The Long Fire Season

A Novel by Garry Rogers

“Love isn’t a luxury for the good times. It is the survival strategy for the bad ones.”

In the summer of 2023, the fire season was supposed to end in October. It never did.

About the Book

When the maps no longer match the territory, how do you find your way home?

Mia Allen is a land-use planner who tracks the dying landscape. Sam Powell is a fire dispatcher who fights the flames consuming it. When they meet as graduate students in a Reno dispatch center, they bond over a terrifying realization: the “abnormal” disasters they are fighting are becoming the new baseline.

The Long Fire Season is a sweeping, multi-generational saga that follows Mia and Sam through six decades of life on a changing planet. From the high deserts of Nevada to the rain-soaked refuges of the Pacific Northwest, they navigate the complexities of marriage, parenthood, and loss against the backdrop of the Great Simplification—the era where complex global systems fracture and humanity must learn to live within planetary boundaries.

As the “roar of combustion” fades into the silence of the Quiet Earth, Mia and Sam transform. They evolve from reactive responders fighting a losing battle against nature into Seed Carriers, elders who preserve the knowledge, seeds, and history necessary for the future to take root.

This is a story about the fierce hope required to love a world—and a partner—that is changing forever.

Why Read The Long Fire Season?

Real Science, Real Stakes Grounded in the empirical research of Biosphere Collapse, this novel depicts a near-future that is terrifyingly plausible. It explores heat domes, atmospheric rivers, and migration corridors not as abstract concepts, but as the daily reality for a family trying to survive.

A Romance of Resilience Moving beyond the “meet-cute,” this is a chronicle of a sixty-year partnership. It explores how intimacy evolves when resources are scarce , how trust is forged in evacuation zones, and how love becomes the ultimate shelter.

From Anxiety to Initiation Instead of apocalyptic despair, this story offers a narrative of Initiation. It reframes the collapse of industrial civilization not as an end, but as a difficult passage toward maturity, where humanity learns to become a “plain member and citizen” of the biosphere.

Meet the Characters

Mia Allen: A meticulous planner who believes data can save lives. Her journey involves learning that while she cannot control the changing earth, she can listen to it.

Sam Powell: A calm-under-pressure dispatcher. His arc takes him from the front lines of fire suppression to the quiet work of restoration and community building.

The Next Generation: Emma, Thomas, and Sarah—children raised in smoke and uncertainty who grow up to become the architects of a new, resilient society.

About the Author

Garry Rogers is a scientist and author based in Humboldt, Arizona. He is the author of Biosphere Collapse: Causes and Solutions and Writer’s Primer.

With The Long Fire Season, Rogers bridges the gap between scientific reality and narrative fiction. He combines his technical expertise in landscape ecology with a deep commitment to biosphere conservation, creating a story that serves as both a warning and a roadmap for the future.