Fiction by Jan Underwood
FUNNY LITTLE NOVELS
Climate refugees fleeing an American West turned desert. A German couple trapped in a new European Ice Age. A sensitive young man drafted to fight in the Tar Sands Wars. Rebels persecuted by a dictatorship of the fossil fuel industry. Exploring life in a climate-altered near future, these and other stories are occasionally whimsical, often grim, always deeply human in their response to catastrophe.
"Jan Underwood's apocalyptic vision in these beautifully written stories is both thrilling and disturbing. Her ordinary heroes will resonate with many readers who wonder what lies ahead."
--Jill Kelly, author of When Your Mother Doesn't and Fog of Dead Souls
from the book
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Night, day, night, day. Both were smoky and difficult to distinguish, and I was catching as catch can both sleep and food, the former wherever I found a little niche where I might not be knifed, the latter wherever I could procure it, sometimes, myself, knifing. Mostly I trotted in the streets like a stray dog on quiet paws, not making eye contact. If you made eye contact with the Order Keepers, they might accuse you of something and harass you for the pleasure of it. If you made eye contact with other civilian men, they might find you threatening and aggress against you. If you made eye contact with the preachers, they would try to lure you into the fold. Every corner had its preacher, and every preacher had its fold, they who followed like sheep and who like sheep were sometimes skinned.
"As you travel to the other side of climate change in these elegant and evocative stories, you will reconsider who you are, what you value, and where your place is in the human family."
--Sage Cohen, author of Like the Heart, the World