Book Review: The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet by Jeff Goodell

 

 

The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet by Jeff Goodell 

400 pages, Hardcover

Published July, 2023 by Little, Brown and Company

First, let me state this is the most important book of the year, maybe the century so far. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry of the Future made the same point. If you don’t want your desperate pleas for action in your own self-interest to keep the world sustainable for your children to have science-fictional aspects then here are the facts. Told with personal stories of travels in the warming Arctic, the story of the mother who baked to death in her apartment, and young families who were fried to death on the hiking trails serve as a wake-up call that will not get the attention that T-swift got for going to a football game.

This book will not make you feel good and should be shelved equally in the science and birth control sections. This is going to be an angry and bitter book review. It is not Jeff Goodall or the book’s fault. He did his job, and he didn’t well. I am going to talk more about me than I probably should. The reality is that this book is about the heat slowly making our planet unsustainable and it is going to cause these types of emotions.  We are all experiencing the world what Goodall is warning us about. Just like the fiction book (The Deluge by Stephen Markley) I was reading at the same time; the political situation is such that no matter how many of you read this book - I as the reviewer have to accept you are not going to do shit.

Not the books’ fault. I am been there on a smaller scale. In 2018 I had a horror novel called Ring of Fire come out from Deadite Press. The novel went on to be nominated for a Splatterpunk award for best extreme horror. The novel was my attempt to write a modern environmental apocalypse novel and the set-up was a massive wildfire that surrounded San Diego and set off a cascade of terrors. That summer the skies around the globe were black with smoke and as I did interviews promoting the book it was uncomfortable. I spent 13 years researching and writing and was looking prophetic. I hated people telling me over and over, hey man sounds like your book. So I feel for Goodell.

No one who writes a non-fiction book like Silent Spring or Diet for New America wants to be right, When Science Fiction authors in the 70s write environmental Science Fiction novels Like Chelsea Quinn Yarbo’s False Dawn or John Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up they hope they play a role in preventing the nightmare they envisioned. John Robbins the son of the ice cream empire Baskin and Robbins wrote the book that opened my eyes.  

Hardcore music and punk introduced me to veganism and environmentalism in the early 90s, but it was reading that book written in the late 80s that convinced me I had to change. You see in 1993 when Bill Clinton was starting his first term was the when I started to be angry and scared about these issues. I didn’t really like vegetables, and lived in Indiana at the time so vegan resources were next to nothing. It was a serious step for me. A book and reading about the dire state of the planet encouraged me to change my life. Thirty years later I can say I am still vegan and have been sounding this very alarm the whole damn time.

I knew many people influenced by Diet for a New America, in many ways we have made amazing progress, and yet the animals keep dying, and the water and grain keep getting wasted turning animals into unhealthy fatty proteins when alternatives exist.  I still firmly believe Veganism is the first and most important thing you can do to turn the tide. If there is no reason to teach this consumer society about the responsibility of each purchase.

If we are going to survive as a species The Heat Will Kill You First will have to have a larger impact. No pressure on this book, but I think it is species' survival.  Jeff Goodall lays out the gravity of the situation by highlighting the creeping threat of heat. No one likes a heatwave, they are uncomfortable, scary, and dangerous. They are not inevitable.

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, led to a revolution that greatly reduced chemicals polluting our air. Diet for New America by John Robbins kicked off a revolution of plant-based activists and a wide expansion of foods available to combat animal oppression and environmental waste. Is it fair to expect this book to spark a revolution? The unfair part is over.  Our generation (Some of us spoke up and acted) fucked over your kids and grandkids. I don’t know how many of the ancient members of the Senate and Congress will read this book. That is the problem Diane Feinstein (for one example) just avoided the horror of the future by dying. She can claim environmental legacy because of a few surface actions but honestly, she did little to stop it because she doesn’t have to deal with it. Mitch McConnel, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi will all die before the deepest consequences of the heat force your children to survive in Air-conditioned bunkers eating Taro and Amaranth paste because the land can’t grow anything else.

