Insurance involves betting on catastrophe, and it’s the main way our economy interacts with short-term disaster and long-term risk. As climate catastrophes accelerate, what happens when insurers walk away from the table?
Response
Drover, a weather analyst, tracks bat data—including heart rate, flight patterns, food intake, and other behavior—to predict extreme weather events. When the bank where his partner works introduces a system that allows people to bet on weather events, he’s forced to reckon with the line between predicting climate catastrophe and profiting from it.
Planning for managed retreat in the face of rising sea levels is politically difficult—getting people to actually move may be even harder.
Response
In a future Washington state, the governor has successfully convinced voters to move the capital of Olympia to a location more protected from accelerating climate threats. But while moving a city is hard, the governor soon discovers that convincing residents to move with it is even harder.
In Margrét Helgadóttir’s “Tunnel Fever,” an isolated roadside bar buried in a vast network of tunnels on the floor of the Arctic Ocean is staffed by a claustrophobic waitress who dreams of life above the surface. When a pair of outlaws tries to rob the bar, its patrons and employees are forced to work together […]
Writer and potter Harrison Cook discusses “The Shade Technician,” his May 2025 story for Future Tense Fiction.
