欧宝娱乐

As with so many anthologies, this was very much a mixed bag. I think it particularly suffered because the stories within were all reprints, so there was very little cohesion between them. It was obvious when a story had been written for a non-climate-focused project, because the authors felt the need to explain to us how, exactly, climate change was bad- not exactly necessary in the context of this anthology, because it is safe to assume that anyone who has picked up something described as an anthology of climate fiction is already rather aware.

There were a few standout stories:
- "Shooting the Apocalypse" by Paolo Bacigalupi: Bacigalupi had two stories here, and both were among the collection's strongest, but I think I like this one better; it had a lot of fascinating layers going on and managed to make climate disaster a powerful part of the plot while still telling a story about other conflicts. I also quite liked the way social media was integrated into the worldbuilding, which turned out to be a common theme across many of these stories.
- "A Hundred Hundred Daisies" by Nancy Kress: A story with some serious heart to it, which really focused on the difficulty of maintaining relationships under the strain of slowly-unfolding disaster. It asks the question "how will we explain this to future children?" and that question sticks with you.
- "Enganglement" by Vandana Singh: While the prose of this story felt weak, it was thematically very strong and had a perspective that resonated with me. It's a very clever way to tell a story about the rich interconnectivity of ecology through a human lens.
- "Staying Afloat" by Angela Penrose: In a practical sense, I am a big advocate of using ancestral knowledge to solve modern ecological problems, and this story both presented that idea cleverly and was a satisfying, tidy bit of storytelling.
- "The Mutant Stag at Horn Creek" by Sarah K. Castle: Definitely my favorite of the collection, even if its presentation of natural selection's effects felt rather exaggerated. Great character voice and sense of place, and successfully layered a story of climate impacts over interpersonal and societal critiques. Like "Shooting the Apocalypse", there's a lot of stuff here about how social media might impact us in the future, but it's handled a bit more sympathetically, treated more like a coping mechanism than fiddling while Rome burns. I also loved the way the world of this story has become foreign in a very slow, inexorable way - that makes the changes all the more horrifying.

A couple I particularly disliked:
- "The Precedent" by Sean McMullen: Aside from an awful lot of history navel-gazing, this story felt like it was rebuking younger generations for resenting the wasteful choices of older generations. Comparing 'climate victims' to the Salem Witch Trials is not a good look.
- "Hot Sky" by Robert Silverberg: So, for this story to make sense, you have to believe that in a severe global warming situation where freshwater is extremely limited, San Francisco is somehow still around and powerful, and basically choose to ignore that South America exists, because apparently an iceberg valued for the fresh water it contains can float all the way north from Antarctica to California before there's any competition over it. It just felt profoundly sloppy.
- "That Creeping Sensation" by Alan Dean Foster: Contained the following actual segue into a historical info-dump:

As she and the corporal worked their way through the swarm, she reflected on the unexpected turn of history.

Seriously?


The rest were... largely mediocre. There were several which I felt could have been poignant if positioned differently in the anthology - "Quiet Town" by Jason Gurley is a small, straightforward portrait of the moment the seas rise too far for one town, but it just sort of vanishes between longer, more complicated stories. I am, in general, not impressed with John Joseph Adams' editing here. Personally, my takeaway was that I really, really need to read some of Bacigalupi's novels - and thankfully, I have a copy of The Water Knife on my shelf already.