"The Rememberers"

2019 Heng, [Qingpei] Rachel. “The Remembers.” Illus. Wesley Allsbrook. 2040 A.D. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern 58 (Winter 2019): 15-33. PSt, PU

The story is set in Singapore after the water came and most Singaporeans now live underground in inverted skyscrapers with “the elite few . . . who can afford homes within the last remaining gated communities aboveground” (18). The protagonist’s family was among the last to move into the underground bunkers, as she calls them, where status is reflected in how close to the surface you lived. Life is tightly controlled with high unemployment and passes checked on exiting and entering. The authors of the stories were each “assigned a specific climate event mentioned” in the 2018 UN climate report collaborating with experts recommended by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) who “provide a scientific backbone” for the stories while giving the writers free rein to determine how closely they adhered to that science” (6-7). The Introduction to the volume (7-12) is by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, Chief Program Officer of the NDRC. Singaporean female author who earned a BA from Columbia University, worked in private equity in London, and then was a fiction fellow in the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas Austin. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Wesleyan University.