Customer Reviews

The Sea and Summer

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A really interesting look at our current society falling apart due to the weather, etc. For a pleasant change, not set in 'ho-hum, not New York again, who the hell cares about there for the nth time', but in Melbourne. The characters seem real.

After a woman loses her job, and her husband, she tries to get by. One honorable man tries to organise people to help each other out.

This book is fantastic - and a warning. Reading it, you can feel the heat, the claustrophobia, the hopelessness of life on the fringes and the rising sea lapping at the doorstep. The scary thing is, the writing's on the wall. Global warming is still a threat, huge multi-story pack-em-in apartment blocks are going up in the middle of cities everywhere, the gap between the haves and have nots is rising, and everybody's looking away. It's just a little harder to look away after reading this.
If you like this book, seek out Brunner's "Sheep look up",

This novel pictures a world facing the rising sea with the resulting decline of the land mass. It based in the middle of the 21st century Australia. The unemployed form more than half the population and they are massed in specially built high rise towers and kept there by the police and the army. The story traces the fall of a family from sweet (i.e. employed with reasonable income) into the hell of unemployment.
the story from the viewpoint of four main characters and more minor ones. While this may seem confusing at first, the author managed to turn this into an interesting way of examining different personalities each with its own selfish motive and self centered view of the world. this one of the best novels of what I call "Future fiction" as opposed to authentic science fiction

The best that can be said for "The Sea and Summer" is that the author writes grammatically. But the prose, the characters, the situations -- all derive from the worst cliches of 50s pulp SF. Turner writes like an arrogant autodidact, putting juvenile tirades into the mouths of all his repellent characters. Simply horrible -- I gave up around page 100.

The late George Turner has captured science, fears of global warming and society change into a brilliantly read book. His scenario may not be entirely feasible, but it is indeed a possibility of a future that we are creating and have no control over.