I hardly ever say this EVERYONE needs to read this book. Unless you are reading this from some other planet as an archeological study of how this insane species baked their own asses to death you need to read this book.  This might sound harsh but honestly, there is not anything more important. Every person, every being of every species we share this planet with will suffer if you don’t act that includes everyone – yes you.  
 

 

 

Book Review: The Deluge by Stephen Markley

 

 

The Deluge by Stephen Markley

896 pages, Hardcover
Published January, 2023 by Simon & Schuster

“From the bestselling author of Ohio, a masterful American epic charting a near future approaching collapse and a nascent but strengthening solidarity.”

From the bestselling author of a literary novel comes a Science Fiction epic that despite being about the near future and approaching climate change apocalypse will never be called genre fiction even though it absolutely is.

Clocking in just under 900 pages and being so heavy I regretted taking it with me on a train trip to LA and back is the science fiction epic The Deluge. It is probably not the fault of the author Stephen Markley that his novel is a modern Stand on Zanzibar, I would guess he never heard of the John Brunner classic. The comparison is not an insult, I consider SOZ to be the best SF novel of the 20th century. It won the Hugo Award, and I will be comparing those books throughout this review.
Brunner embraced Science Fiction, and Markley appears to be wandering through the genre like he accidentally walked into the wrong store. That might be the fault of marketing and I apologize to Markley if I am wrong.

What he was in control of was the page count. I enjoyed this book but the weight and length did challenge me. As a writer, I try to limit narrative side quests or fluff.  I don’t like to waste words. As a reader, I am more forgiving. That said Robert McCammon’s Swan Song was almost as long as this book and the page count didn’t bother me.

There is a tight 500 or 600-page version of this novel I would have thought perfect. That is still epic, but when a book is this long, this heavy that it takes almost two weeks for a fast reader like me you start to edit in your head or question entire chapters. I would think to myself, what does that have to do with the story? Many times they are details that while important can be seeded with asides, not entire chapters. Who the fuck am I? Markley is a more acclaimed author than me but I am giving my experience as a reader.  

That is tons of negative thoughts about a book that I generally liked and think is important.  Using multiple characters in the same epic is a method that classic door stops like The Stand and Swan Song have used. This novel has a diverse set of characters that show the collapse of global sustainability and the next couple of decades of efforts to deal with it.  Cli-fi in our rapidly heating, flooding and growingly unsustainable future is the most important direction storytelling in any media is going. I might sound harsh on The Deluge but that is because it is so very important. If that sounds preachy then so be it, because apparently asking nice has universally failed to do shit to stop all this stuff.  That is the point of this novel that weaves political, personal American panorama on this future.

Heat waves, rising waters, and massive storms. Some get offended if you call this an end-of-the-world novel, and that is not exactly true. That is some optimism on behalf of the author that I am not sure I share. However one of the best things Markley is doing here is painting a realistic picture of the frustration and resistance of the desperate to survive hitting the brick wall of the political system that kicks the can down the road on climate change. This is not something the book takes time to get to page 139…

“…we have a precious handful of years left to act, I promise you this: If you join this movement now, you will wake up fifteen, twenty years from now and feel sick that you didn’t do everything you could during the sliver of time when we still had a chance. When we hadn’t yet fallen over the brink.”

One of the reasons Stand on Zanzibar was considered such a breakthrough in style was because Brunner used a style he admitted he stole from the 1930 USA Trilogy by John Dos Passos. Using letters, newspaper articles, and multiple seemingly unconnected characters and storylines. The Deluge uses this method to a degree. In one of the few page-saving methods, much of the world-building is done in Newspaper headlines that are mixed together like a collage. He still uses articles and multiple characters. Most of it is excellently written, Markley does a wonder job filling his diverse characters with an identity that makes them stand out from chapter to chapter.

I almost quit reading after the second chapter used this “experimental style” that was the only part of the writing that didn’t work for me.  That chapter used boxes that had asides that sometimes added to the chapter with context, but sometimes they didn’t.  I found them confusing, I often didn’t know what I was supposed to be reading or the order. It was frustrating.If that had gone on longer I might have quit. I would have missed out.

