Austral by Paul McAuley
Anticipated Publication Date, October 15, 2017 Before I go any further I want to say that I really enjoyed this. I read it in four chunks of time over the course of five days. I could have probably read it over a shorter timespan but there is so much within this that makes you sit back and think that I had to do just that!
Austral is a genetically modified human living in the not too distant future. A future where climate change is slowly wrecking our planet (recognise anything?). The ice caps are melting at tremendous rates and Antarctica is now inhabitable. She is the child of environmentalists that are attempting to make Antarctica inhabitable and a place where wildlife can flourish.
There is no mention of the Northern Hemisphere whatsoever but even countries like Australia, Argentina and Chile are much smaller because of the rise in sea levels.
After all the ecological good Austral’s family and those like her have tried to do, money, greed, capitalism and the desire to have goods, the Antarctic government decide that these environmentalists are outlaws. They get hunted down and sent to an island where they can barely sustain life, but they do.
The story is Austral’s attempt to tell her daughter her story. We see things through Austral’s eyes, her emotions and motivations. At times it is meandering stream of conscious thoughts, at other times it is almost a thriller as life continues.
Much of the internal story is quite relevant and is one possibility of where humans and the planet could go if something on a planetary scale is not done to try and slow down, maybe even reverse the ecological disaster that looms in this future. It is not a very happy story either, the ending has hope but little more.
This is going to be hard to categorise but it is sort of an eco-scifi-dystopia, not one or the other but all three.
Definitely gets my recommendation!
I would like to thank Gollancz and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this digital galley version for review
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