Heavy Weather was published by Bantam Books in 1994. Alex Unger, a sickly rich kid rescued from a black-market medical clinic in Mexico, joins his sister Janey’s “Storm Troupe” — a band of radical nomadic scientists who chase tornadoes across the devastated Great Plains of 2031. Climate change has intensified weather systems; the plains have depopulated; and the Storm Troupe believes that an F-6 tornado — a storm of unprecedented destructive power — is forming.
Sterling’s 2031 America is brilliantly extrapolated: the federal government has largely collapsed, replaced by a patchwork of corporate zones and ungoverned territories. The Great Plains have become “the Boneyard” — depopulated, drought-stricken, and inhabited only by nomads, outlaws, and scientists. Technology is advanced but unevenly distributed; the rich live in climate-controlled enclaves while everyone else adapts or dies.
The novel was written years before climate fiction became a recognized genre, and its predictions about extreme weather intensification, social breakdown in climate-vulnerable regions, and the emergence of radical environmental movements have proved disturbingly accurate. The storm chasing — rendered with hard meteorological detail — provides thrilling action while the social backdrop provides Sterling’s characteristic political intelligence.
Collecting Heavy Weather
First edition (Bantam Books, New York, 1994): Hardcover with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $25–$60
- Very good/very good: $10–$25