I'm With the Bears: Short Stories from a Damaged Planet

The magnitude of the global climate crisis is such that even the most committed environmentalists are liable to live in a state of denial. The award-winning writers collected here have made it their task to shake off this disbelief, bringing the incomprehensible within our grasp and shaping an emotional response to mankind'¬"s unwitting creation of a tough new planet. From T. C. Boyle'¬"s account of early eco-activists, to David Mitchell'¬"s vision of a near future where civilization dwindles as oil sells for $800 a barrel'¬ ;these stories blend speculative and literary fiction and range across time. The aim is to make the danger posed by climate change as accessible to the imagination as subjects more common to the best of contemporary fiction. Royalties from I'm With the Bears will go to 350.org, an international grassroots movement working to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Bill McKibben is the author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, among other titles; he is the founder of 350.org, which in 2010 organized what CNN called “the most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history.”

Margaret Atwood is a Booker Prize–winning poet and author of many acclaimed novels, including The Blind Assassin and The Handmaid’s Tale.

Paolo Bacigalupi is the author of the sci-fi novel The Wind-Up Girl, which won the Hugo and Nebula awards.

T. C. Boyle has a long list of books to his credit, including the PEN/Faulkner Award–winning novel World’s End and The Road to Wellville. His latest novel is When the Killing’s Done.

Toby Litt has written nine novels and two short story collections; in 2003 he was chosen as one of Granta’s twenty Best British Novelists Under Forty.

The author of the New York Times Notable Book Ghost Lights and eight other works of fiction, Lydia Millet has won the PEN-USA Award and been a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.

David Mitchell has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize; his novels include Cloud Atlas and most recently The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

Nathaniel Rich is the author of The Mayor’s Tongue and Odds Against Tomorrow.

Kim Stanley Robinson is the Hugo and Nebula prize–winning author of the Mars Trilogy and a trilogy of novels about climate change that go under the title Science in the Capital.

Helen Simpson is a prize-winning short story writer and novelist; in 1993, she was selected as one of Granta’s twenty Best British Novelists Under Forty.