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Hot Mess: speculative fiction about climate change
A thought-provoking collaborative anthology on the theme of climate change, featuring short stories from RJ Astruc, Rachel Lynn Brody, Miranda Doerfler, Sare Liz Gordy and Eric Sipple, with illustrations by Hannah Werdmuller and cover design by Sarah Hartley.
"She Says Goodbye Tomorrow" by Eric Sipple
As microclimates shift and a once-abundant vineyard withers away, its owner fights to keep her family’s winery and memories alive. How long can she put off moving on?
"Haute Mess" by Rachel Lynn Brody
Even Fashionistas get the climate change blues.
"In Between the Dark and the Light" by Miranda Doerfler
When state-sponsored executions threaten to claim his only daughter, Brett Zerum does everything he can to save her and escape to a new, otherworldly paradise.
"Traditionbus ne Copulate" by Sare Liz Gordy
The Way of the Geonome will eventually call everyone home. But with humans wiped out in the apocalypse, who’s left to answer?
"Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom." by Rachel Lynn Brody
A boy struggles to keep a promise to his father, while his mother shields him from tragedy in an information-saturated age.
"The World Gets Smaller, and Things Get Left Behind" by RJ Astruc
Everyone knew the deluge was coming. Now, tourists at a new Atlantis visit the city that couldn’t be saved.
"She Says Goodbye Tomorrow" by Eric Sipple
As microclimates shift and a once-abundant vineyard withers away, its owner fights to keep her family’s winery and memories alive. How long can she put off moving on?
"Haute Mess" by Rachel Lynn Brody
Even Fashionistas get the climate change blues.
"In Between the Dark and the Light" by Miranda Doerfler
When state-sponsored executions threaten to claim his only daughter, Brett Zerum does everything he can to save her and escape to a new, otherworldly paradise.
"Traditionbus ne Copulate" by Sare Liz Gordy
The Way of the Geonome will eventually call everyone home. But with humans wiped out in the apocalypse, who’s left to answer?
"Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom." by Rachel Lynn Brody
A boy struggles to keep a promise to his father, while his mother shields him from tragedy in an information-saturated age.
"The World Gets Smaller, and Things Get Left Behind" by RJ Astruc
Everyone knew the deluge was coming. Now, tourists at a new Atlantis visit the city that couldn’t be saved.
- GenresClimate Change Fiction
ebook
First published March 18, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 8, 2012
Hot Mess is an anthology of short stories speculating on the effects of climate change on people and earth. Each story is different, with two stories written by Rachel Lynn Brody, but each focusing on the possibilities in our future. Although none of the worlds may be ones that we would want to live on, they aren't as dystopian as can be found elsewhere and in some you might even get a hint as to how things could change if we only made different decisions.
October 26, 2012
Female voices clear and creative - I was as disturbed by the wording of the stories, the emotions hit so hard. Loved the outcomes. The thematic flow of the stories is that in my mind, a porch, a sunny afternoon and a cup of tea is the perfect setting to read a book such as this.
November 29, 2013
This review is also available on Joe Follansbee's blog.
Climate change is relatively unexplored territory in fiction, including speculative fiction, and most of the pioneers in this area have investigated the subject via the novel. Relatively few writers have tackled it with the short story and other short forms. One collection, however, corrects this mistake. Hot Mess: Speculative Fiction About Climate Change, edited by Rachel Lynn Brody, brings together six stories by five writers (including Brody) into a diminutive and intriguing look at how global warming might affect the lives of ordinary people.
The stories range from classic dystopia to allegory to biting satire, all with a warming world as a driving force behind the narrative. The lead story, Eric Sipple’s “She Says Goodbye Tomorrow,” tackles the impact of the warming on winemakers who see the climate slowing killing their legacy, though family tensions play their usual insidious role. Miranda Doerfler’s “In Between the Light and the Dark” demonstrates a frightening outcome to climate change as an opportunity for murderous authoritarianism. And in “Haute Mess,” Brody skewers the fashion industry and commercial enterprise in general, which is ready to appropriate anything, including a climate disaster, to influence the all-important decision of what to put in our armoires.
