Book Club Endorses Claire North's Slow Gods
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- New Scientist Book Club spent July reading Claire North's Slow Gods, set in the far future about a civilization that learns its planet will be destroyed by a supernova in 100 years
- Claire North described the premise as a deliberate climate-change parallel — 'Subtle metaphor it is not' — framing the novel's question as how a civilization responds to imminent but not immediate extinction
- Slow Gods is also a love story between Maw, a pilot capable of navigating faster-than-light travel but described as 'a little prone to murdering people,' and Gebre, a citizen of the doomed planet Adjumir
- North said protagonist Maw is 'the protagonist you write when you are an adult diagnosed with autism late in your life,' and discussed the book's multiple pronouns, describing gender as a spectrum running 'from Arnold Schwarzenegger through to Harry Kane through to Alan Carr'
- Book club members were broadly enthusiastic, calling it 'one of the more satisfying reads,' though several flagged the opening as 'a bit slow and confusing' before being pulled in
- Science-fiction columnist Emily H. Wilson called it science fiction 'so purely delightful,' and reviewer feedback from the Discord channel included one member so gripped at 50 pages that they complained about having to go to work
Why it matters: For science-fiction readers looking for a climate-change allegory, the New Scientist Book Club's broad positive reception signals that Slow Gods rewards patience through its slow opening and delivers layered engagement with autism, gender identity, and civilizational response to existential threat — themes the author confirms were deliberate, not subtext.
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