RE: Infernal (a cli-fi story) part 1

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Ew, well, I don't much like your protagonist! I thought he was going to be kinder to her but he's obviously ground down in the horror show around him. Love the banal ending, much like now, just a little further on. Mask, vax, be safe. And ignore climate change.

There's a lot of cli Fi fiction in Australia right now. I keep getting it from my Mum. Keen to keep reading more.

vyb
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There is some amazing clifi and solarpunk coming our of Oz now. It seems that Oz and South America are the source of most of it. There's an awesome ebook called the Eromanga Disruption about a huge geoengineering project that makes Oz into a paradise.

My protagonist (when the full story is released, he will have a name (I made him male and straight because that runs counter to most contemporary solarpunk)). Yes, he represents the ground down, reduced, tired masses who will dominate society after 2030-2050.

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He's certainly a Winston from 1984 kinda character, with his varicose veins and despair - sometimes a good character isn't necessarily likeable, and likeable characters can be so passe!

Eromanga Disruption looks interesting - I'll look into it.

There's been a few I've read set in Tasmania - seems a place to wait out the apocalypse! One was interesting - about scientists trying to bring neanderthal back to life - they succeed with one girl, but then give it up. That's also set against a backdrop of climate catastrophes - an extinction of the human race who, ironically, brought an extinct race to life and then abandoned it (ethically fucked).

https://www.penguin.com.au/books/ghost-species-9781926428666

The other was 'The MOther Fault' https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/The-Mother-Fault/Kate-Mildenhall/9781760854478

The Australian Book Review sums up this one well (the backdrop)

...set in an alarming near-future Australia. Climate change has left refugees ‘marking trails like new currents on the maps as they swarm to higher, cooler ground’. Sea levels have risen, species have died out, farmlands have been contaminated, and meat is a luxury. Unprecedented bushfires occur regularly; technology and surveillance are ubiquitous, with bulbous cameras hanging ‘like oddly uniform fruit bats from the streetlights’. The media is controlled, and Australian citizens are microchipped and monitored by a totalitarian government known as ‘the Department’. The ‘Dob in Disunity’ app offers ‘gamified’ rewards to informants (‘Even kids could join in the fun!’), while troublemakers can be relocated to ‘BestLife’ housing estates where the reality is far from the Instagram hashtag. Reflecting on the events that led to this, protagonist Mim notes that the world ‘shifted slowly, then so fast, while they watched but didn’t see. They weren’t stupid. Or even oppressed in the beginning.’

The BestLife housing estates were truly threatening - a way to quash protest and dissent.

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I'll definitely look them up! Linda Woodrow's 470 is definitely the benchmark

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