Breathless: The Oxygen Apocalypse

From the author of the best-selling and award-winning travel memoir Falling Uphill comes a prophetic dystopian novel. What if global warming isn’t the problem, but a symptom of something much worse? Orphaned as a boy by a natural disaster that suffocated his village in Cameroon, Mykelti has dedicated his life to ensuring it never happens again. Now a renowned paleoclimatologist, he discovers the greatest mass extinctions in Earth’s history were caused by cataclysmic oxygen depletion. And it has begun again, this time due to humanity’s rampant industrialization. Modern society is unwilling to heed Mykelti’s warnings. But it makes little difference.

The Earth has already crossed an invisible tipping point. It is only a matter of time before the warming seas and thawing methane reserves push the atmosphere beyond recovery. As infrastructure collapses, Mykelti and a fractured group of survivors must keep their oxygen generators running long enough to face a final, haunting question: Is humanity a species worth saving? A plausible near-future thriller, Breathless is a modern successor to post-apocalyptic classics like On the Beach, Earth Abides and Alas Babylon.

©2023 Scott Stoll (P)2026 Scott Stoll