C. Alex Smith's Blog

An Arctic Climate Fiction Boiling Over with Tension For decades the sea ate the land, causing the collapse of human society. In the absence of governance, humans turned to new mind-numbing drugs, human experimentation, and bloodshed.  Lots of bloodshed.  What survives from those days is a disease nicknamed “the breaks,” a universal hatred for the survivors of The Hive Project, and Qaanaaq–home to a melting pot of a million refugees. Qaanaaq is a new city built on oil rig scaffolding over the deep waters of the Arctic north of Iceland and east of Greenland. It sits over a geothermal vent which warms the city. Glaciers provide fresh water and human waste is cycled into methane that lights its lamps. Currently, it's struggling against an epidemic of the breaks, a disease that fills the victim’s heads with the memories of its previous casualties until the sick lose themselves in hallucinations and madness. A survivor of the Hive Project has just arrived in Qaanaaq. Unaware of th...

Better than the First Book!                                                                                       The earth under England has dissolved and England is a free floating “raft” of an island. England’s elite blow up the mooring to the mainland and British citizens become isolated from the rest of the world’s climate catastrophe. Too busy with their own issues of famine, disease, and dividing precious resources and power, those closest to the shore are easily deceived by those advantaged enough to live near the center.  But every lie has a price. Dr. Savanah Selbourne’s price for signing off on the lies the Centre tells the Periphery is to keep here son, Ethan, born to her partner, Grace. But six years of misleading the people of the Periphery has its...

  How far   would you go to stay alive?  To protect your loved ones? Irma has already decided. There is nothing she won’t do to keep her family alive in this harsh, hot world. She's already murdered another family to take their home--an easily defensible island control tower with a ready supply of fish.  When a hurricane churns the waters at the base of the tower, driving away the fish, and rips off the roof, Irma decides to abandon their water-logged home. She moves her tribe to the mainland. Unfortunately, the mainland is so hot they must seek shelter from the sun each morning to survive. It is also already inhabited by tribes of people guarding scarce resources who don’t welcome Irma’s people. Irma is more than willing to engage and fight for her tribe, but Lucy is aghast at Irma’s depravity. Lucy believes there are moral limits one should not cross. Limits Irma has crossed without hesitation. But when Lucy’s own children are endangered, she must decide wher...