one more thing...

Dear Abbey by Terry Bisson.

I read most of it on the plane on the way home, the rest last night, and highly recommend seeking it out. Not least because PS Publishing tends to sell out everything they publish, sooner rather than later, and it's worth having, and reading, and turning over and over in your mind. There are some lovely things in this novella, beautiful and funny language, strange and resonant images, and never a sense that it's preaching. It takes a real gift to write about something like "the environment" and "the future of humankind" without doing that, doing it writing a story that never shies away from being overtly about those things and still, still not hitting any point hard enough to fracture the whole.

So, read it. It's worth it.