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ECO24: The Year's Best Speculative Ecofiction
“A triumph. 23 stellar tales offering creative and varied takes on the book’s themes. Every entry is equal parts thought-provoking, insightful, and impactful.” — Publishers Weekly Starred Review
A must-read annual showcase of the best nature-based science fiction and fantasy short stories published around the world every year.
Featuring works by rising stars and established names, this anthology is an exploration of humanity’s deep relationships with other species and of our communal fears, grief, and passion as we try to protect our natural world—all told through the lens of the fantastic.
Ranging from literary science fiction and magical realism to dark fantasy and climate fiction, the stories form a unique snapshot of how some of the most brilliant and imaginative authors writing today are engaging with this extraordinary time in Earth’s natural history.
The inaugural edition, selected by award-winning editor and anthologist Marissa van Uden and a team of passionate ecofiction judges, features works by Eugen Bacon, E. Catherine Tobler, Hiron Ennes, K-Ming Chang, Kay Vaindal, Kelsea Yu, Renan Bernardo, and many other brilliant authors.
- GenresAnthologies
312 pages, Paperback
First published November 21, 2025
4 people are currently reading
53 people want to read
About the author
Marissa Van Uden
24 books34 followersMarissa van Uden is an editor and writer from Aotearoa-New Zealand who now lives in rural Vermont, in a little cabin in the woods. She is the editor of The Off-Season: An Anthology of Coastal New Weird (Dark Matter Ink, 2024) and the Apex Strange Microfiction anthologies. She is also the EiC of the imprint Violet Lichen Books and an associate editor and interviewer for Apex Magazine.
Her fiction has appeared in Dark Matter Magazine, Zero Dark Thirty, Los Suelos, and Vastarien Literary Journal. She loves animals, wild things, and weird horror.
Her fiction has appeared in Dark Matter Magazine, Zero Dark Thirty, Los Suelos, and Vastarien Literary Journal. She loves animals, wild things, and weird horror.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 16, 2025
I did not realize that there is enough Sci-fi and horror fiction on the theme of ecology to fill a yearś best anthology, but it is better than that. Eco24 is filled to the brim with powerful and entertaining stories. Speculative fiction is uniquely positioned to explore the nature of our fragile relationship to the only planet in the cosmos that we depend on for life. The fantastic Marissa Van Uden has built a collection of stories that demand attention and warn of futures we can still avoid, if we listen. A must-read.
So I am not going to go super deep, except to highlight some of my favorite stories here. I enjoyed pretty much everything I read, but these were the stand-outs.
A strange but powerful story The Water Runner by Eugen Bacon had a novel’s worth of ideas and creative energy. “The job in area C was suicide; What made a father of seven kill himself? Everything. In this waterless world that paid in credits that never lasted but dissolved unstretched in a grueling economy - everything. One simply lost faith. Even though the father was outwardly perfect, rigamortis in a fetal curl of dying agony, she had to say no. The man had swallowed rust remover. His water compromised.” Damn
Time travel exploring a look at the wake of our culture…Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackened Husk of a Planet By Adeline Wong: “Open loop time dynamics says the moment you leave here, the time plane changes. It folds around you, for you, based on how you experience and your observations inform your future actions they will have been.”
In the category of gruesome and bothered me the most…Bodies by Cat McMahan “That our plant we only produce one kind of chicken; But diogenis ten. Sometime in the early 21st century, a man genetically engineered a featherless chicken, one that was fat and lazy and couldn't regulate its own temperature. A lack of feathers saved on cooling costs. Then in the 20 thirties they made it leaner the new angle was that it was healthier to eat, clean to slaughter. in 2040 they removed the synrinx at the bottom of its trachea, it's voice box and genetically modified it to require forty percent less chicken feed it couldn't wail or want.”
As a 30-year vegan and an Animal liberationist, this story gave me fix feelings and the hee-bee-jee-bees. Good stuff with several ethical issues to ponder.
