Unlike the other works of fiction reviewed on this blog, How close to savage the soul is a short story taken from an anthology of short stories, rather than a novel. However, though it is short in length, the story has a powerful message – it is set in the near future, showing an old man and his grandson at the beach, while the old man thinks back to when he was younger and how he was able to enjoy going to the beach with his son, and didn’t worry about climate change. In the present in the story, the economy has crashed, and there’s fire and riots.
The message of the story seems to be that we can still potentially do something about climate change now, but we have to make the conscious choice to do so, or it will be too late.
Unsurprisingly, this short story was very sad to read, but I believe it makes an important point about accountability and the strong writing carries the point through the story.
Science Fiction and Climate change 