Why am I passionate about this?

I was working installing solar panels in rural Maine when I first had the idea to write a climate crisis novel. I grew up in the woods of New England, and have always loved nature, but I was feeling pretty despondent about global warming. I started to wonder: what would it feel like to be part of a mass mobilization installing solar, wind, and so on, to save the planet? Those were the seeds of the novel. When I’m not writing, I’m a fourth grade teacher. I worry about the planet my students will inherit, and if I’m doing enough to make that world as hopeful as possible.


I wrote

The Great Transition

By Nick Fuller Googins,

Book cover of The Great Transition

What is my book about?

The Great Transition is a hopeful climate novel told through the story of one family trying to protect each other…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Eleutheria

Nick Fuller Googins Why did I love this book?

Eleutheria is a fantastic climate novel that paints a dire, realistic portrait of the near future and then combats that dystopia with bright-eyed hope.

I loved the narrator, Willa Marks, who is endearing and desperate to save the world against overwhelming odds, ultimately elbowing her way into a commune-like movement in the Caribbean that has very big plans. I really loved how Willa encapsulates what many of us feel: this urgency to do something to stop the climate crisis, even if we don’t know how.

What I truly loved about this book, however, is that it leaves us with a spark of real hope, rather than falling into dystopia. The author, Allegra Hyde, has declared the growing number of us hopeful climate writers as “Team Utopia,” and I’m a proud member.  

By Allegra Hyde,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Eleutheria as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

SHORTLISTED FOR THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD
FINALIST FOR THE OHIOANA BOOK AWARD IN FICTION
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

“Allegra Hyde’s seductive first novel tackles the big stuff of climate change and the more intimate matter of heartbreak with grace. Indeed, Eleutheria bravely braids these together, the story of a lost soul moving through the world we’re rapidly losing.” —Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind

Willa Marks has spent her whole life choosing hope. She chooses hope over her parents’ paranoid conspiracy theories, over her dead-end job, over the rising ocean levels. And…


Book cover of Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072

Nick Fuller Googins Why did I love this book?

This is a one-of-a-kind novel by two authors who are also members of “Team Utopia.”

The entire novel is told from “interviews” of people who participated in the complete revolution across our planet, from the liberation of Palestine to the foundation of the New York City Commune. While not exclusively a climate novel, the book depicts the total transformation of society and the economy over the largest hurdles that we face today, of which the climate crisis plays an oversized role.

I was super excited to find this book because it depicts not only the “utopia” that exists in the near future, but shows how people fought and organized to build that utopia. I tried to do the same thing with my book, offering a sort of utopian blueprint for my wildest dreams. 

By M. E. O'Brien, Eman Abdelhadi,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Everything for Everyone as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

By the middle of the twenty-first century, war, famine, economic collapse, and climate catastrophe had toppled the world's governments. In the 2050s, the insurrections reached the nerve center of global capitalism-New York City. This book, a collection of interviews with the people who made the revolution, was published to mark the twentieth anniversary of the New York Commune, a radically new social order forged in the ashes of capitalist collapse.

Here is the insurrection in the words of the people who made it, a cast as diverse as the city itself. Nurses, sex workers, antifascist militants, and survivors of all…


Book cover of The Dispossessed

Nick Fuller Googins Why did I love this book?

This is the grandmother of all great utopian fiction, my favorite science-fiction novel by my favorite science-fiction author, and the number-one source of inspiration for my book.

The novel opens on a moon (not ours) where a utopian anarchist society has long existed, but is now under threat from a host of antagonists on the mother planet. The novel is masterful because it is both enormous in scope (covering entire economies and political structures) but also extremely intimate (following one man, one relationship, one family).

The novel does not have to do with the climate crisis, or Earth, but I’m including it here because of the role it played in my writing; when I set out to write a climate crisis utopia, The Dispossessed was absolutely instrumental, offering me a blueprint on how to build tension and make a utopia personal. Most of all, it will give you so much hope and love for humanity. 

By Ursula K. Le Guin,

Why should I read it?

16 authors picked The Dispossessed as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of the very best must-read novels of all time - with a new introduction by Roddy Doyle

'A well told tale signifying a good deal; one to be read again and again' THE TIMES

'The book I wish I had written ... It's so far away from my own imagination, I'd love to sit at my desk one day and discover that I could think and write like Ursula Le Guin' Roddy Doyle

'Le Guin is a writer of phenomenal power' OBSERVER

The Principle of Simultaneity is a scientific breakthrough which will revolutionize interstellar civilization by making possible instantaneous…


Book cover of The Ministry for the Future

Nick Fuller Googins Why did I love this book?