The story Pig House by Kay Vaindal was very evocative and at times reminded me of a Brian Evenson story. ¨ When the power goes out, whole cities die. Your rebreather stops pulling oxygen and if it zeroes before you can change it, suffocation. He gave into your lungs the useless air. Deep breath, nothing. And another and another period aunt Beth died that way when Rochester went out. That was the fifteenth biggest one in the states - Rochester. ¨
In the fictionalizing solutions category, I enjoyed The Plasticity of Being by Renan Bernardo. “Once Upon a time, Verdita was the future; The bastion of sustainability and green technology aligned with social and environmental responsibility, a powerful Brazilian then global force to correct everything that was wrong with the world. And indeed they showed what they were all about. In a decade their projects of reforestation employed millions of micro drones in the Amazon rainforest, with tech they healed the damaged soil, planted new trees, and rescued animals during fires all the time leaving patterns of what they were doing, so they could improve themselves over time and avoid catastrophes.”
So here is the point, Eco24 is a harbinger, willed with warnings from diverse authors, styles, and locations. I am excited to read future editions and hope the world starts to listen.
So I am not going to go super deep, except to highlight some of my favorite stories here. I enjoyed pretty much everything I read, but these were the stand-outs.
A strange but powerful story The Water Runner by Eugen Bacon had a novel’s worth of ideas and creative energy. “The job in area C was suicide; What made a father of seven kill himself? Everything. In this waterless world that paid in credits that never lasted but dissolved unstretched in a grueling economy - everything. One simply lost faith. Even though the father was outwardly perfect, rigamortis in a fetal curl of dying agony, she had to say no. The man had swallowed rust remover. His water compromised.” Damn
Time travel exploring a look at the wake of our culture…Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackened Husk of a Planet By Adeline Wong: “Open loop time dynamics says the moment you leave here, the time plane changes. It folds around you, for you, based on how you experience and your observations inform your future actions they will have been.”
In the category of gruesome and bothered me the most…Bodies by Cat McMahan “That our plant we only produce one kind of chicken; But diogenis ten. Sometime in the early 21st century, a man genetically engineered a featherless chicken, one that was fat and lazy and couldn't regulate its own temperature. A lack of feathers saved on cooling costs. Then in the 20 thirties they made it leaner the new angle was that it was healthier to eat, clean to slaughter. in 2040 they removed the synrinx at the bottom of its trachea, it's voice box and genetically modified it to require forty percent less chicken feed it couldn't wail or want.”
As a 30-year vegan and an Animal liberationist, this story gave me fix feelings and the hee-bee-jee-bees. Good stuff with several ethical issues to ponder.
The story Pig House by Kay Vaindal was very evocative and at times reminded me of a Brian Evenson story. ¨ When the power goes out, whole cities die. Your rebreather stops pulling oxygen and if it zeroes before you can change it, suffocation. He gave into your lungs the useless air. Deep breath, nothing. And another and another period aunt Beth died that way when Rochester went out. That was the fifteenth biggest one in the states - Rochester. ¨
In the fictionalizing solutions category, I enjoyed The Plasticity of Being by Renan Bernardo. “Once Upon a time, Verdita was the future; The bastion of sustainability and green technology aligned with social and environmental responsibility, a powerful Brazilian then global force to correct everything that was wrong with the world. And indeed they showed what they were all about. In a decade their projects of reforestation employed millions of micro drones in the Amazon rainforest, with tech they healed the damaged soil, planted new trees, and rescued animals during fires all the time leaving patterns of what they were doing, so they could improve themselves over time and avoid catastrophes.”
So here is the point, Eco24 is a harbinger, willed with warnings from diverse authors, styles, and locations. I am excited to read future editions and hope the world starts to listen.
November 30, 2025
ECO24 consists of 23 stories from a staggering 21 different venues, with only Clarkesworld and Strange Horizons represented twice. The anthology doesn’t publish word counts, but a few of the original magazines do, and the entries fall predominantly within the short story range, the longest approaching 7,000 words and the shortest just a hair under 2,000. It’s also being released by a fairly new imprint, Violet Lichen Books, a sister imprint of Apex Book Company that styles itself as home for dark, literary, and weird books, with a focus on “speculative ecofiction, Weird and New Weird, and moody science fiction with uniquely memorable characters.”
