Karma Brown recommends 3 speculative novels that tackle climate anxiety
The Next Chapter contributor spoke to Antonio Michael Downing about the draw of dystopian fiction
Karma Brown is known for writing thrilling, heart-pounding fiction, but in real life the Ontario writer and journalist identifies as a "worrier" — someone who is constantly thinking about the state of the environment.
So, what does Brown turn to when she experiences climate anxiety? Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is often the dramatic post-apocalyptic worlds of speculative fiction.
In dystopian novels "they're taking a problem [and] blowing it up for us," said Brown. The difference between fiction and reality is that, as a reader, she gets the catharsis of a narrative resolution.
"I get to live and marinate in that. I get to let my worrying just expand in that space but then I get to see how it's solved. I get to watch the characters survive and thrive."
Brown is the author of several novels about strong-willed female characters including Recipe for a Perfect Wife, The Life Lucy Knew and her latest, What Wild Women Do. She spoke to The Next Chapter's Antonio Michael Downing about what draws her to books about climate crises and shares some of her favourites.
Girlfriend on Mars by Deborah Willis
Brown's first pick was Girlfriend on Mars, a satirical story about tragic love and commercial space travel. Amber Kivinen is one of 23 reality TV contestants vying for two spots on the first commercial trip to Mars aboard MarsNow, a space shuttle commissioned by the billionaire Geoff Task. Amber is surrounded by a cast of unlikely characters — including an Israeli soldier and social media influencers — while her long-term partner, Kevin, stays at home with the plants and starts to wonder: why does his girlfriend feel such a desire to leave the planet?
"It's funny, it's dark, but just a wonderful example of how a couple is affected by the ravages of climate, by the desire for more, by the desire for less," said Brown. "It really is a conversation between these two [characters] and between this idea of escaping our reality and having to live within it."
Deborah Willis is a fiction writer currently based in Calgary. She debuted in 2009 with Vanishing and Other Stories, which was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction. She followed it up with a collection of short fiction entitled The Dark and Other Love Stories in 2017, which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Hum by Helen Phillips
Next up was Hum, a speculative fiction novel about May, a mother in the near future, who's struggling to provide for her family in a world that's gripped by climate change and overrun by technology. When she's presented with a solution, to be a guinea pig in a new face-altering surgery for a big payday, she goes for it. But the reward comes at a steep price — and she'll have to trust technology to save her family.
"[Phillips has] done a great job in the story of tapping into the fear of what it is like to parent children in the world that we're in, whether it's this futuristic world she's created or our current world," said Brown. "It's sort of a slow burn, has elements of a thriller… it's speculative because it is a world that is post-apocalyptic."
Helen Phillips is the Brooklyn-based author of six books including novel The Need, which was nominated for the National Book Award, and short story collection Some Possible Solutions, which won the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. A professor at Brooklyn College, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award.
Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice
The last of Brown's selections was Moon of the Turning Leaves, which takes place 10 years after the events of the post-apocalyptic novel Moon of the Crusted Snow and depicts an epic journey to a forgotten homeland. With food supplies dwindling, Evan Whitesky and his band of survivors need to find a new home. Evan volunteers to lead a group — including his daughter Nangohns and a great archer and hunter — to their ancestral home, the "land where the birch trees grow by the big water."
Along the way, they come across other survivors — not all of whom can be trusted.
"It is a beautiful story of how nature has reclaimed what was taken from it," said Brown.
Waubgeshig Rice is an Anishinaabe author, journalist and radio host originally from Wasauksing First Nation. Rice's first short story collection, Midnight Sweatlodge, which was about his life growing up in his Anishinaabe community, won an Independent Publishers Book Award in 2012. Moon of the Turning Leaves is the sequel to Moon of the Crusted Snow, which was on the Canada Reads 2023 longlist.
Brown's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
