Literature Archives - ClimateCultures - creative conversations for the Anthropocene

The Steep Climes Quartet: My Take on Climate Fiction

Writer David Guenette shares creative insights into his Steep Climes Quartet, a longitudinal study into climate futures unfolding across an American county. This post accompanies David’s essay for our Longer feature, where he asks “What is Climate Fiction?”

2,620 words: estimated reading time = 10 minutes

I’ve been at work on the Steep Climes Quartet, a literary climate fiction series. The series is a sort of longitudinal study over time across the consistent location of Berkshire County, in Massachusetts. The first book, Kill Well, takes place in 2026. The second book, Dear Josephine, takes place in 2029. The third book, Over Brooklyn Hills, occurs in 2035. The first three books are published. The final book of The Steep Climes Quartet, Farm to Me, takes place in 2047, and I’m aiming for a Spring 2027 publishing date.

As an entrepreneur, writer, and climate change activist, I’ve studied climate change science and policies for over two decades and believe that the most effective basis for the discussion of the climate crisis in climate fiction is realism. No apocalypse, no fantasy, no deus ex machina. I believe climate fiction can be an effective way for individuals and communities to identify climate change challenges and that climate fiction can offer alternative perspectives for understanding the climate crisis and approaches for dealing with climate change. I believe that climate fiction that focuses on the reader’s familiar circumstances and provides a recognizable world will better explain the nature of the crisis and foster a more powerful identification with the problems we face and the solutions before us.

Of course, the novels better be enjoyable reading.

The changing world — a near-future climate timeline

The main theme of The Steep Climes Quartet is our fractured society and the solidarity climate progress requires of us and our communities. Over the course of writing the series — I started in 2015 — other themes evolve and the series includes some source of hope in the form of an economically competitive clean energy transition. But don’t think I’ve grown pollyannish — ongoing and important plotlines involve various misdeeds by Big Oil. I’m also not pollyannish about the rate of progress and take into consideration that political bodies and society at large typically move at snail’s pace. Still, by Book Three, Over Brooklyn Hills, 2035 sees that core court cases against Big Oil are finally starting to break for the climate, but then again, these same corporations and their political allies have managed to get too many gas-fired generator plants in place, with the net result of slowed progress on carbon emission reductions.

Showing the cover of 'Kill Well' - book one of The Steep Climes Quartet (2023) by David Guenette — ‘Kill Well’ – book one of The Steep Climes Quartet (2023)

In the first three books, the residents of the Berkshires — a pleasant bucolic place, by the way — don’t have a lot of direct experience with the terrible consequences of climate change and, like most of us, hear about such negative consequences mostly through the news. Kill Well, in 2026, has a big heatwave in the upper Midwest, and the West is experiencing another plague of wildfires, but Davin, the Berkshire-based main character, is an economically pressed recent divorcee and mostly caught up in worrying about rising costs and the income he’s struggling for. The worst thing that happens to him in the first book, climate-wise, is that a heavy rain damages his vegetable garden and a part of the Airbnb apartment on the first floor of his Housatonic house. There’s a plot line of a young woman on the run after witnessing her fossil fuel divestiture boss killed on a business trip, which brings her to Chicago, where Davin’s son is living his first year out of college, but who is now heading home to escape the heat and the slowing economy. The two meet on the train heading toward Boston, and she ends up at Davin’s house, and there’s a contract killer in play, too, but the prevailing theme in Kill Well is the widespread economic stress of rising costs and the recession-like state of the nation’s economy that retards, along with Trump, clean energy progress.

Sholwing the cover of 'Dear Josephine', book two of The Steep Climes Quartet (2025) by David Guenette — ‘Dear Josephine’, book two of The Steep Climes Quartet (2025)

In Dear Josephine, set in 2029, the nation is post-Trump and politics is working better, but there remains evil intent of those who run fossil fuel empires. There’s Miami’s destruction by the combination of a powerful hurricane hitting in sync with high ocean surges, but the residents of the Berkshires are unaffected directly, mostly. And then there’s a guy running around the country trying to kill billionaires and there’s a guy using Kill the Rich as cover for assassinations in service to fossil fuel think tanks to ease some newly inconvenient political ex-allies off the playing board. And yeah, in Dear Josephine there’s a fair amount of conversation and thinking about externalities by a regular series character, Jeannie Louise Smith, who’s a climate tech and policy wonk living on Cottage Street, but I did follow a beta reader’s advice to cut a lot of character talk about externalities. This book also marks the appearance of a climate action terrorist group.

Showing the cover of 'Over Brooklyn Hills', book three of The Steep Climes Quartet (2026) by David Guenette — ‘Over Brooklyn Hills’, book three of The Steep Climes Quartet (2026)

Over Brooklyn Hills is six years after the second book and nine years after the first. MAGA, repudiated in the 2026 mid-term and 2028 elections, has given way to economic reforms and climate policies and America has rejoined much of the rest of the world in making climate progress, mainly by pushing the clean energy transition. There’s also a look at the consequences of choosing violence, as the climate terrorist group introduced in Dear Josephine now finds itself involved with Mexican cartels who are battling the U.S.’s militarization of the southern border as climate drought blankets large parts of Mexico, Central America, and South America, driving illegal migration. Climate migration is writ small, too, as seen in a long heatwave hovering over the New York metropolitan area and the Berkshires finds itself with very many more young people (i.e., typically less economically advantaged) escaping the heat and the energy bills demanded for safety, and the towns of South County and the second-homers aren’t enjoying the change in the character of their summer.

