Everything Change An Anthology of Climate Fiction FOREWORD BY Kim Stanley Robinson INTERVIEW WITH Paolo Bacigalupi EDITED BY Manjana Milkoreit Meredith Martinez & Joey Eschrich “It’s not climate change— it’s everything change.” MARGARET ATWOOD Everything Change An Anthology of Climate Fiction FEATURING STORIES FROM Arizona State University’s 2016 Climate Fiction Short Story Contest EDITED BY Manjana Milkoreit Meredith Martinez Joey Eschrich Credits Editors Manjana Milkoreit Meredith Martinez Joey Eschrich Judges Robbie Barton, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University Bob Beard, Center for Science and the Imagination, Arizona State University Jeff Cheney, Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Arizona State University Mollie Connelly, Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Arizona State University Laura Hazan, Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Arizona State University Paul Hirt, Department of History, Arizona State University David Hondula, Center for Policy Informatics, Arizona State University Danielle Hoots, Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing Anna Pigott, Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative, Arizona State University Kim Stanley Robinson, Science Fiction Author Steven Semken, School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University Cody Staats, Center for Science and the Imagination, Arizona State University Book Design Matt Phan, Center for Science and the Imagination, Arizona State University Art Direction Nina Miller, Center for Science and the Imagination, Arizona State University iv Leadership for the Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative Ed Finn and Ruth Wylie, Center for Science and the Imagination, Arizona State University Patricia Reiter, Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives, Arizona State University Jewell Parker Rhodes, Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Arizona State University Special thanks to Susie Marston for providing funding and boundless enthusiasm, and for making this contest and anthology possible; to Paolo Bacigalupi for answering all of our most pressing questions about storytelling, imagination, and climate change; to Kim Stanley Robinson for inspiration and ample good cheer, and for helping us turn this big idea into a reality; and to Claire Doddman and Jason Franz of the Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives for invaluable support with promotion, communications, design, and web development. © Arizona State University 2016 The copyrights for individual stories and chapters are owned by their respective authors. v For Susie Marston vi Table of Contents Foreword ix Kim Stanley Robinson Editors’ Introduction xiii Manjana Milkoreit, Meredith Martinez, & Joey Eschrich Sunshine State 3 Adam Flynn & Andrew Dana Hudson Shrinking Sinking Land 25 Kelly Cowley Victor and the Fish 40 Matthew S. Henry Acqua Alta 61 Ashley Bevilacqua Anglin The Grandchild Paradox 81 Daniel Thron Wonder of the World 93 Kathryn Blume vii Masks 107 Stirling Davenport Thirteenth Year 127 Diana Rose Harper LOSD and Fount 148 Henrietta Hartl On Darwin Tides 156 Shauna O’Meara Standing Still 179 Lindsay Redifer Into the Storm 197 Yakos Spiliotopoulos Praying for Rain: 207 An Interview with Paolo Bacigalupi Ed Finn viii Foreword Kim Stanley Robinson Climate fiction is a subgenre of science fiction. Science fiction is literature set in the future, and so by definition it always includes a historical element, imagining as it does possible human futures. Because they are fiction, these imagined future histories focus on individual characters in their relationships with each other, their society, and their planet—or their lack of a planet, if the story happens to follow people out into space. Given how long the future is, science fiction can feel quite different depending on which time a particular story chooses to describe. If the story is set many thousands of years from now, all kinds of near-magical technologies and situations can be made to seem plausible; this is often called space opera, and it can include things like faster-than-light travel, time travel, and humanity traveling across the galaxy. It’s a good story space for modeling abstractions or permanent aspects of the human condition, or simply enjoying the thrill of the new and the sheer size of the universe. Near-future science fiction, on the other hand, concerns itself with events in the coming decades, and because of the rapid pace of change in technology and society today, this subgenre of science fiction has become in effect the realism of our time. Any attempt to describe ix our current moment in a diagnostic or vivid way will tend to become near-future science fiction, just to be accurate to the feel of this moment in history. As part of that fidelity to the real, a lot of near-future science fiction is also becoming what some people now call climate fiction. This is because climate change is already happening, and has become an unavoidable dominating