Stories of Storms and Survival cover

BAD WEATHER

As we were compiling this issue, the West Coast of North America was hit by record-breaking floods wiping out all road access to one of Canada’s largest cities and the country’s largest port, the fourth largest in North America. Just months before, the same part of Canada saw forest fires and record-breaking hot temperatures under a deadly heat dome that killed over 1,400 people and more than a billion marine animals. As extreme weather comes with increasing frequency, more communities are finding themselves struggling for survival. 

The bad weather is here. And it’s only getting worse.

Bad Weather: Stories of Storms and Survival

The stories, poetry, and art in this volume take us head-first into the bad weather that has torn apart towns, submerged cities, scorched mountains, thawed new lands, and left us wondering where home really is.

Inspired by evacuating five times during the Black Summer bushfires in Australia, Elizabeth Walton tells the story of a woman finding hope after escaping the fires. An outsider meteorologist is ostracised when her weather reports don’t bring the weather her community wants in a short story by Tamar Weiss-Gabbay (translated from Hebrew by Jessica Cohen, the winner of the 2017 Booker Prize); and Richard Leise takes us to the bottom of a deep-sea trench where submarine explorers find more than expected.

This volume also turns toward a future to strive for with a story by the award-winning founders of the burgeoning solarpunk movement, Andrew Dana Hudson and Adam Flynn, where a wild community threatened by state forces and a catastrophic hurricane forges a new path of resistance. A survivor helo pilot searches for the origins of mysterious stones on a thawed Antarctica in a story by Paul McAuley—the Philip K Dick, Arthur C Clarke, John W Campbell, and British Fantasy Award-winning author of Fairyland, featured in the SF Masterworks imprint.

In their flash nonfiction, Amy Bee recounts her own experiences with recent California wildfires, and Karin Hedetniemi describes her life-long encounters with lightning at times of distress. Pinny Bulman, Annalise Torcson, Tom Daley, Rebecca Dunn, and Aishwarya Suresh Khale navigate us through stormy weather with poetry exposing our inner lives as the rains beat down outside. This volume also features striking art of the brewing storm by Clari Netzer, Mike Edwards, and Cynthia Young.

This collection features an interview with David Suzuki, the long-established science broadcaster, academic, and author, as well as an interview with Susan Conley, the award-winning author of Elsey Come Home and Landslide. 

The bad weather is here. And it’s only getting worse. The authors within offer us visions of a flooded world and of a world on fire, but also of a better future. Where do we go from here? The choice is yours.

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