The Sea and Summer

by George Turner

Francis Conway is Swill - one of the millions in the year 2041 who must subsist on the inadequate charities of the state. Life, already difficult, is rapidly becoming impossible for Francis and others like him, as government corruption, official blindness and nature have conspired to turn Swill homes into watery tombs. And now the young boy must find a way to escape the approaching tide of disaster.
The Sea and Summer, published in the US as The Drowning Towers is George Turner's masterful exploration of the effects of climate change in the not-too-distant future. Comparable to J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World, it was shortlisted for the nebula and won the Arthur C. Clarke Award.
Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best novel, 1988

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Dystopia, Post Apocalyptic, Australia, Speculative Fiction, Climate Change

382 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

George Turner was born and educated in Melbourne. He served in the Australian Imperial Forces during the Second World War.

Prior to writing science fiction, he had a well established reputation as mainstream literary fiction writer, his most productive period being from 1959 to 1967, during which he published five novels. Over a decade after his previous publication of a full length work of fiction, he published his first science fiction novel, 'Beloved Son' (1978).

George Turner was named as a Guest of Honor for Aussiecon Three, the 1999 World Science Fiction Convention held in Melbourne, but died before the event.

Reviews

[Federico DN · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining.

Sydney, Australia. In a near dystopian future, the world is mostly destroyed by climate change, rising seas, lack of resources, and overpopulation. Society dividing itself into two inapproachable classes, the sweet and the swill; those with everything, and those with nothing. Young siblings Teddy and Francis Conway belong to a fading class that doesn’t exactly belong to either one. And by those chances of fate, Francis is sent to work for the sweet, while Teddy is sent to live within the swill. What follows is a desperate quest for survival, Francis to keep his privileged place as long as he possibly can, and Teddy struggling to survive with scraps in a massive overcrowded tower apartment.

In an alternate timeline, a lot further ahead in time, anthropologist Lenna Wilson slowly piecing history together, investigating and collecting documents from that fateful time, and releasing Teddy’s and Francis’s diaries, with their recollections of those terrible days.

This was a solid 3.5 star read. Not exactly great, yet not bad either. Surprisingly, this book still sticks within my memory even after more than a decade after reading it. The Arthur Clarke award rightfully deserved imo. None of the characters Is really likable, and this was not exactly easy to read, but yes very interesting and memorable for various reasons. The Lenna timeline seemed a little too farfetched, but the Teddy and Francis timeline seemed awfully on point, and considering how the world is going nowadays, with ever new climate catastrophes, and steadily rising wealth inequality; painfully realistic. This book keeps aging like fine wine, even nearly forty years after it was written.

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PERSONAL NOTE : I really don't like wine, but I think the phrase has some truth in it xD
[1987] [387p] [Dystopian] [Conditional Recommendable]
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Entretenido.

Sydney, Australia. En un futuro distópico cercano, el mundo está mayormente destruido por los cambios climáticos, el ascenso de los oceanos, la falta de recursos, y la sobrepoblación. La sociedad dividiéndose a sí misma en dos clases inaccesibles, supras e infras; aquellos con todo, y aquellos con nada. Jóvenes hermanos Teddy y Francis Conway pertenecen a una decreciente clase que no pertenece exactamente a ninguna de las dos. Y por una de esas vueltas del destino, Francis es enviado a trabajar para los supra, mientras que Teddy es enviado a vivir entre los infra. Lo que sigue es una desesperada lucha por supervivencia, Francis para mantener su privilegiado lugar por todo el tiempo que sea posible, y Teddy luchando por sobrevivir con residuos en una masiva sobrepoblada torre de apartamentos.

En una línea alternativa, mucho más adelante en el tiempo, la antropologa Lenna Wilson de a poco uniendo la historia, investigando y recolectando documentos de esa fatídica época, y liberando los diarios de Teddy y Francis, con sus recuerdos sobre esos terribles días.

