The Last Catastrophe
Stories
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
The Last Catastrophe
Buy Now for $23.99
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Written by:
-
Allegra Hyde
About this listen
A hopeful, speculative short story collection about how humanity grapples in a world transformed by climate change.
“Climate fiction does not owe readers hope, but through humor and humanity Hyde manages to present a harsh reality without descending into despair, offering a space for mourning and for reimagining life in a permanently changed world. Each of the 15 stories is swiftly paced and engaging, rich with detail, highlighting and celebrating nature as it borders on the unnatural.” —The New York Times Book Review
A vast caravan of RVs roams the United States. A girl grows a unicorn horn, complicating her small-town friendships and big city ambitions. A young lady on a spaceship bonds with her AI warden while trying to avoid an arranged marriage. In Allegra Hyde’s universe nothing is as it seems, yet the challenges encountered in these pages mirror those we face in our modern age. Spanning the length of our very solar system, the fifteen stories in this collection explore a myriad of potential futures through the concept of “global weirding,” planetary and social disruptions due to climate change. In unexpected and genre-defying ways, this revelatory collection reminds us that our world is precious, and that protecting it has the potential to bring us all together.
What the critics say
Named a most anticipated book of the year by Our Culture Magazine and The Millions
Named a most anticipated science fiction and fantasy book by Polygon
“Climate fiction does not owe readers hope, but through humor and humanity Hyde manages to present a harsh reality without descending into despair, offering a space for mourning and for reimagining life in a permanently changed world. Each of the 15 stories is swiftly paced and engaging, rich with detail, highlighting and celebrating nature as it borders on the unnatural.” —The New York Times Book Review
“While The Last Catastrophe is a brilliant collection from many angles, Hyde particularly excels in one notoriously difficult way: making the amorphous and incomprehensible aspects of climate change and its effects feel tangibly real. The climate crisis, unfortunately for activists and everyone else who inhabits this planet, can be simultaneously unfathomable and more than a bit boring in the technical details of how many degrees Celsius the temperature can rise before we’re all done for. Fortunately for readers, The Last Catastrophe is neither unfathomable nor boring. Quite the opposite. The stories proceed jauntily and are each so captivating that by the time you reach the last story—“The Eaters,” which, at over fifty pages, qualifies as a novella—you’re even a little sad it isn’t longer.” —Chicago Review of Books