Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create accountLimited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting Bookshop.org with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Sign up todayGift audiobook credit bundles
You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and Bookshop.org is supported by your purchase.
Start giftingThe Lost Cause
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreBookseller recommendation
“Cory Doctorow's trademark insight, enthusiasm and wry humour create the perfect blend in this thoroughly entertaining spec fic about a group of teens and twentysomethings figuring out the best way to survive the climate apocalypse. Read with verve by Doctorow himself, it's as clever as it is joyous. I did not want it to end.”
— Melinda • Readings
Bookseller recommendation
“Noted tech writer Cory Doctorow has authored AND performed this audiobook adaptation of The Lost Cause. It is a dystopian tale of hope, love, resistance and generational conflict set 30 years from today. Humanity is fighting against climate change and societal strife. The first generation to be unafraid of the future comes into conflict with the prior MAGA influenced elders and the corporate geniuses who promise to fix everything painlessly. This performance is an incredible listen with compelling characters that will keep you spellbound.”
— Matthew C • McIntyre's Books
Summary
It’s thirty years from now. We’re making progress, mitigating climate change, slowly but surely. But what about all the angry old people who can’t let go?
For young Americans a generation from now, climate change isn't controversial. It's just an overwhelming fact of life. And so are the great efforts to contain and mitigate it. Entire cities are being moved inland from the rising seas. Vast clean-energy projects are springing up everywhere. Disaster relief, the mitigation of floods and superstorms, has become a skill for which tens of millions of people are trained every year. The effort is global. It employs everyone who wants to work. Even when national politics oscillates back to right-wing leaders, the momentum is too great; these vast programs cannot be stopped in their tracks.
But there are still those Americans, mostly elderly, who cling to their red baseball caps, their grievances, their huge vehicles, their anger. To their "alternative" news sources that reassure them that their resentment is right and pure and that "climate change" is just a giant scam.
And they're your grandfather, your uncle, your great-aunt. And they're not going anywhere. And they’re armed to the teeth.
The Lost Cause asks: What do we do about people who cling to the belief that their own children are the enemy? When, in fact, they're often the elders that we love?