Seeds for the Swarm

Rylla McCracken dreams of escaping her family’s trailer in the Dust States to go to college, but on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, her mother demands she drop out of school to work for Lockburn chemical refinery instead. When Rylla learns Lockburn is planning to dam the Guadalupe River—the last flowing water in Texas—she defies her mother to protest in the state capital. The protest ends in disaster, but her ensuing viral infamy gains Rylla an acceptance to the mysterious Wingates University.

At Wingates, Rylla befriends a diverse group of students, all working on new technologies to save the planet. Besides mountains of homework, Rylla struggles with guilt for leaving her brother behind in the Dust, where tensions with the Lush States are escalating towards civil war. Succeeding at Wingates seems like Rylla’s best chance to help her family, until she uncovers a terrible secret about the school’s billionaire backers. Now, Rylla and her friends are in a race against the rich to reclaim the world-altering technology they’ve developed—before it’s too late.

“A deeply humane journey through a near-future where climate change has progressed well past the point of no return. Sim Kern never shies from the ethical implications of their own world-building. It’s easy to valorize hope, but what happens when our desire for hope leads us to embrace facile, counter-productive solutions? In this queer, self-aware take on the Ender’s Game scenario of a bunch of brilliant kids drawn together to save the world, you’ll genuinely be cheering at how Rylla and her friends manage to maintain their belief in the power of science, the value of human life, and need to keep struggling against cynicism and hopelessness.”
— Naomi Kanakia, author of Enter Title Here and We Are Totally Normal

“Kern doesn’t pull any punches on the environmental consequences of consumer capitalism, nor do they avoid the social and emotional impacts of living through an age of mass extinctions. The subject lends itself to nihilism, but Rylla’s commitment to family, friends, and justice provides a glimpse of hope that is badly needed in the coming fights, real and fictional. Perfect for teen readers struggling with their own feelings of despair in our own unstable world, it is also a welcome and provocative read for all fans of YA.”
— Amy Nagopaleen for Strange Horizons