In a moment of dark whimsy, one character wonders with amusement whether “a point might ultimately be reached where a second Adam and Eve themselves alone in a new Eden.”Ī United Nations military unit has been traveling the globe for the past three years, surveying what’s left of the world’s former capitals. The total human population has gone from billions of people dominating most of the planet to a mere several million concentrated around the now-subtropical poles. Mammalian fertility in general has been steadily waning, and human births have become comparatively rare. Humans and other mammals occupy an ever-dwindling ecological niche. The continental interiors are covered in lagoons, jungles and silt flats. The continents have been completely reshaped by the rising seas and the shifting of billions of tons of topsoil.

Malaria-spread by mosquitoes as big as today’s dragonflies-is now common well beyond the equator. The majority of the planet is too hot for humans, but plants and reptiles are flourishing explosively, ferns growing as tall as sequoias and giant lizards presiding over former corporate boardrooms among the inundated ruins.

In its climate, geography and life forms, this new Earth is a chaotic mashup of elements from various points along its prehistoric hothouse past (mostly from the Carboniferous and Triassic periods, which are repeatedly invoked). The novel finds Earth in the midst of runaway climate change caused not by humans, but by a prolonged period of solar storm activity. It’s remarkable for its vivid depiction of a possible future Earth, its fascinating exploration into the psychological effects of environmental change and its brilliant inversion of the standard disaster story formula. The book is a disaster novel, one that has come to be regarded as a seminal contribution to the climate fiction genre. Ballard published his novel The Drowned World. Sixty years ago this year, the late great British science fiction author J.

Liveright Publishing Corporation, July 2012. Ballard introduction by Martin AmisĢ08 pp. The Drowned World: A Novel (50th anniversary edition)īy J.

The drowned world by jg ballard