Readers of Apex Magazine will recognize the overall vibe here. And while Apex can sometimes be a touch too grotesque for my tastes, they publish beautiful stories and regularly have entries landing on my annual favorites list. Similarly, while ECO24 is sometimes a bit darker or weirder than I prefer, it’s certainly not an anthology that’s going to sit back on depressing worldbuilding and call it a job well done.
While I review a lot of short fiction, this is actually my first time reviewing a Year’s Best anthology, so be patient while I find my bearings. That said, the first thing I’m looking for in any anthology is a story (ideally more than one) that makes me want to go find friends to shove it at. In ECO24, I got that in the form of A Seder in Siberia by Louis Evans. Originally published by Grist—a climate news organization that is not predominantly speculative—I wouldn’t have even known it existed without the anthology reprint. And it’s a wonderful story, with the layers slowly peeling back on family drama and family sins, all intertwined with a religious ritual that both echoes and reinforces the contemporary narrative. This one’s a gem on multiple levels, and it’s one of those stories that on its own make me glad I have picked up the anthology.
There are a couple other excellent tales from more familiar outlets whose reprints in ECO24 forced me to take a well-deserved second look. While I’ve enjoyed Renan Bernardo’s work in the past, The Plasticity of Being looked like one of those “see how bad the world could be” stories that I often dislike. Instead, it’s a remarkably nuanced and character-focused look at a world in which technological advancement allows people to survive by eating plastic. The lead initially runs PR for the technology, despite objections from her mother, only later returning to those modified people and finding a complicated combination of responses that make the whole thing feel remarkably real.
To Drive the Cold Winter Away by E. Catherine Tobler is another that hadn’t caught my eye when initially published in Strange Horizons, and I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it here. It’s an atmospheric, almost dreamlike piece in which the lead returns to her childhood home in hopes of beginning a project of rewilding the land. But while her sharp frustration with how humanity has scarred the natural ecosystem periodically bubbles to the surface, this is less an angry piece about environmental degradation and more a beautiful, mythic tale about setting out on a path that’s bigger than just humanity.
While these stories are the standouts, they’re far from the only looks at their major themes. ECO24 has no explicit groupings of stories, but the ordering tends to cluster small selections of tales that take similar approaches. “The Plasticity of Being,” for instance, is immediately followed by another story about poverty and microplastics, Steph Kwiatkowski’s Batter and Pearl. And “To Drive the Cold Winter Away” is preceded by another striking, vibe-heavy tale of magic and transformation in Kelsea Yu’s Skittering Within. In fact, the latter couplet opens a run of five straight that feel more mythic than scientific, and the anthology returns to the strangely magical transformation theme—on the whole, one of its most consistently compelling subjects—in the finale, E.M. Linden’s Mangrove Daughter. It’s a very nice balance that keeps the anthology as a whole feeling cohesive without ever feeling one-note. There are several approaches to almost every theme, and there’s never a point where it just feels like the same thing over and over. Just because they’re all ecologically-driven doesn’t mean they all have to be hard sci-fi tales of climate doom.
The groupings aren’t always clear, but there are often throughlines connecting one story to others around it. A set of six consecutive stories covering roughly the second quarter of the anthology includes a tale about ghosts, war, and trans identity (Nika Murphy’s The Ghost Tenders of Chernobyl), a sci-fi dog story that’s also a friendly-bot story (Swarm X1048 — Ethological Field Report: Canis Lupus Familiaris, “6” by F.E. Choe), a piece from the perspective of a clone with limited privacy rights facing a lot of discrimination (Bodies by Cat McMahan), and a small handful from the perspective of those still living after Earth’s surface has gotten much less livable. They come from different subgenres and focus on different themes, but all six include characters seeing a world of destruction and turning their attention to one thing—a project, a person, a fascination—that gives them focus, and perhaps a bit of hope. Some of them are designed to tug on your heartstrings (sci-fi readers do love them some dog stories), whereas others feature much less sympathetic leads, but they’re interesting to consider as a group of quite different tales that set out in such different directions that yet have that major thread of commonality. For me, it’s “Bodies” with the emotional and thematic depth to really stand above the crowd, but all six are well put-together, with something to offer the right audience.
