Click on the tag “hope” at this bottom of this post to read about all of my suggestions for hopeful science fiction. If you have recommendations for future instalments of this series, I’d sure like to hear them. Leave a comment below or send me message about it on Twitter.
A few months ago, I discovered the Better Worlds series, a science fiction anthology of short stories and films about hope that was published at The Verge two years ago. This is the fifth story from this anthology I’ve covered here, and I will eventually blog about all of them.
There are mild spoilers in this post.
St. Juju
In Rivers Solomon’s St Juju, a young woman must choose between her secure enclave and the one she loves.
The characters in this book lived in a world where everyone scavenged in order to survive. Specifically, they visited ancient landfills to harvest mushrooms and other foods that grew there.
There wasn’t as much time spent on the world building as I would have liked to see, but the audience was given glimpses of the strict society that the main character and her girlfriend, Enid, lived in. Everyone was required to work hard in order for their community to have enough to feed all of its members.
On the positive side, the landfills they visited generally had food for them and they seemed to live pretty peacefully due to the strict laws that governed them and the low population density of humans in general.
What you and I consider to be trash these days has been transformed into treasure for this future generation for reasons that I’ll leave up to other readers to discover for themselves.
There were also some fascinating references to certain genetic mutations that had taken place in some people in order to help them adapt better to this environment. I love the idea of humanity and the Earth healing and adapting together like this.
The romance was handled nicely, too. Would the main character stay home or would she remain with her girlfriend and go explore parts of the world that neither of them had seen yet? That question pushed the plot to move forward while still leaving plenty of space for her to reflect on what she’d lose and gain with either choice.
I’d recommend St. Juju to anyone who likes mixing genres.