Skyseed by Bill McGuire
Sometimes, when you're in a hole, it's best to stop digging. This applies as much to messing with the climate as anything else, except even more so.
Jane Haliwell put her head in her hands. To tell the truth, she was still in shock. All the samples she had taken from inside and around the lab contained the enigmatic spheres in huge numbers. She had only had a brief time to think about the implications, but she was pretty sure already what was going on.
For the first time in the history of the world, it was literally raining carbon. Long before it stopped, the guilty would pay, but so would the innocent...
About the author.
I am an academic, broadcaster, activist and Amazon UK Top 100 popular science and speculative fiction writer. I am currently Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London, a co-director of the New Weather Institute, a patron of Scientists for Global Responsibility, a member of the scientific advisory board of Scientists Warning and special scientific advisor to WordForest.org.
My books include: A Guide to the End of the World: Everything you Never Wanted to Know; Surviving Armageddon: Solutions for a Threatened Planet; and Seven Years to Save the Planet.
Review.
This is a harrowing, devastating and breathtaking look at our attitudes to climate change and the inevitability of nature reacting to our failures. I think since Covid I have started to look at dystopian novels like this differently than before. It all seems far too plausible and that is terrifying.
Jane and Karl are scientists who stumble across some samples that show that the planet is no longer raining carbon. Now, that might have once been a cause for celebration but no longer. What is the reason behind this revelation and it's a force of nature or human intervention? Bill answers all these questions and more. I was afraid that I was going to be overwhelmed with the science but it's all clearly explained and it doesn't feel as if it has been ‘dumbed down’.
There are three parts to this book - the first is action-packed with revelations happening all the way through. The remaining two parts are slower in pace but they are the ones which resonated more for me. The final chapter that features Jane made me cry. It was so eloquent and overwhelming. This is a hard look at climate change and it's a hard read but oh so worth it.