Over the history of literature, only a few dozen writers, mostly in science fiction, have posited an earth with a different climate than we now know. A small subset of those writers–mostly novelists–are attempting to take the very real changes in earth’s climate as starting points for an exploration of the psychological, political and emotional landscape of a warmed planet. For some reason, speculative fiction writers sometimes recoil from a subject once it morphs from conjecture to reality. And not all of Hot Mess’ stories succeed in shedding light on how humans might adapt. But as an anthology, Hot Mess is an excellent early effort at encouraging other adventurous writers to look at what humanity is facing and explore the options.
Climate change is relatively unexplored territory in fiction, including speculative fiction, and most of the pioneers in this area have investigated the subject via the novel. Relatively few writers have tackled it with the short story and other short forms. One collection, however, corrects this mistake. Hot Mess: Speculative Fiction About Climate Change, edited by Rachel Lynn Brody, brings together six stories by five writers (including Brody) into a diminutive and intriguing look at how global warming might affect the lives of ordinary people.
The stories range from classic dystopia to allegory to biting satire, all with a warming world as a driving force behind the narrative. The lead story, Eric Sipple’s “She Says Goodbye Tomorrow,” tackles the impact of the warming on winemakers who see the climate slowing killing their legacy, though family tensions play their usual insidious role. Miranda Doerfler’s “In Between the Light and the Dark” demonstrates a frightening outcome to climate change as an opportunity for murderous authoritarianism. And in “Haute Mess,” Brody skewers the fashion industry and commercial enterprise in general, which is ready to appropriate anything, including a climate disaster, to influence the all-important decision of what to put in our armoires.
Over the history of literature, only a few dozen writers, mostly in science fiction, have posited an earth with a different climate than we now know. A small subset of those writers–mostly novelists–are attempting to take the very real changes in earth’s climate as starting points for an exploration of the psychological, political and emotional landscape of a warmed planet. For some reason, speculative fiction writers sometimes recoil from a subject once it morphs from conjecture to reality. And not all of Hot Mess’ stories succeed in shedding light on how humans might adapt. But as an anthology, Hot Mess is an excellent early effort at encouraging other adventurous writers to look at what humanity is facing and explore the options.
July 12, 2012
MARK'S REVIEW
Reviewing an anthology of short stories written by different authors is a difficult task, for one has to judge theme, writing style, technique, level of editing, and so forth. I came up with the 4-star rating based upon all those criteria. Judging stories individually would have brought a range of scores from 3 stars to 5 stars. A few of the stories did not interest me, or the writing technique bothered me somewhat. One story in particular needed another pass at editing (in my opinion).
However, I want to use the rest of this review to focus on the positive, for there are a lot of good things to say about these stories. For instance, all of them stuck to the climate change theme very well. Two of the stories use the theme in a subtle way, and because these two stories—“She Says Goodbye Tomorrow” by Eric Sipple and “Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.” by Rachel Lynn Brody—are also written extremely well, they are my favorite, earning 5-stars each (if I were reviewing them individually).
Of those two, though, I have to say that the star of the show is Eric Sipple’s story. It’s also the longest of the group, which isn’t a bad thing whatsoever; it’s actually a good thing. His story grabs you from the first sentence and through a series of shifting scenes doesn’t let you go until the end. It’s detailed but not too much so. The structure (though confusing at first) actually works quite well; however, I didn’t see this fact until long after I finished it, which is another good thing, for he had me thinking about his story long after the last word.
I definitely recommend this anthology if you are concerned about the changing climate of our planet, and even if you aren’t, I still recommend it. It’s a good read that gets your mental gears turning.
Reviewing an anthology of short stories written by different authors is a difficult task, for one has to judge theme, writing style, technique, level of editing, and so forth. I came up with the 4-star rating based upon all those criteria. Judging stories individually would have brought a range of scores from 3 stars to 5 stars. A few of the stories did not interest me, or the writing technique bothered me somewhat. One story in particular needed another pass at editing (in my opinion).
However, I want to use the rest of this review to focus on the positive, for there are a lot of good things to say about these stories. For instance, all of them stuck to the climate change theme very well. Two of the stories use the theme in a subtle way, and because these two stories—“She Says Goodbye Tomorrow” by Eric Sipple and “Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.” by Rachel Lynn Brody—are also written extremely well, they are my favorite, earning 5-stars each (if I were reviewing them individually).
