Climate Fiction Short Stories

Hundreds of years after the end of the world, the Appalachian community of Iron Hollow finds itself beset by demons. Such horrors are common these days in the outlands, where most folks die young—if they don’t turn into monsters first. When a legendary knight is summoned to hunt down the latest unearthly beast to haunt their woods, the town’s new oral historian, Shrike, has more reason than most to be concerned. Because that demon was her wife. And while Shrike is certain that May still recognizes her—that May is still herself, somewhere beneath it all—she can’t prove it.

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD A razor-sharp new collection of stories of visionary childhood misfits and struggling adult dreamers from this legendary writer of “perfectly indescribable fiction . . . To read Williams is to look into the abyss” (The Atlantic). “Night was best...

Meet the writers’ room of the kid’s show Rooty Root Vegetables, which struggles to find humor in carbon emissions and climate change. Then things get punny.

What will become of our self-destructed planet? The answer shatters all expectations in this subversive speculation from the Hugo Award - winning author of the Broken Earth trilogy. An explorer returns to gather information from a climate-ravaged Earth that his ancestors, and others among the planet’s finest, fled centuries ago. The mission comes with a warning: A graveyard world awaits him. But so do those left behind - hopeless and unbeautiful wastes of humanity who should have died out ages ago.

Not dystopia — renewal. Solarpunk is the newest branch of speculative fiction—an optimistic vision of the future where renewal, resilience, and human connection take center stage. Too much science fiction has fallen into dystopian clichés. This anthology of stories distinguished by international recognition follows characters and communities finding their way forward: A girl with a rare disorder discovers life beyond screens. A professor chasing fusion energy receives visions he can’t explain. A coming-of-age tale of friendship across time. In an antediluvian world, two teens from ...

Sam has retreated to her late father’s rental house, a safe place to commune with the animals in the greenbelt out back, tend to her garden, and keep her secrets. Her sense of security slowly returns - until an aggressive neighbor from the other side of the ravine fells a tree on her property. How little he regards nature. Or understands its darkness. How little he knows Sam.

Only a few nuclear weapons fell. But in the chaos of famine and plague, there existed a few pockets of order. The strongest of them was the state of Deseret. The climate has changed, and the lake has filled up. There, on the fringes, brave, hardworking pioneers are making the desert bloom again.

A Captivating Short Story Inspired by Innuit Legend and The Modern Day Plight of The Polar Bear. Journey into a world where an ancient spirit walks among mortals, and the balance of nature hangs by a delicate thread. Immerse yourself in a mesmerizing narrative that weaves together the captivating stories of Nanuk, the Polar Bear Shapeshifter Goddess, and the clash of cultures in the icy realms of Greenland. Witness the legacy of a young Inuit hunter chosen by destiny, the intricate magic of totems holding ancestral power, and the plight of the Arctic bears facing extinction at the hands of ...

Around the world, geophysicists and mathematicians, oceanographers and meteorologists, engineers, economists, psychologists, and philosophers have been using their expertise to develop a deep understanding of the crises we face. Greta Thunberg has created The Climate Book in partnership with more than one hundred of these experts in order to equip us all with this knowledge. Alongside them, Thunberg shares her own stories of learning, demonstrating, and uncovering greenwashing around the world. This is one of our biggest problems, she shows, but also our greatest source of hope.

Climate fiction author Richard Friedman takes the listener on a journey from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean to the edges of the universe with his collection of short stories. A narcissistic east coast billionaire receives a visit from three ghosts in a contemporary spin on a timeless classic. Judgment Day asks, is humanity worth saving? A family takes a tour through the Grand Museum of the Universe in The Docent and the crew of the space shuttle witnesses a nuclear holocaust in The World Burns Below.

Countdown to Zero is the first in The Visioner Series of short stories. One day, Alexander McNeil notices that he has some strange powers that he really doesn’t understand. Remarkably, he’s able to tell with absolute certainty the exact day that someone will die. Working in the British Embassy in Moscow, Alexander is called to attend a World disarmament summit in the Kremlin as a translator. Everything is going very smoothly, until he’s asked to join a meeting attended by the new U.S. President. What do you do if you suddenly realise, for certain, that one of the main World leaders ...

Twelve women confront the mounting existential terrors of modernity—climate change, unbridled capitalism and greed, an entertainment industry that will go to surreal lengths to stay relevant—in this debut story collection set in a slightly off-kilter version of reality. A woman's limbs...

It’s fate when a man accidentally drops his phone off the bridge. It’s fortune when it’s retrieved by a friendly shape sloshing in the muck underneath. From that day forward, as they share a coffee every morning, an unlikely friendship blooms. Considering the reality for the man above, where life seems perfect, and that of the sharp-witted creature below, how forever after can a happy ending be?

Miriam was raised in a society without children. To offset the devastation of climate change, state-of-the-art birth control has made daycares and playgrounds things of the past. As tempting as the government inducements are to remain child-free, Miriam’s curiosity about the people who “drop out” of society to become parents grows. When she finds a like-minded partner, she must choose between the rewarding comforts she knows and the unknowable mysteries of being a mother.

Forty years ago, Walt Kelly's comic strip character Pogo famously intoned: "We have met the enemy, and he is us." Now, as the evidence for climate change becomes overwhelming, we learn the hard reality behind that witticism. The possible destruction, and certain transformation, of the ecosphere has been brought about by our own activities. What will our new world look like? How will we - can we - adapt? The clash of a rapidly changing environment with earth's self-styled ruling species, humans, provides ample creative fodder for this riveting anthology of original science fiction.

Embark on a journey across the planet through 23 stories written by 16 authors from six different countries. From super-powered humans taking down polluting industries to genius inventors creating innovative high-tech solutions to protect their communities, Gaia Awakens explores the gauntlet of climate fiction, sci-fi, and fantasy alike.

Building from his acclaimed anthology Tales of Two Americas, beloved writer and editor John Freeman draws together a group of our greatest writers from around the world to help us see how the environmental crisis is hitting some of the most vulnerable communities where they live. In the past five years, John Freeman, previously editor of Granta, has launched a celebrated international literary magazine, Freeman's, and compiled two acclaimed anthologies that deal with income inequality as it is experienced.

Their captivity was traumatizing. And draining. But revenge is in the blood for a group of brave survivors in this chilling short story of conspiracies and youthful pleasures gone awry.

The protected escapees of the blood-farm experiments are free, secure, and set for life. Kind of. Because there’s something new to fear in this short thriller, the twisting finale of the Young Blood Trilogy.