Supplemental cli-fi/eco-fiction lists

I gave Claude this prompt:

At the southern festival of books yesterday, I met the authors Alice Martin, Erin McCoy, and Deb Olin Unferth. I told Unferth that I plan to teach environmental ethics with a cli-fi/eco-fiction theme next semester, using Richard Powers’ trilogy beginning with The Overstory. I’m also going to use Jill Lepore‘s The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State in that course. I asked Unferth what other titles she thinks would be appropriate. She mentioned her own book, Earth 7, and author Kim Stanley Robinson.

Claude’s lists:

• Stephen Markley, The Deluge (2023)
• Charlotte McConaghy, Wild Dark Shore (2024)
• George Saunders, Vigil (2024)
• Eric Puchner, Dream State (2025); Megha Majumdar, A Guardian and a Thief (2025)
• Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate (2022)
• Neal Stephenson, Termination Shock (2021)

Nonhuman life, ecology, and the weird

• Ray Nayler, The Mountain in the Sea (2022), on octopus intelligence
• Gina Chung, Sea Change (2022)
• Ned Beauman, Venomous Lumpsucker (2022), on extinction and its economics
• Jeff VanderMeer, Absolution (2024)

Tech, power, and the "Artificial State" thread

• Naomi Alderman, The Future (2023)

Here's a trimmed list of ten, each with a theme tag and a report prompt. The short descriptions of the titles I didn't confirm by search come from my own knowledge, so check them before distributing.

1. Deb Olin Unferth, Earth 7 (2026) · Technology, extinction. What does the novel suggest we owe a planet we've used up, and does saving a "trace" of Earth count as preservation?
2. Stephen Markley, The Deluge (2023) · Climate politics, justice. Which obstacles to climate action does the novel locate in institutions rather than individuals?
3. Charlotte McConaghy, Wild Dark Shore (2024) · Preservation, loss. What is being preserved, for whom, and at what cost to the people doing it?
4. George Saunders, Vigil (2024) · Complicity, responsibility. How does the novel treat moral responsibility for harms that are diffuse and long-term?
5. Ray Nayler, The Mountain in the Sea (2022) · Nonhuman minds. If octopuses are persons, what changes about environmental ethics and our standing as moral agents?
6. Ned Beauman, Venomous Lumpsucker (2022) · Valuing species. Satirize or defend: can extinction be priced? What does the book assume about instrumental versus intrinsic value?
7. Jeff VanderMeer, Absolution (2024) · Nature's agency. Is nature here a victim, an agent, or something that resists both categories?
8. Gina Chung, Sea Change (2022) · Ocean, grief. How does personal loss shape the narrator's relationship to ecological loss?
9. Samantha Harvey, Orbital (2023/24) · Planetary perspective. How does seeing Earth whole change the ethical questions, compared with Powers' view from inside the forest?
10. Naomi Alderman, The Future (2023) · Tech billionaires, escape fantasies. Pair with Lepore: where do the novel's elites match her "Artificial State"?

2010–2015

• Ian McEwan, Solar (2010): a comic study of a physicist's self-interest and climate action
• Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker (2010): YA, post-collapse Gulf Coast
• Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior (2012): monarch butterflies and climate belief in rural Appalachia
• Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312 (2012): solar-system ecology and terraforming ethics
• Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam (2013): concludes her trilogy on bioengineering and ecological collapse
• Nathaniel Rich, Odds Against Tomorrow (2013): risk, prediction, and disaster profiteering
• Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being (2013): ocean plastic, Fukushima, and Zen
• Alexis Wright, The Swan Book (2013): Aboriginal perspectives on a climate-altered Australia
• Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation (2014): the first Southern Reach book; nature as inscrutable agent
• Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven (2014): what survives after collapse
• Nnedi Okorafor, Lagoon (2014): first contact, Lagos, and the oil-polluted sea
• Kim Stanley Robinson, Aurora (2015): the ethics of leaving Earth
• Maja Lunde, The History of Bees (English 2017; Norwegian 2015): three eras of pollinator collapse

2016–2020

• Annie Proulx, Barkskins (2016): three centuries of deforestation
• Lily Brooks-Dalton, Good Morning, Midnight (2016)
• Omar El Akkad, American War (2017): climate-driven second civil war
• Louise Erdrich, Future Home of the Living God (2017): reproduction and reverse evolution
• Kim Stanley Robinson, New York 2140 (2017): flooded city, capital, and collective action
• Sue Burke, Semiosis (2018): plant intelligence; a natural companion to The Overstory
• Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered (2018): two eras of ecological and economic precarity
• Michael Christie, Greenwood (2019): a century of one family and one forest
• Amitav Ghosh, Gun Island (2019): migration, myth, and the Sundarbans
• Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future (2020): policy-level climate fiction
• Rumaan Alam, Leave the World Behind (2020): crisis and class
• Diane Cook, The New Wilderness (2020): a community living in a protected wilderness state
• Lydia Millet, A Children's Bible (2020): generational anger at climate inaction
• Charlotte McConaghy, Migrations (2020): the last Arctic terns