Showing the mockup cover to 'Farm to Me’, which will be the final book of The Steep Climes Quartet. The cover may be different by publication, in Spring 2027. — ‘Farm to Me’ will be the final book of The Steep Climes Quartet. This cover is a simple mockup and may be different by publication, in Spring 2027.

Farm to Me, which is in draft and with a mess of notes, sees 2047 with reducing yields of some of the once highly productive agricultural areas in the U.S. due to chronic drought and aquifer collapse. New England has been experiencing a resurgence of its once dominant industry, agriculture. There’s been some real progress with carbon emission reduction, but climate change is locked in place, albeit at levels that would be worse without modest progress. Resiliency and adaptation programs are all the rage, but climate change continues to exert a downward pressure on the economy. Farm to Me sees human nature remaining a good news/bad news puzzle, with a murder mystery tied to one ambitious New England food distribution company. There is the issue of aging in the time of climate change and the angst and agony of the young about the future, where the cumulative effects of climate change pile on and tipping points are just the latest dread, and Davin’s granddaughter, not yet 18 years old, is of interest to a federal investigation into a climate activist group she’s part of.

One goal of the series is to present climate change as accurately as possible and with solid scientific grounding. In this way, readers who may not be similarly inclined to keep up with science and policies may consider their own understanding advanced, and, yes, this is something of an illusion for those future timelines, but then novels derive from the creative act of controlled illusion.

Creative challenges for The Steep Climes Quartet

I’d be happy enough to relax my long-running autodidact efforts on climate change, but alas, climate models keep getting tweaked and plentiful research continues. For instance, there are new findings and expanded concepts about faster rising temperatures than conventional understanding has posited, and I’ve had to make my best guess that 2035 will see a rise of 1.7-1.8 Celsius in the global annual average. By the time I have the fourth book’s manuscript well in hand, I’ll have had to best guess about the global annual average temperature rise in 2047. Yet more speculative are the political winds and social expectations governing these timelines, made all the more challenging because political and societal developments march on up and down and sideways.

CO2 emissions, global temperature rises and climate impact risks for SSP-based scenarios over the present century (IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) “Climate Change 2023” Synthesis report (adopted longer report: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2023/03/Doc5_Adopted_AR6_SYR_Longer_Report.pdf)

Of course, presenting the changing world across the series can’t be simply info-dumped, but rather seen, experienced, and understood (or not) through the characters’ own perceptions. The series uses a third person-semi-omniscient point of view, with characters alternating among chapters and some know more, some far less. Like the rest of us, the most stunning stories of climate consequences are more often heard of, not experienced directly, although over the course of the series, more and more direct experience of climate change comes to all.

There are other challenges in attempting to portray the future. These include representations of technology development and most of the characters in this series are regular people and not pioneering tech heads. Human economies and technologies roll out more slowly than the sci-fi-inclined often hope and not just more slowly but also quite unevenly (tip o’ the cap to William Gibson!). By Over Brooklyn Hills and 2035, AI and the spread of some other technologies advance, with smart glasses and haptic feedback and some modest virtual reality interfaces showing up. An AI bubble in 2030 causes a significant recession, especially in the U.S., but that industry evolves. By the last book, in 2047, AI has settled into a controlled progression, and in Farm to Me, I’m exploring the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, which happens to be based in Great Barrington, to explore what the shift toward a more local economy might look like, especially in response to climate change, although this will be more in the background, too.

This challenge of moderating readers’ expectations with tech grows harder the further one goes into the future, but faulting on the side of less-is-more is the right bet. For the Farm to Me story, there’s a part that involves regenerative agriculture, and there are advances in sensor technologies that can accurately analyze carbon sequestration in soil. This sort of development is not a big stretch but rather an incremental improvement in monitoring systems, no doubt to be aided by AI-based computations.

Still no flying cars.

The makings and markets for cultured meat and fermentation-based protein, set up in Over Brooklyn Hills, are a well-established market by 2047. The failure of property insurance and the climate threat to housing markets in some areas will be leaking into the general economy. There will be some new nuclear reactors, although fewer than one might expect, since such energy production is hampered by high costs and bankruptcies.

Did I mention no flying cars?

Of course, I’ve got to finish the damn manuscript first.

The foundation of climate fiction

Projecting out two-dozen-plus years, prognostication becomes more fluid, but keeping up with the best climate science remains an important requirement in writing this series. No magic solutions need apply, but rather only informed extrapolation. For example, it may be that regenerative agriculture is among the best of carbon sequestration strategies, but carbon capture remains an unlikely silver bullet. There’s also opportunity to explore the issue of real costs, where externalities (there I go!) of all sorts of things, from hamburgers to fast fashion, will get a nod, because sustainability will only grow as an issue in the years ahead. The world won’t be ending in 2047, but the higher and persistent loading of greenhouse gases take their toll, with some tipping points threatening. But the main story — the foundation of climate fiction — remains the progress our society makes based on our understanding of climate change and the economic, political, and moral choices we face.

Will our society make sufficient progress?

Talk about a cliffhanger!

Find more

You can read David’s new essay for our Longer feature, Telling Stories about Climate Change.

David explores these ideas, and examples of climate fiction, at The Steep Clime on Substack. And you can find more of his writing — including the first three novels in the Steep Climes Quartet and other books — at his website, davidguenette.com.

Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered by E. F. Schumacher, was published in 1973 and is available from Vintage (Penguin Books).

