Violent social meltdown: a reader offer

Happy new year.

I’m pretty deep in book-writing mode at the moment, and therefore unlikely to have much to offer here for another couple of months. But I thought I’d put out an open comment post inviting readers to debate a few points and questions, which I will then shamelessly plunder as material for my book.

So … I’ve been a regular visitor at my wonderful local bookshop Hunting Raven recently, buying various forbidding non-fiction titles by way of background research for my own book. One of the staff asked jokingly if I ever just settled down with a good thriller – to which the answer is no, not really. The closest I’ve come lately to switching off from writing about a dark age future is reading dystopian climate-change novels. Partly because fiction seems to do a better job than social science.

Most recently, I’ve read Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower and Stephen Markley’s The Deluge. And so to my first question: any recommendations for other must-read climate novels?

**Spoiler alert ** Butler’s book, like a lot of dystopias, basically projects a civilizational breakdown scenario that strips people of almost everything they have and then puts a motley group of them together on the road to see how they fare. To which the answer in Butler’s book along with most others of this genre is ‘not too well’.

It’s plausible that in a rapid social collapse situation there’d be a lot of grim violence, but I’m not entirely convinced by Butler’s take – especially her view of extreme drug-addled violence directed by the worst-off of the have nots against everyone who’s a bit better off. I found Markley’s book more plausible in its emphasis on violence largely being shaped in the form of collective politics. Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age, but I can’t say I was a massive fan of his descriptive writing about extreme violence. There’s only so much I want to read about exactly what a bullet or a knife can do to a human body. Still, a lot of his political imaginings are very interesting. It’s a real doorstopper of a book, which very much held my attention, albeit alas with a hugely disappointing ending. Perhaps I’ll discuss it in another post, if anyone’s interested?

Anyway, it strikes me that there’s quite a modern, Hobbesian view at work in much of this cli-fi genre: without the modern state to hold things together, the argument runs, people naturally lapse into a brutal war of all against all, with a side of ‘eat the rich’ sentiment. I don’t think it’s quite that simple. Interested in any views!

A few other points. Amalgamating Butler’s and Markley’s books in terms of how individual US states or parts thereof fare, I’d suggest it goes something like this:

Southern California (for which, read LA) – not good

Northern California – not good, mostly because of the southern Californians heading there

Oregon, Washington – better, on account of managing to keep the Californians out

Kansas – not good, because of bad politics. But I want to know about the farming and the water!

Illinois (for which, read Chicago) – could be worse

Ohio – the best of a bad lot. Cleveland even gets to be the US capital. But oof! watch out for the ‘patriot’ militias

Eastern seaboard states – move inland folks … and even then, not great

New England – no information available. Views, anybody?

Florida – Hey, where did it go?

There are some regular commenters on this site who I know live in some of those places, so I’m especially interested in your thoughts.

Talking of US states, I’ve become slightly obsessed with Sporcle’s no outlines minefield quiz which I’ve been doing regularly to empty my mind between bouts of writing. My current personal best is all fifty states in 1 min 15 seconds. If writing this book achieves nothing else, it’s at least conferred in me an unerring feel for US political geography, which I’m sure will prove useful somehow.

Anyway, moving on, another question – how do you see future collapse scenarios working out in terms of race and racism? Butler’s book seems to say ‘pretty much the same as now’. Markley’s says ‘quite a lot worse than now’. Then there’s a book like Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s My Monticello, suggesting things in the United States will turn into a race war that white folks will win as soon as the proverbial hits the fan.

Yet another question. I’ve come to the view that the present global economy is built on an unstable edifice of way too much footloose capital, and this alone is likely to prompt economic collapses and meltdowns. I’m not therefore too convinced by ideas like Modern Monetary Theory or neo-Keynesian stimulus packages. But I’m interested in all views and recommended readings – preferably short ones … no more blockbusters for me at this stage in the writing game.

Finally, going back to the US breakdown scenarios, I’m also interested in how these questions might pan out, with the relevant local adjustments, in Britain and mainland Europe. In Markley’s book, far-right racist parties control a lot of Europe for a while, although not so much in Britain. The best British cli-fi book I’ve read is Rosa Rankin Gee’s Dreamland, where a far-right party does take power. Also, don’t go to Margate.

And with those words of sagacious advice, I close this present post and will see you when I see you. But please do send me your answers to my various questions above and I will work them up into an elegant piece of long-form non-fiction.