ECO24: The Year's Best Speculative Eco-fiction Edited by Marissa Van Uden
312 pages, Paperback
Expected publication: November 18, 2025 by Violet Lichen Books
I did not realize that there is enough Sci-fi and horror fiction on the theme of ecology to fill a yearś best anthology, but it is better than that. Eco24 is filled to the brim with powerful and entertaining stories. Speculative fiction is uniquely positioned to explore the nature of our fragile relationship to the only planet in the cosmos that we depend on for life. The fantastic Marissa Van Uden has built a collection of stories that demand attention and warn of futures we can still avoid, if we listen. A must-read.
So I am not going to go super deep, except to highlight some of my favorite stories here. I enjoyed pretty much everything I read, but these were the stand-outs.
A strange but powerful story The Water Runner by Eugen Bacon had a novel’s worth of ideas and creative energy. “The job in area C was suicide; What made a father of seven kill himself? Everything. In this waterless world that paid in credits that never lasted but dissolved unstretched in a grueling economy - everything. One simply lost faith. Even though the father was outwardly perfect, rigamortis in a fetal curl of dying agony, she had to say no. The man had swallowed rust remover. His water compromised.” Damn
Time travel exploring a look at the wake of our culture…Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackened Husk of a Planet By Adeline Wong: “Open loop time dynamics says the moment you leave here, the time plane changes. It folds around you, for you, based on how you experience and your observations inform your future actions they will have been.”
In the category of gruesome and bothered me the most…Bodies by Cat McMahan “That our plant we only produce one kind of chicken; But diogenis ten. Sometime in the early 21st century, a man genetically engineered a featherless chicken, one that was fat and lazy and couldn't regulate its own temperature. A lack of feathers saved on cooling costs. Then in the 20 thirties they made it leaner the new angle was that it was healthier to eat, clean to slaughter. in 2040 they removed the synrinx at the bottom of its trachea, it's voice box and genetically modified it to require forty percent less chicken feed it couldn't wail or want.”
As a 30-year vegan and an Animal liberationist, this story gave me fix feelings and the hee-bee-jee-bees. Good stuff with several ethical issues to ponder.
The story Pig House by Kay Vaindal was very evocative and at times reminded me of a Brian Evenson story. ¨ When the power goes out, whole cities die. Your rebreather stops pulling oxygen and if it zeroes before you can change it, suffocation. He gave into your lungs the useless air. Deep breath, nothing. And another and another period aunt Beth died that way when Rochester went out. That was the fifteenth biggest one in the states - Rochester. ¨
In the fictionalizing solutions category, I enjoyed The Plasticity of Being by Renan Bernardo. “Once Upon a time, Verdita was the future; The bastion of sustainability and green technology aligned with social and environmental responsibility, a powerful Brazilian then global force to correct everything that was wrong with the world. And indeed they showed what they were all about. In a decade their projects of reforestation employed millions of micro drones in the Amazon rainforest, with tech they healed the damaged soil, planted new trees, and rescued animals during fires all the time leaving patterns of what they were doing, so they could improve themselves over time and avoid catastrophes.”
So here is the point, Eco24 is a harbinger, willed with warnings from diverse authors, styles, and locations. I am excited to read future editions and hope the world starts to listen.
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