It is interesting reading many of the comments, and online reviews very few point or even name characters who they spent hundreds of pages following. In a sense, the characters almost were more defined by what they were in this tapestry than who they were.  The narratives used different styles, tenses, etc. so it was easy sometimes to think less about a character's name and think my self as the character not as Seth, but this is a chapter about the gay activist characters, Or this is ex-military drug addict, the guy whose name I don't remember now a week after reading the book. That is not a knock, I actually think that is a feature as part of the point seemed to be their roles in the crisis.

Each of the characters has their own personal connection to the growing crisis. The one that stood out to me was Seth and Ash deciding on having a baby. As a gay couple, the choice of having a child and raising them is powerful to get to witness in fiction but the rapidly ending world it is one I can relate to. At least one of my past relationships ended when I went with team Seth saying it was crazy to bring a baby into this world. “Forrest was born into socioecological circumstances more dire than I could have imagined. He was born into 444ppm carbon in the atmosphere, melting ice-caps, oceans crawling up the world’s coasts and deltas, soil salinization, dwindling fresh water, spreading desertification, and stalling agricultural production.”

I know this might offend some of you who are on team Ash, but I am glad I am not a young person today. That is the power of Speculative fiction. It is also the power to make this future not come true but as this part of the story powerfully displays - time is running out.

The heat waves, and the storms are well written and slowly and carefully lay out the mission statement. I am not positive but I think that statement is a rude awakening, get your shit together. Personally, I think Kim Stanley Robinson nailed the horrors of heatwaves better in his novel Ministry for the Future.  John Shirley got the power of the unending storms better in his criminally underrated Stormland.  The genre writers have been writing about an angry and warming planet for decades so perhaps we need Stephen Markley for the NPR listener who won't slum in the genre ghetto.

Some other issues this book dealt with well...

“Here in a campus bubble it was easy to look around and believe the country was swept up in a wave of change and possibility, a narrative propagated and commodified by the social media companies inflicting a new colonialism on people’s minds.”

I often tell co-workers that we are in a California bubble, where Trump doesn't seem so bad. That bubble here in San Diego also keeps the problems of climate change in the distance. The Deluge does an amazing job of portraying some of the political bubbles, and ways that the obvious need for change gets lost in the mundane even when people know better.

“You might not believe in what we’re doing, but this is the kind of action on which history pivots. This is a choice between revolution against the power structures or our extermination by those structures. People like you and your family? You’re what they harvest. Everything you do, everything you buy, everything you believe in—that’s just product and profit for them. You’re their cash crop.”

This moment stood out to me because it lays out the pivot point we are at so well. I like a cli-fi novel that reminds people that you are making choices. I have heard this novel preachy, but that is far as it goes. It doesn't say ride a bike or you will kill your grandkids, although sometimes I wish it did. It doesn't say you must go vegan, change law and act better now. It could be preachier, soI think that suggestion is without merit.

“The trajectories of the two major political parties shaped much of our lobbying experience, the Republicans in wounded disarray, trying to rebuild their party while frequently staving off primary challenges from suburban neo-Nazis, the Democrats playing a perpetual game of three-card monte, releasing aspirational platforms and progressive wish lists while mostly doing the bidding of Wall Street, Big Tech, and the military–national security–industrial complex.”

Is this preaching?  Or is this explaining the hardcore reality of why we are a culture held underwater by the powerful and elite? I don't care how it comes off I just want more books like it.

The Deluge is a fantastic book, an important message but again I can't help but feel John Brunner made an equally powerful statement in 1969. His novel also addressed global issues better and was less focused on this one country. Together the two books half a century apart make an interesting comparison.  SOZ was worried about overpopulation, and The Deluge is about a warming climate. Some dismiss Brunner prophetic nature because the population bomb didn't lead to a crash. But it is leading to a warming and unlivable future. One that Markley is warning readers about.