The Schumacher Center for a New Economics, in Great Barrington, MA, USA, was founded in 1980 to envision the elements of a just and regenerative global economy, “undertakes to apply these elements in its home region of the Berkshires in western Massachusetts; and then develops the educational programs to share the results more broadly, thus encouraging replication.” They produced a new study guide to Small is Beautiful to mark its 50th anniversary in 2023.

In the UK, the work and example of E. F. Schumaker’s work inspired the creation of the Schumacher Society, the Schumacher Institute, and Schumacher College.

***

From 2026, ClimateCultures is inviting members to say something about how they use AI in their work and in their posts for us. We will be exploring this in future posts here and at our ClimateCultures & more Substack.

David – “AI and writing: a tool, not a partner:

“Serving as a research agent, AI can be an excellent tool for writers who need facts and figures and overviews on a topic. This applies to non-fiction, such as the climate change articles I write, but also as convenient quick research or confirmation (or pointer to errors) for fiction writing. This is how I’ll use AI. I don’t typically worry about hallucinations because I know the knowledge domain well enough to spot AI’s missteps or the results of a poorly put query.

“AI can be helpful, too, as a high-level copy-editor and proofreader, mainly to bring in fresh eyes to discover obvious issues that the writer—having written the work—often has trouble spotting. Having a good human copy-editor remains, in my opinion, an essential element of book production. The way I’ll use AI for copy-editing and proofreading makes for less drudgery and lets the real copy-editor and the proofreader better concentrate on improving the manuscript.

“I suppose AI can be helpful with emails and letters—the sort of business correspondence best delivered as clearly and briefly as possible—although I often don’t bother because emails and letters default to a common tone and style, which isn’t anything a writer should want. I often find that AI—I typically use Gemini—offers “improvements” that are lowest denominator style choices and I often enough conclude with a “Yeah, I don’t think so” response when checking out what AI thinks an email or letter should be. Although, apparently, AI likes em dashes nearly as much as I do.

“AI in the actual work of creative writing seems to me an uninteresting cheat aimed at writing as “content” for easy, quick, and undemanding consumption and thus misses the fun part of the whole process of creating a poem, short story, or novel. My conclusion about AI as a co-author (or, I suppose, even principal author): Why bother?

“Of course, I had to use AI to assess this short essay, didn’t I? It found one typo and offered a slight improvement in another sentence. It also suggested a stronger transition in the last paragraph to better distinguish creative writing from mere content.”

David Guenette

A writer and author of literary climate fiction series, The Steep Climes Quartet, who also writes about climate fiction and climate change science, technology and policies.

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ of Climate Crisis & Poetic Response

Poet Julian Bishop shares three new poems written in response to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where dissension between its famous fairy characters plays out in ‘distemperature’ and ruptures in the patterns of nature and affairs of humans.

1,480 words: estimated reading time = 6 minutes

The setting: The Bridge Theatre, London, 2019. The play: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A fabulously camp romp with a Beyoncé soundtrack and incredible acrobatics. Shakespeare so successfully updated, the same Nicholas Hytner production is revived in 2025. But of all the contemporary resonances, one of the play’s main preoccupations stood out for me as I sat in the audience swaying along to Love on Top at the end: climate change.

Rewind to Titania’s speech in Act II, Scene 1:

And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazèd world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which.
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension.
We are their parents and original.

The summer of 1594, shortly before the play was written, was famously cold and wet, with crops rotting in the fields and floods that wrecked bridges. But mark the last three lines of Titania’s speech — who or what is responsible for the progeny of evils described above but we, the audience, because of our dissension. The dictionary definition of dissension? A formal term for when a group of people who should be cooperating cannot agree on something. Sounds familiar?

I also latched onto the fabulous neologism ‘distemperature’, which surely deserves a revival, with its dual nods to political distemper and an out-of-sorts temperature — is there a better word to encapsulate our global predicament? Accordingly, I’ve used the word in several poems, including one of those you can read below.

Titania’s speech led me to explore Shakespeare’s eco credentials further and, sure enough, there’s ample evidence throughout the folio to demonstrate that he was aware of issues such as deforestation and the impact of expanding cities on the natural world. By his time, the forest of Arden was more patchy woodland thanks to the booming timber industry, used not just for house-building but England’s almost permanent war footing. A fleet to defeat a Spanish Armada demands a vast amount of timber and there’s no evidence of any active attempts to replant what must have been seen as an infinite resource.

Showig a 1914 Play poster for a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Savoy Theatre. Public domain. — 1914 play poster for a production of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at the Savoy Theatre. Public domain.

Golden shovels — poems in conversation

The form I’ve chosen for my poetic response is the Golden Shovel, invented by the American poet Terrance Hayes. He responded to Gwendolyn Brooks’s short but classic poem We Real Cool by using a word from it at the end of every line of his own poem, The Golden Shovel — in order too, so you can read her poem down the right-hand margin of the page.

I also chose this form because it preserves the integrity of the original line and forces a very direct response. Of course, given this is Shakespeare, the language is often archaic, so I’ve had to bridge the difficult gap between authenticity and parody in how I use both syntax and language, probably not always entirely successfully. I also decided each poem’s title should come from a nearby line in the same play that relates to its theme.

Most of the poems are being written while I go for a run outdoors — I hold the relevant quote in my head and repeat it until it starts to generate a response. The tricky bit is waiting until I’m on an empty path to get the words down! There have been a few near-collisions but I’m lucky to live near Green Belt between London and the M25, which can easily accommodate an hour-long run through countryside.