For a philosophy course, a few of these pair well with specific topics:

• Intrinsic vs. instrumental value: Barkskins, Semiosis, Venomous Lumpsucker
• Intergenerational ethics: Unsheltered, A Children's Bible, Vigil
• Geoengineering and policy: The Ministry for the Future, New York 2140
• Indigenous and non-Western perspectives: The Swan Book, Lagoon, Gun Island

2. Climate politics, justice, and policy

• Majumdar, A Guardian and a Thief (2025)
• Puchner, Dream State (2025)
• Markley, The Deluge (2023)
• Robinson, The Ministry for the Future (2020)
• Alam, Leave the World Behind (2020)
• Robinson, New York 2140 (2017)
• El Akkad, American War (2017)
• Rich, Odds Against Tomorrow (2013)
• McEwan, Solar (2010)

3. Responsibility and intergenerational ethics

• Saunders, Vigil (2024)
• Millet, A Children's Bible (2020)
• Kingsolver, Unsheltered (2018)
• Kingsolver, Flight Behavior (2012)

4. Nonhuman life and intrinsic value

• Arnott, Dusk (2025)
• Guha, The Tiger's Share (2025)
• Reva, Endling (2025)
• VanderMeer, Absolution (2024)
• Nayler, The Mountain in the Sea (2022)
• Beauman, Venomous Lumpsucker (2022)
• McConaghy, Wild Dark Shore (2024) and Migrations (2020)
• Christie, Greenwood (2019)
• Burke, Semiosis (2018)
• Proulx, Barkskins (2016)
• Lunde, The History of Bees (2015, English 2017)
• VanderMeer, Annihilation (2014)

5. Oceans, grief, and planetary perspective

• Thien, The Book of Records (2025)
• Kwan, Awake in the Floating City (2025)
• Harvey, Orbital (2023/24)
• Chung, Sea Change (2022)
• Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being (2013)

6. Indigenous and non-Western perspectives

• Ghosh, Gun Island (2019)
• Okorafor, Lagoon (2014)
• Wright, The Swan Book (2013)

7. Collapse, survival, and community

• Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate (2022)
• Cook, The New Wilderness (2020)
• Erdrich, Future Home of the Living God (2017)
• Brooks-Dalton, Good Morning, Midnight (2016)
• Mandel, Station Eleven (2014)
• Atwood, MaddAddam (2013)
• Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker (2010)

Earth 7

https://share.libbyapp.com/title/12266581

Wendell Berry’s Message to Readers: All We Need Is Here

…His essays, the Sabbath Poems, the Port William novels — “Hannah Coulter,” “Jayber Crow,” “The Memory of Old Jack,” all quiet on the surface — are lakes of sleek astonishments. The possibilities of life in a small place are a mirror to the world, because let’s face it, every place is its own kind of small. It’s a universal clemency to find delight in what we have instead of craving what we don’t, and likewise, a balm to any existential dread to consider that “the fragment of the earth/that is now me” is just passing through: “It is on its way/from having been a tree,/a school of fish, a terrapin,/a flock of birds. It will pass/through all those forms again.”

Who doesn’t want to be a flock of birds someday? Returning here to “Manifesto,” we can all use instruction on how to “Be joyful/though you have considered all the facts.”

… 

Barbara Kingsolver

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/books/review/wendell-berry-appreciation.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

It’s Not You, It’s America

Novels set in the future aren’t exclusively the province of science fiction; anxious times tend to generate anxious, cautionary literary dystopias, and when was the last time you can remember not feeling anxious? The 20th century in particular abounded in such visions, some of which — “The Handmaid’s Tale,” or “Brave New World,” published in 1932 and getting spookier every day — have proved more prophetic than others. They’re best understood, though, not as genuine bets on our future, but as dreamlike unleashings of present-day fear over the blind volatility of the moment.

Kurt Andersen, in his new novel “The Breakup,” does something few such books do (Jon Raymond’s excellent 2022 climate-disaster novel, “Denial,” comes to mind); he sets his stage not in some distant century when our own problems are the stuff of history, but a mere 19 years from now, when most of his readers are still likely to be around

In an effort to game out the frightening liminality of American life in 2026, he depicts a 2045 in which — some years after a short, dirty, rather brilliantly imagined second American civil war — the country has fractured into two sloppily distinct but still official entities: the United States of America (now down to 39 states) and the Free American Republic, a largely white and Christian throwback to certain retrograde ideals with which we are all, here in the present, glumly familiar...

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/books/review/kurt-andersen-breakup.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share