Apocalypse, Noah's Ark and neo-colonisation: Kya Kehna!
| The downside with creating perfect weather for wealthier nations is that there's little left over for less developed societies. And the melting polar ice caps result in a rise in oceans, flooding low-lying countries, islands and atolls. Left with no land or country to call their own, hundreds of thousands of homeless people crowd the seas on every form of vessel that will stay afloat. But the wealthy nations won't have them, and so a new community of environmental refugees is formed, millions of people who live, die and breed on literally thousands of ships tethered to each other, spread over scores of kilometres. Their precious water resources are harnessed from icebergs that stay afloat with them; crops, such as they are, are grown on soil spread over vast swathes of tankers, while fish farms provide them precious protein; housing is row beds in miserable conditions in bunkers below deck level. Navies on hardship postings patrol the seas to ensure these floating islands of humanity remain confined to their periphery of the sea. |
| It is here our story begins. Michael Fairfax, a lawyer, is building up a case to represent one such floating community (in turn led by Chand Zia, originally from Bangladesh). In a swift turn of events, the reader will next be introduced to Perdy Curtis of the BBC (thankfully, broadcast news is still around), Nicholas Negromante, weather tycoon who's weather corporation will host the American President, James T Underwood, on a trip to the moon, and Dr Emilia Knight, who's clued into every seismic vibration on earth. |
| Finally""because rich guys can never be good guys""there's the Global Haven, the world's largest ship ever built, a floating megalith of condominiums where the world's largest tax evaders live in untold luxury as the tub sails around the world with its huge storehouses of fuel, food and medicine. |
| As a futuristic picture, so far, it's pretty bleak. But put all these ingredients together and things will come to a boil. And how. On the seas, the environmental refugees decide to take a ship hostage, to demand citizenship for themselves, and as luck would have it, their prize is the precious Golden Haven. On the moon, the President arrives with his entourage and the media, while not so far away on earth, volcanoes and earthquakes erupt to cause fires, typhoons, floods and tsunamis, completely wrecking cities and continents, and destroying mankind. |
| Or almost. The floating ship communities and the Golden Haven come to little harm (the tsunamis pass harmlessly under them), while on the moon, there's still a little bit of mankind left to carry on god's creation, but the earth is now out of reach. There's chance of survival on the moon""at least for a while""but is there any life left on earth? |
| Fortunately, there's the weather corporation's weather machinery that's now put to good use. With the help of precipitation to cause rain, the volcanic air that surrounds the earth is scrubbed clean (so okay, this takes a few months), and finally the belching snouts calm down, the air cleans up, and it's time for Mission Earth. There's just one rocket, a vintage Apollo that had been sussed up for the trip, and this will eventually take a few of the lunar survivors down to an earth where the floating communities have now claimed the land as their own. Their agrarian community will receive the moon visitors with their technologies, to colonise the earth all over again. |
| If that sounds like a simple parable of future doom and destruction, remember there are enough concurrent threads of love and loss and romance, of the politics of power and money, to keep you hooked to the finish. But don't expect to stay up all night worrying whether it's time to garbage those aerosols yet. |
| Only, guess what the new colonisers call their newfound land. Kayaa Kahanaa (perhaps that should have been Kya Kehna), Chand Zia's expression for a land "Beyond Words of Praise". The Asian march, at least, continues... |
| EXTINCTION |
| Ray Hammond Pan Price: £6.99; Pages: 311 |