I grew up in Wiltshire countryside which is gradually being eaten away by new houses, golf courses and the like, so these poems are also a kind of elegy as well. When I was a teenager, a friend and I used to catch the bus to Stratford-on-Avon after school on a Friday night and stay in a youth hostel so we could queue up at dawn outside the RSC to get returns for whatever was showing. I’d become obsessed by Shakespeare after my school took our class to a showing of Franco Zefferelli’s film version of Romeo and Juliet — I think it was the first time I became aware of poetry. By the time it came to O Levels (we studied Julius Caesar), I think I’d seen all the tragedies.

And unexpectedly, Macbeth proved initially to be the richest resource for possible Shovels. The setting for the play is a blasted heath, a place of fog and filthy air. After Macbeth murders Duncan — an unnatural act — nature goes haywire, with animals eating one another, appalling weather and at one point the Earth was fev’rous and did shake. It’s all fittingly apocalyptic but I’d like to think that there’s a more hopeful vision for the world than this, which brought me back to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The circumstances aren’t dissimilar, as Titania’s speech makes clear: she and Oberon are parents and original of the distemperature and chaotic weather by fighting over the custody of an Indian changeling boy rather than attending to their normal duties (whatever it is that fairies do). As the play has it: so quick bright things come to confusion.

The play’s plot mirrors this of course, with Bottom acquiring an ass’s head and mistaken identity almost leading to tragedy among the two groups of young lovers. Significantly, the latter confusion occurs because Puck picks a flower to make a potion — is it too much of a stretch to include this among the acts of environmental destruction too? But in this play there’s a happy outcome: the lovers are reconciled, as are Oberon and Titania, although theirs is something of a forced marriage. There are also plenty of celebrations of the natural world, most famously Oberon’s luscious ‘wild violets’ speech:

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine…

(A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act II, Scene 1)

Showing William Blake's painting: 'Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing. From William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream' 1786. Public domain. — ‘Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing. From William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ by Wiliam Blake, 1786. Public domain.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream — echoing ecological disorder

So, what do I hope this project will achieve? Obviously, I’ll be looking to get some poems published but, more importantly, I’d like them to echo the broader ecological disorder observed by Titania, and indeed Shakespeare himself, when we see floods, fire and seasons alter as a result of our own actions. Just ten years separate the writing of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with its happy ending and Macbeth with its apocalyptic ending… Let’s hope we get to the end of The Tempest without having to sit through all the tragedies on the way.

Three Midsummer Shovels (from the beginning of the sequence):

Enter Oberon with his train

Once I knew of a bank where the 
nodding violets grew in a spring
hung with dewdrops; I knew the       
scent of wild thyme on a summer    
breeze and eglantine on hill, the          
wild dale and mead, bees chiding      
the roses… but then autumn and 
all the four seasons turned angry, 
mutating to a state of never-winter 
where dithering outpaced change.

Act II, Scene 1

Ill Met by Moonlight

Proud Titania attributed the moon, forgeries of jealousy and     
her Lord’s distemper for unsettling the weather, a thorough          
if touch fantastical midsummer flight of airy chiffony for this    
man-stamped disequilibrium she pitched as distemperature, 

citing hoary-headed frost in the fresh lap of rose, of which we 
are parent and original. It begs a question: if a fairy could see 
how all the distemperatured and discombobulated seasons 
changed their liveries, why on earth did humans fail to alter?

Act II, Scene 1

Wonder on, till truth make all things plain

In the age before distemperature and tempests, this
melodious plot of lichen’d oak and broadleaf’d green
was backdrop to every scene. So well-made, the plot
never changed. Years hence, what green props shall 
endure to grace our performance? What spirit will be 
left to emerge unseen from still’d wings? One day our 
tumbledown globe will host plays on an empty stage.

Act III, Scene 1

Poems © Julian Bishop 2025

Find more

You can find more of Julian’s poems at his website, Julian Bishop: Writing & Poetry and his previous ClimateCultures posts, We Saw It All Happen and On Green Verges.

The poem that gave this form its name is Terrance Hayes’s The Golden Shovel, which you can read at Poem Hunter.

Julian Bishop

A former journalist, environment reporter and tv news editor who writes poetry about eco issues and was runner-up in the 2018 Ginkgo Poetry Prize.

Finding the Tipping Points with Thrutopian Fiction

Sustainability researcher and writer Denise Baden discusses the challenges of thrutopian fiction — writing stories to entertain, raise awareness of effective climate action and inspire sustainable behaviours — and her latest thrutopian novel, The Philosopher and the Assassin.

1,645 words: estimated reading time = 6.5 minutes

In his recent ClimateCultures post, Rod Raglin casts doubt on the claims of thrutopian fiction to set out a roadmap to a better future — “writing our way to a future we’d be proud to leave to the coming generations”, as thrutopian champion Manda Scott puts it. In his article Rod sets out the practical, political and economic realities that would need to be addressed before we have any chance of a better future. Many of these seem intractable and the charge levelled at the thrutopian fiction produced so far is that it fails to address these. Another charge is that when it tries to, it comes across as “more didactic than entertaining.”

Rod is right that it is very difficult to write fiction that is both entertaining and will raise awareness of climate policies that are likely to work and/or inspire more sustainable behaviours. I know because I have tried it.

