The Deluge by Stephen Markley
"Stephen Markley’s bracing, beguiling, uneven new novel, “The Deluge,” tracks a cadre of radicalized scientists and activists from the gathering storm of the Obama years to the super-typhoons of the 2040s. The dystopia is realistic and nuanced, grim but playful, setting Markley’s book apart from the tsunami of recent climate-change literature...."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/10/books/review/stephen-markley-deluge.htmlEven though the book is ungodly long (900 pages), it is intriguing enough that I had to finish it. The progression of climatic consequences of warming and the ensuing political and economic chaos are gripping and semi-believable, in part because the book was just published this year and uses post-Trump America (and the world) as its starting point. Markley's near term predictions seem depressingly reasonable. It gets wilder quickly, with a US (and world) that is like a fun-house mirror reflection of today by the mid-30's. There's a lot to argue with in terms of the rapidity of his world's climate degradation, but it's an interesting look at one of our potential paths.
I hope he's wrong.
Re: the length. In my opinion it would have been a much better read at half the length. The last third was a slog. Many pages were skimmed in my determination to see how it all ended.