Interspersed in the anthology are a scattering of ecological dark fantasies, the obligatory tale of climate refugees, and even a couple that abandon the terrestrial setting for tales in other worlds. Parasite’s Grief by Katharine Tyndall is fascinating story from the perspective of alien creatures with a strange lifecycle that evokes meditations on grief, guilt, and dependence, and The Colonists by Jennifer Hudak is an alien encounter tale that grabs the reader’s attention early and never lets it go in building to the inevitable conclusion. Every story hits the ecological theme, but it’s extremely far from a one-note anthology.
Of course, as someone who read a lot of short fiction in 2024, I have my own opinions about what was truly the best of the year. Dan Musgrave’s “A Move to a New Country” was one of my favorites and would’ve fit wonderfully alongside other tight family tales involving involuntary relocation (like “A Seder in Siberia”). Leah Andelsmith’s “Within the Seed Lives the Fruit” would’ve paired perfectly with the magical realism-flavored transformation stories like “Skittering Within” or “To Drive the Cold Winter Away.” Then again, both of those stories were published in Reckoning, and including both would’ve given the publication more entries than any other source of fiction anthologized here. I may quibble about which Reckoning story was truly the best of the year, but the anthology’s diversity—both of original publishers and of varied approaches to the major theme—is one of its biggest strengths, and it would have been undercut by leaning too heavily on any one venue.
Another thing I love about this anthology is the inclusion of a 15-item Recommended Reading section at the end. As of yet, I’ve only read two of the fifteen included, so I can’t comment much on the quality of recommendations—even if I grouse slightly about not seeing “A Move to a New Country”—but the additional recommendations come from sources just as varied as the ones that made it into the anthology, and for fans of the curation of ECO24, the list will undoubtedly be a rich source of further reading.
On the whole, Marissa van Uden’s tastes lean a little darker and stranger than mine do, so ECO24 isn’t loaded front-to-back with Stuff Tar Vol Likes. However, the entries are invariably well-crafted and often beautiful. Even when they’re not my thing, it’s clear that they’re somebody’s thing. Combine that with the balance of unity and diversity in the anthology’s theming, the remarkable range of sources, and a trio of fantastic entries that I never would have otherwise read, and this is an anthology that was exciting to read and is easy to recommend.
16/20
Readers of Apex Magazine will recognize the overall vibe here. And while Apex can sometimes be a touch too grotesque for my tastes, they publish beautiful stories and regularly have entries landing on my annual favorites list. Similarly, while ECO24 is sometimes a bit darker or weirder than I prefer, it’s certainly not an anthology that’s going to sit back on depressing worldbuilding and call it a job well done.
While I review a lot of short fiction, this is actually my first time reviewing a Year’s Best anthology, so be patient while I find my bearings. That said, the first thing I’m looking for in any anthology is a story (ideally more than one) that makes me want to go find friends to shove it at. In ECO24, I got that in the form of A Seder in Siberia by Louis Evans. Originally published by Grist—a climate news organization that is not predominantly speculative—I wouldn’t have even known it existed without the anthology reprint. And it’s a wonderful story, with the layers slowly peeling back on family drama and family sins, all intertwined with a religious ritual that both echoes and reinforces the contemporary narrative. This one’s a gem on multiple levels, and it’s one of those stories that on its own make me glad I have picked up the anthology.
There are a couple other excellent tales from more familiar outlets whose reprints in ECO24 forced me to take a well-deserved second look. While I’ve enjoyed Renan Bernardo’s work in the past, The Plasticity of Being looked like one of those “see how bad the world could be” stories that I often dislike. Instead, it’s a remarkably nuanced and character-focused look at a world in which technological advancement allows people to survive by eating plastic. The lead initially runs PR for the technology, despite objections from her mother, only later returning to those modified people and finding a complicated combination of responses that make the whole thing feel remarkably real.
