Book Review: BEST CLIMATE CHANGE STORIES

Title: Best Climate Change Stories: An Anthology of Original Short Fiction

Editor: Ron Sauder

Publisher: Secant Publishing

Pages: 296

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

The book is the result of a collaboration between Book Bin, an independent bookstore, and Secant Publishing, an independent book publisher. Philip Wilson from Book Bin and Ron Sauder from Secant held a worldwide contest with the idea of creating awareness on the subject of climate change through the power of literary art. The contest elicited entries in a variety of genres, including humour, horror, suspense, satire, science fiction and social realism. 

This collection includes 34 of those stories, with authors from 9 countries and 10 American states. Three stories were selected as Gold, Silver and Bronze winners.

Here are the stories I liked:

1)        Beyond The Timberline by Olaf Lahayne, winner of the BRONZE medal, started with a bang, sounding a note of warning. Two men, a Swiss national and an Italian, ascend the Alps and see a pine tree growing at a height far above its known range. Both are a little too eager to claim the tree for their own nations. This friendly tussle leads to an amazing conclusion. 

Even after their drinking water is over, the first warning sign, they do not learn their lesson. They pull their zippers down and urinate on the tree. All thoughts of something precious, a sacred natural heritage, gone out of their minds.

While we spar, we doom ourselves. Instead of taking pride in our collective achievements, we fight over them. The story pivots on a huge note of hubris.

 

2)        2100, Remnants of a Thriving World by BE Saunders was a story I really liked. The unnamed narrator, a woman in her 60s, is fleeing Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, with her daughter and grandchildren after the city is repeatedly flooded, as a fallout of climate change. The destruction of their home sees them heading to an unknown destination to a fate as migrants. The line, “The time had come to succumb to the waves, one way or another,” reminds us that they have no recourse but to consign their future to the waves. They will either be led to a new home or die trying to get there.

 

3)        Adaptive Solutions by Karly Foland: A couple are raising their six-year-old daughter in a horrible nightmare of a world in which all animals, birds and insects have abandoned humans to recede back into the wilderness. Mankind’s failure to practice stewardship and harmony has led to our undoing. Now there is no animal produce in our food, no animals as pets, no animals or birds to be seen or heard. This story was beautifully written, steeped in guilt, defiance and hope.

 

4)        Desert Fish by KM Watson (SILVER medal winner): Valeria, a young immigrant girl from Guatemala, is befriended by Sofia, an elderly woman, herself once an immigrant from Mexico. Valeria’s family has been displaced by climate change, which made agriculture impossible in their home country. Sofia shows Valeria the desert fish which survive and thrive in the smallest pond of water in the desert, setting the girl an example of hope.

This story reminds us of the social cost of climate change. The descriptions here were so beautiful that I could actually imaging the desert setting.

5)        In Times of Change, Root Down to Rise Up by Jessica Marcy: This story was written from the PoV of an old oak tree. It tells us about the history of the land in which it is rooted. The tree has the voice of an old African tree, immersed in the pride of Black heritage and the sufferings of black people, tied in with the issue of climate change. 

 

6)        Leave No Trace by Lee Clontz: In a world in which the nZika virus is fatal, a father’s attempt to celebrate his vaccine allergic 10-year-old son’s birthday with a camping trip nearly ends badly. I liked this one.

7)        Noah’s Great Rainbow by AA Rubin (GOLD medal winner): The skies have turned grey on account of a stratospheric injection to dim the sun’s heat and deflect it into space, The narrator, a painter, has been tasked with painting the ceiling of the town hall. He paints it in the colours of Noah’s rainbow to symbolize a commitment never to do anything to harm the earth again.

 

8)        Sea Burial by Lee Nash: A beautiful story about a family torn apart and how it sews itself, with one stranger disrupting the family, and another healing it. 

 

9)        The Amuse-Bouche by Dean Engel: The Amuse-bouche sees the only surviving member of a protected oyster species sacrificed for a conservationist’s libido. The amount of detail in this story was amazing.

 

10)   First Can on Mars by VM Sawh: An influencer, hailing from an ultra-rich family, rushes off to Mars, seeking to build her brand even from there.

 

Stories that were good but could have been improved

1)        American Mangroves by Paul Briggs is set in the 2060s, when the world's mangroves have been washed away to sea. The world has woken up to the need to cultivate mangroves as a way to safeguard nature's legacy and the future of mankind. Unfortunately it is already too late, as is evidenced by the evidence of hidden graves found in the dead forest, proof that mankind's future will echo its past, unless something is done. Against this potential disaster is framed the condition of the black community, enslaved by white plantation owners, literally trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea. I thought this story could have been improved. there was no immediate connection apparent between the loss of the mangroves and the protection of the gravesites.

 

2)        Bitter Almonds by Andrea Dejean: As a result of climate change, the growth patterns of plants and the behavioural patterns of animals are both altering. This story, though nice, was too short to make its point.

 

3)        Blood by PH Zietsman: The earth has stopped yielding a harvest of any kind. Hungry and increasingly desperate, the world is grappling with violence and a decline of the social order. The media supports Big Pharma’s drive to profit off this nightmare.

 

4)        Blue Cassandra by Douglas Arvidson: After a spate of storms have battered a portion of the mainland into an island, a few school children and their teachers are surviving on the roof of the school building. When an unmanned boat approaches, it raises their hopes. 

 

5)        Brownian Motion by Cedric Rose: The story started well and the descriptions were beautiful but it seemed to end abruptly, not only with no conclusion, but without even addressing the threatened conflict.

 

6)        Dislocation by Clare D Becker: The encroachment of the sea into the land has downgraded real estate prices and affected families and marriages everywhere. Venice has completely gone underwater. In Boston, Dante Bartolomeo hopes he can win the Boston Canals Gondola Race, and that the prize money will convince his wife, Aida, not to leave. In the end, no amount of prize money can stave off destruction.

I liked this line: Humanity cannot imagine its own extinction.

7) Landslide by Catherine Chaddic: An earth-shattering event in Austria, her birthplace, forces a woman to reconsider her choice of career.

8) Planet Suite by Martin Phillips: The story consisted of vignettes in the lives of three sets of characters whose lives have been upended by climate change. Dominic, a successful baker in Brittany, France, finds his business ruined on account of frequent floods. Patti and Hank Roberts and their friends in Oregon find themselves homeless on account of wildfires. Keida Kater in Northern Mali finds his entire life upended by a severe drought.

9) PLaNT Man by Maura Morgan: Nate, a climatologist, employs unconventional and illegal methods to address the problem of climate change.

10) Raymond and Ruby by Ian Inglis: This story blended the problem of climate change with crime. Raymond, unhappy in his marriage with Ruby, decides to kill her. Both of them have become irritable on account of the increasing heat. This story leaned more on the side of crime rather than climate change.

11) Symbiosis by Brian Brennan: Symbiosis is about a future civilization in which the rich and powerful justify the breeding of the babies of the poor in order to serve their nutritional needs. A good story. But given the amount of world building, this has the potential to become a novella.

12) The Captain of the Fleet by David Poyer: This story blended the climate change element with horror. Unfortunately, neither genre was very strong.

13) When the Water Starts to Rise by Jennifer Gryzenhout: This story was well written, but it ended abruptly.

14) Wildfire by Nicola Billington: An impactful story in just two pages.

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)