Blackfish City is Sam J. Miller's adult science fiction follow-up to his debut young adult novel, The Art of Starving, and establishes a dystopian world that stands apart in a crowded field. Miller's take on climate change-fueled dystopia has some superficial similarities to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson and Paolo Bacigalupi: rising sea levels are just one of a number of threats unleashed by global warming, and humanity hastens its own collapse through wars, religious fundamentalism and genocide. Blackfish City distinguishes itself by a number of idiosyncratic touches. An "orcamancer" arrives in Qaanaaq--a floating city under the laissez-faire rule of a collection of AI and mysterious "shareholders"--and sets off ripple effects in the lives of each of the novel's many characters.
Blackfish City has multiple layers, but frequently revolves around the orcamancer, one of the last of a persecuted race of people who bonded with animals through nanotechnology. She makes quite an entrance, accompanied by a killer whale and a polar bear. Eventually, the characters become embroiled in a larger skirmish between an ambitious gang leader and one of the shareholders.
The climate and the environment are not the most pressing threats to humanity's survival. Base human impulses such as fear and greed are far more destructive, and the novel is committed to exploring the distortions caused by inequality. Questions of fairness and justice are ever-present in Blackfish City, where the characters must reckon with the sins of the past in order to forge a hopeful future. --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, N.C.