The writing is good, but this book was just boring and predictable.

I liked the alternating character story’s as we travel through the generations, but it was a bit tough to follow and took me a while to see it come together.

I love a good dystopian novel, and this one was okay.

What if you could go back in time and change the past with present technology? That is what is explored in Terrestrial History and it was so good. I'm picky with time travel, it can make me roll my eyes, but not here. This was perfectly excecuted and it contains so much more than just science fiction/time travel. A story I will remember.

Random Thoughts About Earth’s Death in the Past, and Mars in the Future
Joe Mungo Reed, Terrestrial History: A Novel (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, April 2025). Hardcover: $29.99; Literary Science Fiction. 272pp, 6X9”. ISBN: 979-1-324-10680-7.
***
“A family saga following four generations on a time-bending journey from coastal Scotland to a colony on Mars. Hannah is a fusion scientist working alone at a remote cottage off the coast of Scotland when she sees a figure making his way from the sea. It is a visitor from the future, a young man from a human settlement on Mars, traveling backwards through time to try to make a crucial intervention in the fate of our dying planet, and he needs Hannah’s help. Laboring in the warmth of a Scottish summer, Hannah and the stranger are on the path towards a breakthrough—and then things go terribly wrong.” It “expands from this extraordinary event, drawing together the stories of four lives reckoning with what it means to take fate into their own hands, moving from the last days of civilization on Earth through the birth of another on Mars. Roban lives in the Colony, one of the first generation born to this sterile new outpost, where he is consumed by longing for the lost wonders of a home planet he never knew. Between Hannah and Roban, two generations, a father and a daughter, face an uncertain future in a world that is falling apart. Andrew is a politician running to be Scotland’s First Minister. Andrew believes there is still time for the human spirit to triumph, if only he can persuade people to band together. For his starkly rationalist daughter Kenzie, this idealism doesn’t offer the hard tools needed to keep the rising floods at bay. And so, she signs on to work for a company that would abandon Earth for the promise of a world beyond—in contravention of all Andrew stands for. In considering which concerns should guide us in a time of crisis—social, technological, or familial—and reckoning with the question of whether there is meaning to be found in the pursuit of salvation beyond success itself…”
This book has a pretty strong start. It opens with a meeting with the time-traveling stranger. Then, a section speaks in second-person with “you”, the reader, regarding the narrator also being a non-believer, or difficult to convince about supernatural or scientifically unlikely things, such as speaking with the dead, or travel “across time and space”. There are few philosophical asides like this in science fiction, and so this is rather original. Anticipating readers disbelieve, and sympathizing with this disbelief helps to keep readers interested. Such reflections are necessary in a literary non-fiction, as this book falls into this category having been published by the highbrow Norton.
The conclusion is also philosophical. But it is too digressive, and too full of laziness. The narrator just lies down in a place where she can feel the grass, the wind and other natural bits, and wants to stay there, instead of heading out to prevent the apocalypse she knows is coming because she is from the future where it has already happened. The notes that she “can hear the bird” and “the moving grass too” is too cliché for a common nature-description. If the point was to really make the reader appreciate the nature that we still have, or that has not yet died, far more unique details were needed.
Things do not improve in the middle, which is full of general thoughts about “retreating to space” or to Mars being a surrender. There are platitudes such as that we should be “saving ourselves” (23). Why would being on Earth or on Mars change if humans are saving themselves or not?
Chapter “3: Roban: 2098” starts with pondering about the necessity or frivolity of the narrator’s “phrasal dictionary”. Generalities about a mom worrying “for me” are suddenly interrupted by the introduction of the fact that this “Mum died in a mine collapse when I was three”. There is apparently a second mum who is described as missing this first mum, and was taking the narrator to therapy to help both cope (25). What does any of this have to do with the planet dying, or going to Mars?
There is not enough in this book so far to keep me reading. I doubt readers would be happy if they went further. It is difficult to imagine what kind of a reader might be more interested than I am.
Pennsylvania Literary Journal: Spring 2025 issue: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/plj/plj-excerpts/book-reviews-spring-2025

Terrestrial History by Joe Mungo Reed is an ambitious and thought-provoking novel that seamlessly blends multigenerational storytelling with dystopian elements. What really captivated me was how Reed weaves together the fates of different generations, exploring the long-term impact of personal choices, societal shifts, and environmental decline in a way that feels both deeply personal and chillingly universal.