Esta fue una sólida lectura de 3.5 estrellas. No grandiosa, pero no mala tampoco. Sorprendentemente, este libro todavía se mantiene en mi memoria incluso una más de una década después de haberlo leído. El premio Arthur Clarke bien ganado en mi opinión. Ninguno de los personajes es muy querible, y esto no fue algo exactamente fácil de leer, pero sí muy interesante y memorable por numerosas razones. La línea de Lenna pareció un poco muy improbable, pero la línea de tiempo de Teddy y Francis pareció estar terriblemente en punto, y considerando cómo le va al mundo estos días, con cada nueva catástrofe climática, y continuamente creciente desigualdad de riqueza; dolorosamente realista. Este libro continua añejando como un buen vino, incluso casi cuarenta años después de ser escrito.

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NOTA PERSONAL : No me gusta el vino para nada, pero creo que la frase tiene algo de verdad xD.
[1987] [387p] [Distopía] [Recomendable Condicional]
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[zed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Considering that this was first released in 1987 conceptually it has stood the test of time. Plot wise there are a couple of character limitation’s, but I have not let that stand in the way of a very thematic book.

Author George Turner came to my attention because he won the Miles Franklin award in 1966 for his novel The Cupboard Under the Stairs. I have been after a copy of that book for many a long year and have seen it for sale at some exorbitant prices that I am not willing to pay, but it has recently become available by a small publisher and will get a copy as soon as I can. Turner, based on this novel The Summer and the Sea is a very gifted writer and story teller and I am keen to read further. The quality of this story was recognised on release by eventually winning the Arthur C Clark Award in 1988.

This is first and foremost an Australian novel and with that one based in Melbourne and its suburbs, nowhere else. It cannot be misconstrued as elsewhere for several reasons. Newport a veritable working class suburb for starters plays a large role in terms of place. Others such as Balwyn and Richmond to name but a couple have roles to play with the city centre, St Kilda Road, its “derelict concert hall” (Hamner Hall) and the Princess Theatre featuring at times. Further afield there are the Dandenong’s and Baw Baw mentioned. A kookaburra laughs at one point and Kangaroos are extinct due to the pressure of feeding an expanding population.

The language of the underclass (Swill and Fringe) is heavy strine, and becomes a distinct dialect that emerged in just a generation to the point that it has become indistinguishable to those that work for or are the ruling and upper classes (Sweet) and make no contact with the underclass. It could be said that the Sweet represents the ruling/moneyed/technocrat class, the Fringe loosely the old middle class and the vast majority, the Swill the old working lower socio economic class. I was reminded of the old Australian 6 o’clock swill term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_o%2...

There is a nod to the literature of Australia past with reference to The Lucky Country. This is a book by Donald Horne and the term itself can at times be used as an insult or with irony as it does in this book. Slang is evident such as “Chewy” for chewing gum. This term was used when I was at school and may well be used today by school kids. I am also reminded of the term “Chewy on your boot”. To quote an internet search “A derogatory phrase called out at AFL (Australian Rules Football) matches (the imputation being that the caller hopes that the footballer has chewing gum stuck on his boot, so that he can’t kick the ball properly) “. Any reader of this book can search the many references made and will be lead to Australiana.

The story is in 2 parts. The Autumn People and The Sea and The Summer. The Autumn People are in the very distant future in what seems to be a utopia. An archaeologist, Lena, takes an actor, Andra, via a form of hovercraft from what is called The New City (in the present Dandenong Ranges and being now above the flooded lowlands) to a Swill tower, Tower Twenty Three, which is visible above the water line. The actor wished to research for a play he wants to write and perform in. When discussing with Lena his plans for the play she gives him her unpublished manuscript of a novel she has written about the life of Billy Kovacs, Tower Twenty Three boss, which he reads. This is the vast majority of this novel and is about the Greenhouse Culture of the times from 2041 through 2061, thus a novel within a novel. To say much about the plot would give too much away.

George Turner has been a smart enough writer to make this as enduring read, even nearly 40 years after release. In the future will there be greenhouse induced floods that make large tracts unlivable, worldwide economic collapse, over population, mass starvation as just some of the events as told in the novel within the novel? Who knows, but be that as it may the dates can easily be changed and the book will still be a dystopian nightmare no matter when it is read into the future. The Sea and the Summer is only a novel in manuscript form, after all. There is a sense of the characters having few redeeming features for long periods of the novel within the novel. The collapse of society along with the ever present drowning of the living space brings out the fear of ‘others’ be that for power/economic reasons or be that due to class and/or race differences. The degrading of Swill people and their very surrounds is all-pervading.

