Weather and Beasts and Growing Things

Suttee debuts with a psychedelic cli-fi tale set in a cyberpunk, postapocalyptic future world. In a crumbling, mold-riddled apartment building on the South Carolina coast, Stevven scrapes out a mostly illegal existence centered around the care and maintenance of their secret rooftop garden. Its precious centerpiece is BluBerry, the genetically modified plant created by their late partner, June. BluBerry was June’s answer to global food scarcity—entirely edible, impossibly resilient, and able to grow anywhere—and after her multi-billion-dollar employer had her killed to keep BluBerry a secret, Stevven went underground and semi-feral to protect it. When the surveillance state catches up to Stevven at last, they grab BluBerry and a few friends, and start a desperate run through monster-filled, cult-dotted wilderness and shiny yet soulless cities to June’s old university, the only place they still trust to help them give BluBerry to the world. Though Suttee’s highly stylized poetic prose and dense, often unexplained worldbuilding can make the story challenging to follow, it’s well worth hanging on for the ride; Suttee’s vision of the future is terrifying, both in its moments of hyper-capitalist lucidity and its fantastical visions of nightmare creatures. This is weird, challenging, and rewarding. (Oct.)