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Spring in Portland has brought sunny 70 degree days, but also record-setting snow, hail, and thunderstorms. Combine that with last year's "heat-dome" and 2020's forest fires and it's pretty clear that our years of CO2 emissions, pollution, disregard for our planet, and general hubris have caught up to us. Good ol' mother earth is out for revenge.

There are scientists doing incredible work to find new technologies that will help us cut carbon emissions and there are brilliant, dedicated activists pushing for climate action around the world. I highly recommend that you read about those efforts and get involved if you can. There are great lists of books for educating yourself on the latest in climate science out there. This however is not one of those lists.

With the first signs of climate upheaval already showing themselves, I'm feeling a bit doom and gloom-y. This Earth Day I thought I would broaden my anxieties by considering all the different forms a future eco-crisis could take. The speculative climate fiction titles on this list are staff favorites at Powell's and I've taken the liberty of assigning a rating to each of them based on the feasibility of the eco-future they describe actually coming to pass*.

This is by no means a definitive list. There are hundreds (or thousands) of incredible cli-fi books out there and even more ways an eco-apocalypse could actually play out IRL. Feel free to apply the rating system to your own favorite climate fiction or imagine possible disasters free-form.

* This rating does not reflect the overall quality of the book. Also, I take no responsibility if any of these predictions end up being accurate.

This is the way the world ends…for the last time…It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world’s sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester.

The Fifth Season is a stunning fantasy about how difficult it is to build a sustainable life as disasters (geologic, atmospheric, manmade) continue to compound. Equal parts beautiful and painful, this is a book that’s directly concerned with the ways a self can shatter when confronted with a world that just keeps breaking and societal norms that are well worth abandoning at the end of the world. Intoxicating and bleak, vast and empathetic — I’m glad we got this book before the world ends. — Kelsey F.

Likelihood: The world of The Broken Earth is not ours, but it mirrors the darkest parts of our current society and the darkest possibilities for our future. 4/10

In a parched southern California of the near future, Luz, once the poster child for the country’s conservation movement, and Ray, an army deserter turned surfer, are squatting in a starlet’s abandoned mansion…Holdouts like Ray and Luz subsist on rationed cola and water, and whatever they can loot, scavenge, and improvise.

If anyone can write about the ways the California mythos persists, even past the apocalypse, it’s Claire Vaye Watkins (the daughter of a member of the Manson family). There are abandoned Hollywood homes, former mines turned into towns for those looking to hide from the sun, a cult-like sand dune colony; the characters grapple with the bleak reality of this newly desiccated landscape alongside issues of fame and addiction and loss and love (as well as the titular gold and citrus). Watkins is so, so good at evoking a broken reality in all its splendor and horror. — Kelsey F.

Likelihood: Given the most recent drought news, this feels less like cli-fi and more like cli-fact. 10/10

What happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution?

The sea levels have risen, bio-engineered plagues run rampant, foods are going extinct, energy is wound on a spring, and the world is on the cusp of post-human evolution. Truly one of the greatest science fiction settings I have ever read. Windup Girl is a book I’ll never stop recommending. — Sarah R.

Likelihood: The list of foods already facing extinction includes fan favorites like coffee, chocolate, wine, and avocados. And since 1993 the rate at which the seas are rising has doubled. 8/10

Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages.

The world of Parable of the Sower is not a world destroyed by a single event. Rather it is the weight of inaction in the face of economic, environmental, and social disaster that fractures America and leads us to a post-apocalyptic future. Butler was not just one of the powerful and prescient science-fiction writers of the twentieth century, she was one of the best writers of the twentieth century full-stop. — Lucinda G.

Likelihood: Inaction in the face of imminent disaster? No further comments. 10/10

Twenty years ago Lucie Bowen left Marrow Island; along with her mother, she fled the aftermath of an earthquake that compromised the local refinery, killing her father and ravaging the island’s environment…In the company of Station Eleven and California, Marrow Island uses two tense natural disasters to ask tough questions about our choices — large and small.

Written by a Portland local (and former Powell's employee!), Marrow Island is a captivating story of natural disaster, the harms that are done to our planet and the people who live on it, and the choices we each make. Smith's descriptions of the Pacific Northwest are lush and exacting — a love letter to our region's unique ecology. — Emily B.

Likelihood: I mean, we all know "The Big One" is coming eventually. 6/10

Established in 2025, the purpose of the new organization was simple: to advocate for the world's future generations and to protect all living creatures, present and future. It soon became known as the Ministry for the Future, and this is its story.

“Bestseller Robinson (Forty Signs of Rain) again tackles climate change head-on in this gutsy, humane view of a near-future Earth careening toward collapse...Robinson masterfully integrates the practical details of environmental crises and geoengineering projects into a sweeping, optimistic portrait of humanity’s ability to cooperate in the face of disaster...a must-read for anyone worried about the future of the planet.” — Publisher's Weekly

Likelihood: While I too want to believe that climate change will force the globe to finally confront inequity, from our present moment that future feels monumentally out of reach. 7/10

Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, and that unmanned drones fill the sky.

El Akkad's debut novel is a canny exploration of current relations in the Middle East through the lens of an entirely too believable second American Civil War. What does it take to cleave a country in two? What will angry and hurting people do when faced with division, terror, disease, asymmetrical warfare, and poverty? El Akkad's critiques of the West cut deep and true. I highly recommend everything he writes. — Emily B.

(editor's note: for more on El Akkad, read his interview about his most recent book What Strange Paradise)

Likelihood: Uncannily similar to more recent nonfiction books. Minus a couple of believability points, but plus a couple of comfort points, for the 2074 start date. 8/10

Welcome to the not-too-distant future: Japan, having vanished from the face of the earth, is now remembered as “the land of sushi.” Hiruko, its former citizen and a climate refugee herself, has a job teaching immigrant children in Denmark with her invented language Panska (Pan-Scandinavian).

Yoko Tawada has never shied away from the complicated, scary realities of climate change. Most of her books deal with climate disasters in some capacity and Scattered All Over the Earth is no different. Somehow, it manages to charm its way through the dark thought experiment: what if, when the oceans rise, they swallow Japan? What will happen to Japanese people living abroad? How will Japan be remembered? And how will the climate refugees find one another? This is an honestly delightful read about finding friends at the end of the world and the importance of finding a shared language. — Moses M.

Likelihood: That the oceans will continue to rise is a scientific fact. I hope that the ability and desire to find friends and connection even at the end of the world is a human fact. 8/10

A Children’s Bible follows a group of twelve eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their families at a sprawling lakeside mansion. Contemptuous of their parents, the children decide to run away when a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, embarking on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside.

“This somber novel by Millet...is a Lord of the Flies–style tale with a climate-fiction twist...Millet’s allegorical messages are simple...A bleak and righteously angry tale determined to challenge our rationalizations about climate change.” — Publisher's Weekly

Likelihood: While it has never been a fair burden to place on their shoulders, the younger generation's sense of outrage and urgency about the climate disaster may be our best hope for the future. I hope us adults will follow their lead and not the lead of the adults in this parable. 8/10