The US edition of this book was published with the title The Drowning Towers for some unknown reason. IMO the deep thinker about what this book offers will prefer The Sea and the Summer, a far superior title.


“This is Elwood and there was a beach here once. I used to paddle here. Then the water came up and there were the storm years and the pollution, and the water became too filthy’. ‘It must be terrible over there in Newport when the river floods’, she continues: ‘A high tide covers the ground levels of the tenements’"


“Mum is dead . . . Once, she said very forcefully, ‘I’ve had a good life, Francis. So full.’ Full, I thought, of what would have been avoided in a saner world. Billy came in later, but by then she was rambling about the past, about summertime and the glistening sea.”

Science Fiction at its best, recommended to those that look to sleep well.

[S.B. Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

The novel has been out of print for some time, indeed I tried to find a copy a couple of years ago and couldn’t. Thankfully Gollanz have seen fit to reprint it as part of their masterworks series.

So how, after 25 years, does the book hold up?

Remarkably well is the short answer. Apart from a couple of historical errors that have crept in with the relentless march of time, it’s a book that fans of Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker series and Anna North’s America Pacifica would enjoy.

It’s a story within a story – the survivors of an a slow apocalypse looking back at the end of the Greenhouse culture.

We are introduced to an archeologist taking a playwright around the crumbling monoliths of the Greenhouse culture. Vast city towers that held 70,000 plus people each. These are the autumn people living in the age where the earth is rapidly cooling toward another ice age. The Archeologist has written a novel that makes a narrative from her discoveries and thus the reader is drawn into the tale of a group of pivotal personalities that see out the beginning of the downfall of our culture, the Greenhouse culture.

A didactic novel written in the mode of science fiction realism, in literary terms, its tone feels very similar to English works like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four, its bleak forecast and representation of the poor reminded me a little of A Clockwork Orange. The Sea and Summer is undeniably Australian though and really should be on the reading list of every Australian science fiction writer.

Turner does note in his afterword that:

Nobody can foretell the future.In a world of disparate aims, philosophies and physical conditions the possible permutations are endless; few guesses aimed beyond a decade from today are likely to be correct, even by accident.

The comment above me made me smile because I think Turner got a lot right in The Sea and Summer, maybe it was pure luck, maybe it was a well rounded knowledge of trends or just an understanding of human nature, but his 2040’s has the rich with large flat screen entertainment terminals that sound a lot like the Smart TV’s that you can buy now (if you happen to be lucky enough to live where you can get suitable internet service). The broadening gap between the rich and the poor (or Sweet and Swill as they are termed in the book) is happening. Even the conspiracy at the heart of the novel was apparently voiced by one of Australia’s richest business women yesterday.

The books central message, observation, warning on climate change goes largely ignored today. Our next likely Prime Minister for example seems confused by the reality of the situation. The Sea and Summer is not depressing though, realistic in its observation of humans and the disasters we can bring upon ourselves, but also hopeful.
The Sea and Summer won the Arthur C Clark award in 1988 the second year the Award had run. Turner had earlier won the Miles Franklin for his mainstream work The Cupboard Under the Stairs. Some awarded books fade from our consciousness, some we can look back on and wonder what the voters and juries of yester year were smoking. Not so with The Sea and Summer, this book deserves its award nomination and deserves to be read. I’d recommend it as a school text if I didn’t think that forcing teens to read it might result in an aversion to it by virtue of it being a prescribed text.

This book was provided by the publisher.

[Deb Omnivorous Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a brilliant book! As speculative science fiction goes it was exceptionally well put together and it is amazing that it was first published in 1987, because it feels so very contemporary.

George Turner has created a future world, with plenty of dystopia elements from before dystopia was a very mainstream thing. He was also ahead of his time in writing solid science fiction relating to climate change at a time when climate change was not yet a common concern. Finally, with the future predictions, and the greenhouse climate change and the sea level rising it is a spectacularly strong and evolved social commentary.

There are two different time frames for this book, one is the Autumn people set centuries ahead of the 21st. The sea level has risen and swallowed Melbourne which is now a sunken city within the Yarra delta. Broken semi-destroyed high-rises poke up from the chill waters. They are chill, because the Ice age is coming. In this world (which is a minor part of the book, merely putting the story in context) a scholar takes an actor to see the reconstruction of the far past which takes us to the bulk of the novel.

