The Mad Planet

The narrative follows Burl, a young descendant of humanity who moves cautiously through a world overtaken by enormous fungi and humid, CO2-thick air. Interwoven with his movements is an account of slow atmospheric change: increasing carbon dioxide transformed climates and vegetation, forced survivors into highlands, collapsed industrial civilization, and drove physical and social evolution over centuries. Human bodies adapted with enlarged lungs and altered features while lowlands turned into lethally dense jungles. The work traces individual survival within a radically altered ecosystem and explores themes of environmental consequence, gradual catastrophe, and biological adaptation.