Articles by: Mary Woodbury

The Vanished Birds, Simon Jimenez

A hundred years from now, a starship engineer named Fumiko works to design starships that will help lift humanity away from a climate change-ravaged Earth… –Polygon Vanished Birds is a mysterious science fiction tale bathed in beautiful prose that offers glimpses of a future of seasons changing, stars within reach, […]

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Weather, Jenny Offill

The mammoth threat of climate change looms large over the ephemera of modern life in this novel filled with dread and humour. –Esquire From the author of the nationwide best seller Dept. of Speculation–one of the New York Times Book Review‘s Ten Best Books of the Year–a shimmering tour de […]

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Disappearing Earth: A Novel, Julia Phillips

Click here to return to the series This month’s spotlight goes to a country not showcased before in the world eco-fiction series: Russia, specifically the Kamchatka peninsula, which dips down from the far eastern coastline of the country and lies between the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea. It […]

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Strange Birds, Celia C. Pérez

Selected as one of our January features for Turning the Tide: The Youngest Generation, Strange Birds: a field guide to ruffling feathers is Florida-based juvenile fiction. Abstract: After Ofelia, Aster, Cat, and Lane fail to persuade a local girls club to change an outdated tradition, they form an alternative group […]

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Split Tooth, Tanya Taqaq

This book is being read and discussed at the Cambridge Ecofiction Bookclub in January 2020. According to Goodreads, Veering back and forth between the grittiest features of a small arctic town, the electrifying proximity of the world of animals, and ravishing world of myth, Tanya Tagaq explores a world where […]

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Sool, Cho Dharman

According to Times India, Tamil writer Cho Dharman won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2019. The novel is a “burning portrait of the environmental and ecological disaster in Tamil Nadu.” The story takes place in Urulaikkudi, the native village of Mr. Dharman, and he has captured the destruction of the […]

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Shadow Flicker, Melissa Volker

Click here to return to the series About the Book It’s coming on winter, yet I’m heading into warm sunshine, surf, and sand–with my mind freshly ensconced in Melissa Volker’s novel Shadow Flicker (Karavan Press, 2019), which immersed me into beautiful east South African beaches and surfing life. Despite the […]

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Klimakvartetten Series, Maja Lunde

We originally posted The History of Bees in June 2017 and then updated this post in December 2019 with the second two books in the Klimakvartetten series. In the spirit of Station Eleven and Never Let Me Go, this dazzling and ambitious literary debut follows three generations of beekeepers from […]

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Ghost Species, James Bradley

We originally published this news on October 25, 2019: James Bradley tweeted the cover reveal of his May 2020 novel, Ghost Species. See below. Update: The book is now listed at Goodreads. Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads Delighted to reveal the cover of my new novel, Ghost Species. Out May […]

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Top Ten Ecologically Oriented Novels & Films of the Decade

Welcome to the first day of December in a changing world. No blue hinges the sky. It’s all gray and cold and still as I write. A soft snow begins to fall. Cedars stand like sentinels. Crows call to each other. Grass is still green but covered in frost. I […]

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Hollow Kingdom, Kira Jane Buxton

Hollow Kingdom is a humorous, big-hearted, and boundlessly beautiful romp through the apocalypse and the world that comes after, where even a cowardly crow can become a hero. Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads

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The Second Sleep, Robert Harris

It’s within this strange and ambiguous historical setting that Harris has also fashioned a cautionary tale for today — a tale over which the 21st century perils of climate change and unfettered technology cast an unsettling shadow. –OCanada.com All civilisations think they are invulnerable. History warns us none is. 1468. […]

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Aerovoyan, P.L. Tavormina

On planet Turaset, droughts ravage farmlands, cyclones rip through coastal cities, and with every barrel of oil the combustion industry pumps from the ground, the climate worsens. Alphonse has just refused a council seat because taking it means serving that rapacious industry. He leaves the city to seek solace in […]

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Fun Experiment: AI Writing Our Stories

I read an interesting article at LitHub yesterday that used an on online AI-bot to write more of some of the world’s classic novels based upon first sentences. I decided to use the same Transformer tool to see what its response would be to some of my favorite eco-fiction stories, […]

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