Earth Month rolls around every April and reminds us to recycle more, waste less, and briefly Google “what is my carbon footprint?” It’s also the perfect time to look at how fiction is grappling with climate change. Often called climate fiction, or cli-fi for short, this genre of writing focuses on climate change as a central force shaping characters or worlds. From bleak, dystopian novels to quirky, optimistic novels, the books in this collection imagine futures shaped by a warming world in ways that are thought-provoking, engaging, and surprisingly readable.
tl;dr — This infographic gives a snapshot of this month’s Collections Spotlight by placing each book on a spectrum from bleak to optimistic and from realistic to speculative.
Hover over a book to see a short synopsis.
Here are our climate fiction picks for April by vibes. Jump to a sub-genre that speaks to you:
- The “We Ignored the Warnings” Shelf — Eco-Dystopian
- The Climate Made Me Do It — Eco-Thriller / Climate Noir
- Powered by Science — Hard Science Fiction
- The Human Cost of a Changing Planet — Eco-Literary / Literary Realism
- Basically Tomorrow — Near-Future / Speculative Realism
- Climate Change Gets Weird…In a Good Way — Surreal / Mythic Climate Fiction
😳 The “We Ignored the Warnings” Shelf
Eco-Dystopian
Depicts societal breakdown, scarcity, survivalism, or authoritarian aftermath.
Walk the Vanished Earth by Erin Swan
Spanning multiple eras, from 1873 Kansas to a future Mars colony, Walk the Vanished Earth tells the story of one family as Earth’s climate collapses and humanity drifts into new worlds. A bison hunter, a pregnant teenager, an engineer building a floating city, and a young woman on Mars all share threads of hope, trauma and legacy.
The Island of Last Things by Emma Sloley
In a near-future world ravaged by mass extinctions, Alcatraz Island becomes home to the last zoo on Earth. Camille, a lifelong zookeeper who prefers animals to people, meets Sailor, a new arrival with a daring vision of freedom for the captive creatures. As they form a bond and hatch a risky escape plan, their world shifts between routine care and radical upheaval.
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
On a remote island near Antarctica, the Salt family cares for the planet’s last seed bank, tethered to a sea-bound life of storms, isolation and echoes of what’s been lost. When a mysterious woman washes ashore during the worst storm in memory, truths unravel, alliances shift and survival becomes entwined with trust, love and the fragile wild.
The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica
In a ravaged, post-climate-collapse world, The Unworthy places us inside a ruthless convent known as the Sacred Sisterhood where women are ranked by purity, mutilation becomes ritual, and pain is sanctified. Written in secret diary fragments by one of the “unworthy,” the narrator’s story of survival and memory unfolds amid a terrifying religious hierarchy. Outside, civilization has crumbled; inside, the Sisterhood’s cruelty masks both yearning for redemption and a whispered hope of escape. It’s a haunting exploration of faith, power, and what is left when hope must struggle for breath.
After World by Debbie Urbanski
In a post-human future, neural implants and climate collapse have redrawn the boundaries of identity. The story follows Sae, a mediator in a divested world, as she investigates the disappearance of a mysterious child linked to an old tech buried in the ice. In a society where nature and machinery merge, secrets buried beneath broken systems surface, and survival depends less on power and more on memory, connection, and what it means to keep something real.
🔥 The Climate Made Me Do It
Eco-Thriller / Climate Noir
Fast-paced, suspense-driven stories where. environmental crises, secrecy, and moral ambiguity shape the plot.
Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer
Security consultant Jane Smith’s life flips when she receives a cryptic envelope containing a key to storage unit #7. Inside, she finds a taxidermied hummingbird and clues tied to an enigmatic ecoterrorist. Soon she is plunged into a covert battle involving endangered species, industrial conspiracies, and climate collapse.
🔬 Powered by Science
Hard Science Fiction
Emphasizes scientific, political, and technological interventions in the climate crisis.
A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys
In a climate-ravaged 2083, environmental networks have begun to rebuild Earth while an alien species known as the Ringers arrives with an offer: humanity can join them among the stars, but only if they leave Earth behind. Judy Wallach-Stevens, a climate activist and co-parent in a polyamorous household, becomes a reluctant bridge between the two worlds. As alliances shift and questions of belonging intensify, the novel asks, “can we save a planet when the rescuers expect us to abandon it?”.
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
In the near future after a catastrophic heatwave kills millions in India, a new global body called the Ministry for the Future is established in Zurich to advocate for the rights of future generations. Through shifting perspectives (scientists, refugees, bankers and activists), the novel follows the Ministry’s efforts to avert climate disaster by deploying radical economic reforms, geoengineering, and direct action.
Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson
In a near-future world pushed to the edge by climate change, billionaire T.R. Schmidt takes matters into his own hands, launching a vast geoengineering project that fires sulfur into the atmosphere to cool the planet. As governments, activists, and ordinary people react, their stories intersect: from a Dutch queen navigating politics to a Texan hog hunter and an Indian-Canadian pilot drawn into the chaos. Termination Shock explores the ambition, risk, and human cost of trying to fix the world on our own terms.
America from 2013 to the near future grapples with climate collapse, political upheaval, and social unraveling. Multiple characters, including a scientist tracking methane, an eco-activist, a charismatic extremist, and a hedge fund manager, navigate rising seas, wildfires, and shifting power as the old systems break down. The Deluge shows how catastrophe and resilience can co-exist, asking what happens when civilization itself becomes a battleground.
🤝 The Human Cost of a Changing Planet
Eco-Literary / Literary Realism
Realistic settings, character-driven stories, environmental or social change as backdrop rather than speculative world-building.
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
In rural Appalachian Tennessee, newly married Dellarobia Turnbow stumbles upon a forest alight with monarch butterflies, an improbable phenomenon that draws scientists, media, and religious zealots into her town. As she grapples with grief, economic hardship, and the extraordinary event, Dellarobia becomes an unlikely voice in a climate-crisis conversation.
In this sharp, surprising novel, Bunny Glenn, an American-born foreign-service child, moves from youthful innocence in Azerbaijan to a career in the oil industry while the world burns. The story traces ambition, climate collapse, and individual complicity in global change.
Here Lies by Olivia Clare Friedman
Set in Louisiana in the year 2042, Here Lies depicts a world where climate change has mandated the closure of graveyards and outlawed burials, transforming the remains of the dead into state-owned ash. Alma, who failed to honor her mother’s final wishes, embarks on a quiet yet rebellious quest to reclaim those ashes and bury her mother properly. Along the way she forges found-family ties with a fierce young stranger and local women resisting a rigid order. This novel explores grief, memory, and resilience in a society reshaped by ecological collapse and human longing.
In a small Massachusetts coastal town years from now, Vigil Harbor observes change in the air: rising seas, increasing storms, and tensions among longtime locals. When two mysterious strangers arrive, the town’s fragile equilibrium cracks. Through eight intertwining voices, Glass explores how place and memory, love and fear, survival and surrender converge as the horizon shifts.
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
In the year 2119, London is half-drowned after decades of climate catastrophe. Amid the ruins, 83-year-old linguist Thomas Metcalfe becomes obsessed with a fragmentary poem found in a submerged archive. As he reconstructs its verses, he pieces together the lives of two lovers who lived during the early twenty-first century, on the brink of the disasters he now endures. Their story of science, denial, and fragile hope mirrors humanity’s long slide into collapse.
Site Fidelity by Claire Boyles
Set against the backdrop of the American West, this collection of short stories delves into how families, communities, and landscapes contend with climate change, economic shifts, and social loss. From a 74-year-old nun sabotaging a fracking project to a young farmer hiding her flock amid a disease outbreak, Boyles writes with lyrical precision about land, belonging and resilience. Deeply human and quietly urgent, this collection invites readers to reflect on the fragile ground beneath our feet and the strength required to stay and fight for it.
👀 Basically Tomorrow
Near-Future / Speculative Realism
Plausible futures extrapolated from current crises; science-based but still recognizable.
The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton
Set in a near-future Florida slowly disappearing beneath rising seas, The Light Pirate follows the extraordinary life of Wanda, born during a catastrophic hurricane. As her hometown erodes and civilization retreats, Wanda forges an unlikely found family among survivors and learns to embody hope in the face of loss. The novel asks, “what does it mean to stay when the world is leaving, and what kind of new community can we build when the old one is gone?”.
Even If Everything Ends by Jens Liljestrand
In a world caught in raging wildfires and fast-moving climate crisis, four deeply flawed lives intersect. A media consultant desperate to save his family, an influencer living in denial, a rebellious teenager seeking revenge, and his younger sister rising from the ashes of neglect. Together their stories probe what happens while the world ends. Love, grief, fury, hope and everyday survival fold into one all-too-real future.
Eternal Summer by Franziska Gänsler
Set in a German spa town under the grip of unstoppable wildfires and climate-driven collapse, Eternal Summer centers on Iris, who has taken over her grandfather’s resort. As the mercury soars and guests vanish, a mysterious mother and daughter arrive seeking refuge, and deeper questions emerge about survival, memory, and what one owes to a burning world.