Environmental warning novels have a long tradition as long as the Nuclear war warning novel. The jury is out on this novel's ability to prevent this future but I can say it is adding to the discussion. I think this has more pros than cons, if a long book scares you I suggest Ministry For the Future, which reads more like a textbook but offers solutions.  I have also included a link to my shelf of Cli-fi books.  

https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2167338-david-agranoff?shelf=cli-fi

Book Review: The Extractionist by Kimberly Unger

 

 

The Extractionist by Kimberly Unger

290 pages, Paperback

Published July 12, 2022 by Tachyon Publications

As a podcaster who does a whole show devoted to Philip K. Dick, I am interested each year in the book that wins the award with his name on it. Our first interview was with Carrie Vaughn on her underrated Bannerless novel when it won the award. The prize each year goes to a paperback original, and the idea is that most of Phil’s books debuted in paperback.  Unlike most winners, Kimberly Unger’s novel actually sounds Dickian in the nature of the plot, not just in format.

The concept of fake virtual worlds is a theme Phil wrote about, including the idea that someone could get stuck in one of these worlds. That is part of the nightmare in Phil’s masterpiece The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and of course, the short story that inspired Total Recall, We Can Remember It for You Wholesale just to name two. So, Unger’s modern take on the subject from Tachyon Publishing is a pretty solid bet for an award winner.

As I get started I want to say I enjoyed this book, I think it is good and worth the time of modern Science Fiction readers. If I seem hard on it, it would be the status as the PKD award winner.  

The history of virtual reality science fiction had its first mind-bending classic a decade before Cyberpunk became a thing with John Brunner’s Shockwave Rider.  The reality is that decades later it is easy for these types of stories to feel old hat, certainly 20 years after The Matrix was in theaters, we are at the point when that movie has already had a legacy sequel. This setup has a long history often the question I have with books in this genre is how do you separate your take on Cyberpunk and do something original.

“Excellent, but where is the body? I’m here to perform an extraction right?”Mckay asked. She had extracted people from some of the oddest setups, but so far there was always a body, somewhere, to write the persona back to.”

The title character Eliza McKay is an expert in Extraction, when powerful people get stuck in “The Swim” virtual worlds, they pay an agent/ mercenary to get them free. This requires skills in the real world and the swim. The action moves from Singapore to San Francisco and back again. Much of the action takes place in the Swim.  As you can see from the above quote she can free her client but back to his body…Where?

In her world that is unethical, he must be alive, or his mind would stop working but where? That sets off the mystery and espionage parts of the story.

One of the keys for a near future cyberpunk-ish novel like this is the world-building. I think some readers believe the dynamic has to be a plausible “few years from now” feeling, but I am a Dickian so I can live with surreal. I don’t understand the idea of wanting this type of Science fiction to feel grounded. Even Hard SF, when it sits on the shelf like say an Arthur C. Clarke novel will transform from grounded and realistic to surreal when the march of passes stories like 2001: A Space Odyssey. That novel has become an alternate reality novel that it was intended to be.  Build me a consistent world and I am good.

“Once settled on the Skybus, she sealed her sunglasses on and closed her eyes. The Overlay helpfully slid Brighton’s contract into her line of sight, hazard terms and rates picked up in red. She hadn’t taken on a project with questionable components for a while, the figures looked low compared with the feeling of panic she’d been trying to avoid for the past several hours.”

Tattoo sinks, the Skybus, and the sealed glasses give this world a different feeling from ours. That is well done natural bits of world-building that will rightfully swim right over most readers. As a Sci-fi writer and critic, I look for such things. The Overlay is the internal net access that appears in the vision of the person operating in the real world. Most of the world-building was well done.

There were several times that The Extractionist lost, me, and details went over my head. Unger is a techie, I am not so, and perhaps that is why I didn’t get everything. Honestly, it didn’t hurt my feelings toward the book. I don’t mind as long as I am getting most of it. The above quote also hints at something I felt was missed.

Why is Eliza taking these dangerous jobs? In a PKD novel, she would be broke, and have an ex-wife or business partner she owed money to. In world, a better explanation might be a loss of connection to the Swim if she didn’t do this one gig.   Those are noir clichés but they exist for a reason. You can’t do a haunted house novel without a logical reason to stay (for a totally different example) and I think I needed more of a reason for Eliza to HAVE to take this case.