Reed’s writing is both beautiful and unsettling, with moments of quiet reflection contrasted against the looming dread of a world in crisis. If you're a fan of stories that not only explore what could go wrong in the future but also delve into the intricate ways families and societies evolve over time, Terrestrial History is a must-read.

Published by W. W. Norton & Company on April 8, 2025

Joe Mungo Reed brings a new perspective to post-apocalyptic fiction in Terrestrial History, a chilling story of global warming. There are elements of science fiction and of a technothriller in the plot, but Reed takes a broader look at the ways in which self-interest and egalitarian drives clash, often in very personal ways, as people work to cope with (or escape) an existential crisis.

The story jumps around in time to focus on family members in different generations. The novel begins in Scotland in 2025, when Hannah sees a boy in a spacesuit walking out of the sea. Hannah has been trying to solve the mystery of fusion but can’t quite design a reactor that works.

In the middle of the century, Hannah’s son Andrew runs for Parliament and then for the position of Scotland’s First Minister. By that point, climate change is making life difficult. A corporation called Tevat, founded by the billionaire Axel Faulk, is planning an excursion to Mars, where — assuming the planet can be terraformed — humanity may have a chance of survival after Earth becomes uninhabitable. Naturally, the passengers who sign up for the voyage are wealthy and powerful, although Tevat allows a couple of its employees to join the crew. Andrew’s opposition to Tevat is the key ideological driver of his decision to enter politics.

Andrew’s daughter Kedzie has taken up her grandmother’s hope of building a fusion reactor to provide clean energy. Lacking other options to fund her ideas, Kedzie goes to work for Tevat. There is tension between Andrew and Kedzie, since Andrew’s political career demands that he oppose Tevat and its unpopular plan to save only the rich and powerful. Some of the book’s strongest moments come when Andrew must decide whether to denounce his daughter after she agrees to join the mission to Mars. The pivotal scene could have been played for melodrama, but Reed lets the characters speak or repress their feelings in a way that feels natural and moving.

Later in the century, Kedzie is on Mars. Kedzie and her wife are the mothers of Roban. The Terrestrial Collapse has occurred. The colonists and the first generation of Mars-born children wonder whether anything remains of the Earth. The kids have pictures and videos so they know about oceans and birds and all the things their parents miss, but their knowledge is abstract. More than most post-apocalyptic stories of global warming, Mungo drives home the magnitude of the climate crisis by viewing it through the eyes of kids who — trapped inside buildings on a desolate planet — don’t understand the richness of their parents’ former life on Earth.

Roban has a sense of duty. “We are not just any children, but those living in the middle of the hourglass, some of the few thousands alive after the loss of so much humanity, amongst the few custodians of our species preparing the way for the Great Repopulation when this place is terraformed and when other habitable planets have been located.” Yet his sense of duty makes him wonder whether he might be able to change history and save the Earth.

Roban is assigned to an asteroid mining crew. He encounters a phenomenon that appears to change the nature of time. Later he takes advantage of the phenomenon to send himself back to 2025. The reader meets him in the first chapter when his great-grandmother sees him walking out of the sea. Roban wants to teach her how to build the reactor that her granddaughter will later create, and in so doing avoid the Terrestrial Collapse.

The possibility of undoing the harm to the Earth, of preventing the Terrestrial Collapse, sets up a moral conflict. If it can be done, what would happen to the Mars colony? Would it never be established? Would its inhabitants be willing to sacrifice themselves to save the larger mass of humanity that they left behind? One member of the colony applies corporate logic — the corporation has a duty to benefit its shareholders, so any larger duty to humanity is irrelevant — an attitude that explains why it is so difficult to make fossil fuel companies admit that they contribute to global warming. If nations move to clean energy, after all, shareholders in fossil fuel companies lose. The companies believe they would be derelict in their corporate duty if they put the existence of all planetary life ahead of short-term profits.

Will Roban succeed? The question is almost unimportant. Like most post-apocalyptic fiction that doesn’t involve zombies, the novel is a cautionary tale. Reed again eschews melodrama by reporting the planet’s destruction from the viewpoint of children on Mars. The reader doesn’t see people die in floods and fires and hurricanes. The fact that people on Mars don’t know if any life remains on Earth makes the story of the planet’s fate even more powerful.

