The novel belongs in the genres of hard science fiction, climate literature, and utopian fiction. As hard science fiction, the novel emphasizes scientific accuracy with its portrayal of technology and climate science. The exploration and extrapolation of effects of humans changing the world's climate made it part of a growing body of climate fiction, while numerous reviewers classified it as utopian fiction because it portrays a society changing in ways to address its short-comings. However, nonfiction environmental writer Bill McKibben wrote in The New York Review of Books that it "is not utopian, it's anti-dystopian, realist to its core." The novel's approach was compared with Edward Bellamy 's Looking Backward 2000–1887 as a future history that bridges the gap between modern times and a future utopia.