Welcome to the Greenhouse (35 page)

Brian W. Aldiss, OBE, is the author of classics such as
Hothouse
(a 1962 novel about climate change, also known as
The Long Afternoon of Earth), Greybeard,
and
The Malacia Tapestry.
The three novels in his Helliconia trilogy depict an Earthlike planet where seasons last for centuries. He lives in Oxford, England.

Michael Alexander lives in western Oregon and holds degrees in chemistry and pharmacology. He considers the current yelling about climate change this century’s equivalent to the reception of Darwinian evolution one hundred fifty years ago, and fully expects the debate to be continuing one hundred fifty years from now, with both sides pointing and yelling while standing up to their waists in warm water.

Gregory Benford is a professor of physics at UC-Irvine who has published more than thirty books, mostly novels. His award-winning novel
Timescape
occurs against a background of climate change, as do many of his short stories. He has published scientific papers on the capture of carbon dioxide and on the methods described in his story here. He has also consulted with several government agencies on responses to the climate change problem and the coming energy crisis.

Jeff Carlson is the international bestselling author of the
Plague Year
trilogy. To date, his work has been translated into fourteen languages.

He is currently at work on a new standalone thriller. Readers can find free fiction, videos, contests, and more on his website at www.jverse. com.

Paul Di Filippo has sold nearly two hundred short stories and several novels in his thirty-year career to date. His story “Life in the Anthro-pocene,” appearing in the anthology
The Mammoth Book of the End of the World,
considers a Greenhouse Earth scenario in which the planet nonetheless manages to support nine billion people.

Alan Dean Foster’s first stories appeared in
The Arkham Collector
and
Analog
in the late 1960s. His first novel,
The Tar-Aiym Krang,
was published in 1972. It is still in print. His short fiction has appeared in all the major magazines and numerous anthologies. Six collections of his short form work have been published. Foster has written more than 100 books (science fiction, fantasy, mystery, western, historical, contemporary fiction, and also nonfiction) and his work has been translated into more than fifty languages. He is the author of screenplays, radio plays, talking records, and the story for the first
Star Trek
movie.

Joseph Green worked for thirty-seven years in the American space program, six military and thirty-one civilian. At NASA he specialized in preparing fact sheets, brochures, and other semitechnical publications for the general public, explaining complex scientific and engineering concepts in layman’s language. As a part-time freelancer he published five science fiction novels and about seventy-five shorter works. One of his novels,
Star Probe,
examined environmental change from a different perspective, that of fanatics trying to sabotage the American space program in the belief that it wasted resources better devoted to saving Earth. Green has a BA from the University of Alabama, and worked as mill hand, construction worker, and shop supervisor for Boeing before moving to the Kennedy Space Center. He retired as deputy chief of the education office.

George Guthridge has lived in rural Alaska for twenty-eight years, including six in an Eskimo village on a Bering Sea island. He has been nationally honored five times for his work with Alaska Native youth and for having co-created the nation’s most successful college preparatory program for Native Americans. He has sold sixty stories, mostly to such magazines as
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog,
and
Asimov’s,
and has been a Nebula and Hugo Award finalist. In 1997 he and co-author Janet Berliner won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Horror Novel, for
Children of the Dusk.

Matthew Hughes writes science-fantasy in a Jack Vance mode. His latest novels are:
Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn, Template
, and
The Damned Buster).
His short fiction has appeared in
Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Postscripts, Storyteller,
and
Interzone.
He has won the Canadian equivalent of the Edgar, and been shortlisted for the Aurora, Nebula, and Derringer Awards. For thirty years, he was a freelance speechwriter for Canadian corporate executives and political leaders. At present, he augments a fiction writer’s income by housesitting and has no fixed address. His web page is www.archonate.com.

Chris Lawson is a doctor, teacher, and writer who lives on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia.

M. J. Locke is an engineer and writer eking out an existence in the urban wilds of New Mexico. Locke’s novel
Up Against It
is due out in March 2011.
Up Against It
is the first book of WAVE, a science fiction series about a group of souls struggling to survive on the treacherous frontiers of interplanetary space, the infosphere, and human nature.