Terrestrial History is also a multi-generational saga of family members who, sometimes in conflict with each other, try to do what they think is right. The depth of the characters and their relationships with each other are the story’s strength. Reed always writes with literary flair. While Terrestrial History didn’t grip me in the same way as Mungo’s debut novel, it is a strong addition to the subgenre of apocalyptic fiction.

RECOMMENDED

What an excellent new addition to the growing genre of eco-fiction! Following the climate crisis to its speculative end... devastating but fascinating! This book asks some really excellent questions about the lack of energy, money, and time being used to save the planet and the species from climate crisis vs. the amount of energy, money, and time that would go into enabling humans to survive or thrive on another planet. Where was this "We can do it" energy when the planet was dying, in some cases at these corporations own hands??? I'm sure all that sounds like its too on the nose thematically but in practice this was beautifully executed, deeply human, and has some time travel bits that really had me on the edge of my seat. Fantastic!

Terrestrial History by Joe Mungo Reed – A Multigenerational Odyssey of Climate and Consequence
Published by W.W. Norton & Company, 2025

In Terrestrial History, Joe Mungo Reed offers a sweeping and elegiac exploration of climate collapse, legacy, and the intergenerational ripples of human choice. Spanning 85 years and two planets, Reed’s novel is a dazzling addition to the canon of climate fiction—often dubbed “cli-fi”—and one of the year’s most urgent, resonant literary achievements.

Structured through four distinct narrators—scientist, politician, idealist, and Martian-born child—Terrestrial History traces the slow disintegration of Earth and the moral reckoning that follows. Hannah, a pioneering fusion scientist shunned by her peers, quietly initiates the chain reaction. Her son Andrew, compelled by principle, enters politics to salvage a planet already tipping toward ecological despair. His daughter Kenzie, caught between realism and idealism, navigates the legacy of both. Roban, born on Mars, is haunted by Earth—"Home"—and the mysteries buried in its past.

Reed’s gift lies not just in speculative world-building, but in the rich interior lives of his characters. Each voice is distinct, their motivations deeply human, their flaws disarmingly familiar. From a windswept Scottish beach to the dusty corridors of a Martian colony, the novel pulses with urgency, beauty, and profound empathy.

Echoing the best of Lydia Millet and Joy Williams, Terrestrial History refuses didacticism in favour of layered, lyrical storytelling. It asks not just what we’ve done to the world—but how we choose to live with that knowledge, and what futures, however fractured, we might still dare to imagine.

I actually really enjoyed this book. To me, it was reminiscent of How to Lose the Time War in the sense that the story takes place across multiple generations, except the love is familial rather than romantic. It was a little short with a lot going on, so I would've liked some more detail in places, but overall it was enjoyable read!

I really enjoyed this one! I loved the span of four generations, and seeing how their lives played out interconnected to each other. There is an element of time travel, but it's very secondary to the characters' stories, most of which we see through various slices of life at different (but vital) points in their lives. I loved how they all connected, but how each character was still their own person outside of the greater scope of the family. It was heartbreaking and heartwarming, and certainly emotive beyond the concept of trying to save the world. My minor gripe is that I personally prefer a neater ending, and we did not get that, but it does fit the tone of the book well. I also found it impressive that such a well-developed world and cast of characters was accomplished in such a short amount of pages! Also, as you can imagine, there is certainly an underlying commentary about climate change, and how maybe waiting until Earth is unlivable isn't the best plan. It doesn't feel preachy or pushy, it just feels... honest.

Bottom Line: Absolutely recommend this lovely and insightful take on family and the perils of climate change.

First and foremost, thank you to the publishers for providing an e-ARC of the book. This story was truly wonderful in its inventiveness.I also thought the sci-fi elements in this book were next level. The author created a world that felt imaginative, thoughtful, and completely immersive. The blend of science fiction with emotional depth and strong relationships made this such a standout read.

Four stars!

This is a really neat idea - you've got several generations of descendants eventually colonizing space and a time loop that ultimately forms between the last and the first to ensure that things turn out the way they need to. Skews literary (in that it focuses on each of the characters during their time period), but was an overall lovely read. Worth your time!

This novel traces 100 years of a family, starting with Hannah, who is trying to perfect a design for a fusion reactor. She is visited by a man from space (from the future) who helps accelerate her research, aiming to save human civilization from an impending collapse. The story then follows her son Andrew, who wants to make a difference in the world and hold on to life on Earth even as the planet faces a gradual collapse. Next, the narrative shifts to Andrew’s daughter, Kinzie, one of the select few chosen to inhabit a colony on Mars due to Earth no longer being safe or sustainable. Her contributions to the design of the reactor make life on Mars possible. Finally, the story shifts to her son Roban, a “First-Gen”, who has never known life on Earth and has grown up entirely on the colony.

