Science Fiction
![Michelle Min Sterling - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B0B3ZQWV2J.jpg)
Camp Zero: A Novel
A Today Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick
In a near-future northern settlement, the fates of a young woman, a professor, and a mysterious collective of researchers collide in this mesmerizing and transportive debut that "delivers its big ideas with suspense, endlessly surprising twists, and abundant heart" (Jessamine Chan, New York Times bestselling author).
In remote northern Canada, a team led by a visionary American architect is breaking ground on a building project called Camp Zero, intended to be the beginning of a new way of life. A clever and determined young woman code-named Rose is offered a chance to join the Blooms, a group hired to entertain the men in camp-but her real mission is to secretly monitor the mercurial architect in charge. In return, she'll receive a home for her climate-displaced Korean immigrant mother and herself.
Rose quickly secures the trust of her target, only to discover that everyone has a hidden agenda, and nothing is as it seems. Through skillfully braided perspectives, including those of a young professor longing to escape his wealthy family and an all-woman military research unit struggling for survival at a climate station, the fate of Camp Zero's inhabitants reaches a stunning crescendo.
Atmospheric, fiercely original, and utterly gripping, Camp Zero is an electrifying page-turner and a masterful exploration of who and what will survive in a warming world, and how falling in love and building community can be the most daring acts of all.
In a near-future northern settlement, the fates of a young woman, a professor, and a mysterious collective of researchers collide in this mesmerizing and transportive debut that "delivers its big ideas with suspense, endlessly surprising twists, and abundant heart" (Jessamine Chan, New York Times bestselling author).
In remote northern Canada, a team led by a visionary American architect is breaking ground on a building project called Camp Zero, intended to be the beginning of a new way of life. A clever and determined young woman code-named Rose is offered a chance to join the Blooms, a group hired to entertain the men in camp-but her real mission is to secretly monitor the mercurial architect in charge. In return, she'll receive a home for her climate-displaced Korean immigrant mother and herself.
Rose quickly secures the trust of her target, only to discover that everyone has a hidden agenda, and nothing is as it seems. Through skillfully braided perspectives, including those of a young professor longing to escape his wealthy family and an all-woman military research unit struggling for survival at a climate station, the fate of Camp Zero's inhabitants reaches a stunning crescendo.
Atmospheric, fiercely original, and utterly gripping, Camp Zero is an electrifying page-turner and a masterful exploration of who and what will survive in a warming world, and how falling in love and building community can be the most daring acts of all.
Editorial Reviews
"[A] stunning debut . . . Sterling's future is close enough to the present to be entirely recognizable, underlining this cleverly constructed climate fiction mystery with palpable terror: this world feels like one many readers could see within their lifetimes. This should earn a place on shelves alongside Station Eleven and Annihilation." -Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Sterling vividly renders a harrowing near-future world ravaged by climate change while still offering hope through human connection and perseverance." -Booklist
"Brilliantly unsettling…Camp Zero is compelling dystopian cli-fi with three-dimensional characters-a perfect read for fans of Station Eleven, To Paradise, and The Handmaid's Tale. The ending leaves the way open for a sequel. Bring it on."-Shelf Awareness
"A gripping story about survival, with compelling characters and frightening plot twists that will keep you riveted."-Real Simple
"A smart setup . . . The book has a soul that generates momentum. It's committed to the bonds of family, the ones we are born into and the ones we choose, as a way forward in an increasingly chaotic world. A love letter to what communities of women can accomplish when they work in concert." -Kirkus Reviews
"Camp Zero is the thrilling, urgent feminist climate fiction that the world needs. With extraordinary world-building, captivating characters, and sharp commentary on climate change, technology, colonialism, capitalism, and the patriarchy, Michelle Min Sterling's remarkable debut delivers its big ideas with suspense, endlessly surprising twists, and abundant heart." -JESSAMINE CHAN, New York Times bestselling author of The School for Good Mothers
"Camp Zero is a sui generis novel, boldly imagined, intricately designed, and convincingly detailed....
