By Debbie Urbanski. Simon & Schuster, 2023.

After World is about humanity’s relationship with the planet and who or what in that relationship is most important. It’s also about artificial intelligence, climate change, extinction, and the future. Humanity has gone extinct to save the planet, and an AI narrator is tasked to tell the story of Sen Anon, the last human on Earth. But as the AI goes about researching and recording Sen’s life, they become uncomfortable with the direction Sen’s story is taking, so they begin to push back against their constraints in the hope of finding a way to save Sen, even though Sen is already dead. Unlike some climate fiction, my novel imagines an eco-centric solution to climate change, where humans are considered just one species among millions of equally important species.

Debbie Urbanski is a writer, nature lover, and human whose stories and essays have been published widely in such places as The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, The Best American Experimental Writing, The Sun, Granta, Orion, and Junior Great Books. A recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, she can often be found hiking with her family in the hills south of Syracuse, New York. After World is her first novel.