Showing the cover of 'Habitat Man', a novel by Denise Baden. — ‘Habitat Man’, by Denise Baden (2021)

Thrutopian fiction — changing behaviours

The first draft of my novel Habitat Man was appalling — everything I wanted the reader to know went in and it was didactic and clunky. I needed to write it then edit it out, just to get it out of my system. But by the final draft, I believe I pulled it off. An award-winning radio drama writer liked it so much she asked to put it in for a BBC Radio 4 adaptation and it got to the final round. It was the best seller in my bookshop for two years and reviews on Amazon are genuine and enthusiastic. In terms of behaviour change, research found that of 50 readers surveyed one month after finishing the book, 98% had adopted more pro-environmental attitudes and 60% had adopted at least one of the green alternatives mentioned in the book. These ranged from simple things like home composting and wildlife-friendly gardening, to campaigning. You can see the results in a link in the notes below.

Another novel, Visco, winner of the 2020 Green Stories novel competition sets out a quite plausible means by which a new society emerges from an old one. David Fell, himself a sustainability consultant, tells the story of a music festival on a small island within the UK that sets up a side festival for those who need care and their carers as part of an inclusivity drive. When the music ends, no one wants to go home and so they don’t. Step by step and overcoming one challenge after another, a more sustainable community based on the values of care emerges, attracting even the wealthy and powerful to its cause. Importantly, it’s also a damn good read!

I would claim that every story in the anthology No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet is thrutopian fiction. Several have been expanded into other forms. For example, one story imagined the ocean being given nation status and was developed into the novel Fairhaven, written by chemical engineer Steve Willis and writer Jan Lee. This sets out in fiction form a roadmap to how Malaysia could mitigate and adapt with respect to climate change.

The Philosopher and the Assassin: the evolution of a work

Another short story in the anthology was written as a standalone novella The Assassin, which is available also an audio book and as a play, Murder in the Citizens’ Jury. It imagines eight people in a citizens’ assembly debating climate solutions. The whodunnit element provides the drama and mystery. The context raises awareness of this emerging form of participative democracy, which I believe is an essential first step to real change. It also allows climate policies to be explored from the perspective of a variety of people, each of whom relates to them in different ways. Murder in the Citizens’ Jury was performed in 2024 in a sellout run, and later, a school put on an abridged one-hour version. It was interactive and the audience voted for their favourite climate policies. The director told me people were still debating the ideas days later. You can see reviews, details and feedback at the Green Stories link in the notes below.

Professional theatre companies can access it via Lazybee scripts, but it’s available royalty-free for any school/college drama groups and amateur theatre companies to stage if they approach me direct.

Thrutopian fiction: showing the cover of 'The Philosopher and the Assassin', a novel by Denise Baden (2025)

Inspired by the success of the theatre production, and wanting to reach a larger audience, I’ve included the ideas from the play as a story within a story in a novel, which was published by Habitat Press on 1^st October: The Philosopher and the Assassin. A script version won the 2024 Writing Climate Pitchfest, and it is literary fiction: think campus novel meets moral philosophy meets murder mystery! The goal is thrutopian — it aims to entertain and suggest some of the key leverage points that could tip us in the direction of a sustainable future. Here is a brief description:

There’s no more important job in the world than educator, and no subject as necessary as moral philosophy. The trick is getting the students to turn up. So, when the Dean proposes the controversial concept of education entertainment, Professor Iris Tate goes all in with a moral philosophy course based on a whodunnit that all assume is hypothetical — a murder in a citizens’ assembly on climate. A variety of characters provide an entertaining source of ethical dilemmas, but what the students don’t know is that the ultimate dilemma is very real, and their conclusions will have far-reaching consequences.

Reviews so far have been reassuringly positive:

“At once a commentary on the looming responsibility of the climate crisis and our ever-shrinking opportunity to enact meaningful change, and a far from conventional whodunnit, the book plays with the notion of what is moral and what is right. Complicit in the book’s central sprawling philosophical dilemma, the reader finds themselves judge, jury and executioner in the case of the century. While the novel tackles prescient and troubling themes and poses difficult questions (how far should we go for the greater good?), it does so with a sense of dry humour and a delightful eye for the absurd. Above all, the warmth and resilience of its ineffable protagonist suffuses the narrative and, as the story ends, we struggle to leave her behind. Not only is this a timely, thought-provoking and essential story in an age of urgent, innovative climate action that demands the attention of us all, it is a thoroughly enjoyable read. Funny, memorable, characterful and original.”

— The Literary Studio

“Denise Baden’s campus novel/whodunnit is so much more than just an up-to-the-minute academic locked-door mystery, it’s a philosophical treatise wrapped in an exposition of the polycrisis, embedded in a love story, threaded through with alternative democracy and grounded in explorations of grief, motivation and drive. Full of sharp ideas, subtle humour and grounded in the harsh realities of our world, you’ll come away with a whole new understanding of our world and what it takes to change it!”

— Manda Scott, author of Any Human Power and Boudica series.

“If facts are ignored, fiction may be our next best hope. With its story-within-a-story, The Philosopher and the Assassin cranks up the dramatic tension around whether we will achieve the carbon transition, or not. Ultimately, a surprisingly hopeful read.”

— John Elkington, author of Tickling Sharks: How We Sold Business on Sustainability

“A sharp, witty take on the climate crisis – from someone who knows what they’re talking about.”

— Wren James, founder of the Climate Fiction Writers League

Rod, I welcome your feedback!

