‘No baby of mine live. I not born, I made. Cook in tube, little cat fish in glass. Not thirsty no, but damn lot a good it do me.’
In a near future ravaged by drought, a young woman makes a choice about her pregnancy. An engineer working on a solar shield protecting the Earth shares memories of their lover with an AI companion. Two Archivists must decide what is really worth saving when the world is flooded by rising sea levels. In a heavily policed state that preferences the human and punishes the different, a mother gives herself up to save her transgenic child. After the oceans have dried out a group of highly evolved robots contemplate their remaining days on a dead planet.
A collection of short speculative fiction exploring possible futures, each of the stories in Everything Feels Like the End of the World examines a different point in time – from an Australia not so different to now, to thousands of years forward when the world is unrecognisable due to human-induced climate change – exploring landscapes, language and technology and the ways they may shift and alter in a radically changing world.
Everything Feels Like the End of the World was published August 2022 by Allen & Unwin.
This project has been assisted by both the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body, and Creative Victoria’s VicArts grant program.