Scan barcode
A review by cameliarose
The Great Transition by Nick Fuller Googins
3.0
I am glad to see that because more and more writers address the issue of climate change, a new sub-genre has emerged: cli-fi, speculative fiction that imagines how we, as human race, react to the climate disasters brought upon by ourselves. The Great Transition by Nick Fuller Googins is one of them. After decades of warning signs, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet finally collapses. Global sea level rises above 3 meters. All major coastal cities are lost. Yet, instead of descending to total chaos, the world (especially the US) kind of pulls through and survives. The Great Transition is set in a post-climate-change world that has been utterly changed by climate disasters and the “great transition” afterwards.
It’s rare to find a near-future speculative fiction about climate change that is not dystopia. Although it is not an utopia, it has a positive atmosphere with a mixed socialism and capitalism flavor.
Quotes:
P103:"I remember one study that got some attention after the Transition--it showed how suicides had dropped in direct relationship to enrollment numbers. Especially young people. Especially young men. I believe it. Sometimes heading back after pouring concrete all night by floodlight–the sky glowing red with dawn–the ferry captain would pull the horn for no good reason and we would all raise a fist and launch into “This Land Is Your Land” or some other song. Cheesy but it shot tears to my eyes. Partly from exhaustion. Partly from living the end of the world together. As a family. And doing something about it. Trying.”
Spoiler
Are American people capable of seeing what truly matters and unite across color and religion lines?It’s rare to find a near-future speculative fiction about climate change that is not dystopia. Although it is not an utopia, it has a positive atmosphere with a mixed socialism and capitalism flavor.
Spoiler
Yet, the repeated “revolution is not a dinner party” by one of the characters just makes me cringe. My biggest problem is that the main character Emi, a teenage girl and a child of survivors, has anorexia. How utterly impossible. Anorexia is a modern, western phenomenon influenced by popular but unhealthy body images. It is socially contagious and only thrives in a world that has abundance of food. None of these apply to a society that barely survived a world ending disaster.Quotes:
P103:"I remember one study that got some attention after the Transition--it showed how suicides had dropped in direct relationship to enrollment numbers. Especially young people. Especially young men. I believe it. Sometimes heading back after pouring concrete all night by floodlight–the sky glowing red with dawn–the ferry captain would pull the horn for no good reason and we would all raise a fist and launch into “This Land Is Your Land” or some other song. Cheesy but it shot tears to my eyes. Partly from exhaustion. Partly from living the end of the world together. As a family. And doing something about it. Trying.”