33 Climate change novels

Alice, the Zeta Cat and Climate Change: A fairytale about the truth is an adult fairytale about the truth by Margret Boysen.

American War is the first novel by Canadian-Egyptian journalist Omar El Akkad. It is set in a near-future United States of America, ravaged by climate change and disease, in which a second Civil War has broken out over the use of fossil fuels.

Barkskins is a 2016 novel by American writer Annie Proulx. It tells the story of two immigrants to New France, René Sel and Charles Duquet, and of their descendants. It spans over 300 years and witnesses the deforestation of the New World from the arrival of Europeans into the contemporary era of global warming.

Between the Strokes of Night (1985) is a science fiction novel by English-American writer Charles Sheffield. It first appeared in the March to June 1985 issues of Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact before being published by Baen Books in July 1985. The story is divided in two vastly separated time periods: the near future of 2010, and the far future of 29,000 AD. Owing to the unique technological mechanisms of the novel, the same cast of characters appears in both parts, though it is not a time travel story.

The Burning World is a 1964 science fiction novel by British author J. G. Ballard. An expanded version, retitled The Drought, was first published in 1965 by Jonathan Cape.

The Dead and the Gone is a young adult science fiction dystopian novel by Susan Beth Pfeffer. Released in hardcover in May 2008, it is the second book in The Last Survivors, following Life as We Knew It and preceding This World We Live In and The Shade of the Moon.

The Drowned Cities is a 2012 young adult novel by Paolo Bacigalupi set in a post-apocalyptic future. The book is a sequel to Ship Breaker.

The Drowned World is a 1962 science fiction novel by British writer J. G. Ballard. The novel depicts a post-apocalyptic future in which global warming has caused the majority of the Earth to become uninhabitable. The story follows a team of scientists researching ongoing environmental developments in a flooded, abandoned London. The novel is an expansion of a novella of the same title first published in Science Fiction Adventures magazine in January 1962, Vol. 4, No. 24.

Earth is a 1990 science fiction novel by American writer David Brin. The book was nominated for the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1991.

Fallen Angels (1991) is a science fiction novel by American science fiction authors Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn published by Jim Baen. The winner of 1992 Prometheus Award, the novel was written as a tribute to science fiction fandom, and includes many of its well-known figures, legends, and practices. It also champions modern technology and heaps scorn upon its critics - budget cutting politicians, fringe environmentalists and the forces of ignorance.

Fifty Degrees Below (2005) is the second book in the hard science fiction Science in the Capital trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. It directly follows the events of Forty Signs of Rain, with a greater focus on character Frank Vanderwal, and his decision to remain at the National Science Foundation, following the earlier novel’s superstorm and devastating flood of Washington D.C.

Flight Behavior is a 2012 novel by Barbara Kingsolver. It is her seventh novel, a New York Times Bestseller, and was declared "Best book of the year" by the Washington Post and USA Today.

Floodland is a children's fantasy novel by Marcus Sedgwick, published on 2 March 2000 by Orion Children's Books. Floodland won the Branford Boase Award in 2001 for an outstanding first published novel.

Forty Signs of Rain (2004) is the first book in the hard science fiction "Science in the Capital" trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. Robinson has been nicknamed the "Master of Disaster" for his description of natural disasters based partly on the contents of this book.

Life As We Knew It is a young adult science fiction novel by American author Susan Beth Pfeffer, first published in 2006 by Harcourt Books. It is the first book in The Last Survivors series, followed by The Dead and the Gone. When an asteroid hits the moon and brings it closer to Earth, life in Northeastern Pennsylvania will never be the same again for Miranda and her family. The lack of food and extreme cold provides major threats to their survival.

The Man with the Compound Eyes is a Taiwanese novel by Wu Ming-Yi. The novel was first published in Taiwan in 2011 by Summer Festival Press. In 2013 it became Wu's first novel to be translated into English and was released simultaneously in the UK and in the USA. Before publication an extract of the novel was published in the online literary journal Asymptote.

The Ministry for the Future is a cli-fi novel by American science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson published in 2020. Set in the near future, the novel follows a subsidiary body, established under the Paris Agreement, whose mission is to advocate for the world's future generations of citizens as if their rights are as valid as the present generation's. While they pursue various ambitious projects, the effects of climate change are determined to be the most consequential. The plot primarily follows Mary Murphy, the head of the titular Ministry for the Future, and Frank May, an American aid worker traumatized by experiencing a deadly heat wave in India. Many chapters are devoted to other characters' accounts of future events, as well as their ideas about ecology, economics, and other subjects.