2040's - 2060's the era that the Autumn people know as the Greenhouse era. Society is rigidly demarcated between Sweet and Swill. The Sweet have jobs, respectability education and a life style that, while it seems minimal to us, is adequate. The Swill have no jobs, live on subsistence in high rise towers and are thoroughly demonised by the Sweet, who have mostly never met any Swill.

The story follows the fortunes of the Conway family, mother Alison, two son's Teddy and Francis and their father who is a 'lower level Sweet' until the day he is retrenched and the family has to move to the fringes. A complete social structure somewhere between the Sweet and the Swill.

The scope of the social construction and commentary in the novel is amazing. In Australia we can see a slow dividing of the rich and poor, as well as the social scorn the rich feel justified in levelling against the poor; the notion of 'dole bludgers ' being the first step to the subsistence living that Turner has mapped out so evocatively. The way the evolved slang is handled, too, is pretty genius as is the analysis of the outcome of climate change denial.

But essentially, it is an excellent story. We have Teddy taken into an advanced education program, who leaves behind his family entirely, feeling betrayed by their decent toward poverty. We have his younger brother Francis, who has a freak mathematical talent which gives him a chance at something better than a mere decent into Swill. When you think back on it, few of these characters are particularly ethical or likable, but they are interesting, exceptionally well written and living in a world that makes for an amazing adventure.

An amazing prophetic adventure. I don't know how far away we are from sea level rise, but I am not sure that Turner was all that pessimistic about the time line. Great story, well written - beautifully written in fact and a thoroughly flawless reading experience.

[Ricardo Carrión Libros · Rating 5 out of 5]

Las torres del olvido nos invita a un viaje hacia un posible futuro cercano. A mediados del siglo XXI, una sociedad completamente desestabilizada lucha por sobrevivir en medio de una crisis social, económica y ecológica.

En un futuro indeterminado las personas intentan reconstruir el pasado de lo que denominan "La cultura del invernadero", que entró en crisis a partir del año 2040. La historiadora Lenna Williams ha recopilado suficiente información sobre las personas que protagonizaron dichos acontecimientos, a través de documentos históricos y del registro e investigación de los restos de unas enormes torres medio sumergidas en el mar, en las cuales vivían hacinadas las familias más pobres de la ciudad de Melbourne, Australia.

Pero Lenna, no solo ha reconstruido la cultura del invernadero en base a conceptos y términos académicos incomprensibles para el ciudadano común. Vio que la mejor forma de retratar dicho tiempo y hacer llegar el mensaje a todas las personas era escribiendo una novela, por lo cual recurre a un famoso actor y comediógrafo para que la lea y le de su opinión.

Los acontecimientos de la novela de la doctora Williams se desarrollan entre los años 2041 y 2061. La sociedad se encuentra dividida en dos. Por un lado tenemos a los "supra" que engloba a todas las personas que tienen un nivel socio-económico medio-alto, y los "infra" que representan la parte olvidada de la sociedad; no tienen empleo, ni educación, poseen un lenguaje propio que procede de la deformación del lenguaje tradicional y viven de lo poco y nada que les entrega el estado, lo que incluye unas enormes torres con diminutas habitaciones, casi cubículos, en donde debían vivir familias de hasta once personas. El planeta se encuentra sobrepoblado.

Una familia supra, que vive con lo justo para mantener su status, sufre un revés económico que los hace caer en la escala social a un paso de convertirse en "infras". Por lo que se deben desplazar a vivir a un lugar llamado "La periferia", muy cercano a los barrios infra, donde se levantan majestuosamente las enormes torres. La familia Conway acostumbrada a una vida supra deberá adaptarse a este nuevo estilo de vida, lo que causará irreconciliables conflictos entre los integrantes de la familia.
El clima hostil de la zona se deja sentir inmediatamente a su llegada por medio de la extorsión. Encontrarse en la periferia de un barrio infra significa quedar expuestos a su influencia y a sus leyes. La policía no se asoma por aquellos lugares, y en medio del caos, los infra se han adaptado a la soberanía del "Jefe de torre", un hombre que por medio de su influencia y sus seguidores se preocupa por mantener el orden por medio de su red de protección a cambio de una módica suma. Billy Kovacs es el jefe de la torre veintitrés, él ejercerá una profunda influencia en la familia Conway, quienes abandonados por un mundo clasista e insensible harán todo lo posible por no seguir cayendo en el abismo e intentaran utilizar todos los medios para volver a ser supra. Mientras tanto deberán soportar los efectos de la superpoblación, la devaluación del dinero, inundaciones debido al alza del nivel del mar causado por el derretimiento de los casquetes polares, y la vida al borde de la insalubridad, de una sociedad infra que carece de los implementos básicos para subsistir.