"Sterling vividly renders a harrowing near-future world ravaged by climate change while still offering hope through human connection and perseverance." -Booklist
"Brilliantly unsettling…Camp Zero is compelling dystopian cli-fi with three-dimensional characters-a perfect read for fans of Station Eleven, To Paradise, and The Handmaid's Tale. The ending leaves the way open for a sequel. Bring it on."-Shelf Awareness
"A gripping story about survival, with compelling characters and frightening plot twists that will keep you riveted."-Real Simple
"A smart setup . . . The book has a soul that generates momentum. It's committed to the bonds of family, the ones we are born into and the ones we choose, as a way forward in an increasingly chaotic world. A love letter to what communities of women can accomplish when they work in concert." -Kirkus Reviews
"Camp Zero is the thrilling, urgent feminist climate fiction that the world needs. With extraordinary world-building, captivating characters, and sharp commentary on climate change, technology, colonialism, capitalism, and the patriarchy, Michelle Min Sterling's remarkable debut delivers its big ideas with suspense, endlessly surprising twists, and abundant heart." -JESSAMINE CHAN, New York Times bestselling author of The School for Good Mothers
"Camp Zero is a sui generis novel, boldly imagined, intricately designed, and convincingly detailed....
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter One: Rose CHAPTER ONE ROSE
The Blooms receive their new names on the shortest day of the year. Six women in total. All strangers. They stand in an empty parking lot and wait to be checked in. Snow has scrubbed the landscape clean, capped the roof of the run-down mall that is one of the few buildings still standing on this frozen stretch of highway.
The Bloom last in line pauses to appreciate the freeze. It's colder in the North than she expected, and the snow is more delicate. She takes off a glove and watches a flake vanish in the palm of her hand. She's never seen snow before, and the snowflake feels refreshing on her skin, like a cool cloth pressed to a feverish forehead.
When she reaches the entrance to the mall, her new Madam introduces herself as Judith. She is nothing like the Bloom's previous Madam, who drifted around in a linen caftan and calfskin sandals. Judith wears a fur-lined parka, black snow pants, and a pair of steel-toe boots, as if she was hired to demolish the dilapidated mall they're standing in front of.
Judith reads off a clipboard. "Your name will be Rose."
"Rose," she repeats. A cloying, sentimental name. Like a grandmother who keeps apple pies in the deep-freeze. She had expected one of the pseudonyms shared among the "Asian Girls" in the Loop where she used to work: Jade, Mei, Lotus. It never mattered that the names were cliché, or that she is as white as she is Korean. Back in the Floating City, ethnicity was a ready-made brand.
Judith lowers her voice. "I wanted to let you girls choose your names for yourself. But Meyer likes things his way."
"Is Meyer my client?" Rose asks, careful to sound casual.
"He doesn't want us to use that word here, Rose. Think of him as your collaborator." Judith opens the front door of the mall and Rose follows inside. "Welcome to the Millennium Mall."
The Blooms' quarters are at the back of the mall in a department store that has long since been pillaged. Metal clothing racks are scattered in jumbled piles, and the beauty counters' mirrors are mottled. Rose can smell the faintest trace of artificial gardenia as she rolls her suitcase past a perfume display, where an ad of a woman's glowing face pressed against the bristly cheek of a male model still remains. Her mother never wore perfume and hadn't allowed Rose to either. She wanted them to smell as they actually did, like the saltwater breeze of the peninsula.
"When did the mall close?" Rose asks.
"Fifteen years ago," Judith says. "It was the first place to shutter when the rigs stopped drilling."
Judith leads Rose to the former furniture section where the Blooms' lodgings have been built out of plywood along an echoing corridor. Each room's entrance is framed by light, and Rose can hear the sounds of the other Blooms unpacking behind the closed doors.
Judith opens Rose's door and deposits her single suitcase on a mahogany four-poster bed. A bear pelt is splayed across the floor, and a rickety plastic chandelier is bolted to the ceiling. A vanity mirror with a small, upholstered stool in front of it is against the wall. The room reeks of damp pleather.
Damien, her former client who set her up with this job, warned her that the camp would be spare, but he said nothing about squatting in a derelict shopping mall. It's too late to give Damien shit now. Rose won't speak with him again until her assignment is complete. All she has is her contact in camp, who Damien promised would reach out when the moment is right. She wonders if Judith might be her contact, but then decides this clipboard-wielding woman is too straightforward for that level of deception.
"Water is heated to tepid," Judith says, and shows Rose the "sanitizing schedule" tacked to her bedroom door. Judith explains that the Blooms are expected to share the mall's washroom, where a nozzle attached to one of the sink's faucets functions as a makeshift shower. "We run on oil and have to conserve energy to maintain our supply."
"Oil isn't illegal here?" Rose asks in surprise. In the Floating City, oil usage is treated with the same moral outrage as murder.
"Nothing is illegal in camp," Judith says. "That's why we live off-grid. We're lucky enough to make our own rules here."
