Earth Winter [Paperback]

Richard Moran (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1996

A cloud of volcanic ash has darkened the Northern Hemisphere. The U.S. faces the prospects of an endless winter, yet the world's leaders are paralyzed by apathy, avarice, and fear. Only geologist Ben Meade realizes the need for immediate action. With time running out, he devises a brilliant, desperate scheme to bring Earth's weather back into balance.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Picking up where they left off in The Empire of Ice, geologist Ben Meade and his fiancee, genetics researcher Marjorie Glynn, attempt to save the northern hemisphere from a 15-year-long winter even as they struggle to salvage their relationship from its own frost in this fast-moving but poorly focused thriller. Set in 2001, after the eruption of a volcano in the middle of the Atlantic has chilled the earth's climate north of the equator, the novel envisions a U.S. whose farmlands are frozen and worthless. (It's also a U.S. with a woman president, inspiring such sentences as, "The President crossed one well-shaped leg over the other.") Until the biospheres developed by Marjorie can be set up across the country, the nation has to buy all its food from southern hemisphere countries with agricultural economies?which is why Argentina is now a world power. To ensure that things stay that way, Argentinian strongman General Ramon de Urquiza arranges to purchase a long-hidden nuclear submarine from the government of Ukraine. The general plans to use the sub to stop Ben, who has come up with a way to harness the Gulf Stream to correct the world's climate. Because Moran concentrates on only a few key characters, his narrative ends up feeling cramped rather than epic. If you're going to destroy the world, it's wise to describe the world that's destroyed; but, aside from scattered vignettes and some longer descriptions of anti-immigrant riots in San Francisco, Moran keeps the focus close to Ben and Marjorie, giving his tale the feel of a 1950s science fiction movie in which one or two determined people with the right ideas can save the world and fall in love at the same time. Nevertheless, the novel is smoothly written and builds on several exciting set pieces to a tense and riveting climax.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this sequel to the "fascinating and frighteningly plausible" The Empire of Ice (LJ 2/15/94), a cloud of volcanic ash spreads across U.S. skies, canceling summer and heralding a most bitter winter.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 10 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; First Edition edition (January 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812530128
• ISBN-13: 978-0812530124
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,323,721 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Superb intensely dramic book!!, January 31, 2003

By 

Jimi Dracutt "Tusken Hawk" (Orlando, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Earth Winter (Hardcover)

This book deserved a five!!! I have never read the first book but I feel I didn't need too. After finishing the book, I do see that this can become a Hollywood made movie. I'm not sure what Robert Morgan background is but there are some great military, political, scientific thoeries and senerios, in my opinion, are phenomenially well executed. After reading the 2nd chapter I was hooked. It showcased a dramatic scene about what a father would have to do in order for his family to survive. That scene was very intense. Later in the book, events that lead to a face-off between a female mayor and and angry mob had me on the edge of my seat. So much in this book keep my interest afloat, there were no boring elements at all!! This book from begining to end was excellent reading. In the future, I will definitely read more books by this author.

2.0 out of 5 stars "Earth Winter" - OK, sometimes cheesy, but with one BIG hole at the end, December 22, 2010

By 

Shams Rashid - See all my reviews

This review is from: Earth Winter (Hardcover)

It was mostly an enjoyable read. The "science" in the fiction was fairly well thought out (except for one really big problem at the end), but I thought the love scenes were more suitable for a soap opera than a science fiction novel, and dumb at times. Other than that, it was OK, BUT:

Near the end, the author casually throws out the fact that cold fusion had been available for some time. WHAT????? The whole story is based on the premise that its too cold in the northern hemisphere, there is not enough heat, enough food, enough liquid water, etc. etc., but if cold fusion is available, none of these would not be such a big problem!!! Cold fusion would be the most revolutionary thing since the steam engine, perhaps even more revolutionary! How did the author mess that up??

I know this can be seen as a small thing, but this little fact turned the entire story very sour for me, and this is why I am giving it a 2. If not, I would give it a 3 or 4.

3.0 out of 5 stars Not bad, but not great, either., June 4, 2008

By 

Nina M. Osier (Randolph, ME USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Earth Winter (Paperback)

Earth's northern hemisphere lies beneath a vast cloud of volcanic ash, and the nations of the southern hemisphere find themselves supplying food to those northern countries that used to be the world's breadbaskets. It's not just the terrible cold; it's the lack of sunlight during the north's shortened summers that makes normal crop production impossible. With emigrants from poorer countries such as China flooding into the United States anyway, the U.S. president turns to geothermal energy entrepreneur Ben Meade for help. Ben teams up with his fiancee, British plant genetics expert Marjorie Glynn, to do what they've already done in Britain: build vast biospheres, enclosed environments where crops can be grown and humans can live protected from the increasingly brutal world outside. With Argentina's ruling junta repeatedly raising prices for its food exports, getting the biospheres operational is a race against time. That race takes on new urgency when an accident sets back the development of the first Biosphere America, a severely overworked Marjorie Glynn suffers a near breakdown, and Argentina buys itself a nuclear submarine. Can Ben Meade's latest inspiration - a scheme to raise temperatures throughout the northern hemisphere to near normal levels - succeed despite Argentina's determination to thwart him and protect its burgeoning profits? And if Ben fails, what will happen to the U.S. and its desperate people?

I had no trouble following this book's story despite not having read the book before it, Empire of Ice. I found the love scenes between Ben and Marjorie rather silly at times, and the "first woman president of the United States" seemed like a much bigger deal than it (well, she!) should have been; but that may be because this tale was published in the middle 1990s, and set in a 2000 that was still the future. As an adventure story it reads well enough, and the passages about the Jerome family stranded and starving to death in their snowbound Wyoming ranch house are wrenching. The book could have used more such passages.