The Last Catastrophe: Stories

Allegra Hyde

Mar 2023 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Natalie Naudus, Kristen Sieh, Kirby Heyborne, Jamie K. Brown, Emily Ellet, Sophie Amoss, and Sarah Naughton

About this audiobook

A hopeful, speculative short story collection about how humanity grapples in a world transformed by climate change.

“Climate fiction does not owe readers hope, but through humor and humanity Hyde manages to present a harsh reality without descending into despair, offering a space for mourning and for reimagining life in a permanently changed world. Each of the 15 stories is swiftly paced and engaging, rich with detail, highlighting and celebrating nature as it borders on the unnatural.” —The New York Times Book Review

A vast caravan of RVs roams the United States. A girl grows a unicorn horn, complicating her small-town friendships and big city ambitions. A young lady on a spaceship bonds with her AI warden while trying to avoid an arranged marriage. In Allegra Hyde’s universe nothing is as it seems, yet the challenges encountered in these pages mirror those we face in our modern age. Spanning the length of our very solar system, the fifteen stories in this collection explore a myriad of potential futures through the concept of “global weirding,” planetary and social disruptions due to climate change. In unexpected and genre-defying ways, this revelatory collection reminds us that our world is precious, and that protecting it has the potential to bring us all together.

About the author

ALLEGRA HYDE is the author of the novel Eleutheria and the story collection Of This New World, which won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, The Best Small Fictions, The Best American Travel Writing, and elsewhere. She lives in Ohio and teaches at Oberlin College.