FINALIST Shelf Unbound: Blue Karma is a “cli-fi” novel in which water is in very short supply. What interested you in writing about the climate? J.K. Ullrich: I’ve always felt strongly about environmental issues, but I started writing cli-fi by accident. As a teenager in the early 2000s, news of the terrible Australian droughts made me wonder how people lived in a place where water was a rare commodity. Then I got a glimpse for myself: A hurricane temporarily cut off the running water in my neighborhood. For the first time in my life, nothing happened when I turned on the tap. The experience transformed my perspective on water as a finite resource. Soon after that, I came up with the idea for Blue Karma. At the time I considered it science fiction, a near-future story with ecological themes. In the decade it took me to finally write the manuscript, climate change surged to the fore of public consciousness. Fiction became a form of activism for me. Books like Blue Karma give readers an opportunity to consider how the future might unfold, but I don’t write with a political agenda in mind. My goal is always to tell a good
story, and climate scenarios provide fertile ground for conflict, drama, and adventure. Shelf Unbound: Tell us about your main characters and how you developed them. Ullrich: I didn’t strive to make Blue Karma’s protagonists likable so much as interesting. Their world is broken and flawed, so why should they be any different? Each of the three main characters occupies a position where the cli-fi landscape impacts their daily lives; however, I let their simple human motives drive the plot. Amaya steals water to provide for herself and her sister, the only family she has left after a freak weather event destroyed her country. Logan’s deployment to guard water reserves seems wasted when he discovers his hometown on the verge of desertification. Paul, whose water company controls the fate of millions, feels torn between winning his mother’s approval and acting ethically. I like working with adolescent characters because they have tremendous capacity for both drama and development. Many of their experiences—from their first kiss to their first betrayal—are firsts, so reactions are more extreme. They can
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