Sometimes, a story in which people are caught in a catastrophic nature-based calamity is meant simply to entertain.
But sometimes those stories are meant to be cautionary tales with (hopefully) preventative messages. Which is where we find Kate Risse’s new climate fiction novel Inland (paperback, Kindle, audiobook).
In the following email interview about it, Risse not only discusses what inspired and influenced this story, but also why she set it when she did.
To begin, what is Inland about, and when and where is it set?
Inland is a novel about catastrophic sea level rise along the Eastern Seaboard. Two families are separated and spends a good part of the novel trying to reunite while also surviving and adapting to the inundation.
It is set in the year 2026. The fictional world I have created very much resembles our world today, but you sense the beginning of infrastructure, community, and resources unraveling with the weather.
Where did you get the idea for Inland?
In Inland, the two adults who are trying desperately to find their families, drive from the Panhandle of Florida to New England. I’ve done that drive many times and recently have seen a lot of weather. I wanted to write about what I had seen.
I was further compelled to write this novel after witnessing damage caused by the category 5 Hurricane Michael that made landfall on the barrier island where I spend time with my family. I’ve spent a lot of time on islands and I’m always super aware of the fact that sometimes you can’t leave, and this theme of finding yourself stuck on an island due to weather you can’t control, also impacted the plot of my novel.
So, is there a reason why you set in 2026 as opposed to 2066 or 2226 or 2626? Or, for that matter, 2024?
Yes. I very specifically chose that year to suggest that things are unwinding faster than was initially thought, or at least communicated to the public. We are now in a world where Mungeshpur, a suburb of New Delhi, India, just recorded 127 F. Heat records have been broken all over the world this summer. I decidedly didn’t want my novel to be a dystopian story set in the far-flung future. I wanted it to be about where we might possibly be heading soon and how that’s not a good direction.
I had originally thought that Inland is a dystopian sci-fi /cli-fi story, but now I’m not sure.
It is a cli-fi novel with some speculative elements. I want there to be, and here I’ll quote Amanda Hagood, who reviewed my book for a Florida newspaper: “something like hope.” I wanted my novel to underscore the importance of resiliency, hope, practicality, perseverance, adaptation and other mindsets that the world will need to survive.
Inland is your first novel, though you’ve written some short stories. Are there any writers who had a big influence on Inland, but not on anything else you’ve written?
I wouldn’t say any writer or book has had a big influence. I did think of T.C. Boyle’s novel, A Friend Of The Earth as I was writing simply because there is endless precipitation in that novel. Our narrative tones are completely different, but I was evidently influenced by that background noise in his book.
Also, Island Of The Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell has always been one of my favorite books. I think I read it 4 times in fifth grade. It tells the story of a Native American girl who is stranded alone on an island for years and survives. She faces hardships but is confident and resilient.
I also have a Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies, and so have read many of the great Latin American and Spanish classics, many of which I’m sure indirectly impact my writing. Juan Rulfo’s collection of short stories, El llano en llamas [The Burning Plain] is one of my favorites. His work is complex and simple. He was a brilliant social critic of a particular post-Revolution period in Mexico and his depiction of an unforgiving, brutal Mexican landscape is superb.
And what about such non-literary influences as movies, TV shows, or games? Did any of those things have a big influence on Inland?
No.
Now, it sounds like Inland is a stand-alone story. But since you never know, I’ll ask: Is it?
I have thought about writing a sequel. Without giving too much away, let’s just say that the protagonist of Inland, Juliet, has some work to do at the end that could be addressed in Book II.
A moment ago you said Inland was not influenced by any movies, shows, or games. But do you think it could work as a movie, show, or game?
I think Inland would make a great movie. There is a lot of action, tension, challenges for the characters, and unknowns that I hope keep people turning the page. The main protagonist is a woman, a mother, grappling with two existential themes lots of parents think about these days: a changing climate and the iPhone and all the social media, and its effect on young people (As I write, the Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, has issued an advisory about the detrimental effects that social media has on our mental health — an understatement if you ask me.) There’s a lot of parent-teenager tension throughout the novel, which I think would work well in film. Both mother and son narrate, obviously through very different perspectives that realistically underscore the generational conflict regarding technology that a lot of us experience on a daily basis. There’s hope, terror, resiliency, forgiveness, and even humor that would lend itself to a visual medium like film. The sixteen year old character, Billy, is a good kid and likeable: innocent, flawed, brave, funny, all the characteristics that make for a good screen hero.
And if someone decided to make that movie, who would you want them to cast as Martin, Juliet, and Billy?
No idea. I’m sure a casting director could answer this question so much better than me.
So, is there anything else someone might need to know about Inland?
It’s fast paced, there’s a sense of urgency to move forward, find family, survive, adapt, open our eyes to the physical changes that are happening around us now in 2024.
Finally, if someone enjoys Inland, what cli-fi novel or novella of someone else’s would you suggest they read next and why that one?
Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry For The Future for its harrowing opening scene portraying an extreme heat wave in India (sound familiar?). It’s a brilliant scene: very realistic, very believable and horrible in its minutia of detail about what would happen to the human body (is happening in some places: suburbs of New Delhi: 127 F), what people would do, how community struggles or collapses
I would also go back a few decades and suggest Octavia Butler’s Parable Of The Sower, a brilliant novel about the breakdown of social order and how people persevere through extreme collapse and survive, help one another, and attempt to create new community.
I also recently enjoyed Lily Brooks-Dalton’s The Light Pirate, which tells a story of extreme hurricanes in Florida and what that scenario might look like in the future. Again, like the other books I’ve just mentioned, and like my novel Inland, it is set in the here and now: the 2020s, in our world. There is hope, resiliency, and scenarios for how we might survive more water. It is another novel with an absolutely harrowing beginning involving two young brothers innocently trying to survive too much water.
