Susan Kaye Quinn

Halfway to Better is a collection of short solarpunk stories, each exploring a near-future where were struggling to survive the climate crisis and build a better world.

SHORT STORY: A very short story about the cost of cutting down a tree. I Came Home From Saving the Rainforest is one of six short solarpunk stories in the Halfway to Better collection.

SHORT STORY: A sister in the far future, when we no longer burn things for fuel, finds a forbidden thing that would make the perfect gift. The Day We Stopped Burning is one of six short solarpunk stories in the Halfway to Better collection.

SHORT STORY: A cute technician keeps breaking things in her too-shiny lab, then calling a fixer in for repairs. Zita's a certified member of the International Guild of Repair Workers, Local 772, and she's certain this hot girl is breaking her toys on purpose.

SHORT STORY: Humanity has left the cities to live in the "greenbelt," but a young woman's curiosity brings her back to the bot-patrolled streets where human beings used to live... until she gets caught.

SHORT STORY: At the bottom of the sea, a trawler crawls across an abyssal plain, carefully cleaning microplastics off the ancient mineral-rich nodules, when the crew finds something that shouldn't be possible.

SHORT STORY: Living in a flooded lighthouse is probably illegal, but no one has come to kick her out, so she keeps furtively tending the oyster beds and feeding the crows.

Nitara Desai has spent her life negotiating international agreements, easing points of conflict, and averting disasters. Worst-case scenarios belong in her nightmares, not the IEC’s daily reports....

Humanity is trapped in a loop. As the world heats, it takes more energy to keep humanity from dying—a feedback loop that makes net-zero carbon increasingly impossible to reach....

Climate-driven plagues haunt humanity, and it’s regional director Zuri Hill-Gray’s job to keep the clean-energy grid running....

For better, for worse. In sickness and in health. It’s a legal vow of care for families in 2050, a world beset by waves of climate-driven plagues. Power engineer Lucía Ramirez long ago lost her family to one....

Human cloning. Technology evolves faster than we do. The law shields us from our worst temptations. But the opportunity is there, dangling just out of reach - perfection and ascension or delusion and destruction. The choice is ours. In this collection of clone-themed stories, 10 of today’s...

Wraith is a shadow in the night, haunting the bedrooms of the rich "high potentials" who have stolen life energy from the desperate and dying. The justice and the sweet mercy hit that follow keep her from falling into her own personal abyss....

The war has begun, and with the Queen of Dharia on her deathbed, Aniri’s excessively-proper eldest sister, first daughter Nahali, finally sees her chance to claim the crown....

Aniri’s life is supposedly perfect - she’s beloved by the people of Jungali and betrothed to their handsome prince. He’s a noble barbarian who’s pledged to use his skyship for peace....

Sneaking out of the palace wasn’t one of Aniri’s best ideas. But she’s the third daughter of the Queen of Dharia - zero responsibilities and zero royal duties. She’s just the backup daughter, in case her older sisters’ arranged marriages don't work out....

What does it mean to be human? Elijah Brighton is the face of the Human Resistance Movement. He's the Olympic-level painter who refused an offer of immortality from the ascenders - the human/machine hybrids who run the world - in solidarity with the legacy humans who will never get a chance to...

What if you could paint with reality? Elijah Brighton can bring a girl back from the dead, travel outside his body, and absorb a lifetime of memories from anyone he touches in the fugue state. Everyone seems to think he's the prophet they're waiting for...including the girl he's falling in love...

Warrior faery princes can be very stubborn. Especially when they possess your body. Fourteen-year-old Finn just wants to keep his little sister out of Child Protective Services - an epic challenge with their parentally-missing-in-action dad moving them to England, near the famous Stonehenge...

What would you give to live forever? Seventeen-year-old Elijah Brighton wants to become an ascender--a post-Singularity human/machine hybrid--after all, they're smarter, more enlightened, more compassionate, and above all, achingly beautiful. But Eli is a legacy human, preserved and cherished...