Shameful secrets where you expect to find them and where you don’t, a past that is never fully the past, a foul political candidate who is nonetheless compelling to a disturbing number of people, and a small Southern town that has to make a decision about what it wants to be.
He’d nearly killed himself half a dozen times. If he’d succeeded in doing it, that would’ve been sacrifice for the greater good, he thought.
After a few times, when he figured out the right amount of electricity to add, he’d put a couple of white mice near the glastique containers, tiny, sweet little things, really, and he regretted it, but science was science. When the vessel shattered and the glowing rain fell, the mice would shiver a little, sit back, look upward, seemingly at peace, as blood emptied out of their ears, eyes, mouths, noses, anuses. They never struggled. 35 noted that it seemed not a bad way to die.
Or sometimes they were indifferent and just turned orange later. But those expired in a couple of weeks.
Or sometimes they screamed tiny little cries and scratched on their eyes and ears before falling over.
A brilliant but arrogant meteorologist, pilot, and occasional Hurricane Hunter.
His twin sister, a bitter, acid-tongued nuclear physicist on the verge of a breakthrough.
Their other sister, an anxious, needling, passive-aggressive, very politically connected right-wing mom.
Her daughter, a progressive activist acutely aware of the flaws in everyone and everything—except herself and her circle.
And one unprecedented storm.
In the near future, climate change has continued unabated, and the media landscape makes it harder than ever to solve problems. Podcasts, streaming, and social media have triumphed utterly, and anyone can be a self-appointed “expert.” People’s attention spans are negligible, half of America sees science as a threat, and populist demagogues have vast audiences. In this world, the sound bite is everything.
When Leonard, the world’s first observed hypercane, forms and threatens the Gulf Coast, can Americans put their differences and distractions aside just this once? Or is it already too late to do anything but laugh bitterly as Earth forces humanity to accept its long-overdue “inheritance”?
The Inheritors: A Climate Fable is a biting, timely satire of anti-intellectualism. It is also rigorously researched climate fiction by an atmospheric scientist and an exploration of generational trauma in families.
Keywords: climate fiction; climate change; social satire; hurricane; hypercane; environmental fiction; science fiction; political fiction; disaster; satire; weather fiction; global warming; near future; dark comedy