So this gets back to the question of how you separate your story. That is important but the balance of hitting clichés in the right moments is like playing the power cord correctly as a rhythm guitar

She has a brother and that gives the character a little depth but I thought one part on page 87 gave Eliza a strange internal world depth. In the novel she is attacked, what they do to her body is almost an afterthought. They connect to her swim and the violation is brutal.

“The Overlay spun up in response to the unexpected input, leaping at the chance to reconnect with the headset, then recoiling as it made contact with the unexpected system. No. No. No. Never had McKay imagined something like this. The Overlay was firewalled and secured against all manner of virtual threats, but direct input was something else entirely. She felt a sick twisting in her gut. They can access everything.”

The terror and violation in this scene make clear that the importance of the virtual world, the shifting importance. The Tech overwhelms the lead character as it sometimes does the book. Like I said that never bothered me, less tech-savvy readers will likely not enjoy the experience.

Overall this a very good novel, it is entertaining. The most important judgment I can give you is that I intend to read more of Kimberly Unger.

Book Review: Counterfeit Worlds: The Cinematic Universes of Philip K. Dick by Brian J. Robb

 

Counterfeit Worlds: The Cinematic Universes of Philip K. Dick by Brian J. Robb

288 pages, Paperback

Polaris Books Expected publication October 3, 2023

As the co-host of the Dickheads podcast and the author of my own forthcoming book that will be added to the massive canon of Philip K Dick studies I can't read this book like any civilian. I held off getting the 2006 edition of this book knowing that Brian J. Robb was working on a new updated edition.  

I admit this book was not a high priority in my PKD studies, because the films based on his work have recently felt less important to me. The reality is that the movies play a role in his popularity but they often take his ideas and go in action movie or paranoid thriller directions. There is a reason long-time Dickheads who have been with Phil and his books since he was alive roll their eyes at the movies.

All that said we would not have Phil Dick the 21st-century pre-cog, a prophet with libraries of books if not the tortured path through Hollywood development hell that twisted his ideas into blockbusters, cult movies, and TV  shows. Brian Robb is the perfect researcher and writer for this project as he has written books on the production and history of Doctor Who, Star Wars and the films of Wes Craven (I want the DW and Wes Craven ones yesterday)

As someone who has spent the last five years researching Phil I was ready to nitpick the facts, but the book is really well-researched and there was only one super deep cut related to my corner of research that I found inaccurate. I really liked that Robb went into the shitty sequels of Screamers, the TV shows of total recall and Minority Report.   One of the things that makes this book awesome is that Robb leaves no stone unturned when it comes to PKD adaptations including those B-movies and TV shows, Radio dramas etc.

The parts of the book on Blade Runner through A Scanner Darkly were from the 2006 edition and were VERY detailed. The stuff in the new edition is GREAT and well researched but Robb didn't do as many interviews for the new material. Maybe he did and that is my perception. The material out there on Total Recall and Blade Runner is vast, and the information on the newer shows like Man in the High Castle is not nearly as intense, so that is kind of natural.

I think the most important thing I can assure Dickheads of is the fact that Robb is one of us. He clearly understands the themes and concerns of Phil's novels. He understands Phil's life and greater work that has not become films. A book like this COULD be frustrating if it only focused on or understood the movies. Nope,  Brian Rob is clearly a reader of PKD. He understands him and his biographical history.

Counterfeit Worlds in 2023 edition is a Must have for any serious Philip K. Dick researcher if you want to understand how his work went through the Hollywood grind, and that is important to Phil's afterlife 21st-century literary resurrection.  Keep your eyes peeled for A Brian Robb appearance on the Dickheads podcast. 

Book Review: Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

 

Homage to Catalonia

232 pages, Paperback

First published April, 1938

In the Pantheon of books, American young adults are forced to read there are not one but two stone-cold classics connected to George Orwell. I don’t need to the readers of this review about the importance of Orwell, whose mega classics Animal Farm and 1984 are pretty much household names even with non-reading nitwits who at least remember the names. It is interesting because this book his war-time memoir is easily Orwell’s most important book to me, it is the reason I read it again.
The first time I read it was as a young radical and much went over my head because it was my first exposure to the conflict of the Spanish Civil War. Since reading this book I have read several histories of the conflict, seen movies and documentaries and I had a father who was very invested in that history. We talked about each time one of us read a history on the subject.

