Mean Higher High Water
Survival takes strange shapes, whether it’s a fledgling Viking queen with a habit of talking to birds or a scrappy nonprofit fundraiser who turns every date into a lesson on decarbonization.
But why bother when the seas won’t stop rising and the forests burn on a loop? In this version of the future that’s too rotten not to recognize, justice is a bedtime story for people who still sleep. For Nia, an aging, sharp-tongued forager with a grief problem, the hope of revenge is the only thing keeping her alive. Decades ago, her fiancé died in the explosion of the world’s first zero-emissions jet, an incident that put a fiery punctuation mark on global climate cooperation. Convinced that the crash wasn’t an accident, she followed the echoes west, chasing rumors, and discovering along the way that patience can turn nearly anything with leaves into liquor.
Just as Nia’s resolve is starting to fray, the ocean coughs up an eerily familiar sneaker—with the foot still inside.
Praise for Mean Higher High Water
“D.S.G. Burke conjures a future no one dares hope for—raw, gritty, and stripped of mercy. Mean Higher High Water marks a striking new voice in cli-fi: a slow-burn descent into a world teetering on the edge, where the payoff is as haunting as it is unforgettable.”
M Jackson, author of The Ice Sings Back and The Secret Lives of Glaciers
“A compelling parable braiding the human costs of climate catastrophe. The daunted denizens of Dismal Nitch resound with obsessions, grit, and exquisite complexity.”
S. G. Ellerhoff, author of Jung and Star Wars: A Contemporary Mythology
“Mean Higher High Water imagines a terrible future, but populates it with kindness, curiosity, and community. An island of hope in a rising sea.”
Meg Elison, author of The Book of the Unnamed Midwife
“Vivid and visionary, Mean Higher High Water offers a fascinating glimpse of a stark future, but not one without hope. It skillfully weaves together past and future narratives and paths crossed with an exploration of how we seek to find meaning, assign blame, and persevere against the tidal sweep of a changing climate.”
Emily Jane, USA Today bestselling author of On Earth as it Is on Television
“Who is to blame for climate change, and what are the afterlives of that blame? From charred forests to dead malls, Mean Higher High Water is both a gripping scavenger’s romp and a murder mystery. Readers that seek out immersive worldbuilding will be drawn to this darkly humorous, carefully crafted future.”
Holly Jean Buck, author of After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration
“Mean Higher High Water is a darkly funny, engrossing introduction to cli-fi. It changed how I think about a future shaped by climate change, and the present that leads us there. This book was my first cli-fi novel, and it won’t be my last.”
Jordan Calhoun, author of Piccolo is Black: A Memoir of Race, Religion, and Pop Culture