Ben Shread-Hewitt

So, what have we got? A global economy staggering amongst geopolitical tension, a bubble to beat all bubbles, and the twin shocks of a (potentially permanent) oil price crash and the EV subsidies ending — and all with the backdrop of worsening climate change driving up inflation and inflicting constant disasters.

One conceptualisation of this new narrative is as a ‘Thrutopia’. This is the middle passage between utopia and dystopia. The hour is too late to avoid reaping the destruction we have sown, but neither is complex human civilisation beyond hope.

But I think what makes Parable so popular and intellectually stimulating (aside from the fact that it’s a very exciting book!) is that it takes first principles—effectively social emotions—and develops them into a new politics for the challenges of the world the novel presents.

If some degree of warming is inevitable, then it is incredibly important we reach it later, rather than sooner. If we cannot yet fully avoid them, then we must decelerate our climate impacts.

The Deluge is a tome, a vast and sprawling novel with myriad narrative threads. Tracking the future of American society between 2013–2040 against the backdrop of worsening climate change, the reader is shown a nation plunging fitfully into turmoil – with hard-fought moments of recovery and sudden, devastation catastrophes.

Looting, it seems, has got a bad rap. Because to save the planet, we need to loot it. We must let nothing — not cultural artifacts, not ancient woodlands, nor even entire species — get in the way of this drive to save the planet from its number one threat: Climate Breakdown.