heatwave – Arthur Hofn

When Fiction Got There First

Heat. It has been hot. I love it, or I would if it wasn’t a sign of the damage done to our planet. But the 40C we experienced in my part of England recently… I could happily bask in it; what is it they say about mad dogs and Englishmen? The sad fact though is that, according the those in the know, this shouldn’t be happening. Predictions of a future of environmental calamity aren’t the just stuff of fiction. Regardless, many a story has been told whilst set in a world experiencing the consequences of the harm done to our planet, or in some cases other worlds.

It’s always been a tool writers use to highlight present issues, that is exaggerating the situation to clearly identify it and then setting it either in the future or off world, ‘This is what it could be like.’ It also allows the author to change the rules to tell a better story and let the imagination flow rather than be stuck trying to keep it as believable as possible. You want to highlight how the ecosystem itself is being damaged? Whilst we have reports of foreign species appearing in Britain and native ones on the decline, at the moment it’s not something the average person tends to worry about. Speed forward in time and tell of a world were all the bees have gone and the waters around our coast are patrolled by thousands of man eating sharks.

It’s hard to accurately predict how the food we grow will be affected, but go one hundred years in the future and you don’t need to worry about being accurate to reports of scientists, readers will be less inclined to disregard your words as being unrealistic.

Probably, to me, one of the most obvious novels dealing with climate change is The Drought by JG Ballard. In fact this was first published in 1964 under the title ‘The Burning World’ and then expanded in 1965 as The Drought. Ballard is brilliant at creating worlds, most of them are depressingly dystopian and this is no exception, but it is also stark. It’s the future and water is scarce, as in it’s all really messed up. Humans are just about surviving and even then it’s an effort. The problem is that the oceans have have been so badly polluted the water cycle is just not working properly. Of course the regular worries of green house gasses that we know all to well were not so strong in the 1960s, despite this the results and warnings of his scenario are the same as we could be fearing.

As a reader you feel the arid nature of the landscape, you can see yourself in the situations the characters, don’t just endure, but take as what life is. Ballard is clever here, it’s not so alien that you can’t imagine yourself doing the things that need to be done. We’ve all seen stagnate water in rivers that should be flowing. We can all imagine what happens to a zoo when the water runs out. The solution is to move to the coast, although even that is not so easy; however we start inland where the rivers have run to trickles if they have survived at all. This isn’t a novel about conspiracy or fighting for the survival of the planet; despite uprisings happening on the on the edge of the story, all that is already lost. This is a character working out how to live in the world, his world.

“Ransom walked across the central promenade of the zoo. Some twenty pink flamingos huddled together in a shallow trough at one end of the rock pool, the water sunk to a pallid slush between their feet. Sheets of matting covered the wire mesh over the pool but the birds fretted nervously, opening their beaks at Ransom.”
― J G Ballard, The Drought

Even though I’ve previously spoken about the other book I think of immediately when it comes to feeling the heat described in the text, I feel I just need to once more mention The Power And The Glory by Graham Greene. Set in Tabasco, Mexico (even if the geography is a little suspect) in the 1930s it’s hard to not fully embrace the dryness of the opening chapter which then leads into the humid swaps of the interior; you can almost see the sweat of the characters.

The fact this is set in the past, and in a landscape where the reader already expected things to be hot, humid and uncomfortable, at the time they probably dint’ see such temperatures coming to British shores. But it’s an interesting contrast to The Drought, because it also shows that in some parts of the world The Drought isn’t the future. Greene probably hadn’t thought of worldwide environmental damage when he penned his story, it was just this was what Mexico was like and he wanted to set his tale there. But how long until the heat in our part of the world is just as common place as the locals in Tabasco experience? How long until, like the people of The Drought, although knowing something is wrong, we just have to find a way to survive it?

“Mr Tench went out to look for his ether cylinder, into the blazing Mexican sun and the bleaching dust. A few vultures looked down from the roof with shabby indifference: he wasn’t carrion yet.”
― Graham Greene, The Power And The Glory

Personally I do like the heat, and to bask with a good novel is a good way to enjoy it, but maybe it shouldn’t be quite this hot?

Buy The Drought – by J G Ballard
Buy The Power And The Glory – by Graham Greene