Earth Week Reading List: Compiled by Ada Palmer

In celebration of Earth Week, the Seminary Co-op Bookstores are pleased to present a series of reading lists addressing environmental issues and the challenges of sustainability. These lists are organized as part of UChicago ECo, a platform aimed at fostering connection among and support for the University of Chicago’s Environmental Community. You can find the full schedule of Earth Week events organized by UChicago ECo here, and learn how our shared community is thinking rigorously about environmental impact and ways to leverage data, practices, policies and creativity to help combat climate change. 

The following list was compiled by University of Chicago Professor of History and science fiction author Ada Palmer. 

Walkaway, by Cory Doctorow - Hubert Vernon Rudolph Clayton Irving Wilson Alva Anton Jeff Harley Timothy Curtis Cleveland Cecil Ollie Edmund Eli Wiley Marvin Ellis Espinoza--known to his friends as Hubert, Etc--was too old to be at that Communist party. But after watching the breakdown of modern society, he really has no where left to be--except amongst the dregs of disaffected youth who party all night and heap scorn on the sheep they see on the morning commute. It's still a dangerous world out there, the empty lands wrecked by climate change, dead cities hollowed out by industrial flight, shadows hiding predators animal and human alike. Still, when the initial pioneer walkaways flourish, more people join them. Then the walkaways discover the one thing the ultra-rich have never been able to buy: how to beat death. Now it's war - a war that will turn the world upside down. Fascinating, moving, and darkly humorous, Walkaway is a multi-generation science fiction thriller about the wrenching changes of the next hundred years...and the very human people who will live their consequences.

Forty Signs of Rain, by Kim Stanley Robinson - The bestselling author of the classic Mars trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt presents a riveting new trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of global warming as they are played out in our nation's capital--and in the daily lives of those at the center of the action. Hauntingly yet humorously realistic, here is a novel of the near future that is inspired by scientific facts already making headlines.

New York 2140, by Kim Stanley Robinson - As the sea levels rose, every street In New York became a canal. Every skyscraper an island. For the residents of one apartment building in Madison Square, however, New York in the year 2140 is far from a drowned city. The residents adapted and it remained the bustling, vibrant metropolis it had always been. Through the eyes of the varied inhabitants of one building, Kim Stanley Robinson shows us how one of our great cities will change with the rising tides. And how we too will change.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, by Hayao Miyazaki - In a long-ago war, humankind set off a devastating ecological disaster. Thriving indistrial societies disappeared. The earth is slowly submerging beneath the expanding Sea of Corruption, an enormous toxic forest that creates mutant insects and releases a miasma of poisonous spores into the air. At the periphery of the sea, tiny kingdoms are scattered on tiny parcels of land. Here lies the Valley of the Wind, a kingdom of barely 500 citizens; a nation given fragile protection from the decaying sea's poisons by the ocean breezes; and home to Nausicaä. Nausicaä, a young princess, has an empathic bond with the giant Ohmu insects and animals of every creed. She fights to create tolerance, understanding and patience among empires that are fighting over the world's remaining precious natural resources.

Book of the New Sun Series, Gene Wolfe - A critically acclaimed four-part science fiction seriies about what happens when the Earth is so old that the sun is burning out and all resources are fading - Tor is about to put out a new edition of the first half of it, 

The Sheep Look Up, by John Brunner - In a near future, the air pollution is so bad that everyone wears gas masks. The infant mortality rate is soaring, and birth defects, new diseases, and physical ailments of all kinds abound. The water is undrinkable--unless you're poor and have no choice. Large corporations fighting over profits from gas masks, drinking water, and clean food tower over an ineffectual, corrupt government. Environmentalist Austin Train is on the run. The "trainites," a group of violent environmental activists, want him to lead their movement; the government wants him dead; and the media demands amusement. But Train just wants to survive. More than a novel of science fiction, The Sheep Look Up is a skillful and frightening political and social commentary that takes its place next to other remarkable works of dystopian literature, 

China Mountain Zhang, by Maureen McHugh - After the Second Great Depression and the American Liberation War, the US has been left as a satellite state of China. In this somewhat but not entirely regimented world, young New York construction engineer Zhang Zhongshan must find his way in a society that disapproves both of his cultural heritage and his sexual identity. Because not everyone can change the world--sometimes, the ultimate challenge is to find a way to live in it. China Mountain Zhang presents a macroscopic world of microscopic intensity, one of the most brilliant visions in modern science fiction.

Hammered, by Elizabeth Bear - Once Jenny Casey was somebody's daughter. Once she was somebody's enemy. Now the former Canadian special forces warrior lives on the hellish streets of Hartford, Connecticut, in the year 2062. Racked with pain, hiding from the government she served, running with a crime lord so she can save a life or two, Jenny is a month shy of fifty, and her artificially reconstructed body has started to unravel. But she is far from forgotten. A government scientist needs the perfect subject for a high-stakes project and has Jenny in his sights.Suddenly Jenny Casey is a pawn in a furious battle, waged in the corridors of the Internet, on the streets of battered cities, and in the complex wirings of her half-man-made nervous system. And she needs to gain control of the game before a brave new future spins completely out of control.