I read this novel when I was about three-quarters finished with my novel, and was just blown away by the attention to detail, possibilities, and hope between the pages.

This is another hopeful near-future novel, in which humanity is trying its best to overcome the worst of climate change. Unlike my novel, however, which is told from the perspective of one family, Ministry for the Future is a truly global story, with dozens and dozens of narrators, many unnamed, who give us snapshots everywhere from the Arizona border to Antarctica to Switzerland to India, all coalescing into what becomes a global movement to try to save the planet.

This novel is a little lighter on plot, but fascinating as a menu of hopeful options and possibilities for what could be done if humanity really got its act together. 

By Kim Stanley Robinson,

Why should I read it?

23 authors picked The Ministry for the Future as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR

“The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I’ve ever read.” —Jonathan Lethem
 
"If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future." —Ezra Klein (Vox)

The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite…


Book cover of A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Nick Fuller Googins Why did I love this book?

This is a really fun, slim novel set on a moon, Panga, where technology long ago achieved sentience and decided to leave humanity for the wilderness.

The novel opens with a tea monk, Dex, who lives in a gentle utopia and becomes the first human to meet a robot in distant memory. The robot, named Mosscap, asks Dex, “What do humans need?” and what proceeds is a marvelous rolling conversation between robot and monk that spans philosophy, theology, and ecology, providing so much food for thought regarding a happy, nurturing post-transition world.

By Becky Chambers,

Why should I read it?

10 authors picked A Psalm for the Wild-Built as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.

One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honour the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of 'what do people need?' is answered.

But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how.
They're going to need to ask it a lot.


Explore my book 😀

The Great Transition

By Nick Fuller Googins,

Book cover of The Great Transition

What is my book about?

The Great Transition is a hopeful climate novel told through the story of one family trying to protect each other and the place we all call home.

Emi Vargas is tired of being told how lucky she is to have been born after the climate crisis. But following the assassination of a dozen climate criminals, Emi’s mother disappears as a suspect, and Emi’s illusions of utopia are shattered. Emi and her father journey from their home in Nuuk, Greenland to New York City, now a storm-surge outpost built. But they aren’t the only ones looking for Emi’s mother. The novel alternates between Emi’s desperate search for her mother, a heart-stopping account of her parents during the Transition, and the movement that saved the world.

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Broken Mirror

By Cody Sisco,

Book cover of Broken Mirror

Cody Sisco Author Of Broken Mirror

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

The books on this list have inspired me to expand the horizons of my imagination and to think boldly about the future. So often, it feels like we’re stuck living with our forebears’ bad choices and our leaders’ cynical and self-serving constructions of reality. In defiance, I write books for people who have struggled to fit in, who look around at our world and imagine how things could be better, and who want to read about realistic but optimistic futures. I write alternative history and cyberpunk to highlight how our cultural, technological, and political choices affect our future and how creating change starts with imagining it. 

Cody's book list on thought-provoking sci-fi novels set in vivid worlds

What is my book about?

A fractured mind or a global conspiracy? Uncovering the truth can be hell when nobody believes you… and you can’t even trust yourself. 

"A fantastic science fiction thriller with a sincere and important message.”—Kirkus Reviews. 

“A breathtaking, deeply dark alternate-history Earth with complex characters, layered worldbuilding, and twist after twist after twist.”—Julianna Caro, Reedsy Discovery.

Broken Mirror is the first volume in a queer psychological science fiction saga that looks at the stigma of mental illness and the hellish distrust and alienation that goes with it.

Broken Mirror

By Cody Sisco,

What is this book about?

Broken Mirror: the start of a smart, complex, and imaginative cyberpunk alternate history saga. Literary science fiction from a fresh, young voice.

In a skewed mirror universe, a mentally ill young man searches for his grandfather’s killer.

Someone killed Jefferson Eastmore. His grandson Victor is sure of it, but no one believes him.

Diagnosed with mirror resonance syndrome and shunned by Semiautonomous California society, Victor suffers from hyperempathy, blank outs, and sensory overload. Jefferson devoted his life to researching mental illness and curing Broken Mirrors like Victor through genetic engineering, but now that he’s gone, Victor must walk a narrow…


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