As is evident, the novel shifts back and forth in time, changing perspectives seamlessly without being jarring. In a story of such vast ambition, it’s the small, humane moments that stand out - particularly the relationships between characters and the moral dilemmas surrounding Andrew. His daughter’s decision to leave Earth, against everything he stands for, causes him great anguish as he continues to live out his last years on Earth. Kinzie’s ambivalence about leaving Earth and her grief at abandoning her home is another poignant aspect of the novel. The grief and longing of the characters are explored beautifully, especially in the way they nearly lose their homes and their loved ones. The book also interestingly explores how technology, while playing a crucial role in preventing the collapse of Earth, can simultaneously contribute to its downfall.

I also appreciated how Reed masterfully reveals the slow deterioration of Earth. The novel highlights that cataclysmic events don't always come suddenly but are often the result of a long, drawn-out series of events that slowly push the planet toward its destruction. Moreover, I loved how Reed depicts a generation that knows nothing of life on Earth except through pictures, videos, and the stories of their parents. The characters on Mars often find that words and phrases from Earth no longer make sense to them, as they lack the context surrounding them. They must develop their own versions of these phrases, adapting them to their new life on Mars.

Another aspect I enjoyed was the longing for things from Earth - rain, grass, crops, watches, candles, and church music. These seemingly mundane things, which one might overlook while surrounded by them in abundance, take on a deeper significance for the characters.

My only minor gripe with the novel was its frequent use of both real and made-up scientific terms and names. These terms often come without explanation, and understanding them requires inferring their meaning from the context. However, despite this, there is so much to love about the book. As someone who doesn’t typically read a lot of sci-fi, I thoroughly enjoyed this one!

Thank you to Netgalley, the author (Joe Mungo Reed), and the publisher (W. W. Norton & Company) for an advanced copy. Thoughts and review are completely my own.

I’m always down for a science fiction read told from multiple perspectives. One thing I loved about this book was the timelines didn’t get confusing so note taking wasn’t needed. The science fiction was also pretty smooth to follow, Reed doesn’t over complicate the sci fi rules for this setting (for example the time travel).

I also felt a connection for each of the 4 characters in the book. The family connection was present too, especially between Andrew (Hannah’s son) and Kenzie (Andrew’s daughter). Bring your tissues.

Terrestrial History is short and sweet and I was hooked. I needed to see what happened to some characters even though their fates were foretold in the later timelines.

Terrestrial History gets the perfect 5 stars for me.

Thank you netgalley for the early copy!

Solid dystopian time travel sci fi! The cover is what drew me into this book and I’m really glad I gave it a shot. It’s sci fi but definitely more of a slow burn. Not a ton of action, but plenty of excellent characterization and world building. Terrestrial History is a story told through four connected narrators. We have Hannah in 2025 who is visited by a mysterious young man who claims to be from the future. We also have Hannah’s son, Andrew, who goes into politics when he is of age, running principally on trying to save the dying Earth. Andrew’s daughter, Kenzie, is given an opportunity to relocate to Mars. And finally we have Roban, a Mars colonist who is a “first gen” and one of the first to have been born and grown up entirely on Mars.

Chronologically, this one’s all over the place. Reed will bounce from 2025, to 2071, to the 22nd century and back again. He does this in a way where we’re gradually given components that solidify into a coherent tale. I found the book fascinating and very enjoyable. The characters are expertly flawed but complex enough to relate with them. They make questionable decisions but none are evil simply for the sake of strife.

If you appreciate slower burn sci fi that incorporates space and time travel during the collapse of our planet then I would recommend this one. There’s very little action so if you’re hoping for space battles then this isn’t it. But if you like more conceptual books that explore themes of connection throughout time and how our different actions shape our worldview, then I’d highly recommend.

Territorial History is about a family of four generations are trying to survive. Some are trying ti leave earth, some are trying to figure out how to get off of it, and others are trying to go back a fix where things might have gone wrong.

It’s about saving the world from destroying humanity and taking care of what we have, but also about scientific advances and understandings, with a dash of time travel. It’s about loss and trying to save the ones you love.

The multiple POV was pivotal for this book and you could see each and every character clearly through their tone and intentions of where they were going and who they were as a person.

