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The Drowned World

The Drowned World

Author: J. G. Ballard

Remember the fist apocalypse? You don't? I guess you're not all that old then. It's the one with the flood. Heard of it? Noah and the animals and the ship and all that? Well, there's a lot of water in the polar icecaps—though only Antarctica matters here, for reasons of basic physics!!!—and if they melt... Well, Noah, where are you? It's not quite as serious as I make out, of course, but since so many people live near coasts or in low-lying areas of the world, we might as well call it 'The Flood - 2'. Much the world drowns. Since that's caused by overheating—solar radiation in the novel, but global warming would do just fine—a lot of the world ends up as a kind of tropical paradise, at least in the formerly-temperate and frigid latitudes. As anybody having holidayed in a paradisiacal tropical environment knows, it makes you kinda torpid. Colder climates, on the other hand, tend to foster inventiveness. It's no accident that modern science and technology blossomed in moderate-to-frigid latitudes. Well, all that's going out the window now, and the few who persist in resisting the motivational devolution that's taking place predictable have a hard time. Why it's on the list: Seriously dystopian post-apocalyptic fiction, which focuses on human psychology and how it is influenced by the environment. Dismal but compelling. A distinctly different take on the 'Global Warming' theme to Spinrad's Greenhouse Summer. Ratings: Grimness: 4, Bizarreness: 2, Hope: 1, Fun-factor: 2.

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