It's thirty years from now. We're making progress, mitigating climate change,
slowly but surely. But what about all the angry old people who can't let go?
For young Americans a generation from now, climate change isn't
controversial. It's just an overwhelming fact of life. And so are the great efforts
to contain and mitigate it. Entire cities are being moved inland from the rising
seas. Vast clean-energy projects are springing up everywhere. Disaster relief,
the mitigation of floods and superstorms, has become a skill for which tens of
millions of people are trained every year. The effort is global. It employs
everyone who wants to work. Evenwhen national politics oscillates back to
right-wing leaders, the momentum is too great; these vast programs cannot be
stopped in their tracks.
But there are still those Americans, mostly elderly, who cling to their red
baseball caps, their grievances, their huge vehicles, their anger. To their
alternative" news sources that reassure them that their resentment is right and
pure and that "climate change" is just a giant scam.
And they're your grandfather, your uncle, your great-aunt. And they're not
going anywhere. And they're armed to the teeth.
The Lost Cause asks: What do we do about people who cling to the belief that
their own children are the enemy? When, in fact, they're often the elders that
we love?
Cory Doctorow is a regular contributor to the Guardian, Locus, and many
other publications. He is a special consultant to the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, an MIT Media Lab Research Associate and a visiting professor of
Computer Science at the Open University. His award-winning novel Little
Brother and its sequel Homeland were a New York Times bestsellers. His
novella collection Radicalized was a CBC Best Fiction of 2019 selection. Born
and raised in Canada, he lives in Los Angeles.
Tor
On Sale: Oct 10/23
5.38 x 8.25 • 368 pages
9781250865939 • $39.99 • CL - With dust jacket
Fiction / Science Fiction / High Tech