The prequel novella, Two of All People, and the shocking new climate-fiction novel it introduces, The Dying Party, both ask: What happens when they tell us it’s too late to stop climate change and we are forced to face a near future that will be increasingly hellish, and an end that will come within our lifetimes? The novel answers with two parallel story lines. On the one hand, we have six survivors in 2049, in a residential complex built into the side of Gros Morne. They are the last six people alive on the only piece of habitable land still above water in all of what was once eastern Canada. The prequel kicks off this story line. On the other hand, we have a group of humanity’s richest and most powerful, the super-elite, trying to establish an off-Earth colony for themselves.
The prequel and the novel show in fascinating detail the complex brutality of what having to accept such a fate would mean for human civilization; what it would look like on a global scale, in a local context, and from a variety of personal perspectives. The thrust of the novel, however, is to illustrate the under-appreciated impact that passing the climate change tipping point will have on the human psyche. This is not fanciful speculation about the near and distant future, but the logical extension of the current course of humanity based on extensive research. The novel has the courage to depict the worst-case scenario unflinchingly; it is, therefore, the cautionary tale to end all cautionary tales.
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