Kelly Robson’s killer novella Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach opens 250 years into our future. Many decades prior, catastrophic climate and environmental change forced humans into massive underground metropolises, or “hells.” Eventually, the plague babies—survivors of epidemics that burned through the hells in years past—braved the topside in an attempt to reclaim the land. One of those topsiders is Minh, a river rehabilitator in the struggling Calgary habilitation center. With the solid if not abundant financial backing of the banks, she and other plague babies were doing good work repairing damage to the earth to make it livable once more. And then the organization known as TERN invented time travel and everything fell apart. What little cash there was now goes to shiny new short term projects full of flash and bang rather than not so exciting long-term ecological necessities. Minh, who saw her livelihood and all her work’s meaning disregarded in the wake of TERN, is left bitter and bored.
When Minh gets the chance to use TERN to finally do some good, she pulls together a rag-tag crew and sets off to run river analysis in ancient Mesopotamia. At first, Minh, Kiki (an overeager grad student), Hamid (an old friend and wannabe cowboy), and Fabian (their TERN contact) have everything under control, but their well-planned expedition quickly falls apart. Tense interpersonal relations, historical conflicts, and shady tech wreak havoc on their project right from the beginning. The past, present, and future collide in unexpected yet devastating ways.
[“We’re on an island with a killer.”]
