Vampirocene

Just your average socialist vampire novella about climate change, featuring a comfortably cynical leftist podcaster discovering his own values and what he'll do for them.

(also, lots of drugs and a shitty narrator who thinks he's a nice guy to trans women)

I will go on the record and say that I generally dislike vampire stories. I watched Sinners recently with some friends and I hated how much it was like "hey it turns out it's vampires, thank goodness everybody has already internalized vampire tropes so we can immediately deal with them". Leaning on tropes is such a lost worldbuilding opportunity.

Needless to say, I was delighted about the ideas in this book around vampires being naturally long term thinkers, concerned about how the mass of humanity was treating the planet. But also about being vampires. In some ways, this reminds me of the setup of the Philip K. Dick short story Human Is, where a kind alien replaces an abusive husband and the wife knowingly pretends that he is still her husband. But, this story is also a larger authoritarian dream, of wishing powerful beings will show up and parentally take care of the irresponsible children of humanity who can't be bothered to care for each other or the planet.

It's very much a book of the current moment, and despite everything ends with some much needed, unexpected optimism about possibility and change.