element in the coming century. The new name thus reflects the basic realism of near-future science fiction, and is just the latest in the names people have given it; in the 1980s it was often called cyberpunk, because so many near-future stories incorporated the coming dominance of globalization and the emerging neoliberal dystopia. Now it’s climate change that is clearly coming, even more certainly than globalization. That these two biophysical dominants constitute a kind of cause and effect is perhaps another story that near-future science fiction can tell. In any case, climate fiction will be one name for this subgenre for a long time to come. This is a good thing, because fiction is how we organize our knowledge into plots that suggest how to behave in the real world. We decide what to do based on the stories we tell ourselves, so we very much need to be telling stories about our responses to climate change and the associated massive problems bearing down on us and our descendants. This book collects a number of new and exciting stories about things that will be happening soon, as people try to adapt to a changing climate and its impacts on our biosphere. It’s fair to ask whether that means that these stories are depressing and unpleasant to read; the answer is no, they aren’t, and in fact they are tremendously stimulating. This should not come as a surprise. Literature is about reality, indeed is part of the creation of reality, so it always deals with hard situations. This engagement is a crucial part of literature’s interest to us. In science x fiction, imagining futures as it does, the visions always tend to portray either good outcomes or bad outcomes—in other words, utopias or dystopias. People enjoy reading about both, including dystopias, so this isn’t really what people are asking about when they wonder if climate fiction can be fun. The question they are asking may be something more like, “are these stories so didactic, so obviously meant to warn us and teach us, that they no longer work as fiction, having lost that liveliness that makes literature such a joy?” I am happy to report that this gathering of stories handily escapes that particular aesthetic mistake, and is a true pleasure to read. How that can be you will discover for yourself, but I think the simplest explanation is that a lot of really talented writers responded to the inspiring challenge put out by Arizona State University’s Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative. Their efforts model how we will respond to climate change itself: globally and creatively, with energy and imagination and a will to succeed. There’s a certain kind of joy that can emerge out of intense and meaningful situations; in an emergency, what to do and how to live become questions with clear answers. So it is that even the angriest and most cold-eyed of these stories give reasons for hope, because the writers have not flinched from the huge problems we face, and neither have their characters. Read on and enjoy learning more, knowing more, living more. Kim Stanley Robinson is a winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards and, according to The New Yorker, one of the most important political writers working in the United States today. He is the author of the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critical acclaimed novels 2312, Forty Signs of Rain, The Years of Rice and Salt, and Antarctica. His most recent novel, Aurora, was published in 2015. xi xii Editors’ Introduction Manjana Milkoreit, Meredith Martinez, & Joey Eschrich When the Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative (ICF) announced its first Climate Fiction Short Story Contest, the international community was getting ready for one of the most important events in the history of global climate change diplomacy. State representatives from around the world met in Paris in December of 2015 and adopted an international agreement on climate change. The Paris Agreement has been praised as a landmark accomplishment, but, of course, the climate does not stop changing because 195 states put some words on paper. There is no doubt that the Paris Agreement will affect the future of all human and non-human life on Earth, but today nobody knows what that future will look like. Today, all we can do is imagine our possible climate futures. Using Margaret Atwood’s words, we have to imagine the “Everything Change.” We have chosen her thought-provoking turn of phrase as the title for our anthology not just because it reflects the scale of the task ahead, but also because it captures the substance of the twelve stories we present here: climate-induced changes in all aspects of human experience, ranging from individual emotions and aspirations to family life, professional trajectories, the shape of communities, and the organization of societies. xiii And that is the core concern of the ICF. We seek to understand the role of imagination in societies’ responses to climate change, especially when the imaginative impulse leads to a compelling story.