An end-of-the-world love story, full of pathos and humor, about the future and past of our planet
Well, that’s about it for the story of planet earth, poor earth, reduced in Earth 7 to not much more than a piece of burnt coal. But, as Deb Olin Unferth shows in her latest electrifying novel, life—and love—persist in unexpected ways even in the most inhospitable circumstances.

Earth 7 is the story of two women, one who was raised in a pod in the ocean and the other who may or may not be a robot. Earth has been severely depopulated, not due to any one calamity but because of many. Some humans have given up, gone off to Mars. Others pursue digital eternal life. And yet others, like Dylan and Melanie, are holdouts, and some of those holdouts are constructing a vast molecular collection in hopes that someone in the future may be alive to make a new Earth. Foolhardy? Misguided? Probably. But what can a human (or a robot) do? The Martian named Zee might have an opinion, too.

By the end of Unferth’s wild, poetic, consistently surprising, and slyly philosophical novel, the reader has traveled to the very edges of the cosmos and into the muck of a wandering “soul globule.” It’s the most exhilarating work to date by one of our most distinctive and original American writers
 
Contributor Bio(s)
 
Deb Olin Unferth is the author of six books, most recently Barn 8 and Wait Till You See Me Dance. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Her work has appeared in Granta, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, and The Paris Review.