The High House by Jessie Greengrass
At a once-luxurious coastal estate transformed into an ark against rising seas, scientist Francesca and caretaker Grandy vigilantly prepare for the catastrophe they know is imminent. As the mill hums, the orchard thrives, and the greenhouse holds its fragile secret, their family and hope wander a precarious edge. In this novel, Greengrass explores how we face change not as a distant threat but as the place we call home, asking who we’d save when the earth itself shifts beneath our feet.
A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
Set in a near-future Kolkata straining under food shortages, flooding, and bureaucratic collapse, the novel follows Ma, a mother racing to secure a climate-visa for her daughter, and Boomba, a desperate young man who steals that visa to feed his own family. Over seven days, their paths collide in a moral maze where survival bends the rules of justice.
Set in a ravaged near-future America, Lark Ascending follows Lark, one of the few survivors who escape a homeland devastated by wildfires and authoritarian collapse. Hoping for refuge in Ireland, he instead lands in a world as dangerous as the one he fled. Alongside a fierce woman searching for her son and a dog who becomes his anchor, Lark forges a new kind of community, offering tenderness amid hardship and hope amid ruin.
In a near-future America battered by climate change, Blue Skies follows a dysfunctional family trying to maintain normality while the world collapses around them. Cat, a social-media-obsessed woman living in a flood-threatened beach house, buys a Burmese python and inadvertently sets off a chain of surprising, absurd disasters. With biting humor and wrenching realism, Boyle sketches our planet’s fragility and humanity’s stubborn denial of it. The novel mixes satire, eco-thriller and dark family drama, showing that even when everything goes wrong, life still goes on.
In the year 2052, after fossil-fuels giants have already been tried for environmental crimes, journalist Jack Henry travels to Mexico under a fake identity to uncover a fugitive oil magnate. As Jack befriends the man, whose destruction he is investigating, he becomes entangled in questions of justice, culpability, and identity in a world still reckoning with climate collapse.
Loosed Upon the World edited by John Joseph Adams
This anthology gathers twenty-six short stories that confront the near future of climate change. From desert-drowned cities to water-war futures, each tale explores how humanity grapples with an Earth in flux. Featuring contributions from major voices such as Margaret Atwood, Paolo Bacigalupi and Kim Stanley Robinson, the collection is at once terrifyingly plausible and deeply thoughtful. It doesn’t just depict ecological collapse, it forces us to look at the world anew and ask what we owe the future.
🔮 Climate Change Gets Weird…In a Good Way
Surreal / Mythic Climate Fiction
Uses metaphor, myth, or magical elements to engage climate themes.
Spanning three striking, Appleseed weaves myth, science fiction, and ecological warning into one ambitious epic. At its heart are apple orchards, biotech corporations, corporate power, rebelling outcasts and a lonely sentient being drifting across a glacier in search of humanity’s remnants. With scope as vast as its themes, the novel challenges how we’ve shaped the earth, how we remember it, and what hope remains when the wild might reclaim everything.
In the year 2048, civilization has crumbled under a deadly virus and ecological collapse. Amid this wasteland, former Buddhist center resident Will Collins wheels across the American West, pulled by two mules and accompanied by a raven, on a mission to deliver a mysterious cure. As he journeys through a ravaged landscape of neon-glow crocodiles and wild camels, he meets a teenage survivalist with grief etched into her eyes, and together they confront questions of hope, connection, and what we owe the world we’ve broken.
My Volcano by John Elizabeth Stintzi
When a volcano erupts and looms two miles high in Central Park, the world fractures. Across continents and centuries, scattered characters, including a Nigerian scholar in Tokyo, a trans writer in Jersey City, and a child sent back to Aztec-era Mexico, face personal and planetary transformations. Their stories intermingle in a surreal, kaleidoscopic vision of heat, memory, loss and rebirth. My Volcano is an audacious blend of eco-horror, myth and speculative fiction.
The Disaster Tourist by Sun Ko-Eun
Yona Ko works for Jungle, a travel company that arranges luxurious trips to disaster-ravaged locations. When a harassing workplace incident threatens her career, she is offered an all-expenses-paid “vacation” to the island of Mui, a lesser-visited destination in need of rebranding. But as Yona arrives she uncovers the shocking truth: Mui’s next catastrophe may be manufactured for profit. This novel probes disaster tourism, corporate exploitation, and the unseen human cost behind spectacle.
Fire & Water edited by Mary Fifield and Kristin Thiel
This collection of seventeen short stories brings together varied voices from around the globe as they grapple with the Anthropocene. From an Alaska-based Sámi woman tracking fish populations, to a teenager facing endless drought in Australia, to a Wisconsin trailer where animals take over, each story merges the real and the uncanny. The world they portray is not far off but already shifting, and the emotional terrain of loss, adaptation, and strange hope is unmistakable.
Curated by Jenna Strawbridge, Librarian for the Nicholas School of the Environment & Department of Chemistry.