Last Catastrophe

Last Catastrophe is a speculative short story collection by Allegra Hyde about how people cope in a world reshaped by climate change. The tone is hopeful, even as the settings stretch from familiar landscapes out across the solar system.

The fifteen stories take in a wide range of possible futures. In one, an enormous caravan of RVs travels the length of the United States. In another, a girl grows a unicorn horn, which complicates her friendships in a small town and her ambitions in the big city. In a third, a young woman aboard a spaceship forms a bond with the AI that guards her while she tries to escape an arranged marriage.

Nothing in Hyde's fiction is quite what it seems, yet the problems her characters face echo those of the present day. Together the stories suggest that the world is precious and that the work of protecting it could bring people together. The collection was published as a Vintage original.