I have just put the last touches to Drowned Worlds: Tales from the Anthropocene and Beyond which is due from Solaris in July.  With a spectacular cover from Les Edwards, and a bunch of great stories, I think it’s all come together really well. I’m hoping you’ll like it too.

Here’s the table of contents:

• Elves of Antarctica, Paul McAuley
• Dispatches from the Cradle: The Hermit – Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts, Ken Liu
• Venice Drowned, Kim Stanley Robinson
• Brownsville Station, Christopher Rowe
• Who Do You Love?, Kathleen Ann Goonan
• Because Change Was the Ocean and We Lived by Her Mercy, Charlie Jane Anders
• The Common Tongue, the Present Tense, the Known, Nina Allan
• What is, Jeffrey Ford
• Destroyed by the Waters, Rachel Swirsky
• The New Venusians, Sean Williams
• Inselberg, Nalo Hopkinson
• Only Ten More Shopping Days Left Till Ragnarök, James Morrow
• Last Gods, Sam J. Miller
• Drowned, Lavie Tidhar
• The Future is Blue, Catherynne M. Valente

I think it’s sharp, pointed, timely and sometimes satirical. I think it’s about who we are when faced with disaster, and not about disaster. I think it makes for good reading.  Here’s what the publisher says about it:

Last call for the Gone World…

We live in a time of change. The Anthropocene Age – the time when human-induced climate change radically reshapes the world – is upon us. Sea water is flooding the streets of Florida, island nations are rapidly disappearing beneath the waves, the polar icecaps are a fraction of what they once were, and distant, exotic places like Australia are slowly baking in the sun.

Drowned Worlds asks fifteen of the top science fiction and fantasy writers working today to look to the future, to ask how will we survive? Do we face a period of dramatic transition and then a new technology-influenced golden age, or a long, slow decline? Swim the drowned streets of Boston, see Venice disappear beneath the waves, meet a woman who’s turned herself into a reef, traverse the floating garbage cities of the Pacific, search for the elf stones of Antarctica, or spend time in the new, dark Dust Bowl of the American mid-west. See the future for what it is: challenging, exciting, filled with adventure, and more than a little disturbing.

Whether here on Earth or elsewhere in our universe, Drowned Worlds give us a glimpse of a new future, one filled with romance and adventure, all while the oceans rise…

I think this is a good book. I hope you’ll consider reading it.