To Drive the Cold Winter Away by E. Catherine Tobler is another that hadn’t caught my eye when initially published in Strange Horizons, and I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it here. It’s an atmospheric, almost dreamlike piece in which the lead returns to her childhood home in hopes of beginning a project of rewilding the land. But while her sharp frustration with how humanity has scarred the natural ecosystem periodically bubbles to the surface, this is less an angry piece about environmental degradation and more a beautiful, mythic tale about setting out on a path that’s bigger than just humanity.
While these stories are the standouts, they’re far from the only looks at their major themes. ECO24 has no explicit groupings of stories, but the ordering tends to cluster small selections of tales that take similar approaches. “The Plasticity of Being,” for instance, is immediately followed by another story about poverty and microplastics, Steph Kwiatkowski’s Batter and Pearl. And “To Drive the Cold Winter Away” is preceded by another striking, vibe-heavy tale of magic and transformation in Kelsea Yu’s Skittering Within. In fact, the latter couplet opens a run of five straight that feel more mythic than scientific, and the anthology returns to the strangely magical transformation theme—on the whole, one of its most consistently compelling subjects—in the finale, E.M. Linden’s Mangrove Daughter. It’s a very nice balance that keeps the anthology as a whole feeling cohesive without ever feeling one-note. There are several approaches to almost every theme, and there’s never a point where it just feels like the same thing over and over. Just because they’re all ecologically-driven doesn’t mean they all have to be hard sci-fi tales of climate doom.
The groupings aren’t always clear, but there are often throughlines connecting one story to others around it. A set of six consecutive stories covering roughly the second quarter of the anthology includes a tale about ghosts, war, and trans identity (Nika Murphy’s The Ghost Tenders of Chernobyl), a sci-fi dog story that’s also a friendly-bot story (Swarm X1048 — Ethological Field Report: Canis Lupus Familiaris, “6” by F.E. Choe), a piece from the perspective of a clone with limited privacy rights facing a lot of discrimination (Bodies by Cat McMahan), and a small handful from the perspective of those still living after Earth’s surface has gotten much less livable. They come from different subgenres and focus on different themes, but all six include characters seeing a world of destruction and turning their attention to one thing—a project, a person, a fascination—that gives them focus, and perhaps a bit of hope. Some of them are designed to tug on your heartstrings (sci-fi readers do love them some dog stories), whereas others feature much less sympathetic leads, but they’re interesting to consider as a group of quite different tales that set out in such different directions that yet have that major thread of commonality. For me, it’s “Bodies” with the emotional and thematic depth to really stand above the crowd, but all six are well put-together, with something to offer the right audience.
Interspersed in the anthology are a scattering of ecological dark fantasies, the obligatory tale of climate refugees, and even a couple that abandon the terrestrial setting for tales in other worlds. Parasite’s Grief by Katharine Tyndall is fascinating story from the perspective of alien creatures with a strange lifecycle that evokes meditations on grief, guilt, and dependence, and The Colonists by Jennifer Hudak is an alien encounter tale that grabs the reader’s attention early and never lets it go in building to the inevitable conclusion. Every story hits the ecological theme, but it’s extremely far from a one-note anthology.
Of course, as someone who read a lot of short fiction in 2024, I have my own opinions about what was truly the best of the year. Dan Musgrave’s “A Move to a New Country” was one of my favorites and would’ve fit wonderfully alongside other tight family tales involving involuntary relocation (like “A Seder in Siberia”). Leah Andelsmith’s “Within the Seed Lives the Fruit” would’ve paired perfectly with the magical realism-flavored transformation stories like “Skittering Within” or “To Drive the Cold Winter Away.” Then again, both of those stories were published in Reckoning, and including both would’ve given the publication more entries than any other source of fiction anthologized here. I may quibble about which Reckoning story was truly the best of the year, but the anthology’s diversity—both of original publishers and of varied approaches to the major theme—is one of its biggest strengths, and it would have been undercut by leaning too heavily on any one venue.
Another thing I love about this anthology is the inclusion of a 15-item Recommended Reading section at the end. As of yet, I’ve only read two of the fifteen included, so I can’t comment much on the quality of recommendations—even if I grouse slightly about not seeing “A Move to a New Country”—but the additional recommendations come from sources just as varied as the ones that made it into the anthology, and for fans of the curation of ECO24, the list will undoubtedly be a rich source of further reading.