Rose wonders if the rules of the camp are like the rules of the Floating City, created to benefit those who made them. If this is the case, then she doubts Judith is the one who made the rules. Judith strikes her as a middle manager, a local hire paid to oversee the Blooms, whose influence in camp is confined to the domestic arrangements of the bedrooms. But Judith is technically Rose's boss, so she will have to adopt the blasé disinterest of a jaded escort to keep her ...
The Blooms receive their new names on the shortest day of the year. Six women in total. All strangers. They stand in an empty parking lot and wait to be checked in. Snow has scrubbed the landscape clean, capped the roof of the run-down mall that is one of the few buildings still standing on this frozen stretch of highway.
The Bloom last in line pauses to appreciate the freeze. It's colder in the North than she expected, and the snow is more delicate. She takes off a glove and watches a flake vanish in the palm of her hand. She's never seen snow before, and the snowflake feels refreshing on her skin, like a cool cloth pressed to a feverish forehead.
When she reaches the entrance to the mall, her new Madam introduces herself as Judith. She is nothing like the Bloom's previous Madam, who drifted around in a linen caftan and calfskin sandals. Judith wears a fur-lined parka, black snow pants, and a pair of steel-toe boots, as if she was hired to demolish the dilapidated mall they're standing in front of.
Judith reads off a clipboard. "Your name will be Rose."
"Rose," she repeats. A cloying, sentimental name. Like a grandmother who keeps apple pies in the deep-freeze. She had expected one of the pseudonyms shared among the "Asian Girls" in the Loop where she used to work: Jade, Mei, Lotus. It never mattered that the names were cliché, or that she is as white as she is Korean. Back in the Floating City, ethnicity was a ready-made brand.
Judith lowers her voice. "I wanted to let you girls choose your names for yourself. But Meyer likes things his way."
"Is Meyer my client?" Rose asks, careful to sound casual.
"He doesn't want us to use that word here, Rose. Think of him as your collaborator." Judith opens the front door of the mall and Rose follows inside. "Welcome to the Millennium Mall."
The Blooms' quarters are at the back of the mall in a department store that has long since been pillaged. Metal clothing racks are scattered in jumbled piles, and the beauty counters' mirrors are mottled. Rose can smell the faintest trace of artificial gardenia as she rolls her suitcase past a perfume display, where an ad of a woman's glowing face pressed against the bristly cheek of a male model still remains. Her mother never wore perfume and hadn't allowed Rose to either. She wanted them to smell as they actually did, like the saltwater breeze of the peninsula.
"When did the mall close?" Rose asks.
"Fifteen years ago," Judith says. "It was the first place to shutter when the rigs stopped drilling."
Judith leads Rose to the former furniture section where the Blooms' lodgings have been built out of plywood along an echoing corridor. Each room's entrance is framed by light, and Rose can hear the sounds of the other Blooms unpacking behind the closed doors.
Judith opens Rose's door and deposits her single suitcase on a mahogany four-poster bed. A bear pelt is splayed across the floor, and a rickety plastic chandelier is bolted to the ceiling. A vanity mirror with a small, upholstered stool in front of it is against the wall. The room reeks of damp pleather.
Damien, her former client who set her up with this job, warned her that the camp would be spare, but he said nothing about squatting in a derelict shopping mall. It's too late to give Damien shit now. Rose won't speak with him again until her assignment is complete. All she has is her contact in camp, who Damien promised would reach out when the moment is right. She wonders if Judith might be her contact, but then decides this clipboard-wielding woman is too straightforward for that level of deception.
"Water is heated to tepid," Judith says, and shows Rose the "sanitizing schedule" tacked to her bedroom door. Judith explains that the Blooms are expected to share the mall's washroom, where a nozzle attached to one of the sink's faucets functions as a makeshift shower. "We run on oil and have to conserve energy to maintain our supply."
"Oil isn't illegal here?" Rose asks in surprise. In the Floating City, oil usage is treated with the same moral outrage as murder.
"Nothing is illegal in camp," Judith says. "That's why we live off-grid. We're lucky enough to make our own rules here."
Rose wonders if the rules of the camp are like the rules of the Floating City, created to benefit those who made them. If this is the case, then she doubts Judith is the one who made the rules. Judith strikes her as a middle manager, a local hire paid to oversee the Blooms, whose influence in camp is confined to the domestic arrangements of the bedrooms. But Judith is technically Rose's boss, so she will have to adopt the blasé disinterest of a jaded escort to keep her ...
