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A review by jfl
Earthlings by Cynan Jones
5.0
Poetically compressed, intertwined snapshots of a future where people are facing a radically changing climate. The country (presumably England) is experiencing alternating cycles of flood and draught, leading to unsustainable stresses in the rural countryside and growing socio-economic pressures in the urban centers.
In 12 chapters, Cynan Jones sketches with a great economy of words the stresses and emotions of a variety of people—many interrelated—as they face living at a moment when water has become commodified. Among the people whom Jones introduces to the reader:
1) John Branner, whose job is to guard the Water Train that transports water from the reservoir to the distant city. His wife, Anne, is terminally ill.
2) A worker on the Ice Dock who lives with Nita and her daughter, Hillie, in the area the government has condemned for right-of-way to allow passage of the Iceberg. Nita makes paper flowers to sell in the city.
3) David and his wife, Helen, who live on the unstable coast. Their daughter, Ruth, lives in the city, is a nurse and is married to Colin, a local journalist. Their son, Leo, works at the pumping station serving the Water Train and is partnered with Cora, who works as a thermo-fluctuationst.
4) Alan, a bureaucrat, who is overseeing the construction of the Ice Dock that will hold the Iceberg Calf.
5) A crew of tug boat operators who are transporting a calf of an Iceberg into the city for docking at the Ice Dock, still under construction.
6) A professor whose recent discover threatens to temporarily halt the construction of the Ice Dock.
7) Two young brothers, orphans, who track a dog into the right-of-way of the Water Train with disastrous results for one of the boys.
In 12 chapters, Cynan Jones sketches with a great economy of words the stresses and emotions of a variety of people—many interrelated—as they face living at a moment when water has become commodified. Among the people whom Jones introduces to the reader:
1) John Branner, whose job is to guard the Water Train that transports water from the reservoir to the distant city. His wife, Anne, is terminally ill.
2) A worker on the Ice Dock who lives with Nita and her daughter, Hillie, in the area the government has condemned for right-of-way to allow passage of the Iceberg. Nita makes paper flowers to sell in the city.
3) David and his wife, Helen, who live on the unstable coast. Their daughter, Ruth, lives in the city, is a nurse and is married to Colin, a local journalist. Their son, Leo, works at the pumping station serving the Water Train and is partnered with Cora, who works as a thermo-fluctuationst.
4) Alan, a bureaucrat, who is overseeing the construction of the Ice Dock that will hold the Iceberg Calf.
5) A crew of tug boat operators who are transporting a calf of an Iceberg into the city for docking at the Ice Dock, still under construction.
6) A professor whose recent discover threatens to temporarily halt the construction of the Ice Dock.
7) Two young brothers, orphans, who track a dog into the right-of-way of the Water Train with disastrous results for one of the boys.