Of those two, though, I have to say that the star of the show is Eric Sipple’s story. It’s also the longest of the group, which isn’t a bad thing whatsoever; it’s actually a good thing. His story grabs you from the first sentence and through a series of shifting scenes doesn’t let you go until the end. It’s detailed but not too much so. The structure (though confusing at first) actually works quite well; however, I didn’t see this fact until long after I finished it, which is another good thing, for he had me thinking about his story long after the last word.
I definitely recommend this anthology if you are concerned about the changing climate of our planet, and even if you aren’t, I still recommend it. It’s a good read that gets your mental gears turning.
November 10, 2013
The handful of stories in Brody's collection clearly have an agenda of raising consciousness of and concern about the implications of climate change. Socially or politically motivated art is tricky: it can succeed in communicating its objectives without necessarily exhibiting the general hallmarks of literary merit. In literary terms, I found Hot Mess a mixed bag. These stores don't always succeed for me even at the propaganda level: a world in which exposure to the sun literally brings instant death is so exaggerated that it almost seems to undercut the urgency of dealing with the real-world problem. The stories that worked best for me generally had a much narrower focus. Eric Sipple's "She Says Goodbye Tomorrow" looks specifically at what climate change could mean for wine growers, and uses that as a lens to look at the difficulties of nurturing romantic relationships. Although I found its chronology a bit confusing, I thought it was generally successful. RJ Astruc's "The World Gets Smaller, and Things Get Left Behind," ponders the fate of Venice's canals and art; it's a bit heavy-handed, but I thought it was effective. The editor's own "Haute Mess" is short and pointed satire about the point at which climate change could threaten our ability to remain a high-tech culture, and her "Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom" examines a troubled child coping with repressed grief with the dubious aid of an artificial intelligence against a background of radical climate change. Both were among the strongest entries.
February 8, 2016
This is a collection of six short stories. The last two stand out as being truly superb stories, the others are less memorable.
She Says Goodbye Tomorrow, is a piece of dry realism. Decades from now a family is losing their vineyard due to changing weather conditions. Haute Mess is a fancy short piece about an item of clothing. In Between the Dark and the Light is a fairly traditional science fiction story. It reminded me of Yevgeny Zamyatin. Actually I don't think it really has anything to do with climate change at all. After this comes Traditionibus Ne Copulate which is a truly bizarre story set after the demise of the humans, when mice have taken over as the dominant species.
Next up is Mom.Mom.Mom.Mom.Mom. I particularly enjoyed this one. It's a little bit like the really good chapter in A Visit From The Goon Squad. The future has a lot of fancy communications and computers, but there's some real problems getting plants to grow. The World Gets Smaller And Things Get Left Behind is set at a time when Venice is underwater. A somewhat philosophical tourist goes diving to see some Botero statues.
Definitely worth a look.
review first appeared at: http://bench-press.blogspot.com.au
She Says Goodbye Tomorrow, is a piece of dry realism. Decades from now a family is losing their vineyard due to changing weather conditions. Haute Mess is a fancy short piece about an item of clothing. In Between the Dark and the Light is a fairly traditional science fiction story. It reminded me of Yevgeny Zamyatin. Actually I don't think it really has anything to do with climate change at all. After this comes Traditionibus Ne Copulate which is a truly bizarre story set after the demise of the humans, when mice have taken over as the dominant species.
Next up is Mom.Mom.Mom.Mom.Mom. I particularly enjoyed this one. It's a little bit like the really good chapter in A Visit From The Goon Squad. The future has a lot of fancy communications and computers, but there's some real problems getting plants to grow. The World Gets Smaller And Things Get Left Behind is set at a time when Venice is underwater. A somewhat philosophical tourist goes diving to see some Botero statues.
Definitely worth a look.
review first appeared at: http://bench-press.blogspot.com.au
March 20, 2012
This is a really fantastic anthology (if I do say so myself) with illustrations for each story. Some of the stories are humorous, some luminous, and each one another poignant essay of what may become of us if our world continues on its present course. Each of the authors are donating a part of their proceeds to the charity of their choice.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews