2050: A Post-Apocalyptic Murder Mystery by Michael Kluckner is Cli-Fi in the age of Trump and climate-change denial—a brainwashed detective puzzling her way through a rare murder in the ruins of Vancouver in 2050. What’s life like for the survivors of the war and pandemic? Not too bad, as it turns out.
This is a dystopian story for people who want their dystopias not too dystopian. If you want a geography lesson on Vancouver after a huge sea-level rise, or if you wonder how a future society run by an extreme environmentalist government might operate, 2050 is for you. It is funny, thoughtful, and timely.
Michael Kluckner is a Canadian writer and artist. His early books on the history of Canadian cities, heritage, planning issues, and art, include Vancouver The Way It Was, Vanishing Vancouver, Paving Paradise, and British Columbia in Watercolour. He has won numerous awards, including the Duthie Prize, the Vancouver Book Prize, the Toronto Book Prize (short list), the Hallmark Society (Victoria) Award of Merit, and the Heritage Canada Medal of Achievement. 2020 is his second graphic novel published with Midtown Press.