Tag: apocalypse

Authors have a moral duty to help save the planet

Posted on by isobelblackthorn

I have been dwelling all day on whether I should write this post. Then I started re-watching Climate Change: The Facts – David Attenborough’s documentary on climate change – and I decided that yes, I must.

Authors often taken a stand on various issues. We have a tendency to champion causes when our latest release carries that theme. Right now, when it comes to climate change, I don’t have a book I am promoting. I just feel the need to speak out. There are some in the writing community who believe we should zip it and get on with entertaining readers. But what of authors such as Tim Winton or Richard Flanagan or Arundhati Roy, to mention but three, who have stepped up and written extensively on the environment and social justice.

Authors have a moral duty to lend their weight to global salvation at a point in history that is so critical, extinction is a very real possibility.

Thanks to our inertia, our planet has reached a tipping point. The dystopias presented in climate fiction are becoming a reality today and not at some point fifty or a hundred years from now. The climate denialist machine funded by the fossil fuel industry has successfully thwarted efforts to raise widespread awareness. The same fossil fuel industry is totally aware that climate change is real and they are for the most part selfishly and greedily planning on milking the planet for all it is worth regardless of the death they cause. They must be stopped.

The United Nation’s IPCC has been constrained, forced by governments into providing the most conservative estimates when climate change scientists have for decades known how fast climate change will happen once it really gets going. In the past few years in language and reality we have gone from the cautious-sounding global warming to the more realistic global heating and climate catastrophe. Vast swathes of Australia and southern Africa are sliding into permanent drought. Communities are running out of water. Mass human migration is on the cards. What of the plants and animals left behind? Our glaciers are melting, the tundra is melting, the Arctic has melted. A one degree rise in global temperature and our weather has become wild and chaotic. We are experiencing monster storms, ferocious winds, freak winter freezes, droughts, extreme heat waves, torrential downpours and devastating floods. The evidence is everywhere.

Authors situate their books in settings around the world. Each and every one of those settings is affected by climate change. As writers we are rooted in the very worlds we create – perhaps with the exception of speculative fiction – and as storytellers we are reliant on the continuity of our precious resource, our planet Earth, with all of the wonder and magic that nature affords. Our fiction will soon appear quaint and redundant as the world we live in undergoes radical change. And as creatives, the anguish climate change looks set to cause will affect us profoundly. I for one, do not wish to be burdened with writing stories set in an apocalypse.

Take Action to Help Mitigate Climate Change

This is a call to action. Do something to make a difference. Stand on the right side of history. Now is not the time to think about it. Act. All of us together can turn this trajectory around. But it is going to take all of us, not just a handful. (For my part, I do not own a car, I use my feet and public transport, and I have just put a 5.5KW solar system on my roof, making me a net energy provider. But, I need to do more.)

From – https://www.activesustainability.com/climate-change/6-actions-to-fight-climate-change/

  1. Reduce emissions
  2. Save energy
  3. Reduce, reuse, recycle
  4. Eat low-carbon
  5. Act against forest loss
  6. Demand governments take action

Book review: The Pale by Clare Rhoden

Posted on by isobelblackthorn

About The Pale

The Outside can be a dangerous place.

But so can the inside.

It’s been years since the original cataclysm, but life has been structured, peaceful, and most of all uneventful in the Pale. The humachine citizens welcome the order provided by their ruler, the baleful Regent.

However, when one of their own rescues a human boy, Hector, from ravenous ferals on the Outside, their careful systems are turned upside down.

As Hector grows more and more human-strange, the citizens of the Pale grow uneasy.

What will happen when the Outside tries to get in?

My Thoughts

The Pale is science fiction set in a post-apocalyptic dystopia. Amid the destitution of the Broad Plain, the Pale itself is a policosmos, a walled colony ruled by a tyrannical Regent and filled with humachines – machine-augmented humans not known for their empathy. Tad, a humachine that cares a little too much, lets in a human child, Hector, when he arrives at the Pale’s gate. Outside, the caninis struggle to survive after a devastating earthquake destroys their habitat. The tribes and the Settlement also struggle for survival. Four groups, four distinct societal structures. What unfolds is a tightly woven plot that centres around a struggle for survival in the harshest of conditions.

Rhoden demonstrates tremendous descriptive powers and impressive world building, The Pale reminiscent of the intelligent science fiction novels of old. I am reminded of my favourite science fiction author, Phillip K. Dick. The Pale is filled with well-crafted and engaging characters – including dogs –  in what amounts to a classy read with an important moral message, making the reader question where we are heading and whose side we are on and what it means to be fully human. Add to this an elegant writing style which makes The Pale accessible to teens and adults alike, and I imagine it won’t be too long before this novel catches on big time.

The allegorical aspect of The Pale provides much fodder for contemplation in today’s pre-apocalyptic climate change reality, something all good high school teachers should relish were they to lay their hands on copies for their classrooms. In all, Rhoden has penned a feast for the speculative fiction aficionado.

 

Find your copy of The Pale on Amazon

Author Website