A "work of incandescent imagination" (Karen Russell) from Young Lions Fiction Award–finalist Matt Bell, a breakout book that explores climate change, manifest destiny, humanity's unchecked exploitation of natural resources, and the small but powerful magic contained within every single apple.
In eighteenth-century Ohio, two brothers travel into the wooded frontier, planting apple orchards from which they plan to profit in the years to come. As they remake the wilderness in their own image, planning for a future of settlement and civilization, the long-held bonds and secrets between the two will be tested, fractured and broken—and possibly healed.
Fifty years from now, in the second half of the twenty-first century, climate change has ravaged the Earth. Having invested early in genetic engineering and food science, one company now owns all the world’s resources. But a growing resistance is working to redistribute both land and power—and in a pivotal moment for the future of humanity, one of the company’s original founders will return to headquarters, intending to destroy what he helped build.
A thousand years in the future, North America is covered by a massive sheet of ice. One lonely sentient being inhabits a tech station on top of the glacier—and in a daring and seemingly impossible quest, sets out to follow a homing beacon across the continent in the hopes of discovering the last remnant of civilization.
Hugely ambitious in scope and theme, Appleseed is the breakout novel from a writer “as self-assured as he is audacious” (NPR) who “may well have invented the pulse-pounding novel of ideas” (Jess Walter). Part speculative epic, part tech thriller, part reinvented fairy tale, Appleseed is an unforgettable meditation on climate change; corporate, civic, and familial responsibility; manifest destiny; and the myths and legends that sustain us all.
Praise for Appleseed
“Excellent… formally ambitious but still deeply humane… an appealing earnestness undergirded by deeply felt optimism influences Appleseed… Bell has achieved something special here. Appleseed, a highly welcome addition to the growing canon of first-rate contemporary climate fiction, feels timely, prescient, and true.” —Laird Hunt, New York Times Book Review
"Appleseed is a work of incandescent imagination, at once an eco-horror story about human greed and a regenerative new myth. I loved the soaring possibilities seeded throughout this wild novel, which pushes its readers to imagine 'new ways of dwelling' in and with non-human nature. Bell's book is a chrysalis inside of which I could feel my mind changing, preparing for new flights." —Karen Russell, author of Orange World
"Woven together out of the strands of myth, science fiction, and ecological warning, Matt Bell’s Appleseed is as urgent as it is audacious." —Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble
"Matt Bell's Appleseed expands in the most entrancing manner to encompass everything from the hidden hoofs of fauns to the pending doom of the planet. What a sui generis feat of imagination and scope this novel is." —Idra Novey, author of Those Who Knew
“There’s a particular thrill reading a book that has such certainty of vision, one that guides every page and allows us to truly picture the connections between our past and our future. We see the naturalist’s mind placed in the realm of the imagination as a way to try to grasp what’s happening to our planet right now. It’s a beautiful tribute to what fiction can do, and these characters and their visceral struggles will remain with me for a long time.” —Aimee Bender, author of The Butterfly Lampshade
"The reason you’ve never read a book like Appleseed is that there’s never been a book like Appleseed. The scary thing, though, is this is a world you might recognize. This premise, this content, this form, this language—only Matt Bell could have given us this novel." —Stephen Graham Jones, author of The Only Good Indians
"Myth meets science; fable confronts existential crisis. In its bountiful prose, gleeful genre-hopping, and the sheer scope of its storytelling, Appleseed points toward hopeful futures for literature—and the planet." —Sam J. Miller, Nebula-Award-winning author of Blackfish City
A “book everyone will be talking about… conjures up thought-provoking, immersive worlds.” –Joumana Khatib, New York Times Book Review
“A gripping meditation on manifest destiny and humanity's relationship to this endangered planet, making for a breathtaking novel of ideas unlike anything you've ever read.” —Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire
“While uniquely its own tale, Appleseed will remind readers of the best of Neal Stephenson, N. K. Jemison, and Richard Powers as it wraps mythology and climate change around a mesmerizing struggle for domination… Every chapter is brilliant, and the gradual reveal of what’s really going on makes the span of this book deeply rewarding. Appleseed is one of this year’s surprise masterpieces.” —Adrian Liang, Amazon Book Review
“Rich and complex… This is a terrifying, beautiful book… A deep, urgent story, that is so full of love for our Earth, and so full of compassion for all of these messy characters who are trying to do the right thing—but never quite know what that right thing is. It’s not always a fun or comfortable read, but Bell has given us an urgent vision of a possible future, and a story that could lead us onto a better path if we just pay attention.” —Leah Schnelbach, Tor
