2084: An Oral History of the Great Warming (Kindle Single) [Kindle Edition]

James Powell (Author)

Book Description

By 2084, global warming has proven worse than even the worst-case projections of scientists at the turn of the century. No country and no individual has escaped. Through interviews, this book of oral history captures the effects of the Great Warming on various countries and individuals, as reported in the year 2084.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The year is 2084: a literary anniversary of sorts, but these days, Mother Nature makes Big Brother look like child's play. Framed as an oral history, Dr. James Powell's novella depicts the late 21st-century by channeling many voices, from across the inhabited world, to describe the catastrophic effects of global warming. Powell's fictional narrator aims to model the inimitable Studs Terkel, but the resulting overall tone instead recalls the best of pulp science fiction from the 1950s: here a dash of Arthur C. Clarke's penchant for understatement, there a taste of Asimov's subtle bait-and-switch. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Powell's most moving chapter is "Nanuk" ("Polar Bear"), but not because, circa 2084, global warming's poster-beasts only survive in zoos. Rather, the chapter ends with a single, elegant question of booming resonance: "What will people do with the last Native Eskimo?" --Jason Kirk

Product Details

• File Size: 320 KB
• Print Length: 91 pages
• Publisher: James L. Powell (March 21, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B004TAD8G0
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #37,291 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #8 in Kindle Store > Kindle Singles > The Sciences
  • #11 in Kindle Store > Kindle Singles > The World Stage
  • #14 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Earth Sciences > Environmental Science

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 66 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Read April 6, 2011

By Christopher Hunter

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a great work of speculative fiction. My very first purchase from the Kindle store and I couldn't have picked a better book to start things off. The beauty of "2084" is that it reads like non-fiction. The narrators (interview subjects) never really talk about their families or personal lives that much, but collectively, they paint a very bleak and vivid picture of a faltering planet. The chapters: "The Four-Day War", "The Indus War", and "O Canada" are real standouts. Those chapters alone are worth more than the price I paid for the whole book. There are moments where things are too technical, but for the most part, the ideas, the pounding of the central theme, and the diversity of the settings make for one compelling experience. The reader should definitely snatch this before the price goes up. This is a steal.

Christopher Hunter
Author of the "The Days and Months We Were First Born" trilogy.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and Thought Provoking June 10, 2011

By Daniel Bernstein

Format:Kindle Edition

Dr. James Powell, a geologist and former college president, offers a stark and fictional account of the world in 2084, a world in which the march of climate change has changed the world for the worse. The book is a sequence of self-contained chapters, each focusing on one geographic region. Dr. Powell wrote the book in an attempt to use art to make people aware of what climate change may hold in the cards for the future of humanity. While it is impossible to predict any specific future scenario, Dr. Powell lays out a range of possible/plausible outcomes (now of which are particularly appealing). Dr. Powell is an excellent, descriptive writer and the tales in this book are page turners. After reading the book you will not only be entertained but perhaps also a bit more pessimistic about the future climate. After reading it, consider writing a letter to your congressperson or better yet, think about what you can do each and every day to limit your individual impact while you prepare yourself for changes that may already be inevitable.

Highly recommended.

27 of 35 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Idea Marred by Poor Delivery June 19, 2011

By Ben Capozzi

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I read this after being drawn to dystopian near-futures by Paol Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl and this book disappointed.

I rate this book so poorly because it sets out to present itself as an oral history collecting the real words of real people (albeit imagined) in the future, but it reads instead like an extended essay listing cold facts and sometimes imaginative predictions. The book also suffers because the 'voices' of all the 'characters' are IDENTICAL.

EVERY CHAPTER HAS THE SAME VOICE.

It doesn't matter if it's a defeated Canadian governor now absorbed into the Union, an Inuit refugee, or the former Mexican ambassador to the US -they ALL have the same voice. When the author does make an attempt to differentiate -through a flash of accent or a single-sentence-but-apparently-deeply-personal story- it just comes across as amateurish.

Favorable comparisons to Max Brook's World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War do not give that excellent title proper respect.

2084 should have just been a speculative essay, dispensing entirely with any sort of story wrapper. Just make the scary predictions, back them up with facts or projections, and let folks make their own conclusions. I think I'm even sympathetic to the point of view of the author, but seriously, for much more visceral connections to the one world we're destroying and the new one we're making, check out Bacigalupi's Pump Six and Other Stories or WindUp Girl. They will affect you more.

You can read this thing in an afternoon, easy-peasy, though I got bored and it took me a few weeks.

One technical note - This entire Kindle eBook version is set in bold face type. ALL of it. Distracting and amateurish.