Publisher's Synopsis
The year is 2024, and the long-looming threats of climate change are rapidly becoming the earth's reality. The world's greatest scientists have come together, and in a release known simply as "The Announcement," have let the world know that the earth's climate has passed an irreversible tipping point. Predictably, these scientists are dismissed as "whistleblowers," as having an agenda; even in the face of bare and bleak fact, the world chooses not to listen. Or, most of the world. In response to this definitive doomsday forecast, eight friends gather for perhaps the final time, to tell stories, share experiences, express their frustrations, and search for hope. One person shares a vision of a world in which the remaining human population has moved to colonies underground, and another recalls the dangerous history of human exceptionalism; we see a love story unfold in the wake of the covert murder of scientists, and memories of drives through coastal regions now underwater. The result is a diverse collage of human experience pressed up against natural forces that will almost certainly swallow it whole. Equal parts cautionary tale, apocalyptic vision, and celebration of the small pockets of human goodness that define the world, The Announcement reveals that even amidst the destruction we've wrought, there will always be beauty and humanity worth fighting for.
