He’d always accepted the mine and power station were part of Shelbourne. On still nights, the thrum of the turbines echoed down the valley and melded with the sound of the ocean until you couldn’t tell them apart.
Hesse lives a small coastal town, where a coalmine and power station are a part of the scenery, and a part of the ever-growing problem of climate change. His mum is a member of a local environmental group campaigning to close the mine and shut down the power station. It’s a no-brainer, of course, but Hesse is more interested in surfing—and in Fenna, the new exchange student from the Netherlands.
But when someone seems to be trying to derail the campaign, and his friends’ families face losing their jobs, Hesse begins to realise that things are complex.
Even though he’s reluctant to step into the spotlight, with Fenna’s encouragement he decides it’s time to make a stand. Because some things are too important to leave to everyone else. And even one small, nervous voice can make a difference.
When Hesse agrees to speak at a protest meeting he has no idea of the storm he is about to unleash.
If Not Us is Mark Smith’s first standalone YA novel following his hugely successful Winter trilogy. It’s another great story with an engaging and relatable protagonist, as well as an impassioned plea for climate change action that will inspire and empower readers of all ages.
Category: Near future, Science fiction, Thriller
Published by Paper Road Press (out now)
You can find a downloadable worksheet/discussion guide for The Stone Weta here.
The Stone Wētā by Octavia Cade
“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 organizations 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 colonize Mars, isolated and vulnerable in the depths of space.
How far would you go to save the world?
Category: Science Fiction
Published by Hodder & Stoughton (out now)
Read our interview with James Bradley
Ghost Species by James Bradley
An exquisitely beautiful and deeply affecting exploration of connection and loss in an age of planetary trauma.
When scientist Kate Larkin joins a secretive project to re-engineer the climate by resurrecting extinct species, she becomes enmeshed in another, even more clandestine program to recreate our long-lost relatives, the Neanderthals. But when the first of the children, a girl called Eve, is born, Kate finds herself torn between her duties as a scientist and her urge to protect their time-lost creation.
Set against the backdrop of hastening climate catastrophe, Ghost Species is an exquisitely beautiful and deeply affecting exploration of connection and loss in an age of planetary trauma. For as Eve grows to adulthood she and Kate must face the question of who and what she is. Is she natural or artificial? Human or non-human? And perhaps most importantly, as civilisation unravels around them, is Eve the ghost species, or are we?
Thrillingly original, Ghost Species is embedded with a deep love and understanding of the natural world.
An electrifying novel about an oracle. A small town. And the end of the world as we know it… One morning, the residents of a small coastal town somewhere in Australia wake to discover the sea has disappeared. One among them has been plagued by troubling visions of this cataclysm for years. Is she a prophet? Does she have a disorder that skews her perception of time? Or is she a gifted and compulsive liar? Oscillating between the future and the past, Dyschronia is a novel that tantalises and dazzles, as one woman’s prescient nightmares become entangled with her town’s uncertain fate. Blazing with questions of consciousness, trust, and destiny, this is a wildly imaginative and extraordinary novel from award-winning author Jennifer Mills.
Categories: Near-future, Speculative, Literary fiction
Published by Picador (out now)
In the Australian outback, a lone farmer prepares her homestead for the latest in a growing wave of bushfires. In Oxfordshire, an elderly man protests the cutting down of an ancient beech tree by chaining himself to its trunk. In the depths of space, two evacuees from a scorched and barren Earth consider whether to tell the rest of the crew that their old home may be starting to heal…
The stories in Jane Rogers’ much-awaited second collection shine an unflinching light on the future health of the planet, and the prospects for its greediest us. With stories spanning hundreds of years – from the far side of the 22nd century all the way back to the darkest days of lockdown – they pose questions about personal responsibility that cannot be easily answered.
Categories: short stories
Published by Comma Press (out now)
The Rewilding by Donna M Cameron
An exhilarating and unforgettable love song for our world. Heartbroken and in fear for his life, corporate whistle blower, Jagger Eckerman, escapes to hide out in a remote cave, but kick-arse radical, Nia Moretti, is furious a ‘capitalist suit’ has taken over her cave. It is hatred at first sight.
Yet Nia is hiding for reasons of her own, ones that drag Jagger closer to death as they are forced on the run together and he is unwittingly pulled deeper into Nia’s reckless mission to help save the planet. But who can save Jagger from the relentless pursuit of the man who wants him dead?
Both an electrifying cat-and-mouse-chase and an odd couple love story, The Rewilding captures the essence of what it means to be alive today in this cusp of change pulsing with possibilities.
It is a passionate intimation of hope.
Categories: contemporary fiction
Published by Transit Lounge Publishing (March 2024)
Summertime: Reflections on a Vanishing Future by Danielle Celermajer
A different kind of nature writing, for a different kind of landscape.
I went and sat alone where Jimmy has been lying. It is way down in the bush. The light is soft, the air and the earth are cool, and the smell is of leaves and the river. I cannot presume to know what he is doing when he lies here, but it seems that he is taking himself back to an ecology not wrought by the terror of the fires, not fuelled by our violence on the earth. He is letting another earth heal him.
Philosopher Danielle Celermajer’s story of Jimmy the pig caught the world’s attention during the Black Summer of 2019-20.
Gathered here is that story and others written in the shadow of the bushfires that ravaged Australia. In the midst of the death and grief of animals, humans, trees and ecologies Celermajer asks us to look around – really look around – to become present to all beings who are living and dying through the loss of our shared home.
At once a howl in the forest and an elegy for a country’s soul, these meditations are lyrical, tender and profound.
Categories: Narrative Non-fiction, Australian bushfires
Published by Penguin Random House (out now)
Category: Contemporary, Near-future
Published by Melliodora Publishing (out now)
In 2031, Zanna is housesitting a beachside house in Byron Bay, living the kind of life that inspires gloating selfies. She isn’t thinking about climate change – it’s just something in the background squeezing her life choices. She has much more immediate concerns, like whether she should let her parents meet her new boyfriend. Her sister Kat has worries much closer to home too, like dealing with difficult personalities in her eco-village in the hills. Their parents in Melbourne are nervously watching the stock market and debating whether it’s time to do a sea change.
For all of them though, the good life is uneasy, fragile, and about to come undone.
Categories: Young Adult, Contemporary, wildfires, adventure
Published by DELTA (out now)
Caught in the Fire by Mike Gould
It’s another dangerously hot day on the south coast of Australia. Flynn and his friends decide to go to the old timber mill in the forest. It’s a great place to hang out and somewhere parents won’t bother them. However, worried about the weather and warnings from his mother, a volunteer firefighter, Flynn decides to leave because of the risks of a wildfire.
Then the worst happens: a wildfire breaks out. The fire threatens the whole town. Flynn, his sister, and his dad are supposed to escape to the east, to safety, while his mum stays to fight the flames. But Flynn’s friends are still at the timber mill in the forest. Flynn decides to go looking for them to warn them. However, when he reaches the mill, his friends have gone, and he suddenly finds himself caught in the fire…
Climate Fiction Writers League 