Oryx and Crake is a 2003 novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. She has described the novel as speculative fiction and adventure romance, rather than pure science fiction, because it does not deal with things "we can't yet do or begin to do", yet goes beyond the amount of realism she associates with the novel form. It focuses on a lone character called Snowman, who finds himself in a bleak situation with only creatures called Crakers to keep him company. The reader learns of his past, as a boy called Jimmy, and of genetic experimentation and pharmaceutical engineering that occurred under the purview of Jimmy's peer, Glenn "Crake".

The Overstory is a novel by Richard Powers published in 2018 by W. W. Norton & Company. It is Powers' twelfth novel. The book is about five trees whose unique life experiences with nine Americans bring them together to address the destruction of forests. Powers was inspired to write the work while teaching at Stanford University, after he encountered giant redwood trees for the first time.

The Purchase of the North Pole or Topsy-Turvy is an adventure novel by Jules Verne, published in 1889. It is the third and last novel of the Baltimore Gun Club, first appearing in From the Earth to the Moon, and later in Around the Moon, featuring the same characters but set twenty years later.

The Road is a 2006 post-apocalyptic novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. The book details the grueling journey of a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that has destroyed industrial civilization and almost all life. The novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006. The book was adapted into a film of the same name in 2009, directed by John Hillcoat.

Ship Breaker is a 2010 young adult novel by Paolo Bacigalupi set in a post-apocalyptic future. Human civilization is in decline for ecological reasons. The polar ice caps have melted and New Orleans is underwater. On the Gulf Coast nearby, humanity has reverted to survival mode and a small economy has grown from the scavenging of washed up oil tankers for bits of copper and other valuables.

Sixty Days and Counting (2007) is the third book in the hard science fiction Science in the Capital trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. It directly follows the events of Fifty Degrees Below, beginning just after the election of character Phil Chase to the White House. It follows the previous novel's deep freeze of the area surrounding Washington D.C. and details the remediation of the climate in the United States and around the world.

Solar is a novel by author Ian McEwan, first published on 18 March 2010 by Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Random House. It is a satire about a jaded Nobel-winning physicist whose dysfunctional personal life and cynical ambition see him pursuing a solar-energy based solution for climate change.

Something New Under the Sun is a 2021 novel by American writer Alexandra Kleeman. The novel takes place in the near future in which California has been rendered nearly uninhabitable by climate change.

State of Fear is a 2004 techno-thriller novel by Michael Crichton, his fourteenth under his own name and twenty-fourth overall, in which eco-terrorists plot mass murder to publicize the danger of global warming. Despite being a work of fiction, the book contains many graphs and footnotes, two appendices, and a 20-page bibliography in support of Crichton's beliefs about global warming. Many climate scientists, science journalists, environmental groups, and science advocacy organisations dispute the presented views as being error-filled and distorted.

The Stone Gods is a 2007 novel by Jeanette Winterson. It is mainly a post apocalyptic love story concerned with corporate control of government, the harshness of war, and the dehumanization that technology brings, among other themes. The novel is self-referential, where later characters in the story find and read earlier sections of the book itself, and where certain sets of characters’ story arcs repeat, particularly those of a Robo sapiens named Spike and her reluctant human companion, Billie. This technique sets the book in the postmodernist genre, though it is mainly used to warn against history’s tendency to repeat itself, as well as humanity’s inability to learn from past mistakes, even when these mistakes repeat across history, planets, and their respective evolutionary timelines.

Termination Shock is a science fiction novel by American writer Neal Stephenson, published in 2021. Major themes include the climate change, global flooding, and pandemics. The book is set in a near-future Earth where climate change has significantly altered human society; it can be considered part of the climate fiction subgenre.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is a 1965 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1965. Like many of Dick's novels, it utilizes an array of science fiction concepts and explores the ambiguous slippage between reality and unreality. It is one of Dick's first works to explore religious themes.

Time of the Great Freeze is a science fiction novel by American author Robert Silverberg, first published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1964. The novel concerns a group of explorers, living in an underground city somewhere in North America three hundred years after an environmental catastrophe has triggered a new Ice Age. They decide to leave their haven after making contact with London via radio transmissions. Once on the surface, they set out across the mostly frozen wasteland of North America, and eventually across the icy surface of the Atlantic Ocean, and along the way encounter descendants of survivors of the original catastrophe who were unable to seek refuge underground.

Walkaway is a 2017 science fiction novel by Cory Doctorow, published by Head of Zeus and Tor Books.

The Water Knife is a 2015 science fiction novel by Paolo Bacigalupi. It is Bacigalupi's sixth novel, and is based on his short story, The Tamarisk Hunter, first published in the news magazine High Country News. It takes place in the near future, where drought brought on by climate change has devastated the Southwestern United States.

The Windup Girl is a biopunk science fiction novel by American writer Paolo Bacigalupi. It was his debut novel and was published by Night Shade Books on September 1, 2009. The novel is set in a future Thailand and covers a number of contemporary issues such as global warming and biotechnology.