Full Description
Eclectic, experimental, and wildly imaginative climate fictions from a familiar world hauntingly transformed
Climate disaster-induced fugue states, mutinous polar bears, support groups for recently displaced millionaires, men who hear trees, and women who lose their wives on environmental refugee resettlement trips. In these dispatches from a weirding world, the absurd and fantastic are increasingly indistinguishable from reality. Exploring this liminal moment, Ashley Shelby's collection of climate fictions imagines a near future that is both unnervingly familiar and subversively strange.
Set in the same post-climate-impact era, these stories range from playfully satirical to poignantly humane, bending traditional narrative forms and coming together into a brilliant and unusual contemplation of our changing world. Featuring the Hugo-nominated novelette "Muri," Honeymoons in Temporary Locations processes the unthinkable through riotous inventions like guided tours of submerged cities, Craigslist ads placed by climate refugees, and cynical pharmaceutical efforts to market a drug to treat solastalgia, the existential distress caused by environmental change.
Shelby reengineers the dystopic bleakness that characterizes so much climate fiction by embracing an eclectic experimentalism leavened with humor, irony, and the inevitable bathos that characterizes the human experience. Unexpected and clever, this innovative collection confirms her status as a visionary writer whose work expands the forms, attitudes, and possibilities of climate fiction.
Contents
Contents
Oral History
Muri
Honeymoons in Temporary Locations
Documents (Recovered)
Post-Impact Craigslist Ads
Impact Cruises' Brochure Text: "Endangered Cities 7-Day Free-Sail Cruise"
Unicorn Investments Newsletter: Subscription Confirmation E-mail
Three Rivers Park District Class Description: "New Friends at the Feeder"
"Incident on Yellowstone Trail": Climate Crime Files Podcast, Episode 276
Federal Eligibility Questionnaire from the Temporary Aid to Climate-Impacted Deserving Poor
Benefits Program
Ersatz CafÉ Menu (Store #350)
Violent Biophilia in Solastalgia Patients: Case Study
Climafeel In-House Marketing Brief: [Vortex Biologics]
Participant Histories from Climafeel Clinical Trial
The Ingenious Futility of Warblers (Elizabeth Fugit)
They Don't Tell You Where to Put the Pain (Winfield Scott)
Your Ghost Remains Upright (Deacon Kompkoff-Blackwood)
The Sickness (Santiago Faucheaux)
"Mark"
Acknowledgments
