METAtropolis: Cascadia
METAtropolis • Book 2
by Jay Lake, Mary Robinette Kowal, Elizabeth Bear, Ken Scholes, Karl Schroeder, René Auberjonois, Kate Mulgrew, Wil Wheaton, Gates McFadden, Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton, Tobias S. Buckell
Why You'll Love This
Six sci-fi writers built one crumbling Pacific Northwest future together — and the seams are invisible.
- Great if you want: shared-world SF where ecology, economy, and identity collide
- The experience: dense and cerebral — best read slowly to absorb the worldbuilding
- The writing: multiple distinct voices that somehow cohere into one cohesive broken future
- Skip if: you haven't read the first METAtropolis — context matters here
About This Book
The Pacific Northwest has always felt like a place apart — and in METAtropolis: Cascadia, that instinct becomes prophecy. Set in the 2070s, this shared-world anthology imagines Cascadia as a breakaway territory carving its own identity from the ruins of a fractured United States. Economic collapse, genetic experimentation, and fierce environmental struggle aren't backdrop here — they're the oxygen every character breathes. Six science fiction writers build a world that feels lived-in and urgent, where the stakes are civilizational but the stories stay stubbornly, compellingly human.
What makes Cascadia distinctive is how seamlessly its contributors — including Elizabeth Bear, Ken Scholes, Karl Schroeder, and Mary Robinette Kowal — write toward a shared vision without flattening their individual voices. Each story approaches the same territory from a different angle, so the world deepens with every page rather than repeating itself. The prose is sharp and the speculation grounded, favoring texture and consequence over spectacle. Readers who enjoy science fiction that trusts them to connect the dots will find this anthology particularly rewarding — a world assembled in pieces that cohere into something larger than any single story.
