New York 2140

By Kim Stanley Robinson,

Book cover of New York 2140

Book description

NOMINATED FOR THE HUGO AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL 2018

'A towering novel' - Guardian

'Relevant and essential' - Bloomberg Businessweek

As the sea level rose, every street became a canal, every skyscraper an island. For the residents of one apartment building in Madison Square, however, New York in the year…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked New York 2140 as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

For me, the worst thing about New York is getting stuck in traffic.

In the New York of 2140, that’s not a problem because rising sea levels have drowned much of Manhattan and motorboats zip through the flooded streets like it’s a high-rise Venice. Future New York is also a city whose residents are coping with the planet’s new reality.

In the midst of climate gloom, it is refreshing to imagine a scenario where New Yorkers can come together through cooperative action to take control of their own future.

My home port, New York City, never stops entertaining me, with endless pockets of culture to explore. Kim Stanley Robinson’s book centers on parts of Manhattan that I know very well, like Madison Square Park, and reimagines them in a Venice-like environment, with most of the city’s streets submerged in water. 

While climate change is clearly at play, this book isn’t all doom-and-gloom. There’s a somewhat quirky cast of characters that all inhabit the same building and include a media star known for her airship escapades and a couple of coders whose disappearance has monumental consequences for the financial industry.…

From Janet's list on novels that wonder about the future.

A Diary in the Age of Water

By Nina Munteanu,

Book cover of A Diary in the Age of Water

Nina Munteanu Author Of Darwin's Paradox

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Writer Ecologist Mother Teacher Explorer

Nina's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

This climate fiction novel follows four generations of women and their battles against a global giant that controls and manipulates Earth’s water. Told mostly through a diary and drawing on scientific observation and personal reflection, Lynna’s story unfolds incrementally, like climate change itself. Her gritty memoir describes a near-future Toronto in the grips of severe water scarcity.

Single mother and limnologist Lynna witnesses disturbing events as she works for the powerful international utility CanadaCorp. Fearing for the welfare of her rebellious teenage daughter, Lynna sets in motion a series of events that tumble out of her control with calamitous consequence. The novel explores identity, relationship, and our concept of what is “normal”—as a nation and an individual—in a world that is rapidly and incomprehensibly changing.

A Diary in the Age of Water

By Nina Munteanu,

What is this book about?

Centuries from now, in a post-climate change dying boreal forest of what used to be northern Canada, Kyo, a young acolyte called to service in the Exodus, discovers a diary that may provide her with the answers to her yearning for Earth’s past—to the Age of Water, when the “Water Twins” destroyed humanity in hatred—events that have plagued her nightly in dreams. Looking for answers to this holocaust—and disturbed by her macabre longing for connection to the Water Twins—Kyo is led to the diary of a limnologist from the time just prior to the destruction. This gritty memoir describes a…


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