Many books discussing the planet’s future lean towards doom and gloom, emphasizing rising temperatures and the potentially catastrophic consequences of allowing temperatures to keep rising. Not so with What If We Get It Right? (2024), an anthology edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, that approaches the task of charting visions of the future that emphasize the optimistic outcomes that could occur if we make positive changes in policy and behavior. Books that help us to envision a better future are crucial because they help motivate us to take positive action—if we can imagine it, we can take steps to create it.

American author C Pam Zhang’s novel Land of Milk and Honey is set in a near future suffering ecological collapse, and explores a scenario in which the super-rich create a secretive utopian enclave. A novel of ideas that imagines the egos and excesses such an enclave would attract, Land of Milk and Honey encourages readers to consider the consequences of refusing responsibility for environmental pollution or investing in solutions to save the planet, ultimately reminding us that there is no planet B and we must solve the problems that lay before us.

Imagine a point when society becomes strained to the breaking point due to toxic pollution, over-militarization, and severe political dysfunction. Imagine a vigorous environmental movement that gains not only political strength but enough dedicated citizens concentrated in the Pacific northwest to secede from the United States and form a new nation dedicated to sustainable development and preserving the earth’s environment. This is the setting of Ernest Callenbach’s visionary novel Ecotopia (1975). Like Aldous Huxley’s Island (1962), Ecotopia is one of a handful of precursors to contemporary climate fiction and for this reason alone warrants attention.