That younger reader can to this book inspired by the idea that Orwell left England to write about the conflict and was inspired to join. I often think of this book in a similar vein to Frantz Fannon’s Wretched of the Earth, very different books but both follow an idealist sent to another country who is inspired to join the fight, Fannon against Imperialism, and Orwell against Fascism.

It is true looking back on the conflict, we can easily see the important piece Spain was in the global march of capitalism, but Orwell understood. He pointed out that one reason he was willing to fight was he was sick and tired of the fascists winning and in Europe one after another they were getting big victories.  

“All the war propaganda, all the screaming and lies, and hatred comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”

One of the things that makes this book a special wartime journal is that Orwell is a great writer, radical thinker and gives zero fucks about telling it as it was. The only part of the book that drags is still nonetheless important, When he breaks down all the various factions, sub-factions, and circular firing squads it shows the thin lines that hurt the anti-fascists in the greater conflict.

He also got a front seat to see how wars function and the class system that engages in it in various ways. Consider…

“It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda-tours.”

It remains true, think how many of the older flag-waving war-mongering political figures in America today avoided the war in southeast Asia but are very excited to send others to war. This book is a great read for anyone who wants to see how to classics of political fiction were radicalized in his actual experience. It is not all political thought and theory, it is also a well-written journal of wartime experience. From the boredom of waiting for something to happen, the terror of those moments, to suffering without supplies. Orwell puts you in this unique moment in history.
Most powerful is the moment when he thought he died…

“They laid me down again while somebody fetched a stretcher. As soon as I knew that the bullet had gone clean through my neck I took it for granted that I was done for. I had never heard of a man or an animal getting a bullet through the middle of the neck and surviving it. The blood was dribbling out of the corner of my mouth. ‘The artery's gone,’ I thought. I wondered how long you last when your carotid artery is cut; not many minutes, presumably. Everything was very blurry. There must have been about two minutes during which I assumed that I was killed. And that too was interesting—I mean it is interesting to know what your thoughts would be at such a time. My first thought, conventionally enough, was for my wife. My second was a violent resentment at having to leave this world which, when all is said and done, suits me so well. I had time to feel this very vividly."

Homage to Catalonia should be taught in schools just as much as Animal Farm and 1984, It is indeed Orwell’s most important book but it will never happen. This is a radical history and a must-read classic.

Book Review: A Labyrinth by Michael J. Wilson

 

A Labyrinth by Michael J. Wilson

155 pages, Paperback

Stalking Horse Press, October 16, 2023 Pre-order now!

A writer and reader I am generally a narrative structure guy and tend to prefer books of a higher standard. Somewhere between popcorn and high art. Stalking Horse Press is consistently producing books that are of the high art variety.  A Labyrinth by Michael J. Wilson is a classy piece of art from the design in a small compact size that made my Voyager 2 bookmark (over 700 books and counting read with it) look comically big as it held my spot. I read the first 100 pages on a bus and trolley trip  across San Diego and this book classed up the joint.

"Zoe looked at the tapestry. A dragonlike serpent a mountain rising from a sea an expanse of clouds. She reached out to touch it - the pile was clearly fine silk she wanted to buy her fingers in it."

The prose is lush, and while it tells a story familiar in the mythological character of Daedalus (I'll admit much of it probably went over my head) it gives the whole experience a fantastical feeling. Wilson plays with words and rhythm that comes off like a magic trick to this writer who can't imagine keeping up this kind of style at such a length.

There were so many moments of beautiful prose that I found myself dog-eared pages so I could come back to them.

"Anyone could see the hummingbird in Minos' eyes. The boredom once the chase was over He cared only for the shooting of arrows not the blood and meat on the earth."

This is an incredible book. Not my normal jam, but very impressive nonetheless.