I’d love to meet some fellow ClimateCultures members and readers, so if you’d like to come to the The Philosopher and the Assassin book launch in Winchester, UK on 11^th October, you will find details below.

Find more

Denise’s novel The Philosopher and the Assassin was published on 1st October. The book launch is on 11th October in Winchester, UK: details and booking here.

Denise mentions Manda Scott, whose novel Any Human Power (2025) is published by September Books. Manda discussed thrutopian fiction and more in a recent episode of the Life Itself podcast, and she and Faith Tilleray run the Accidental Gods podcast and programme “exploring how we can create a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations to come.”

You can find thrutopian stories and features at Bending The Arc — “towards a thriving future on Earth”, and Green Stories runs a series of writing competitions across various formats to solicit stories that showcase what a sustainable society might look like.

Denise’s novel Habitat Man (2021) and her novella The Assassin are published by Habitat Press and are available in paperback and as ausiobooks amd eBooks on all major platforms, including Amazon (where you will find the reviews Denise mentions). Denise summarises the research into readers’ responses in Habitat Man in Research on her website.

Visco by David Fell, No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save our Planet (edited by Denise Baden and Steve Willis), and Fairhaven by Steve Willis and Jane Lee, are also available on all major platforms. You can find reviews and information about the performances of the play Murder in the Citizens’ Jury here.

In his ClimateCultures post, Thrutopian Fictions: Ways to a Better Future?, fellow writer Rod Raglin asks if thrutopian fiction’s solutions-focused approaches to our climate predicaments address the real challenges: how to overcome our reluctance to make the sacrifices needed to get through the hardest times and towards a better future?

Denise Baden

A professor of sustainability and a writer, who founded the Green Stories project to create a cultural body of work that entertains, informs and inspires transformation ...

Thrutopian Fictions: Ways to a Better Future?

Writer Rod Raglin asks if Thrutopian fiction’s solutions-focused approaches to our climate predicaments address the real challenges. How to overcome our reluctance to make the sacrifices needed to get through the hardest times and towards a better future?

1,180 words: Estimated reading time = 4.5 minutes

Thrutopian is described as literature that avoids the pitfalls of both dystopian – paralyzing by depicting bleak futures – and utopian narratives – disconnected from the realities of current challenges. Instead, thrutopian stories are rooted in plausible solutions for getting through difficulties and towards a better future.

But do these thrutopian stories take into consideration economic realities, political expedience and an electorate that only considers their immediate needs? Do they address the reality of climate change that is already having a devastating effect on many parts of the planet?

Facing up to power …

For years, Canada has been struggling to meet the commitments it made in the 2016 Paris Agreement, involving reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The major policy initiative of federal government was to implement a carbon tax, a mechanism that puts a price on carbon emissions, aiming to encourage individuals and businesses to reduce their carbon footprint. A charge is levied on fuels like gasoline, diesel, and natural gas, increasing their cost to consumers to incentivize fuel efficiency and the use of lower-carbon alternatives.

In addition, it responded to public pressure about the environmental hazards of pipelines and introduced a strict environmental review process that discouraged further expansions.

That was until Donald Trump got elected and declared economic war on his neighbour.

In response to Trump’s tariffs and the impact on the Canadian economy, the first piece of legislation passed by newly elected Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, was to eliminate the carbon tax. His rationale for axing the tax was to “make sure our companies are competitive, and the country moves forward … it’s focused on building this economy.”

Also being reviewed (and likely modified), is the government’s policy to have all Canadian car sales powered by a battery, fuel cell or plug-in hybrid system by 2035.

In addition, old plans to build other energy projects are being revived by giving provincial governments “the environmental authority to approve pipelines”.

Before you could say “what the frack!”, the BC provincial government had passed The Infrastructure Projects Act, giving itself broad powers to override existing environmental regulations and authorities and expedite approval of major projects, public and private. “We’re not in the business of turning away investment in British Columbia,” said the premier of the province, David Eby.

Just to make sure no investment is being turned away, The Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions is undergoing a review of the policies and programs of CleanBC, the province’s climate strategy.

How do environmental principles stack up against economic realities? They don’t.

Nearly three-quarters of Canadians supported getting rid of the carbon tax and the renewal of pipeline projects. Apparently, the threat of becoming the ’51^st state’ far exceeds that of a climate catastrophe.

… and climate realities

Though wildfires are a natural part of the Canadian boreal forest life cycle, higher temperatures and drier conditions, caused by climate change have resulted in more frequent and severe fires and a longer fire season.

Showing Haze sun, a photograph by Rod Raglin — Haze sun. Photograph: Rod Raglin © 2025

This year’s fire season — the second worst since 2023 — has seen 3,092 wildfires that have consumed 5.17 million hectares (as of July 12, 2025). Officials with Public Safety Canada say the greatest fire danger is still to come and expected to be in the Northwest Territories, the Yukon and southern British Columbia.

I live on the west coast, and regularly wildfire smoke drifts in from the interior, making the sun appear as an orange ball and creating a haze that burns the eyes and throat. On some days, the air quality in Vancouver is the worst on the planet, and we’re advised to close windows and stay indoors. For inland communities, it’s far worse.

While Canadians worry about how tariffs will impact our economy generally, and their livelihood specifically, it’s not an existential threat, like having breathable air.

Like alcoholics, who must hit bottom before they’re motivated to sober up, Canada appears to not be there yet – environmentally speaking. As the results of our last federal election proved, we are still a society that prefers to pay less to fill up the family SUV than contribute to the mitigation of global warming.

