Book #29: Scatter, Adapt, and Remember

Space travel as a possible climate future, from the lens of a queer sci-fi writer.

We’re Book Club for the Planet, a book club dedicated to reading about the climate crisis in community. Want to see all of the 2025 book picks and recommendations in one place? Here you go. Need a refresher for how book club works? Right this way.

Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction by Annalee Newitz

Annalee Newitz, the writer of our next book club read, is a journalist and sci-fi writer who was previously editor-in-chief of i09 and Gizmodo with her partner, fellow sci-fi writer Charlie Jane Anders. Her novels have won the Lambda Literary Award and been nominated for the Nebula Award and the Locus Award. And she’s written a book about colonizing space as an answer to climate collapse.

You may have heard that we’re living through Earth’s sixth mass extinction event. How will humans survive it? Newitz makes a case for Space. And while billionaires have appropriated space travel for their own personal interests and profit, Space has long been a place of mystery, radical hope, destiny, and power for many. Think Afrofuturism, Sun Ra Arkestra, or Octavia Butler’s Black teenage protagonist from Parable of the Sower, Lauren Olamina, claiming “The Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.” Our last book, Everything for Everyone, even included a space elevator (!!) in its imagining of a future communist world order.

I’m hoping and anticipating that this one lends itself to a spicy dialogue! Let’s approach the idea of space travel from the lens of a queer sci-fi writer as a possible climate future.

Book club dates: Sunday, July 13 (virtual); Monday, July 14 (in-person)

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If you live in or near Baltimore, join us at Greedy Reads' Remington location for an in-person meet-up!

Take care of yourself and each other, friends. See you soon.