Project Tag: thriller

The Wintermen III – At the End of the World

“You know, Tiny, it was sentiments like that that caused all the problems in the first place.”

In her climate thriller, Brit Griffin‘s future dystopia is a crucible for our moral choices today: how to find our way to be a better species in a world that’s already changed is a path of the imagination.

“You know, Tiny, it was sentiments like that that caused all the problems in the first place.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Things people would kill for. Chocolate. Cinnamon. Beaver pelts. Oil. You name it, buddy, someone says those words and then it’s mayhem.”

Brit Griffin is author of three near-future cli-fi novels and a writer of poetic/story musings, whose interests lay in reconciling with non-humans and exploring the human/creature boundaries.

It seems we are a species of excess. Appetites? Endless. Whether we are stacking buffalo skulls along the railway or the towering shelves at Amazon, it is the same human itch to want more. It might just be who we are — but I think many of us would rather not be quite so rapacious in our need and greed. So this is the moral conundrum I always return to in my writing: why do some people do the right thing, behave properly in the sense that they share, act with restraint and respect, consider others (both human and non-human), and other people do not?

I started working on the Wintermen series ten years ago. At that time, I was interested in dystopic scenarios because they act like a crucible in which we can explore the kind of moral choices and actions I am interested in. There are many literary crucibles out there to chose from: zombie invasions, natural catastrophes, fascism. At the time, I had a growing interest in climate change and the measures we needed to take as a species to avoid catastrophe.

So climate change became my crucible, and the Wintermen trilogy a means to discuss and ponder our relationship with the environment. At the time, my perpetual winter scenario seemed like a good frame for a book that explores ordinary people struggling with the aftermath of on-going climate disruption, breakdown and scarcity.

By the time I was working on Wintermen III: At the End of the World, it was clear that there was nothing speculative about a climate change scenario. The present, transformed into some sort of liminal space — the future concocted by the past leaving the here-and-now the odd man out. Existing in the present means we cannot re-write the future script, only make small but important edits to it. No rolling back the clock. Urgent mitigation only, no prevention. So in At the End of the World I wanted to think about simply behaving properly in its own right, not to save ourselves and our ‘way of life’, but to transform ourselves for a different way of being human.

In the liminal space of the story the question shifts from how do we prevent climate change to how do we find our way to be a better species in a world that has already changed? How do we begin to reintegrate ourselves back into the natural web, where can we look for the wisdom to guide us on the path away from desire towards ordinary, in situ joy?

This path, I think, is one of the imagination as much as lifestyle changes or the development of new and gentler technologies. Returning to those liminal spaces, the book begins to explore and chip away at the hard boundaries between what is and what should have been, reality and dream, science and magic — this is an area of exploration I will continue to wander in, looking for the signposts left by birch and wolf and wiser humans than myself about how our species can find our way home.

The Wintermen III: At the End of the World by Brit Griffin is published by Latitude 46 (October, 2020) and can be ordered direct from them as a print book or an ebook, from Chapters (Canada) or from your local, independent bookseller.

And you can hear a great chat about nature, winter and climate change with Brit Griffin and Algonquin Anishinaabe writer from the Timiskaming First Nation, Karen McBride (author of Crow Winter, 2019).

Skyseed – Hacking the Earth might be the last thing we ever do…

“For the first time in the history of the world, it was literally raining carbon…”

In his thriller Skyseed, writer and scientist Bill McGuire explores what might happen if we start geoengineering our climate to ‘fix’ global heating, and everything goes pear-shaped. A cautionary tale from a researcher steeped in the natural history of disasters.

Jane Haliwell put her head in her hands. To tell the truth, she was still in shock. All the samples she had taken from inside and around the lab contained the enigmatic spheres in huge numbers. She had only had a brief time to think about the implications, but she was pretty sure already what was going on.

For the first time in the history of the world, it was literally raining carbon. Long before it stopped, the guilty would pay, but so would the innocent…

Bill McGuire is a researcher in the science of global heating and climate breakdown, and a writer of non-fiction on natural hazards and climate change and of speculative and climate-related fiction, who values his contribution to climate activism above everything else.

We all know that slashing greenhouse gas emissions is the key to side-stepping catastrophic global heating. Under the radar, however, others are promoting a very different way of tackling the climate crisis. So-called geoengineering is defined by the Royal Society as: ‘the deliberate intervention in the climate system to counteract man-made global warming,’ and it is attracting increasing support and funding. If messing with the climate some more, to sort out the mess we have already made, sounds crazy, that’s because it is. Geoengineering distracts from the main business of cutting carbon emissions as the science demands, threatens further damage to the environment and tramples over human and legal rights. Far more scarily, the cure might even end up being deadlier than the illness.

Perhaps the riskiest of all geoengineering schemes is a plan to mimic a volcanic eruption by pumping tens of millions of tonnes of sulphur into the stratosphere. Sulphur gases are especially good at reflecting incoming solar radiation back into space, which is why a period of global cooling is common after a major volcanic blast. Past episodes of volcanic cooling, however, are also associated with major changes in weather patterns and rainfall, the failure of harvests and widespread famine, so copycat cooling is really not a good idea. In my new novel, Skyseed, a massive volcanic eruption in Bolivia – true to form, but in an unexpected manner – provides the catalyst that transforms an illicit bid to ‘fix’ global heating into a fight for the survival of the human race.

For someone steeped in the natural history of disasters (I did after all write A Guide to the End of the World: Everything you Never Wanted to Know), the idea of following the geoengineering route in our increasingly desperate quest to come to grips with the climate crisis, has always fascinated, which is really why I wrote Skyseed. I am very much of the mind that stories, rather than lists of hard facts, are often far better at getting complex ideas across, which explains why Skyseed is a novel, rather than a technical analysis of geoengineering and the associated risks. Set in the near future, the book is — first and foremost — a thriller, but a thriller with a message. Without giving too much away, it is a cautionary tale that flags a warning to the reader of what might happen if we embark upon further climate tinkering and everything goes pear-shaped. I have tried not to be preachy, and my principal intention has always been to pen a damn good yarn. Do please read it and let me know if I have succeeded.

Skyseed by Bill McGuire is published by The Book Guild Publishing (September 2020) and can be bought direct from them, from Hive or from your favourite independent bookshop. 

Fellow ClimateCultures member and writer Rob La Frenais discusses Skyseed and geoengineering with Bill on our blog: see Hacking the Earth.

And you can hear Bill discuss the novel and the issues around geoengineering in this short Shaping the Future podcast from the Cambridge Climate Lecture Series (10/10/20).