The Earth is burning. The elite have fled. And humanity's only hope is a secret they were never meant to discover. By the year 2060, decades of unchecked corporate greed and fossil fuel reliance have turned the surface of the Earth into an unlivable furnace. While the remnants of humanity struggle to survive in harsh, isolated underground communities, the global oligarchy has secured its own future. Sophie, a brilliant scientist, discovers the horrifying truth: the government's weather modification program isn't designed to save the planet, but to control it.
Worse, the elite have engineered trans-humans-beings capable of extended life-to ensure their eternal dominance over the ruins of Earth. Unwilling to watch humanity burn, Sophie commits the ultimate act of treason. She dismantles the weather program and steals the trans-humans, fleeing into the scorching wastelands with the world's most powerful forces hunting her down. Meanwhile, Captain Rachel Chen commands the worldship Persephone, embarking on a desperate voyage to Proxima Centauri to find a new home for the human race.
But as the stakes rise both underground and among the stars, one question remains: can humanity be saved, or is it already too late? The Burning Years is the first book in the Until This Last series, a visionary, hard-hitting climate fiction epic perfect for fans of Kim Stanley Robinson, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Hugh Howey's Silo series.
The Earth is burning. The elite have fled. And humanity's only hope is a secret they were never meant to discover. By the year 2060, decades of unchecked corporate greed and fossil fuel reliance have turned the surface of the Earth into an unlivable furnace. While the remnants of humanity struggle to survive in harsh, isolated underground communities, the global oligarchy has secured its own future. Sophie, a brilliant scientist, discovers the horrifying truth: the government's weather modification program isn't designed to save the planet, but to control it.
Worse, the elite have engineered trans-humans-beings capable of extended life-to ensure their eternal dominance over the ruins of Earth. Unwilling to watch humanity burn, Sophie commits the ultimate act of treason. She dismantles the weather program and steals the trans-humans, fleeing into the scorching wastelands with the world's most powerful forces hunting her down. Meanwhile, Captain Rachel Chen commands the worldship Persephone, embarking on a desperate voyage to Proxima Centauri to find a new home for the human race.
But as the stakes rise both underground and among the stars, one question remains: can humanity be saved, or is it already too late? The Burning Years is the first book in the Until This Last series, a visionary, hard-hitting climate fiction epic perfect for fans of Kim Stanley Robinson, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Hugh Howey's Silo series.