Pat MacEwen has a B.S. in marine biology. She is a physical anthropologist who worked as a CSI in California for a decade. Currently, her research is focused on a detailed comparison of the genocidal campaigns carried out in Kosovo and Rwanda. Her short fiction has appeared in
Aeon, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,
and
Full Spectrum 5.

Judith Moffett is the author of eleven books in five genres. Her science fiction novels include the
Holy Ground Trilogy—The Ragged World
(Vol. 1),
Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream
(II), and
The Bird Shaman
(III)—as well as
Pennterra,
a standalone. All four focus on ecological themes, including climate change. She has been honored with the Theodore Sturgeon Award (1987) and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (1988), and has been nominated for a number of others.

David Prill is the author of the cult novels
The Unnatural, Serial Killer Days,
and
Second Coming Attractions,
and the collection
Dating Secrets of the Dead.
His short fiction has appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Subterranean, SCIFICTION, Cemetery Dance,
and the original anthologies
Salon Fantastique, Poe,
and
Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories.
He lives in a small town in the Minnesota north woods, where he is working on an offbeat baseball novel.

Bruce Sterling is the author of a dozen novels, including
Islands in the Net, Distraction, Zeitgeist, The Difference Engine
(written with William Gibson), and most recently,
The Caryatids.
His 1996 novel
Heavy Weather
depicts stormchasers in the American Midwest in a future where global warming has made tornadoes more active. Bruce Sterling writes frequently for
Wired
and for many online publications. Originally from Texas, he currently lives in Europe and travels a lot.

Ray Vukcevich’s new book is
Boarding Instructions.
His other books are
Meet Me in the Moon Room
and
The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces.
He lives Oregon. Read more about him at www.rayvuk.com.

Most of the contributors to this anthology have written novels on this subject, ranging from Brian W. Aldiss’s novels of environment and season to Judith Moffett’s alien invasion novels to Jeff Carlson’s ecodisaster books. For readers interested in more stories about climate change, here’s a list of other books that might be of interest. These suggestions are neither comprehensive nor wholly recommended; instead, they are meant to point you in a few directions if you’re interested in reading more speculations about climate.

Always Coming Home
by Ursula K. Le Guin (1985)

Antarctica
by Kim Stanley Robinson (1997)

Arctic Drift
by Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler (2008)

The Child Garden
by Geoff Ryman (1990)

Climate of Change
by Piers Anthony (2010)

The Drought
by J. G. Ballard (1968)

The Drowned World
by J. G. Ballard (1968)

The Drylands
by Mary Rosenblum (1993)

Earth
by David Brin (1990)

Eruption
by Harry Turtledove (forthcoming 2011)

Exodus
by Julie Bertagna (2005)

Far North
by Marcel Theroux (2009)
The Flood
by Maggie Gee (2005)

Forty Signs of Rain
(2004),
Fifty Degrees Below
(2005), and
Sixty Days and Counting
(2007) by Kim Stanley Robinson

Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias
edited by Kim Stanley

Robinson (1994)

The Great Bay: Chronicles of the Collapse
by Dale Pendell (2010)

Greenhouse Summer
by Norman Spinrad (1999)

Greensword by Donald J. Bingle (2009)

Greenwar
by Steven Gould and Laura J. Mixon (1997)

The Ice People
by Maggie Gee (2005)

In Flight Entertainment
by Helen Simpson (2010)

Mother of Storms
by John Barnes (1994)

The Other Side of the Island
by Allegra Goodman (2008)

Oryx and Crake
by Margaret Atwood (2004)

Primitive
by Mark Nykanen (2009)

Pump Six and Other Stories
by Paolo Bacigalupi (2008)

The Road to Corlay
by Richard Cowper (1978)

River of Gods
by Ian McDonald (2004)

The Sea and Summer
(aka
The Drowning Towers)
by George

Turner (1987)

The Snow
by Adam Roberts (2004)

Solar
by Ian McEwan (2010)

State of Fear
by Michael Crichton (2004)

Sunshine State
by James Miller (2010)

Ultimatum
by Matthew Glass (2009)

Water Rites
by Mary Rosenblum (2007)

The Windup Girl
by Paolo Bacigalupi (2009)

World made by hand by James Howard Kuntsler (2008)

The Year of the Flood
by Margaret Atwood (2009)