"Rambunctious....made me think of Jeff VanderMeer and his Area X trilogy, chilling the spine while engaging the heart. Then too, Appleseed's pervading concern for forest ecology recalled Richard Powers and his phenomenal tree-text, The Overstory, Comparisons like that raise problems—the two older authors are miles apart —but they drive home my point: that Matt Bell has brought off a novel as exciting as any in recent years." —John Domini, Boston Globe
"You can take Mr. Bell’s book as warning or vision of hope, as myth or blueprint for the future. Either way, it’s everything sci-fi should be." —Tom Shippey, The Wall Street Journal
“Appleseed incorporates myth, sci-fi, and satire into its dazzling high-wire act about how things went so wrong, and so weird. In previous works and even more so here, Bell executes a kind of literary daredevilry, making carefully controlled storytelling feel treacherous and delightful.” —Patrick Rapa, The Philadelphia Inquirer
“[An] ambitious speculative epic and striking take on climate change.” —Barbara VanDenburgh, USA Today
“Appleseed plays on the dystopian climate disaster genre, deftly weaving threads from Greek mythology, magical realism, and America’s settler-colonial folklore… a cerebral folktale all its own.” —Morgan Forde, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Appleseed is wildly ambitious by the standards of climate fiction and most novels, period; Bell applies some spectacular world-building… [his] story is audacious beyond just its plot—he’s attempting to shift our focus from mankind to nature, or at least suggest that we keep them in balance.” —Mark Athitakis, Alta
"Sentence-level epics form on every page, the prose floating between beatific and elegiac… The sci-fi is inventive, the fantasy alluring, and the odd formal choices—one-off chapters from minor characters, rapid tone shifts—surprisingly fluid.“ —Colton Alstatt, Zyzzyva
“In Appleseed, magic and science aren’t integrated but simply juxtaposed; the juxtaposition suggests that mythologies of hybrid human beasts have been transferred over time into imaginings of robot beasts, genetically modified creatures and people who can exist outside their bodies. It proposes a fungibility of matter and consciousness that’s both horrific and transcendent.” —Lydia Millet, Los Angeles Times
“This ambitious work of climate fiction weaves together three timelines to depict the myriad ways that humans destroy their environments… this fascinating novel is rich in thought-provoking ideas and world-building.” —Margaret Kingsbury, Buzzfeed Books
“With Bell’s inventive incorporation of myths and legends, this is an unparalleled and unforgettable examination of the effects of climate change.” —Emily Martin, Book Riot
“Thought-provoking and accomplished, [Bell’s] new novel acknowledges its debts to climate fiction and demands that readers examine the implications of humanity’s relationship with the natural world. In Appleseed, Bell asks a new set of intriguing questions about what might constitute the future of the world—and who or what will be left to experience it.” —Michael Berry, Sierra Magazine
“Bell delivers a stirring take on climate change, complicity, and human connection… This is an excellent addition to the climate apocalypse subgenre, and the way it grapples with humanity’s dramatic influence on the planet feels fresh and bracing.” —Publishers Weekly
“Billed as part speculative fiction epic, part tech thriller, and part reinvented fairy tale, Matt Bell’s Appleseed tackles the central dilemma of our age—climate change—via three stories in three timelines: the 18th century, 50 years from now, and 1,000 years into a grim future. American mythology + thoughtful sci-fi = good beach reading.” —Goodreads, hottest books of the season
"Bell’s terrifying yet deeply humane novel of ideas is both an awesome work of imagination and a stirring ecological call-to-arms—a reminder of what the best genre-bending books can achieve.” —Dan Sheehan, Literary Hub
"Enormously ambitious... Bell not only radically shifts tone between [the] three timelines, he confidently hops genres as well." —Gary K. Wolfe, Locus
“Appleseed is not an optimistic book—it casts far too many shadows for that—but it is definitely a hopeful one. That might seem like a semantic difference, but to my mind, it is a very real one. Finding reason to hope in the face of seeming hopelessness is a key component of the human condition – a condition that Matt Bell deftly and thoroughly explores here.” —Allen Adams, The Maine Edge
“Each timeline raises challenging questions about interconnection, complicity and ecological stewardship. Appleseed's mix of hard sci-fi, folkloric elements and ethical issues make it appealing for Neal Stephenson fans and readers who long to safeguard the wild.” —Jaclyn Fulwood, Shelf Awareness
