psocoptera

After the disappointment of Emily Eternal, I decided to try Greg Egan's new climate apocalypse novella Perihelion Summer, counting on Egan to be neither heteronormative nor trite. I'm a huge fan of early maximum-mindfuckery Egan, less so of cranky "only losers aren't into physics" post-millennium Egan. But he seems to be publishing more frequently again, after some quiet years, so dare we hope he's into some third career phase? (I don't actually read Analog or Asimov's, where a bunch of the new stuff is, though... hopefully he'll do a new collection when he has enough, that would be the most convenient.)

Anyways. Perihelion Summer. I've been talking about the Retreat to the North as a near-future setting in new science fiction (Blackfish City, Gods Monsters and the Lucky Peach, Autonomous); Egan is Australian, so it makes sense that he's exploring the Retreat to the South. Except with an Egan twist on the exact nature and complexity of the climate crisis in question. The novella is set before and in the first year after the event, so this is a story about the initial moves of such a Retreat, before anything is established or stable. I thought it was really good, and is the kind of climate fiction I want to be reading - no magical fixes or downplaying of the scope of the catastrophe, just a bleak situation and people trying to survive and save others, with sharp psychological and sociological commentary. The last line really packs a punch, damn.

ETA: Tor.com is calling this a novel, and they would presumably know, so. Novel! Not novella!