay: Kay is an antisocial STEM prodigy who lives in a high-tech eco-city—one of the last safe havens from the effects of climate change. Following her sister’s disappearance, she tries to retrace Cee’s footsteps and figure out what made her to leave in the first place. Overall, asides from Cee’s struggle to survive on and leave the island, I found the technology aspects of the book to be the most interesting part of the story. Joan He introduces some really cool conceptual ideas here that remind me of Black Mirror . For instance, the citizens of eco-cities live out the non-essential parts of their ...