This book seriously took me by surprise - it took a bit to get into, the physics jargon janky at times and the plot ambiguous, but once I got into the flow of it I was utterly hooked. It is such a fascinating, multi-generational dystopian sci-fi time travelling piece (a mouthful - I know). While it does have the ‘epic-ness’ of a science fiction novel, it is balanced with moments of despair, of hope, and of candid relationships between parents and children. Underlined by realities of a desecrated Earth and the desire to have a new perfect world beyond (or alternatively, go back in time to save the one we have) make this journey precariously present, and overwhelmingly relevant to today.

I like this book. Climate novels are tough, and this one exhibits some familiar tropes -- not least the Musk figure colonizing Mars -- but does so fairly gracefully and subtly, with a warmheartedness that I ultimately found really winning. The premise is perhaps a touch overcomplicated and the prose can be self-serious -- I struggled with the first chapter, which had maybe been through one too many edits -- but I was often moved by the characters' attempts to grapple with their circumstances and found the nature writing especially precise and lovely. There's nothing especially groundbreaking here, but this is a well-conceived and well-executed novel that's certainly worth a few hours of anyone's time.

Big thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for the E-ARC. *4.5 Stars*

This multi-generational tale of survival, displacement, family, and time-travel has a little bit of everything. The first pages draw you in, establishing a character sensibility (that stays as a trait passed throughout generations): these are people of science; believe in evidence, what they can see, prove. Which is a needed anchor for where the book goes, and continues to go throughout.

I really enjoyed how the book sort of unfurled out of itself the further through it you got. It took a bit of trust in the writer to get through the beginning, I'll admit, because after the hook there is quite a bit of wordy exposition. It was necessary though, as I said above, as it grounded the character(s) as sensible people, making everything believable and even a bit more urgent. That said, by the time I made it to Roban's first chapter, I was bought in and was confident I'd enjoy the book.

There are good stakes coming from large external entities (ecological collapse; billionaires fleeing the planet), and others where the characters, while family, must face down each other to make the most important choices of their lives. They tread a delicate line of friction between family members, and addresses a sad sort of estrangement not driven by one singular traumatic event, but by a small peppering of times where you've found yourself simply, and respectfully, at odds.

I really liked the use of repetition in scenes, and how it served the sort of time-bending thesis that drove the plot. That time is not linear but something that spreads, sprawls out. The author says it better, I don't want to say much more than that on that right now.

I'm not normally one for sci-fi but 2025 has been packed full of great sci-fi, I'm sure the current political climate is ripe for inspiration. Terrestrial History is a great, multi-generational story about a family trying to save humanity, the earth, or both.

When Hannah is visited by a man from the future who wants to help her save the planet from climate change, she couldn't begin to guess how this would change the shape of her life, as well as her son Andrew, her sister Kenzie. Each have their own ideas about the best path forward and they clash against one another as well as Roban, the man from the future who has come to warn them.

Thought-provoking and quite the page-turner, Terrestrial History is a fantastic piece of climate fiction, one of the best I've read in a long while.

This is on my shortlist of 2025 books so far. Terrestrial History hit the bullseye for me, being the right blend of lit fic, speculative fiction and science fiction (time travel and space colonization.)
At its core, this novel is a family saga that spans four generations. I loved the way that they were all woven together and connected. This is one of my favorite multi-generational family sagas of all time.

Space travel is one of my least-read sci-fi/speculative-fi sub genres, but I really enjoyed the Mars colonization thread in Terrestrial History. Like in many stories, humanity looks to evacuate the Earth because we’ve trashed it. The story of this family and their relationship to that activity was fascinating to read about. From those who were all in and ready to blast off to Mars, to those who felt it was better to save the planet and stay. Their points of view were so well described. Reed did a fabulous job giving each side its fair telling.

While there were four time periods and four generations told in a non-linear pattern in this 250 page book, it was very easy to follow. Reading this one was anything but a chore. As I look back at this fact, it makes me enjoy the book even more. Reed did such an awesome job dealing with time and space. The fact that it was not difficult to follow is true testament that he did an excellent job writing it!

After reading it, I tried to pick a favorite character. I couldn’t do it, I have to pick two- the bookends, if you will. The oldest generation and the youngest generation. Who are so well written and so beautifully connected.

Many thanks to Netgalley, Joe Mungo Reed and W. W. Norton & Company for the free advanced e-copy!