I love spending time outdoors and exploring the natural wonders all around us. I also enjoy reading about it. And with climate change impacting our environment, there are more and more books exploring the topic—including in fiction.

Climate fiction, sometimes referred to as cli-fi, focuses on the effects of climate change within the realm of science fiction. By speculating a rapidly changing future, it offers a powerful way to explore the potential outcomes in our natural world while they remain fiction.

This genre incorporates a variety of factors—time, environmental changes, and technology—offering many ways to explore and contextualize our changing climate today, for the future.

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Technology and climate

Hum by Helen Phillips
🎧 Audiobook

In a near-future world of climate change and technological progress, May worries about her family. In a society full of hums (robots trained to mimic calm conversations that always lead into product sales), May sees her family completely tied to screens. After losing her job to the AI she trained, May decides to splurge on a short trip to the botanical garden for her family. At the botanical garden, there are trees, animals, nature, and air quality much better than the city. While enjoying the little bit of wild, May’s kids get lost. The surveillance that helps find them also puts them at risk as the video is released, goes viral, and May comes under attack on social media. This story illuminates the unsettling possibilities of growing a family in an over-polluted and tech-saturated world.

A rapidly changing world

The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton
🎧 Audiobook

This near-future story follows Wanda, who was born during a hurricane bearing the same name, and grows up during a time when the weather is altering the landscape of her home in Florida. Her father works as a lineman, cleaning up storm damage, and her brothers follow suit. While her family’s busy at work, Wanda grows close to her neighbor. As Wanda finds her place in a shifting world, she watches as more and more people leave the land, now being reclaimed by nature.

Although wrought with climate disasters and ecological crises, this story offers hope for adapting to a world remade in just one generation.

A focus on wildlife, or what remains

Extinction by Bradley Somer
🎧 Audiobook

Ranger Ben watches over the last grizzly bear in a world where nature is exhausted and species are going extinct, thanks to human development. Mostly alone aside from some radio calls with other rangers, Ben is surprised one night when he hears poachers in the woods—and so begins the fight to keep his bear safe. Sometimes being hunted by the poachers, sometimes hunting them, Ben must decide how far he’ll go to protect this last remaining bear.

A thrilling battle, this story reflects on humans’ relationship with nature through the lens of fighting for one last remaining animal of its species.

Migrating

Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling
🎧 Audiobook

As a warming world drives people further and further north, a building project in northern Canada promises a new way of life. Rose, one of the women sent to entertain the men doing the physical labor, has her own motives—she’s determined to uncover the hidden agendas of others involved in the project. Meanwhile, a group of researchers grow closer as they uncover mysteries of their own, with both the changing climate and the research project itself.

Fast-paced and packed with elements of technological progress, this environmental mystery explores the varied impacts of climate change on resources, keeping readers on their toes as the twists—both in the characters and the climate—continue to unfold.

For the visual learners

The Most Important Comic Book on Earth by Cara Delevingne and others, edited by Paul Goodenough

If comics and graphic novels are more your speed, then this very important, or most important, comic book is a must-read. This collaborative work brings together comics by environmentalists and artists to explore climate change and issue a call to action for saving the planet.

With topics ranging from making changes, protecting the environment, restoring damage, and educating and inspiring others, these comics offer humor, hope, and a spotlight on our changing world.

A whole new world

The Ancients by John Larison
🎧 Audiobook

In a dystopian world ravaged by climate change, people fight to survive. Three siblings return home to find their parents gone. Without the resources to survive on their own, they embark on a perilous journey to find family that moved inland. Their mother, taken by raiders, fights indentured servitude to get back to her children. Meanwhile, in a civilization built on sand, the wealthy are planning to embark to rumored greener shores.

Through fables, this adventurous, atmospheric read cautions readers to learn from the past in order to build a better future. Despite a drastically altered landscape, enduring hope showcases the resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity.

All efforts matter

Blue Skies by T. C. Boyle
🎧 Audiobook

A family is separated by distance, but connected by climate change in Blue Skies.

Cat and her husband live in Florida where they’re building a life together. Cat becomes enamored with the idea of a snake as living jewelry and buys a Burmese python. Brother Cooper and Mom Ottilie are in California, and they raise crickets as a food source. Cooper is an entomologist who’s always been working to save the environment. Now, he’s working to get his family on board, too.

With humor sprinkled in like crickets to balance the tension, this story centers around people trying to adapt to climate change rather than prevent it in the first place. Not for the faint of stomach, there are descriptions of various insect-based meals.

Add some (more) horror

Among the Living by Tim Lebbon
🎧 Audiobook

If you’re looking for a little horror in your climate fiction, then this is a great choice.

An ecological horror, Among the Living transports readers to Arctic caves, where valuable minerals offer hope in a world where once-fertile farmland has turned to desert due to climate change. As researchers and eco-activists race to claim these resources, a deadly threat arises from the mummified remains hidden within the caves—a contagion that could endanger all of humanity. The plausible threat of melting permafrost along with the treacherous landscape makes for a terrifying tale.

Journeys

After the Flood by Kassandra Montag
🎧 Audiobook

In a world of water, the rising sea has taken over most of the land, leaving mountain tops as islands. Myra and her daughter, Pearl, live in a small boat, catching fish and visiting these islands to barter for other vital supplies. Before everything was fully flooded, Myra lived with her husband, who took their first daughter, Row, and left Myra on her own. Now, as Myra and Pearl travel around, they ask about Row wherever they go, and they may have a lead. Myra needs to decide if the journey to Row is worth the danger to Pearl.

With every day an adventure on the seas, this compelling story of climate and family crisis is an intense read.

Major events

Blaze Island by Catherine Bush
🎧 Audiobook

As a birder, I was immediately drawn in by the inclusion of accidental bird occurrences, brought on by changing weather and severe events like the Category 5 hurricane that opens the book.

On Blaze Island, Miranda learns from her father how to be self-sufficient and track the weather. Meanwhile, Caleb learns to live off the land and draw from the wisdom of experience with his mother. As the islanders work to recover from the storm, the future remains uncertain. With climate change as the backdrop, this story explores a world in which the environment and its people are evolving.

Keep trying

The New Wilderness by Diane Cook
🎧 Audiobook

In a city full of pollution and ravaged by climate change, Bea and her daughter, Agnes, join a study to see if people can survive in nature without destroying it. Along with the other volunteers, they travel into the last surviving wilderness to return to the hunter-gatherer’s way of life in an attempt to coexist with the wilderness. Bea is hoping nature will help Agnes as she struggles to survive in the polluted city. As they develop instincts in the wild while still being influenced by people in the city, the characters and story grow increasingly complex. The narrative balances moments of darkness with resilience, exploring themes of survival and sacrifice in an ecological setting.

*Title availability may vary by library & region.

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