On the whole, Marissa van Uden’s tastes lean a little darker and stranger than mine do, so ECO24 isn’t loaded front-to-back with Stuff Tar Vol Likes. However, the entries are invariably well-crafted and often beautiful. Even when they’re not my thing, it’s clear that they’re somebody’s thing. Combine that with the balance of unity and diversity in the anthology’s theming, the remarkable range of sources, and a trio of fantastic entries that I never would have otherwise read, and this is an anthology that was exciting to read and is easy to recommend.
16/20
December 26, 2025
ECO24: The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction, edited by Marissa van Uden, does what it says on the cover, bringing together 23 high-quality short stories considering the future of the natural world, that came out within a set timeframe.
As with any anthology, I had favourites that will particularly stick with me and maybe even influence my own writing, and I was able to group many of the stories under broad subthemes, some of which I’ve appreciated in my previous reading.
The most effective stories, for me, came under the theme of social commentary on novel solutions to environmental decline. These stories ask: who bears the brunt of these innovations, and who gets to carry on as before?
The Plasticity of Being, by Renan Bernardo, is an especially striking example of this subtheme. A company has developed a solution to both plastic pollution and world hunger: an enzyme that enables people to digest plastic. As you might have guessed, though, the rich still get to enjoy their food. It’s fallen upon the residents of a Brazilian favela to literally eat rubbish, making for disturbing scenes.
Other stories on this theme that especially stood out to me were Bodies, by Cat McMahan, where the cloning of chickens has helped address food supply issues, but the cloned humans who work at the chicken plant are treated as second-class citizens, and Love, Scotland, by E.M. Faulds, where refugees find initial employment harvesting mushrooms that consume e-waste.
While the labours portrayed in Love, Scotland are arduous and physically risky, the story also has room for optimism and joy, bringing us to another subtheme that caught my attention: glimmers of hope at the end of the world (which I also enjoy across Katy Winhurst’s work).
My other favourite ECO24 stories in this vein were In the Field, by Shelly Jones, where a human researcher continues to send a droid out to interview people despite their repeated failure to find anyone to interview following a nuclear event, and The Last Library, by Joshua Jones Lofflin, where the two remaining staff members at a sinking library give away its books in order to preserve the knowledge it contained. Both of these stories are stark and sad, yet also portray humans refusing to completely give in to despair, adding an uplifting note.
Another welcome subtheme echoed in Katy Wimhurst’s stories, as well as some of those in Spread: Tales of Deadly Flora, edited by R.A. Clarke, is that of humans quite literally becoming one with nature. My imagination was particularly captured by Skittering Within, by Kelsea Yu, where a young girl grows up with an extraordinary affinity with crabs, and The Ghost Tenders of Chornobyl, by Nika Murphy, a stirring story where the titular spirits – not all of them killed at the time, or even by radiation – have the power to direct nature in a healing direction.
As in Love, Scotland, mushrooms are essential to the natural clean-up work in The Ghost Tenders of Chornobyl – and mushrooms are another subtheme I love to read about! They’re also used to brilliant effect in The Colonists, by Jennifer Hudak, where a grove of sentient mushrooms take action against the humans who plan to uproot them as part of their drive to colonise the mushrooms’ planet.
As these mushrooms are a collective, The Colonists also falls under my final subtheme: alien hive minds – an idea that first piqued my interest when I read The Space Between Us, by Doug Johnstone. Meanwhile, in the eerie and moving Swarm X1048…, by F.E. Choe, a throng of alien insects document the short life of a stray puppy born on a dying Earth, and love him despite their scientific brief to observe, inventory, archive, and not interfere.
ECO24 is a moving and thought-provoking collection featuring some of my favourite themes in speculative fiction.
As with any anthology, I had favourites that will particularly stick with me and maybe even influence my own writing, and I was able to group many of the stories under broad subthemes, some of which I’ve appreciated in my previous reading.
The most effective stories, for me, came under the theme of social commentary on novel solutions to environmental decline. These stories ask: who bears the brunt of these innovations, and who gets to carry on as before?
