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Age of Suicide is a climate fiction novel by J.R. Kirsch. The story features catastrophic climate change as the major plot element, illustrated through scientifically-accurate descriptions and references to contemporary political and social challenges to effective climate change mitigation.

The story centers on Cooper Braydon and his Millennial roommates in New York during his final year of college. When they learn about the effects of global warming from a climate refugee from the Philippines, Cooper is drawn into a larger conflict known as the climate wars, while he and his roommates undergo various psychological traumas as they transition into the Anthropocene.

Setting
The novel takes place in contemporary New York City at the end of the Holocene, the geological age in which the Earth entered an interglacial period which led to the rise of human civilization. The story features references to Hurricane Sandy, Typhoon Haiyan, and the unstoppable loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, placing it in the time frame of 2013-2014.

Halfway through the story, the Earth moves into the Anthropocene age, an "age of suicide" according to Pando, a climate refugee from a fictional city in the Philippines. The Anthropocene is depicted as a time of war, in contrast to the idyllic Holocene that preceded it. The headquarters of the Coke Coalition is located on an oil field in Oklahoma, and isare prone to fracking earthquakes.

Plot summary
The story opens in a dream sequence aboard the RMS Titanic in her final hours after striking an iceberg. Cooper Braydon awakens from this dream in the midst of the 1998 Kissimmee tornado outbreak, where his mother is killed by a tornado potentially caused by an El Niño. Fifteen years later, he moves to Brooklyn to finish his final year of undergraduate study at Columbia University. He and his roommates Shree and Mel have a hard time adjusting to their apartment as various unexpected challenges test them during their transition to adulthood.

In another part of Brooklyn, the heads of decarbonization activist groups learn that their main antagonist, Senator Joseph Coke, is secretly working on a potentially catastrophic geoengineering device that would release aerosols into the atmosphere to mitigate the heat-trapping effects of greenhouse gases. The leader of the meeting, Nevaeh Brooks of the Brooklyn Project, dispatches two agents on a suicide mission to learn more about the geoweapon, inadvertently triggering the "climate wars."

With record-breaking warmth searing the globe, Typhoon Powell makes landfall in the Philippines, decimating the fictional city of Kabubwason. Pando, a survivor of the destruction, travels to New York as a homeless man, only to be taken in by Shree. Pando explains to the roommates what climate change will mean for their future, sending Shree down the path to depression. Mel chooses not to believe his story, exhibiting clear signs of climate change denial, while Cooper remains skeptical.

Cooper and Pando are soon recruited by the Brooklyn Project to radicalize them into fighting in the upcoming conflict with Coke and his ruthless Coke Coalition, a vast political machine funded by the fossil fuel industry. The pair are assigned to undertake a bombing at a Columbia University divestment protest, which prompts Cooper to disobey his orders and sabotage the mission. Shree, meanwhile, is unable to overcome her feelings of hopelessness, and commits suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge. The story ends at her funeral, where Cooper and Pando avow to stop carbon emissions and keep global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius.

Themes
Age of Suicide incorporates scientific and historical references into its narrative arc, including the following:
 * The Keeling curve, depicted on the front cover
 * The threat of sea level rise inundating Cooper's hometown of Miami and new residence of New York City
 * Desertification of America's cropland and wildfires
 * The risks of positive feedbacks limiting the time left to act, represented by a ticking Doomsday Clock
 * Climate engineering through the use of aerosols to induce a global dimming effect
 * Collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet
 * Senator Joseph Coke, modeled after Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, and his Coke Coalition, based on the Koch brothers and climate change deniers
 * A institutionalized cheating at Shree's school, similar to the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal
 * Typhoon Haiyan, represented by Typhoon Powell, destroying a city in the Philippines and making Pando a climate refugee
 * The ongoing Holocene extinction
 * Passages from the Bible, particularly references to the Book of Revelation
 * The geological transition from the Holocene, a time of idyllic childhood memories, to the Anthropocene, a world of violence and adult responsibility
 * The fossil fuel divestment movement
 * The Brooklyn Project as a functional analogue to the Manhattan Project to tap the power of clean energy
 * The RMS Titanic as a metaphor for humanity's present course, and Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan representing futility in the face of overwhelming odds