Tag: cli-fi

SFF, Short stories

Pollen and Salt

OJ

I have a new story out! Well, it came out a couple of months back, but I’m playing catch-up here. “Pollen and Salt” is available in the July/August issue of Asimov’s. I’ve had a few people contact me to say nice things about it, which is lovely, as it’s something of an experiment on my part.

The story, you see, doesn’t have much of a plot. It’s more a mood piece, set in the near-distant future, where a scientist is studying pollen at the edge of a rising ocean – pollen in salt marshes, mud flats, littoral spaces and so forth. The pollen is a record of past vegetation, and as they work the scientist is mourning their partner, who has recently died. It’s a meditation on change, more than anything else, and I was trying to create a story that was sad and quiet and still very aware of the beauty and potential of that new world, even when the parts of it that were loved are gone. Also, there’s a goose.

So, something of an experiment on my part! I don’t know that I’ll write a lot more stories like this in the future, but I worked on this one for several years, and I’m genuinely pleased with the result. If you can, please take a look!

 

 

SFF, Short stories

Resilience

OJ

I have a new story out! “Resilience” has been published by Stuff, and is free to read at the link there. It’s the second in a series of cli-fi shorts commissioned by Stuff, so it was a lovely surprise to get that email from them. They said they were looking for a more positive story about the future, and how it might play out in a changing climate. They also said it had to be family friendly, which I admit gave me brief pause. (There’s often more than a touch of horror in my stories, and so when I heard “family friendly” my first reaction – thankfully internal – was “No killing characters off this time, then.”)

So I came up with this story about two kids, Coral and Elsbeth. I reckon they’re about ten years old. Anyway, they meet each other one summer day and run off to play hooky, messing about on the beach and discovering the nesting sites of some very special birds. The emphasis on conservation is going on in the background, really, with the urban landscape they live in having undergone an enormous ecological makeover. Increased biodiversity increases resilience, remember, and with climate change likely to inflict significant disturbance on our ecological systems, supporting biodiversity in our environments is one way of building healthier and more sustainable ecosystems.

And there’s some art to go with it too. Isn’t it pretty?

SFF

The Stone Wētā

OJ

My new book is out today!

With governments denying climate science, scientists from affected countries and organisations are forced to traffic data to ensure the preservation of research that could in turn preserve the world. From Antarctica, to the Chihuahuan Desert, to the International Space Station, a fragile network forms. A web of knowledge. Secret. But not secret enough.

When the cold war of data preservation turns bloody – and then explosive – an underground network of scientists, all working in isolation, must decide how much they are willing to risk for the truth. For themselves, their colleagues, and their future.

Murder on Antarctic ice. A university lecturer’s car, found abandoned on a desert road. And the first crewed mission to colonise Mars, isolated and vulnerable in the depths of space.

How far would you go to save the world?

The Stone Wētā
ISBN 9780995135505
Published by Paper Road Press

Buy at Amazon / Kobo / Apple / Barnes & Noble / Paper Road Press

Science, SFF

Pre-order: The Stone Wētā

OJ

I have a new book coming out! The Stone Wētā, from Paper Road Press, is due out on April 22. That’s Earth Day, which is deeply appropriate for a novel about climate change and how it can affect us and our planet. The Stone Wētā is based on the short story of mine, of the same name, which was published a couple of years back in Clarkesworld.

We talk about the tyranny of distance a lot in this country. That distance will not save us.

With governments denying climate science, scientists from affected countries and organisations are forced to traffic data to ensure the preservation of research that could in turn preserve the world. From Antarctica, to the Chihuahuan Desert, to the International Space Station, a fragile network forms. A web of knowledge. Secret. But not secret enough.

When the cold war of data preservation turns bloody – and then explosive – an underground network of scientists, all working in isolation, must decide how much they are willing to risk for the truth. For themselves, their colleagues, and their future.

Murder on Antarctic ice. A university lecturer’s car, found abandoned on a desert road. And the first crewed mission to colonise Mars, isolated and vulnerable in the depths of space.

How far would you go to save the world?

You can pre-order hard copies of The Stone Wētā at the Paper Road Press site. E-copies are also available to pre-order at Amazon, Kobo, Apple, and Barnes & Noble.

Horror, SFF, Short stories

We Feed the Bears of Fire and Ice

OJ

I’ve a new story out! “We Feed the Bears of Fire and Ice” is free to read over in this week’s edition of Strange Horizons. It’s a climate horror story about bears and lies.

It’s an odd mix of fantasy and fact, this one. Clearly, ghost bears the size of houses are not prowling over the ever-less-frozen north of the Americas. But I like finding interesting new ways to write about science so folded in with all the gore and mayhem are bits of biology and climate, and sprinkled through the whole are links to science news stories from journals like Science and Scientific American. The articles inform the story, so you can read them if you want but the mere presence of the titles in the text should clue you into context if you don’t want to follow the links.

I wrote it in cold rage a few months back, after seeing that terrible video of the starving polar bear. I couldn’t stop thinking about it and it was either swallow down all my bile (which didn’t seem to work, apparently spite concentrates in small spaces) or spit it out and make other people suffer too. Fair warning, this one’s really dark. Strange Horizons lists content warnings before each story, and this hits quite a few of them. As you can see from the opening snippet:

Look at what we woke.

We feed them lies and watch them burn for it.

Koala bears rarely run during bush fires. Their instinct at danger is to climb up into canopy, where the leaves are shot through with eucalyptus oil, and flammable. They cling to the trunk with charred paws when it begins to burn, the thin bark catching easily and falling off in flaming strips. It sets their fur alight.

They die screaming. ….