Sea Change

Author: Nancy Kress
Publisher: Tachyon Publications (May 22, 2020)
Paperback, 192 pages
Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Novella
Goodreads

Summary

Renata Black is entertained by the traffic snarl caused by a rogue self-driving house–until she spots the Org’s Tiffany Teal paint marking the house’s windowsill.

In 2022, GMOs were banned after a biopharmed drug caused the Catastrophe: worldwide economic collapse, agricultural standstill, and personal tragedy for a lawyer and her son. Ten years later, Renata, a.k.a. Caroline Denton, is an operative of the Org, an underground group that could save the world from itself. Their illegal research is performed and protected by splinter cells, which are hunted by the feds.

Now a mole is in the Org. Who would put the entire Org in jeopardy? Renata is the only one who can find out–and she will need to go to her clients in the Quinault Nation for answers.

Review

CW: Death of a child

I work for an agricultural cooperative where there’s a lot of discourse about GMOs and feeding a growing population with shrinking resources, so when I read the blurb for this book I was intrigued. I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I love the sci-fi/speculative fic meets dystopia a little bit of mystery in this novella. For a shorter book (192 pages) it was really involved with a complex main character, an intricate plot, and astounding world-building. The world Nancy Kress builds is a harrowing look at what could all to easily be the way the world goes. Go read this book, open your mind. It maaaaybe helps that Kress’s views on GMO’s (or at least what I assume them to be based on this book) very closely align with my own. And then of course I read this during the height (oh lord, I hope this is the height…) of the Covid-19 situation, where the world already feels like living in a spec-fic novel, so there was that added layer of spiciness.

Upon finishing this book I immediately went to check out Nancy Kress’s back catalog, and there’s really no higher recommendation for a book.

A digital ARC of this book was provided by the publisher via Edelweiss+ for review. All opinions are unbiased and my own.