All the Birds in the Sky

All the Birds in the Sky
By Charlie Jane Anders

The split between two cultures has rarely been as pronounced as it is Charlie Jane Anders’s charming contemporary fantasy All the Birds in the Sky.

Patricia is a young witch, graduate of a Hogwarts-style magic academy. Laurence is a scientist and engineer, product of MIT. Linked from childhood, together they have a world to save from a composite Armageddon (or Unraveling, or “colony collapse disorder”) involving plague, famine, political breakdown, environmental crisis, and mechanical monsters.

Cooperation is difficult. Team Science, associated with a libertarian venture capitalist, wants to scuttle this rock and hop to a new dimension. Team Magic wants to try to heal the planet in their own way. Nevertheless there is hope for common ground to be found in the realization that science is an expression of human nature, and our tools compatible with trees.