CLIMATE DYSTOPIA, HOMOPHOBIA, AND CAPITALISM: AN INTERVIEW WITH ALISTAIR MACKAY
A listair Mackay’s debut novel, It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way, tells the story of three queer men trying to navigate an increasingly fractured, violent, and unstable world – one ravaged by climate collapse and rampant inequality. Set in Cape Town over a period of fifteen years, from the present-day into the future, the novel imagines the impact of climate change if we do nothing to stop it.
In the future, Cape Town has become even more divided than it currently is. The privileged have retreated into The Citadel, a climate-controlled dome on top of Signal Hill, and separated themselves with The Wall. On the other side, the city has become a vast and arid slum, wrecked by rising sea levels and made inhospitable by unbearable heat, lack of food, and 100% unemployment.
But the novel isn’t entirely bleak. By focusing on the relationships between his characters, Mackay demonstrates the extent of human resilience, our capacity for love in the face of
