pamur wrote:I really hope to hear what any of you may have to say about this book. Science fiction has really dropped the ball when it comes to post-oil conjecture.
Well I ordered the book off Amazon, it arrived a few days ago and I'm 80 pages into it.
So far so good. It's actually not a depressing read.. I've avoided "The Road" just because the story sounds so damn grim, so I'm glad this is a fun read so far.
Lots of stuff here for doomers / sci fi fans to like. Story takes places a couple centuries in the future. Sounds like the US has broken up. Gene modification has been going on for a long time.. the US collapsed after peak oil but bounced back with GMO agriculture. Then that backfired as new GMO diseases wiped out much of the Earth's plant, animal, and human life. The American ag companies are hated.
Thailand is a success thanks to developing their own GMO program. I should note here that this is science fiction not a realistic vision of post-peak.. but still a fun read. In Thailand, they created a new animal based on elephants called megodonts. They use the beasts for kinetic power, pulling crank shafts powering the factories and such.
The gene-modifications are clever; things like big worms that provide phosphorescent light. And the "windup girl" is one of the "New People," a Japanese creation analogous to an android -- except these are genetically engineered people, though treated like robots.
Let's see, they still have coal but it's precious and wars are fought over it. There is limited electricity.. mostly things like compost methane gas are used for streetlighting. There are still some elites in the world with electricity and "climate control," but mostly it's all kinetic power -- human, animal, and "kink-springs." I do wish the author could have gone into some more detail on the theoretical tech.. for example, in the book these "kink springs" are something like a battery. A compressed spring, treated with algae, that can hold kinetic energy to be released later. But the author doesn't go into it enough for me to know if this is realistic or not.. I don't see how a "king spring" can hold enough kinetic energy to power trains and the like. And if the spring is compressed to a molecular level, how are they doing that with elephant labor?
Anyhow, don't mean to sound negative it's a FUN read so far and worth the purchase. Thanks for recommending.