Our bookseller says…

After alien invaders demand all of humanity migrate to Antarctica, Cold People becomes a bleak sci-fi tale of humanity’s odyssey south and the society they build there in the decades after, all the while battling inhospitable circumstances and total annihilation. The story itself is a splash of Foundation by Asimov, a little bit of survival horror, and a lot of deadpan criticism of human nature and the mess they wrought upon the world. It’s an almost overwhelmingly grim story at times, but Smith does inject a little optimism here and there; just enough that I never lost hope for humanity, even though it probably would have been wise to.

-Sam

The world has fallen. Without warning, a mysterious and omnipotent force has claimed the planet for their own. There are no negotiations, no demands, no reasons given for their actions. All they have is a message: humanity has thirty days to reach the one place on Earth where they will be allowed to exist…Antarctica.

Cold People follows the perilous journeys of a handful of those who endure the frantic exodus to the most extreme environment on the planet. But their goal is not merely to survive the present. Because as they cling to life on the ice, the remnants of their past swept away, they must also confront the urgent challenge: can they change and evolve rapidly enough to ensure humanity’s future? Can they build a new society in the sub-zero cold?

Original and imaginative, as profoundly intimate as it is grand in scope, Cold People is a masterful and unforgettable epic.