The Plasticity of Being, by Renan Bernardo, is an especially striking example of this subtheme. A company has developed a solution to both plastic pollution and world hunger: an enzyme that enables people to digest plastic. As you might have guessed, though, the rich still get to enjoy their food. It’s fallen upon the residents of a Brazilian favela to literally eat rubbish, making for disturbing scenes.
Other stories on this theme that especially stood out to me were Bodies, by Cat McMahan, where the cloning of chickens has helped address food supply issues, but the cloned humans who work at the chicken plant are treated as second-class citizens, and Love, Scotland, by E.M. Faulds, where refugees find initial employment harvesting mushrooms that consume e-waste.
While the labours portrayed in Love, Scotland are arduous and physically risky, the story also has room for optimism and joy, bringing us to another subtheme that caught my attention: glimmers of hope at the end of the world (which I also enjoy across Katy Winhurst’s work).
My other favourite ECO24 stories in this vein were In the Field, by Shelly Jones, where a human researcher continues to send a droid out to interview people despite their repeated failure to find anyone to interview following a nuclear event, and The Last Library, by Joshua Jones Lofflin, where the two remaining staff members at a sinking library give away its books in order to preserve the knowledge it contained. Both of these stories are stark and sad, yet also portray humans refusing to completely give in to despair, adding an uplifting note.
Another welcome subtheme echoed in Katy Wimhurst’s stories, as well as some of those in Spread: Tales of Deadly Flora, edited by R.A. Clarke, is that of humans quite literally becoming one with nature. My imagination was particularly captured by Skittering Within, by Kelsea Yu, where a young girl grows up with an extraordinary affinity with crabs, and The Ghost Tenders of Chornobyl, by Nika Murphy, a stirring story where the titular spirits – not all of them killed at the time, or even by radiation – have the power to direct nature in a healing direction.
As in Love, Scotland, mushrooms are essential to the natural clean-up work in The Ghost Tenders of Chornobyl – and mushrooms are another subtheme I love to read about! They’re also used to brilliant effect in The Colonists, by Jennifer Hudak, where a grove of sentient mushrooms take action against the humans who plan to uproot them as part of their drive to colonise the mushrooms’ planet.
As these mushrooms are a collective, The Colonists also falls under my final subtheme: alien hive minds – an idea that first piqued my interest when I read The Space Between Us, by Doug Johnstone. Meanwhile, in the eerie and moving Swarm X1048…, by F.E. Choe, a throng of alien insects document the short life of a stray puppy born on a dying Earth, and love him despite their scientific brief to observe, inventory, archive, and not interfere.
ECO24 is a moving and thought-provoking collection featuring some of my favourite themes in speculative fiction.
December 1, 2025
As someone passionate about the environment and strange stories, I knew right away that I wanted to read ECO24: The Year's Best Speculative Ecofiction. Edited by Marissa Von Uden, this anthology launched on November 18th and contains 23 short stories all focusing on nature and on the relationships of humans and other sentient creatures with the natural environment.
I greatly appreciate the diversity of the narratives in this collection. While several stories deal with the current climate crisis at various points set in the near or distant future with touches of both science fiction and fantasy, plenty of stories don’t touch on it at all. For example, Nika Murphy's “The Ghost Tenders of Chornobyl” follows the angry ghost of a Ukrainian soldier killed in the current Russia-Ukraine war who now supervises mushrooms that are slowly cleaning up certain radioactive isotopes. His journey of accepting his death and the slow healing of the environment are powerfully paralleled, and Murphy's vivid descriptions of the setting grant the reader welcome access to places typically unseen.
One of the most striking stories in this collection is far removed from humanity entirely. In Katharine Tyndall's “Parasite's Grief”, the protagonist is a member of a species that enters into a consensual parasitic relationship with its host. Unfortunately, the host, Leucal, is dying, leaving the parasite protagonist to cope with suddenly being alone; a single mind left behind in a body they’ve shared for its entire life. Tyndall's portrayal of grief and loss is fascinating, so touching and yet so completely alien. I never thought I would get teary-eyed over a parasite, but that is the true beauty of ecofiction: authors can reach out and completely recontextualize our view of the natural world through their inventive explorations.
