Honeymoons in Temporary Locations x Ashley Shelby (DRC)

152 pages.

First published June 25, 2024 (University of Minnesota Press).

Fiction/cli-fi.

In the opening story of this anthology of interconnected tales, the brilliant Muri, there are talking bears. The world has effectively ended (“Impact”). There’s a “sulphate aerosol veil” over the Poles; geoengineering has happened. And there’s a project to relocate polar bears from the Arctic, which is now practically non-existent, to the Antarctic, to buy the bears a little more time. However, these particular bears of this story are not, to say the least, on board with the plan—and so they take over the ship they’re on.

The anthology is profoundly emotionally intelligent, exploring deeply and extrapolating into an alarmingly near future the impact on the human psyche of ecological catastrophe. Honeymoons in Temporary Locations, the only other formal “story” apart from Muri, features climate refugees who are forcibly (by their situation) moved to safer areas of the country (the US); this story is interesting in itself, about, possibly, mental breakdown; but also, its atmosphere is one of loss and despair, of anger and powerlessness, of a time when people are waiting for the world—or humanity—to end.

In the archive section of the book, Documents (recovered), there are post-climate breakdown cruises to see nearly submerged cities like Miami, Boston, and Savannah. People lead with their carbon compliance status when meeting new people. What might mental illness look like for people who love(d) the earth? The focus of many of the stories in the collection (in many forms, including also archived materials and clinical histories) is solastalgia, a term coined by Glenn Albrecht in the 2005 article Solastalgia: a new concept in human health and identity, and that’s defined by the NIH as the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment. Could there be pharmacological solutions? And then, what might billionaires, with their bunkers, do? Would they create support groups? Capitalise somehow on the situation? (You know they would.) My favourite theme is the recurring Ersatz Cafe: what might be on the menu of a post-Impact cafe? Shelby imagines some really smart things.

I found this collection a thoughtful exploration of a future that has us further along the same trajectory on which we are currently, but that considers our planet’s more than human aspects. What would our co-inhabitants on Earth say to us as the world dies? What would the effect be on us—and that of the knowledge of the end of humanity? Shelby’s collection of imaginaries is something I’ll keep going back to.

Many thanks to NetGalley and to the University of Minnesota Press for access to an early DRC.

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