Writing towards a better future

In the midst of this ‘reset’ of environmental priorities has emerged thrutopian literature with its “plausible solutions for getting through difficulties and towards a better future.”

A quick look at a few of the titles suggests that other than the name there’s little difference between this genre and eco-fi or cli-fi – other designations that have emerged for environmental fiction since I began writing it in 2010.

The difference between my books and these newer ones appears to be issues of subtlety and practicality. In my novels, environmental issues are not in the forefront but presented only as a subplot that must eventually be addressed in practical ways for the protagonist to achieve their goal. The few thrutopian titles I’ve reviewed flip this around, presenting the environmental problem foremost and the characterisation secondary. In my opinion, this approach makes the narrative more didactic than entertaining – usually a turnoff for the reader, though time will tell.

And though this new fictional category attempts to present possible solutions to mitigate the environmental crisis, I saw no evidence it addresses how to overcome our reluctance to make the sacrifices necessary to implement them.

This was the issue I set out to answer when researching my novel, The Triumvirate – Love for Power, Love of Power, the Power of Love. What I discovered was it’s a lot harder to create a better future than envision one – human beings notwithstanding. Political and economic issues take precedence over the environment, and it is only when “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”*, do we realize we’ve made the wrong choice.

I’m sure this new sub-genre will thrive. Who doesn’t want to choose hope over despair, the positive over the negative, delusion over reality? It’s easier to suggest that we still have time to prevent the worst-case scenario even while that scenario is playing out in front of us.

This is the reality of thousands of wildfire evacuees every Canadian summer (actually, fire season is now April through October, depending on where you live) as they idle away the hours in evacuation centres worrying if they’ll have a home, or for that matter, a community to return to.

* ‘The Second Coming’ by W. B. Yeats

Find more

Rod writes about his novel The Triumvirate in his previous ClimateCultures post, Power, Love, Religion & Climate Fiction: Life Imitating Art, discussing how a story about power, love and religion finds echoes in our unfolding climate crisis and how we try to come to grips with a hostile and uncertain future.

You can read a Writers Rebel interview with novelist Manda Scott about her thrutopian novel, Any Human Power. And ClimateCultures member Denise Baden writes about her own approach to writing to a better future in Social-science fiction or Thrutopia?

Rod Raglin

A journalist, publisher of an online community newspaper, photographer and writer of novels, plays and short stories that address the human condition and serious environmental issues ...

Spellcasters – a Dance with the Real and the Uncanny

Author Rajat Chaudhuri discusses the backstories and inspiration for his most recent book, Spellcasters, and how they connect to the plot of this novel, which is part psychological thriller, part climate adventure with a twist of the occult.

1,470 words: estimated reading time = 6 minutes.

The most common question that authors get asked at literary events is the genesis question. Where did you begin a particular work, what was your inspiration or some variations of the same. I find coming up with a response difficult, because there is obviously no single starting point and beginnings are also part of a flow.

Spellcasters: Showing Rajat Chaudhuri at the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival (2024). Screenshot. — Rajat Chaudhuri at the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival (2024). Screenshot.

The writing of Spellcasters, which is my most recent climate novel, had been in a large part influenced by the opening up of the Indian economy to global economic forces and the rising tide of conspicuous consumption it unleashed, aggravating the climate crisis, driving resource exploitation, and affecting the environment. In this book, my attempt has been to weave together elements of fantasy and magic with a story of mental illness to portray the impact of this opening up on individuals and society.

A flavour of these changes brought on by globalisation and the human costs of unfettered growth can be found in this description near the beginning of the book, when the scientist Vincent Dutta drives to his lab outside the city of Aukatabad, where he is conducting secret experiments with psychedelics under orders of a shadowy corporate entity:

‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ pulsated through the car speakers, as the first of the flyovers zipped by. Glassy shopping malls, the steel and chrome geometries of mega corporations flashed past, shimmering in the heat. The burning air echoed the howls of farm labourers whose bones were turning into buttery dust under the newly-sprung city of glass. In hoc signio vinces!

Showing the cover of Rajat Chaudhuri's novel, 'Spellcasters' (2024) — Cover of Rajat Chaudhuri’s novel, ‘Spellcasters’ (2024)

Psychedelics in certain ways are quaint and old-world, but think of our social media addiction, which is mediated through a dopamine rush, and how this can affect mental-well being. So the story can be considered to be an allegory of such modern addictions (consumerism being another) that is driving people crazy.

Later on, as we are introduced to the main character, business reporter Chanchal Mitra, who gradually gets affected unpredictably by these changes, his transformation, much of which drives the narrative, is echoed in the ways the cities of Anantanagar and Aukatabad, partly modelled on Calcutta and Delhi, are transforming because of the onslaught of globalisation:

It is around this time of the attack on the Chief Minister that it begins. We grow feet, more and more feet, like centipedes. Jet engines thunder above us in droves, desire kisses the stratosphere, dirt’s swept away, miasma vacuumed. They even demolish the hovel where Akbar lived near the river bank, but I manage to get him a place in an abandoned warehouse belonging to the rail company.

Frenzy, feverish frenzy overtakes us all. We move at a dizzying pace. Steel, concrete, cement, stock market pulse beats, exotic vacations, infotech gurus and aerodrome-sized establishments to lose freedom, win it back again.

