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St. Martin鈥檚 Press, 304 pages, $39

It鈥檚 sometime in the near future and the waters have, as predicted, risen. Glaciers and ice caps have melted and most of the world鈥檚 coastal cities have drowned.

Nonie is a girl who lives with her family on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. When a megastorm called a hypercane strikes, Manhattan鈥檚 seawalls break, and the family members become internal refugees, boat people paddling up the Hudson River in a birchbark canoe to find a place of greater safety.

Cli-Fi is becoming an overworked genre, but Eiren Caffall handles it well here, evoking a world where water, in all its forms, is a danger but not the only one. There are also outbreaks of disease and threatening encounters with tribes of people known as the Lost, who are trying to find a way to survive in the straitened conditions of the 鈥淲orld As It Is.鈥�

Nonie鈥檚 family profits from the example of earlier societies experiencing breakdown and their attempts to shore the fragments of civilization against its ruins. And Nonie does her part in keeping a logbook that she hopes may provide a guide for others. Which isn鈥檛 just her coping strategy but a 鈥渄uty to the future.鈥�

Cold Storage

Michael C. Grumley

Forge, 320 pages, $38.99

鈥淐old Storage鈥� is billed as a stand-alone thriller set in Michael C. Grumley鈥檚 Revival series, but readers may want to start with 鈥淒eep Freeze,鈥� the first book, as this is very much a sequel.

The same characters are involved and we鈥檙e following the same story arc. John Reiff is the human guinea pig for a secret cryogenic program that鈥檚 designed to freeze people and then revive them at a later date. As things kick off, he鈥檚 actually still frozen, which is a vulnerable position to be in as there are different groups vying to find him and unlock the secrets that he holds. Chief among these is a cabal of billionaires known as the Nine who want to use the cryo program for their own nefarious reasons.

Grumley writes hard-hitting action and has no problem with chapters of only 100 words when things really get going. While the book starts off slowly, by the back half readers won鈥檛 want to slow down until the finish.

The Gates of Polished Horn

Mark A. Rayner

Donovan Street Press, 220 pages, $19.99

The title for Mark Rayner鈥檚 whimsical yet unsettling collection of stories comes from the poet Homer鈥檚 notion that dreams come to us having passed through different gates depending on whether they鈥檙e true or not.

It鈥檚 a tricky poetic trope that fits with the way Rayner plays with the question of what鈥檚 real. His stories are like thought experiments, with imagined and reimagined histories (we begin with a time-traveler dropping in to witness the death of Socrates) and settings where technology, consciousness, memory and dreams all sort of blur together in a manufactured 鈥渄atasphere鈥� or 鈥渕ediascape.鈥�

What makes the stories disturbing are niggling moral issues, the problem of brain rot in the metaverse, and a recurring motif that questions whether our future techno-consciousness may not only be a false dream but perhaps even a literal prison. A memory program amounts to being 鈥減inned in time.鈥� A soul being reborn into an infant body goes stir crazy.

So it may not be a question of which gate our dreams enter us through, but which gate they can use to escape.

The Unworthy

Agustina Bazterrica; translated by Sarah Moses

Scribner, 192 pages, $25.99

The historical corollary to the view that we are living through another fall of Rome is that there is a new Dark Age ahead. And so there鈥檚 a whole sub-genre of speculative fiction going back at least as far as Walter M. Miller Jr.鈥檚 1959 classic 鈥淎 Canticle for Leibowitz鈥� that sees our future in terms of medieval times, with the light of learning kept alive by scholars in monasteries.

鈥淭he Unworthy鈥� is another such book, albeit darker, being set within the walls and adjacent grounds of a convent called the House of the Sacred Sisterhood. There鈥檚 been some sort of cascading global ecological catastrophe referred to as 鈥渢he great collapse鈥� that鈥檚 left survivors hanging on by eating bugs and worshipping in a brutal, authoritarian religion whose faith promises them a refuge as they proceed through stages of purification to enlightenment.

Argentinean author Agustina Bazterrica鈥檚 previous novel, 鈥淭ender Is the Flesh,鈥� imagined a future state where cannibalism has become big business, and things aren鈥檛 any sunnier here. The convent is a horrifying place of violence and lies, with the unnamed narrator keeping a record in a secret journal written in dirt or ash or blood. It鈥檚 a bleak vision of civilization thrown into reverse, with only the smallest lyrical glimmers of light.