When Shells Crumble

by Chris Carlsson

Chris Carlsson is one of the great bards of San Francisco, whose activism and storytelling have reshaped the way we understand our city’s past—and changed its future. When Carlsson offers a vision of urbanism to come, you’d better pay attention.
—Annalee Newitz, author of The Terraformers
and Four Lost A Secret History of the Urban Age


Carlsson invites us to put the imagination back in the revolution. When Shells Crumble is reminder that the path from dystopia to utopia may not be as long as we have feared it to be.
—James R. Tracy, co-author No Fascist USA!
The John Brown Anti Klan Committee and Lessons for Today’s Movements


Futurist and thought provoker Carlsson once again imagines a near-future scenario where disaster spawns opportunities for radical self-reliance. San Francisco and the greater Bay Area are where history, politics, culture and environment create a messy stew of biotech, inequality, activism, and overreaching federal crackdowns. But wait—mysteriously enabled flora and fauna may be allies in the struggle! As with his first novel After the Deluge, Carlsson’s ideas will stay in your mind long after you put down his tale of radicalized plumbers and urban gardeners.
—Laura Lent, retired, formerly Chief of Collections & Technical Services,
San Francisco Public Library


Most dystopian fiction takes the reader to strange new worlds where mutations are large and grotesque. The strength of Chris Carlsson’s When Shells Crumble instead arises from how close its future-world is to our present-day Trumpland realities. Enriched by Carlsson’s deep, sympathetic understanding of San Francisco Bay Area alternative undergrounds, When Shells Crumble brings us into a landscape of martial law and spirited resistance to it, made all the more chilling by how little distance there seems between his imagined nightmare scenario and the near-nightmare we currently inhabit.
—Joseph Matthews, author of The Blast

645 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 9, 2023

About the author

Chris Carlsson, executive director of the multimedia history project "Shaping San Francisco" (foundsf.org), is a writer, publisher, editor and community organizer. He was a founder of the ground-breaking magazine Processed World, and helped launch the monthly bike-ins known as Critical Mass that have spread to five continents and over 300 cities. Carlsson has edited and authored numerous books, including Reclaiming San Francisco: History, Politics, Culture.

Reviews

[Leander McNeely · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chris Carlsson paints a vivid vision of San Francisco under a facist occupation. Chocked full of local lore and far flung concepts, it all comes together in a riveting story of how resistance achieves persistence in a rapidly deterorating political and environmental climate.