Another week, another Sunday spent on short fiction.  Lately, I’ve been planning to get back to my monthly online short stories, and I think I have a solid idea to run with.

The Reclaimers

As my more dedicated readers would know, this is an idea I’ve been playing with for a few weeks now.  While I feel the concept is both topical and vital, I’ve struggled with the format, having originally intended to write a single short story on the subject, then expand to a novel.  Now, I think I finally have it.

The Reclaimers will be a series of short stories posted here, to my website.  The stories will take place in a dystopian late-21st century in which climate change has dramatically altered our planet, and the way humans live their daily lives.  Amid rising seas and carbon dioxide levels, acidifying oceans and soaring global temperatures, food shortages and the constant threat of extreme weather events, the tone is understandably grim.  By this point, the bulk of human efforts are channeled into a constant struggle to ensure the survival of our species, while working desperately to undue the damage done to our planet before it’s too late.  However, I feel there is also a sense of hope, not only in the efforts to undue past mistakes, but in how man finds new ways to cope with changing conditions on Earth.  Though the characters’ lives may be harsh compared to our relatively comfortable lives today, I hope readers can take some comfort in the thought that, even if we fail to act in time to thwart global warming, our adaptability will allow future generations to find new ways to survive.

Each story will focus on a single character, exploring their background as well as the details of their daily life, showing how each one copes with the realities they face.  Currently, I have plans for four stories, though I hope to have at least five complete before the first is posted.  Excluding Rayne (formerly titled The Panel, which I’ve mentioned before), here’s what I have so far:

Elder

The first story in the Reclaimer series will focus on Elder Maliscz: an African American scientist in his early thirties, living in a house on stilts in shallow water off the coast of Estonia.  By this point, rising sea levels have dramatically changed the Baltic region; Estonia is now a narrow peninsula, and the former capital of Estonia, Tallinn, lies underwater off the coast of the peninsula, not far from Elder’s home.

Elder works as a marine agrobiologist: a scientist specializing in finding new ways to feed a hungry world.  The story will explore the nature of his work off the Baltic coast, as well as his past growing up in sweltering, overcrowded cities in the United States.

Ingrid

The third story (after Rayne) takes a more hopeful tone.  Ingrid follows the daily life of the eponymous researcher, living in seclusion on Svalbard.  A botanist of Norwegian descent, Ingrid was part of the staff assigned to the Global Seed Vault: a real-world agricultural seed repository buried in the permafrost on Svalbard.  Now an old woman, the story recounts Ingrid’s long life alone after the vault was abandoned.  As the ice on Svalbard began to melt, the vast trove of seeds held in the vault were compromised.  Rather than leaving them to rot, she instead began planting them, eventually building makeshift greenhouses along the nearby hillside.

By the 2090s, Ingrid tends a vast and diverse garden composed of a staggering variety of fruits and vegetables, and subsists off the garden, enjoying something of a symbiotic relationship with the plants she saved.

Story 4

An as-yet untitled story, the fourth story will detail the grim realities of living in one of Earth’s overcrowded cities.  The story will follow the daily life of a “climate refugee”: an elderly man or woman forced to leave their island nation as their home was surrendered to the rising sea.

That’s all I have for the moment.  As I said, I hope to have five stories ready before the first is posted, so I’ll need to decide on a fifth plot line.  Keep checking back, and I will keep you all updated.  Until then, as always, dare to dream.