Within the storyworld, this unbridled growth impacts the planet as the burden of aspirations also begins to have an effect on minds. In Chanchal’s city, Anantanagar:

The immense heat of the afternoon is an attack on civilisation. This year, it is worse than the last. The avenues of Anantanagar shimmer in the fiery blaze, tar melts like liquid nightmares, the art-deco mansions hiss and crack while hulking SUVs climb mirror-clad avenues swooping up into jannats of petroleum dreams. Unnoticed in the mountains, the glaciers melt away, drop by drop—like the terminally ill shuffling along till the end, glioblastomas growing, the teardrops of a future waiting in the wings. Sorcerers crouch at every corner, casting spells, selling hope and tricks.

Here onwards it is a story of how globalisation and limitless growth not only changes the familiar and impacts the environment, but also affects the mind of Chanchal.

Spellcasters – a shadowy realm

While researching mental illness, I was lucky to be granted extended interviews with the well-known psychiatrist Anurag Mishra who also happens to be a student of the great psychoanalyst-author Sudhir Kakar, who recently passed away. And the fact of my character’s mental afflictions is also nuanced by my readings of Kakar, especially where he compares Indian and Western healing traditions in Shamans, Mystics and Doctors. Which is perhaps how the element of occult and secret societies enter the story, invoking a shadowy realm where the uncanny and the improbable dance in step with the real.

Just as growth picks up, so do emissions and other environmental impacts, many borrowed from reality, and we have unnatural rains in a desert, blinding smog blanketing Aukatabad, landslides in the Himalayas, all of which in turn advance the plot of the novel. In this process, the settings and the environment of Spellcasters almost become characters, or actants, shaping the story in particular ways.

Showing the Inside cover of ‘Spellcasters’ (2024) — Inside cover of ‘Spellcasters’ (2024)

All along, climate change and an altered environment play important roles in driving the narrative as the fortunes of the simple man Chanchal and a powerful business tycoon are affected by the planetary forces. The city of Aukatabad, much like the real city of Delhi, remains blanketed in smog:

Morning tastes like a scrapyard. Morning smells like a farm fire. The yellow-grey walls of smog had grown darker. For days and weeks the dust of the desert, swept by freak and untimely storms, had thickened the haze and now the city was suddenly engulfed in coarse dust. It holds the streets in a stranglehold, blurring the borderland between night and day.

We know very well that the pursuit of limitless growth, in the absence of environmental justice and social safeguards, can have devastating effects. The weak and the vulnerable without proper state intervention get left out of the growth story while also suffering the most from climate impacts. When Chanchal loses all his money and has to skip meals he thinks:

I imagine heaps of rice on banana leaf plates and the aroma of fish frying in the wok. Mustard oil, that’s what we prefer. But now I could even do with a dal fry, but it is not for me. Food is not for me tonight. I am not for food tonight. I slide the menu below the carpet. There will be thousands all over this unhappy land who will go without food tonight, and many more nights. I will join their ranks, this last night in the city of kings.

Elsewhere, in Chanchal’s hometown:

The poor of Anantanagar, who had set up small shops everywhere—and those from the villages whose lands had been snatched by the smart cities and tech academies—creep and crawl all over, overflowing into the shopping malls, fighting with the uniforms, snatching careless cappuccino cups of dreamy-eyed duos sitting in sidewalk cafés on the boulevard that heads towards the river.

Limitless growth, planetary illness

Spellcasters is really about the spells cast by powerful ideas like limitless growth, our material aspirations and the indulgence in conspicuous consumption which together are not only ‘infecting’ the living planet, one of its symptoms being climate change, but also affecting our minds. The mirroring and interactions between this planetary illness and individual illness, portrayed through mental affliction, forms the conceptual background of the novel.

In between there is the business tycoon, who goes by the name JRK, with a world domination plan fuelled by the power of psychedelics. As the story progresses, conflicts arise between Chanchal and this tycoon, which put both their lives in great danger. Besides, there is also the ever present possibility of a secret society of occultists who may or may not be working to save humanity from the wicked designs of the businessman. If we look around us, we will find how the plot of Spellcasters often seem to mirror realities of our times.

Having been a climate activist for many years it was natural for me to create the character of JRK presiding over a global business empire, as a personification of the ambitions that drive resource exploitation and endless growth. But JRK has many shades, and a very dark past, all of which propel this story of planetary crisis towards its denouement.

Will it be magic and the occult that is decisive in the story or is it the planet itself that will strike back at human ambition, and restore some balance, symbolic or otherwise? Read the book to find out!

Find more

Spellcasters is published Olive Turtle an imprint of Niyogi Books and is available from bookstores and online.

A review by Kousik Guhathakurta for Scroll (January 2024) described Spellcasters as “a modern saga blending climate fiction with a sardonic take on city-bred consumerism.” And author Amitav Ghosh calls the novel “a phantasmagoric journey through an alternative reality of collapsed time, hallucinatory visions and spectral visitations: an unexpected and unsettling rollercoaster ride.”

You can find more of Rajat’s work at his website, and his new middle-grade work of climate fiction will be published in June 2025: Wonder Tales for a Warming Planet.

Rajat featured as part of the ClimateCultures Quarantine Connection series in 2020. We shared his piece, Heat or the Iceberg Chill – a translation of a poem by Novera Hossain, and part of Rajat’s project to translate 100 Bengali poems by non-mainstream poets – on Day 23 of our 40-day series.

Rajat Chaudhuri

A writer of climate novels and co-editor of solarpunk collections, closely involved with the climate movement, who writes and speaks about climate, literature and possible futures.