Check out these climate fiction stories and reviews

Are you concerned about climate change? If so, you’re not alone.

According to the world’s largest survey on climate change, 80% of people globally want their country to do more on climate change. Here in the United States, Yale’s “Climate Change in the American Mind: Beliefs & Attitudes, Spring 2024” report tells us that majorities of Americans think global warming will harm plant and animal species (72%), future generations of people (72%), the world’s poor (69%), people in developing countries (68%), people in the United States (65%), and people in their community (52%).

In other words, most people do in fact care about climate change!

If you want more information about the climate crisis and what you can do about it, I can recommend some great nonfiction books about climate change. However, many readers prefer reading fiction, especially in their spare time. As both a reader and an author, I love picking up a good novel or short story collection and spending a couple of hours immersed in a compelling fictional narrative. I read nonfiction too, but it doesn’t fill the same niche in my life as reading a good work of fiction.

If you want to read novels, short stories, and other fiction with climate themes, you’re in luck! Authors and publishers have started writing and publishing so much good climate fiction that you could read a climate novel a week for the rest of your life and still not have time to read it all. But where can you find all of these amazing works of climate fiction? And how do you decide which ones you want to read?

With those questions in mind, I’m excited to tell you about two places where you can find good climate fiction! This includes both the climate fiction I’ve written and all of the climate fiction I’ve read or heard about as a climate author, climate communicator, and avid climate fiction reader.

Treesong’s Climate Fiction

My climate fiction is easy to find! Check out my books page for all of the details about my published books. If you want a bargain on my ebooks and a sneak peak at all of my works in progress (WIPs), check out my Ko-fi page. For as little as $1 per month, you can read all of my published climate fiction right now and read all of my WIPs as they’re written, chapter by chapter. I donate 10% of the proceeds of my climate-themed writing, reviews, and other projects to climate justice groups.

I’m also excited to announce that I now have three short stories that are free for everyone who subscribes to my email newsletter! I send one or two emails per month. Sometimes it’s even less than that when my non-author life gets busy. Each newsletter includes updates on my climate-themed writing projects and other climate-related topics.

I’ve included the cover art and summary of these three free climate short stories stories below. If you see one you like, click/tap on the cover art or button to receive your free short story. You’ll be taken to a new page where you can receive the story by signing up for my newsletter.


Burning by Treesong

Rionach was a woman who had it all: a loving wife, a six-year-old child, a beautiful house, and a high-paying job with a private security firm.

When a wildfire burns it all down, Rionach recovers by taking up a new hobby: hunting the people responsible for the climate crisis.

Burning is a short story about climate grief — and murder.


Welcome to Solardale

By the year 2050, the small town of Carbondale, Illinois has renamed itself Solardale in honor of its embrace of solar power and transformation into a post-scarcity, solarpunk, municipalist community.

When climate migrants arrive from the coasts, Solardale’s commitment to hospitality is called into question. One of these new arrivals, Amalia, learns that some of Solardale’s residents want to preserve their small town utopia by closing their doors to any future climate migrants.

Can a small town handle a growing number of climate migrants? Will Amalia be able to find her place in Solardale and convince her new neighbors to open their community to more climate migrants like her?


Three Scenarios (Cli-Fi Plus)

An expecting mother attends a major climate conference in Paris in December of 2015. After giving birth, she has a vivid dream about three versions of her daughter’s future. She sees dramatic differences in her daughter’s life in 2065 depending on which greenhouse gas emissions scenario the world chooses. But which scenario will her daughter actually experience?

Three Scenarios is a complete short story that appears in the Cli-Fi Plus climate fiction anthology. Each story in the anthology combines the theme of climate change with another traditional sci-fi element — in this case, alternate timelines.

Once you’ve read Three Scenarios, check out the Cli-Fi Plus anthology for more climate tales featuring time travel, robots, aliens, superheroes, dirigibles, zombies, and beyond!


Climate Fiction Reviews and Reading Lists

Are you looking for climate fiction by other authors? That’s great!

As a author, I want to sell my own books. But as a climate communicator and climate justice advocate, I want to connect readers with whatever climate change books are right for them. That’s why I started writing and publishing climate change book reviews and climate change reading lists.

Book reviews are a great way for you to discover new books and new authors to read. The reading lists will help you find books that match a particular theme related to climate change.

Here are a few of my latest reviews. If you see one you like, you can click on the cover or button to read the full review.


Troubled Waters

There’s more than one way for a family to deal with generational trauma. And there’s more than one way for a family to respond to systemic racism and the climate crisis.

Mary Annaïse Heglar’s debut novel, Troubled Waters, tells an intense, compelling, and deeply personal story at the intersection of these themes. After listening to her on the Hot Take and Spill podcasts, and reading her essays about climate justice and new children’s book, I was eager to read her novel to see how these themes play out in her fiction. Now that I’ve read it, I’m pleased to report that this novel will be a great read for people interested in climate justice themes, racial justice themes, Southern characters and settings, strong women protagonists, and compelling literature in general


Metamorphosis: Climate Fiction for a Better Future

Metamorphosis: Climate Fiction for a Better Future is a climate fiction anthology edited by Grist, one of the Internet’s longest-running environmental news and culture websites. It’s available now for pre-order with a release date of October 22, 2024.

This visionary anthology features the winning entries from a climate fiction contest called Imagine 2200: The 2024 Collection. The contest was the third installment of Grist’s innovative Imagine 2200 series.

Imagine 2200 asks a simple but powerful question. What will the future look like when diverse people and communities create meaningful and impactful solutions to the climate crisis together?


The Deluge

What will the climate crisis and the world’s response to it look like over the course of the next decade or two?

The Deluge by Stephen Markley offers one of the most thorough and compelling answers to this question that I’ve read to date. This novel explores almost every facet of the climate crisis in amazing and terrifying detail. Even after reading dozens of other climate fiction classics like Ministry for the FutureTermination Shock, and Parable of the Sower, I found myself blown away by both the sheer scope of this novel and the many skillful ways Markley drew me in and kept me reading throughout the entire 896-page journey.


These are just a few of my most recent reviews. You can find all of my reviews and reading lists over at my book blog site, Climate Change Books. I also have a Climate Change Books newsletter that sends out one or two emails per month highlighting the latest book reviews, reading lists, and other developments in the world of climate change books.

Submit Climate Fiction Suggestions

Is there a work of climate fiction that you’d like to see me review? Are you looking for a reading list on a particular climate-related topic but don’t see anything like it on my Climate Change Books site?

If you have any suggestions, please let me know. I’m always eager to hear from readers — especially readers who have good suggestions about books for me to review and reading lists to create.

In the meantime, thanks for reading!

Leave a Comment