Front Page - Claudia Casper

Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award

The Mercy Journals

The Mercy Journals, which is Casper's third novel, is set in 2047 and foreshadows a dark future in the wake of a climate change catastrophe. The story examines human nature through a soldier's healing process as he comes to terms with his past.

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Book Cover of Claudia Casper's book, The Mercy Journals

Praise for The Mercy Journals

"From the opening paragraph, I dove into the deep end of a dystopian world that was terrifying, familiar and thrilling, and made me keep reading until the shocking end. The novel focuses on family and survival and love and humans' nature; hunger, passion, possession, and murder. It's a masterpiece." - Jamie Lee Curtis

"The Mercy Journals is a book of extraordinary vision. Part Lord of the Flies, part Romeo Dallaire's Shake Hands With the Devil, I cam out of this book deeply touched by the characters who moved through it, but also more alert. There's a sense of the prescient in this novel - of where we could end up if we're not careful." - Aislinn Hunter, author of The World Before Us

"I admire tremendously how The Mercy Journals takes current concerns - global warming, PTSD, anti-immigration policies, war - and weaves them seamlessly into a gripping and mysterious plot set in a future world that, like any excellent sci fi, is really about today." - John Colapinto, staff writer at The New Yorker

"Not since Margaret Atwood's Snowman have we met such a desperate and compelling hero as Allen Quincy, doing his best to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Claudia Casper takes us into a chillingly believable landscape where love still clicks in on red high heels and brothers still engage in conflict of biblical proportions." - Merilyn Simonds, author of The Convict Lover

"Casper's wry lament for the world is utterly unforgettable. She creates a slow apocalypse and finds real human voices and aching in the collapse and rebirth of society." - Emily Schultz, author of The Blondes

Blog

Walt’s Head

February 24, 2022

Here’s a link to my short story commissioned by SubTerrain Magazine It’s about the absurd hubris of life extension services. I can’t think of this story without laughing with wicked glee. Suggestions have been made to turn it into a novel. That thought rolls around my still attached head. Online version, with illustrations by the […]

My TedX Talk about Writing

February 24, 2022

In which I learn, after the alarming discovery that my mind tends to exhaustive lists of exceptions to any statement, the power of the declarative sentence.

Winner of the Phillip K. Dick Award – The Mercy Journals

February 24, 2022

Claudia Casper’s third novel, The Mercy Journals (Arsenal 2016), first reviewed by Joan Givner in BC BookWorld, has won the 2017 Philip K. Dick Award for the best work of science fiction published in paperback for the first time in the USA in 2016. The announcement was made on April 14, 2017 at the Norwescon 40 conference, in […]

Lit-Hub: The Weirdness of Literary Awards

February 23, 2022

philip k. dick, literary awards, science fiction, the mercy journals “I think of writers as mostly a horizontal tribe, people who work beside each other, people who avoid hierarchies. And then we publish a book, if we’re lucky, and our publishers, if they’re good publishers, enter our book into contests. And suddenly, we’re pitted against other writers for a prize that only […]

Trump’s Wall Foretold

February 22, 2022

Reviewed by Joan Givner, Jan 20, 2017 Link: https://bcbooklook.com/2016/07/21/trumps-wall-foretold/ Claudia Casper’s new novel adds to a growing body of work designated as “cli-fi,” a genre distinct from sci-fi and fantasy, because the horrors described are not futuristic fantasies but predictions of a certain future. Fans of Casper’s highly successful first novel, The Reconstruction, will find The Mercy Journals (Arsenal […]

Why I Go to Writers Festivals

February 19, 2022

Published Jan 24, 2018 So a few months ago, I attended an event at the 2017 Vancouver Writers Festival where my close friend, poet, novelist, and educator Aislinn Hunter, was interviewing renowned author Eileen Myles. I went, not because I was familiar with Myles’ work, though what I found on YouTube more than piqued my […]