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.

The award-winning Fathoms: The World in the Whale, by Rebecca Giggs, was the book club’s big read in February. Everyone was glad they read the book. It was incredibly informative and phenomenally well-researched but difficult emotionally. Giggs pulls no punches. Her descriptions of whales and their history left many of us in awe of these amazing creatures, and in pain as we recognized and grappled with the havoc wrought on whale populations by human activity over the last 150 years.