Changing the Narrative

Since 2021, Grist magazine has held a short story competition inviting writers to imagine the world’s climate future. The project has grown bigger each year, and in 2024 editors received more than 1,000 entries. Now, the competition’s 12 winners have been published by Milkweed Editions in Metamorphosis: Climate Fiction for a Better Future.

The anthology features a diverse range of voices, including many from the Global South. Story approaches range from magical realism to futuristic technology, and most of the stories prioritize community-building and relationships. Each of them adds to a growing canon of climate fiction, with sustainability at their core.

In Nadine Tomlinson’s “The Metamorphosis of Marie Martin,” a woman turns into a parrot fish after she dies while spearfishing. In this form, she gains a better understanding of the ecosystem she was disrupting as a human. She also works with other parrot fish to build a new beach and to revitalize coral reefs.

In “The Lexicographer and One Tree Island,” by Akhim Alexis, the main character, Tonie, is marooned on an island amid rising sea levels, stuck with one mango tree, a talking raven, and an unusually large talking water snake. The snake and the raven bring a woman to the island who speaks the same language as Tonie, who is writing a book meant to capture all the words his people used to speak. When a ship comes to take him to the “city,” his island grows: “The land swelled, the mango tree thickened, and new trees sprung up near the reef.” All this activity drives the ship away, suggesting that life is better with fewer cities, gadgets, and people.

Susan Kaye Quinn’s “Seven Sisters” focuses on a group of women from all walks of life who run a tea farm. Robots harvest the tea, and a human keeps the robots functioning. But the farm is at a crisis point: The bot-keeper is sick, the robots are breaking down, and the farm can’t afford to fix them. Meanwhile, one of the women, Pushti, wants to bring a refugee woman and child back to the farm. The others are hesitant, until they learn the woman is a bot-keeper. Serendipity, Quinn seems to say, keeps our world going, even amid crisis. “Hope was no kind of business strategy,” she writes, “but it kept you moving through hard times, waiting on better ones.”

Futuristic technology also appears in Rich Larson’s “And Now the Shade.” In this near-future story, a scientist named Minerva works with other biotech researchers to find a plant that will grow in cities and reduce the urban heat island effect — to no avail. But in conversation with her grandmother, who has dementia, Minerva suddenly comes up with a solution. She can use a tree her grandmother remembered from childhood, which would grow anywhere. All she has to do is alter the genomic code to remove the tree’s thorns. She also tweaks a gene to make the flowers of the tree glow. Once the trees are planted all over the city, Minerva “sees the city her great-great-grandmother dreamed of.”

While most of these stories are focused on humans and their woes, there are themes in here for the nature lover too. In “A Holdout in the Northern California Designated Wildcraft Zone,” TK Rex describes a rewilded landscape where humans aren’t permitted. A small “wildcraft” drone that patrols the zone realizes a woman is living there.“ Permanent human presence poses a significant risk to my rewilding efforts here,” the drone thinks. But when it sees the woman’s front yard, it realizes that she has been rewilding on a grand scale for decades: “And it’s actually going pretty well.”

Community is a common thread in many of the stories. In “To Labor for the Hive,” by Jamie Liu, Huaxin tends bees in her wildflower garden. She connects with a scientist who wants to understand how her bees respond to the weather, so they can be used as a sustainable advanced warning system. In the meantime, she’s also connecting with her city by joining the community center, where people can exercise, avoid the heat, and cook along with their neighbors. “Everyone, a role,” Liu writes. “Everyone, now, including her.”

This anthology is essential climate fiction for those of us tired of dystopic literature on climate change. The emphasis on community and integrated technology, the magical realism, and the problem-solving efforts of the characters provide a more positive roadmap for considering our future. Everyone has a role, after all. Everyone, including you.