Want to read a series of dystopian novels that leave you with hope for the future? These climate change books offer more than just warnings. They provide hope, adventure, and unforgettable characters navigating a world that you may live in just a few years from now.
Tales from a Warming Planet is a series of three standalone climate science fiction stories in the genre of climate fiction. These dystopian novels explore an Earth in the next few decades coping with a catastrophic climate crisis and its aftermath. Enjoy the novels Carbon Run, City of Ice and Dreams, and Restoration, as well as the novelette, The Mother Earth Insurgency.
Check out the new Bureau of Environmental Security website, which explores and expands the Warming Planet world!
How I wrote these novels
I wrote Carbon Run as a climate science fiction novel that took global warming seriously without being preachy or doom-laden. Seeing a gap in quality sci-fi with climate themes, I joined writers like Kim Stanley Robinson, Margaret Atwood, and Paolo Bacigalupi in tackling this challenge.
City of Ice and Dreams was inspired by Mediterranean refugees of the 2010s—people fleeing war in rickety boats. I imagined climate refugees seeking new lives as their lands become uninhabitable, combined with Antarctic ice loss creating opportunities at the bottom of the world.
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I witnessed heated debates about removing dams to save salmon. Restoration explores how the climate crisis might force such decisions, affecting entire communities. My eastern Washington childhood and family values from central Washington’s small towns shaped this bio-regional story.
The Mother Earth Insurgency opens with a scene inspired by Seattle’s 1999 WTO riots, imagining how extremists might react to mega-corporations controlling future green energy. In less than 20,000 words, this climate fiction story explores how desperation and ideology might lead some down a destructive path.
Carbon Run
A young woman searches for her father across an Arctic Ocean patrolled by obsessed security agents and prowled by oil-smuggling pirates. A suspenseful climate change book, Carbon Run is an exciting thriller set in a dystopian world ravaged by global warming. Anne Penn dreamed of saving an endangered species of birds. When a fire destroys the birds’ last home, her beloved father Bill is accused of starting the blaze. Fanatic officer Janine Kilel comes to arrest Anne’s father, but Bill escapes, because in the 22nd century, destroying a species means execution. How will Anne find her father in a Russian city where the difference between good and evil is as murky as the choking smog?
Check out the Bureau of Environmental Security project.
City of Ice and Dreams
In 2261, Sento, a tormented woman obsessed with the legendary Antarctic city of Isorropia, leads climate refugees on a suicidal trek across melting ice. Meanwhile, First Citizen Elita Soares watches from the secretive city, determined to stop the immigrants—especially when she discovers her half-sister may be among them. Will the pilgrims survive Antarctica’s harsh climate to reach their destination? City of Ice and Dreams is a dystopian thriller exploring identity, survival, and family secrets in a climate-changed world.
Restoration
In Restoration, a sassy, independent city girl finds herself in a small, conservative town where she meets a young man that challenges everything she believes. Junie Wye is an urbane 17-year-old forced to move from her big city to a divided desert town. Her dad, Ed, has a difficult, dangerous job: removing an enormous hydroelectric dam blocking a beautiful river. Junie meets, Don Rast, whose father, Covington, opposes taking down the dam. Though the government wants it taken away, others will do anything to keep it, including sabotage and threats. Meanwhile, a conspiracy brews that could mean the deaths of thousands downstream. Will Junie and Don overcome their parents’ hostility? Is the dam a million-ton bomb waiting to go off?
The Mother Earth Insurgency
A government agent infiltrates a terrorist group bent on destroying a launch tower 20 kilometers tall, only to learn his wife and child may die among thousands. Nick Sorrows is an undercover agent with the Bureau of Environmental Security. He is ordered to discover the plans of Jon Janicks and The Mother Earth Insurgency, which is determined to stop the hijacking of clean energy by greedy corporations. After a riot in Seattle, and an attack on a wind power farm in California, Sorrows learns about the MEI’s most audacious plan yet. Will Agent Sorrows stop the terrorist Janicks from killing thousands? Winner of an Honorable Mention in the 2017 Writers of the Future science fiction contest.
Check out my other series, The Future History of the Grail, inspired by the King Arthur stories and our climate crisis.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to read these books in order? No, each of the four stories is standalone, but they are inter-related. You can read them in any order.
The books talk about climate change. Are they preachy? Not at all. I’ve deliberately avoided preachiness to explore what life might be like for ordinary people as the world grows warmer.
How realistic are the situations in the books? I’ve tried to base the environmental problems faced by the characters on real climate change science. However, the stories are exciting and dramatic, meant to entertain.
The climate crisis is one of the defining issues of the 21st century. I hope you’ll find hope and inspiration from these climate change books. Be sure to leave a review!