In the opening chapter of “The Ministry for the Future,” science-fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson details a calamitous heat wave that kills almost all the residents of a small town. In another chapter, he imagines a catastrophic flood that wipes out Los Angeles.
The late Octavia Butler described a Southern California reeling from years of drought in “Parable of the Sower,” and Paolo Bacigalupi writes about a near-future Southwest that’s also been devastated by drought.
Sci-fi writers have long conceived worlds in which extreme weather events upend the lives of its inhabitants, but with every passing, warming year, their scenarios feel more prophetic.
Read more at the Los Angeles Times.