Aerth

by Deborah Tomkins

Winner of Weatherglass Novella Prize 2024.

Magnus lives on Aerth, which is currently moving into an Ice Age, with a strange virus limiting the population. When the planet Urth is discovered, he vows to become an astronaut and travel there, but on arriving he finds it hot, crowded, corrupt and violent, despite it being initially welcoming. Slowly Magnus realises he will not find what he’s looking for, but there seems no way back.

Aerth is a story about migration, climate, conspiracy theories and interplanetary homelessness.

“What planet are we on? Can we leave? Does it mean we can never go home again if we do? What does a phrase like worlds apart really mean? Deep-forged, witty and resonant, this dimensionally stunning novella deals with dystopia and hope in a way that reveals them as profoundly related. A work of real energy and narrative grip, brilliantly earthy and airy at once, it blasts open a reader’s past/future consciousness and taps into literary antecedents as disparate as Hardy and Atwood. Funny, terrifying, humane, this is a thrilling journey in a story the size of a planet – no, the size of several, all of them altogether strange and uncannily familiar.”– Ali Smith

Deborah Tomkins writes long and short fiction. Her prize-winning flash fiction and other work has been published in print and online. She has recently been announced as the joint winner of the Virginia Prize for Fiction, and her winning novel will be published by Aurora Metro. She lives in Bristol with her family.