ECO24: The Year's Best Speculative Ecofiction is a strong collection with no misses that will leave you spellbound by the beautiful and terrible forces of nature. Von Uden expertly balances stories that deal with the grief of our current climate crisis and others that are simply adventures into the unknown, with a bit of weird fiction and horror for good measure. If you haven't read any ecofiction before, this anthology is the perfect way to dive into this broad genre.
Review crossposted to the blog: https://imaginatlas.ca/catch-of-the-m...
I greatly appreciate the diversity of the narratives in this collection. While several stories deal with the current climate crisis at various points set in the near or distant future with touches of both science fiction and fantasy, plenty of stories don’t touch on it at all. For example, Nika Murphy's “The Ghost Tenders of Chornobyl” follows the angry ghost of a Ukrainian soldier killed in the current Russia-Ukraine war who now supervises mushrooms that are slowly cleaning up certain radioactive isotopes. His journey of accepting his death and the slow healing of the environment are powerfully paralleled, and Murphy's vivid descriptions of the setting grant the reader welcome access to places typically unseen.
One of the most striking stories in this collection is far removed from humanity entirely. In Katharine Tyndall's “Parasite's Grief”, the protagonist is a member of a species that enters into a consensual parasitic relationship with its host. Unfortunately, the host, Leucal, is dying, leaving the parasite protagonist to cope with suddenly being alone; a single mind left behind in a body they’ve shared for its entire life. Tyndall's portrayal of grief and loss is fascinating, so touching and yet so completely alien. I never thought I would get teary-eyed over a parasite, but that is the true beauty of ecofiction: authors can reach out and completely recontextualize our view of the natural world through their inventive explorations.
ECO24: The Year's Best Speculative Ecofiction is a strong collection with no misses that will leave you spellbound by the beautiful and terrible forces of nature. Von Uden expertly balances stories that deal with the grief of our current climate crisis and others that are simply adventures into the unknown, with a bit of weird fiction and horror for good measure. If you haven't read any ecofiction before, this anthology is the perfect way to dive into this broad genre.
Review crossposted to the blog: https://imaginatlas.ca/catch-of-the-m...
November 18, 2025
I was ridiculously excited to get a sneak peek at ECO24: The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction, edited by Marissa van Uden and published by Violet Lichen Books. The TOC features some of my favorite writers and stories, including several previously featured in my MicroVerse blog.
Revisiting those pieces was a treat; reading a second (or third) time revealed complex layers of storytelling, with fantastic characters and imaginative worlds. The anthology format is a perfect vehicle for these stories, imo, because the themes combine and diverge in ways I might never have considered if I’d only read the pieces separately.
I’d like to rec a few of my absolute favorites, but each story in this anthology is a stand-out. It’s easy to get caught up in the wow-of-the-moment with these stories, but I encourage you to take your time with them—give yourself ample space to consider the deeper meaning and soak up the craft expertise on display. The shortlist of recommended stories is also a great resource if you’re looking for more.
Revisiting those pieces was a treat; reading a second (or third) time revealed complex layers of storytelling, with fantastic characters and imaginative worlds. The anthology format is a perfect vehicle for these stories, imo, because the themes combine and diverge in ways I might never have considered if I’d only read the pieces separately.
I’d like to rec a few of my absolute favorites, but each story in this anthology is a stand-out. It’s easy to get caught up in the wow-of-the-moment with these stories, but I encourage you to take your time with them—give yourself ample space to consider the deeper meaning and soak up the craft expertise on display. The shortlist of recommended stories is also a great resource if you’re looking for more.
January 1, 2026
Those who think all ecofiction has to be either gushy and "crunchy" or tech-heavy and preachy, take note: these stories are not dry or didactic. They are gorgeous and hypnotic, focused on the impact of changing climates and ecologies on people and societies. Although the conditions are often dire (a clear-eyed reflection of our current ecological trajectory), the tone is not one of doomed dystopia. People still love and strive and manage and dream in these stories, and you'll be thinking about them long after you read the last page.
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