As you will probably know, there has been a harmful algal bloom in South Australian waters for the last four months, an ecological catastrophe that is killing marine life along our coast and having many other complex effects. I wrote about the algal bloom for The Saturday Paper [gift link]. A straight journalism piece, which was interesting to work on, though it’s a form that always feels incomplete to me. I’m glad to see the article is being widely shared and hopefully contributing to better understanding of what’s going on and why.

The oceans are warming.

It has been surreal to tour Salvage and speak about a fictional climate-catastrophe future, while a real ecological disaster plays out near my home. The day that Salvage came out, my local beach was strewn with dead cuttlefish. Many people have pointed out the link between this algal bloom and Dyschronia, with its images of dead marine life washed up on the sand. Others are pointing out the links between Salvage and what’s happening in the political realm around the world.

I didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming everyone’s cultural reference point for climate catastrophe, but here we are. Of course I’m also wary of falling prey to delusions of reference, which is an occupational hazard for novelists. The familiarity of the algal bloom has been uncanny. The closeness to home. Walking on the beach several days a week with the dog, and seeing the place I live change from a place of beauty and fresh air and play to a place of horror and fear and grief and climate fury – that hurts. But there is no living outside of this climate crisis, no place where one can be blithely unaffected. Not even space. And the beauty and fresh air and play are still there, somehow.

No choice but to keep writing about it, I suppose. And keep taking action when I can.

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Another very fine review came out for Salvage over the weekend. This one is from Cadance Bell in The Australian, who also notices how familiar the world of the book feels. The review is paywalled, but here are some choice quotes:

“Salvage is less the work of a fantastical imagination and more one of extrapolation. Droughts, societal collapse, famines, floods – all the ingredients of the kind of apocalypse we’re slowly experiencing in the real world are rendered in rich, contemplative, literary prose.”

“Mills eschews traditional formats of dystopian storytelling in favour of exploring compassionate alternatives to existence in hardship… Her world-building is deep and grounded, delicately threading the numerous characters and their strands into a meaningful, memorable conclusion.”

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With my own critic hat on, I was delighted to review Yumna Kassab’s The Theory of Everything [$] for this month’s issue of ABR. Kassab is a prolific, intellectual and very interesting writer – I’ve so enjoyed following her work in recent years.