“There’s so much success here: from finely drawn characters to a voice at once epic and intensely humane. Honestly, I’d call this book a career achievement for a lot of writers, but Bell’s still young enough that he may surpass it. Even if he doesn’t, Appleseed is a worthy enough high point for most writers, a major work that conjures thoughts of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and Mark Doten’s recent Trump Sky Alpha.” —Kurt Baumeister, The Brooklyn Rail
"Appleseed joins the ranks of those books like Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and VanderMeer’s Hummingbird Salamander, novels which refract mankind’s eco-sins through strange lenses of grief, desire, hope, and doubts." —Paul Di Filippo, Locus
“It’s tempting to call Appleseed a climate change novel, but that’s only true if we first accept that when we talk about climate change, we are talking about carbon emissions, but also: technology, capitalism, globalization, poverty, agriculture, our obligations to the future, the ongoing sins of history, and how to conceptualize (accurately and with some measure of humility) humanity’s role in the constant unfolding of the world.” —Adam Zemel, The Coachella Review
“Matt Bell follows in the tradition of Kim Stanley Robinson and William Gibson with Appleseed, an epic tale of our coming eco-pocalypse, split between a near-future dystopia at a crossroads, and the distant figures of the future who try to parse what all went wrong.” –Molly Odintz, Literary Hub
“An epic novel about saving the planet that blends science fiction, mythology, and techno-thriller… Bell cleverly combines the novel’s plot threads in the book's late stages, and… his central message hits home: The world as we know it is past saving if we need a monopolist to save it.” —Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Matt Bell
"Equal parts dystopian novel, psychological thriller, and literary fiction, [Scrapper] evokes a dark and lonely existence for its stoic protagonist . . . By the novel's end, Bell adeptly depicts Kelly as a complicated soul capable of great violence and kindness." (New York Times Book Review)
"A fearless and harrowing meditation on the ruination and transformation of cities and of people; but amid loss and destruction, Bell finds a strain of piercing hope. This is an extraordinary book." (Emily St. John Mandel, New York Times bestselling author of Station Eleven, on Scrapper)
“It's hard to imagine a book more difficult to pull off, but Bell proves as self-assured as he is audacious . . . Bell's novel isn't just a joy to read, it's also one of the smartest meditations on the subjects of love, family and marriage in recent years . . . The novel is a monument to the uniqueness of every relationship, the possibility that love itself can make the world better, though of course it's never easy.” (NPR on In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods)
“For readers weary of literary fiction that dutifully obeys the laws of nature, here’s a story that stirs the Brothers Grimm and Salvador Dali with its claws . . . as gorgeous as it is devastating.” (Washington Post on In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods)
"A big, slinking, dangerous fairy tale, the kind with gleaming fangs and blood around the muzzle and a powerful heart you can hear thumping from miles away. The story's ferocity is matched by Matt Bell's glorious sentences: sinuous and darkly magical, they are taproots of the strange." (Lauren Groff on In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods)
"Somber, incantatory sentences to hold you within [Bell's] dreamlike creation . . . This unique book leaves you with the haunting lesson that even if you renounce and cast away your loved ones, you can never disown the memory of your deeds." (Wall Street Journal, on In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods)
"A blood-soaked fable . . . With this debut novel, Matt Bell [reworks] myths, rituals and fictions into something that can hold his visceral, primal vision. In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods provides us with a new, unstable literary element, something scavenged from the old, something bright and wet and vital.” (Globe and Mail (Toronto), on In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods)
“An extraordinary achievement, telling a most ancient story in a way that feels uncannily new." (Boston Globe, on In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods)
"This is a fiercely original book—at once intimate and epic, visceral and philosophical—that sent me scurrying for adjectives, for precedents, for cover. Matt Bell commands the page with bold, vigorous prose and may well have invented the pulse-pounding novel of ideas." (Jess Walter)
"Bell joins a class of genre-blind writers that include Karen Russell, China Miéville and Emily St. John Mandel." (Shelf Awareness on A Tree or A Person or A Wall )
Custom House
July 13, 2021
Novel
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF SUMMER BY THE NEW YORK TIMES * USA TODAY * ESQUIRE * PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER * LITERARY HUB * GOODREADS
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
Indies Next List Pick, August 2021
Amazon Book of the Month, July 2021
Bookshop
Indiebound
Barnes & Noble
HarperCollins
For press inquiries regarding Appleseed, please contact Eliza Rosenberry, Senior Publicity Manager at William Morrow.