[Martina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Drowning Towers is yet another good entry in the science/speculative fiction genre. The title ruins the first impression, though, because it sets the tone of doom and gloom way too early. For that reason, the title given to the novel inside the novel - The sea and summer - works much better. The sea and summer is very innocent and is very much in contrast with the world the author portrays.

Turner's vision of the future is grim and dreary; it might not be as extreme as Harrison's Make room! Make room!, but it still packs a punch. The climate changes, the overpopulation and lack of resources are a focal point of the novel, for a job in the goverment means the difference between life (living in a normal house) and death (living in an overcrowded "tower"). Or that's the way Francis, one of the protagonists, views life - as getting back into the Sweet regardless of the price.

Contrary to the blurb, Francis is not the main character of The sea and summer. There are several narrators in the book - Francis' brother Teddy and mother Alison, the rich businesswoman Nola Parks, Teddy's superior in the law enforcement "Nick" Nikopoulos... I suppose Turner wanted to explore how bad conditions in the society can erode the family unit and even destroy it. But I was glad that we had a multitude of narrators, simply because I needed a change of pace. The characters were mostly unlikeable, especially Francis. His behavior as a child was somewhat understandable, but as an adult he was downright loathsome. If there were more parts where Francis was directly involved, I would throw in the towel very, very soon into the novel.

But interesting enough, despite the near ecological disaster on one side and the difficulties a family that had fallen on hard times experiences in a cruel world on the other, and the author manages to convey a glimmer of hope. You see, the depressing The sea and summer is a novel done by a scholar who lives in the distant future - one of the Autumn people. They are living in Earth's autumn, anticipating the new ice age, but - they are still there. They are still living and trying to make sense of the Greenhouse culture, and I suppose, living much more thrifty and economical lives. One can only hope the same for humanity.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Technically a science fiction title, it is more just near futuristic – and hauntingly plausible. In the coming decades, class stratification leads to sharp division between Sweet (those with jobs and a tenuous grasp at some sense of instable stability, roughly analogous to our present-day middle class) and Swill, the despised underclass forced to contend with sea levels rising around their high-rise towers, massive unemployment and no sense of hope. Billy Kovacs, a tower boss, keeps his world afloat through bribery, conniving, and finally, through an act of brutality and calculation that I’ve only seen equaled in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Fabulous.

[Sjancourtz · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the all-time best science fiction books ever! Takes place in Australia, in a world where global warming and rising sea levels and a collapsed economy divide people into two groups: the "sweet"--those who have jobs--and the "swill"--those who live on a meager public assistance program in decrepit public housing, scrabbling to survive. This is your future, America. Wake up and do something before it's too late.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a couple of non-fiction books that I haven't yet brought myself to read, Losing Earth: A Recent History and The Discovery of Global Warming, because I know they will make me so angry that I won't be able to function. The Sea and Summer is a reminder of why: by the time I was born in the 1980s, the science of global warming was clear and the need to stop burning fossil fuels was evident. Yet petrochemical companies suppressed evidence and governments were lobbied into doing virtually nothing, so forty years later greenhouse gas emissions have risen inexorably and the climate is changing disastrously. It isn't too late to prevent worse catastrophes, but we could have prevented some of the warming and extreme weather that has already occurred. The Sea and Summer was published in 1987 and depicts a grim future of rising seas and temperatures. Although the novel is highly involving, it is harsh to read from the start. The framing mechanism for the main narrative set in the 2040s is research into 'Greenhouse Culture' a thousand years later. This is hopeful in the sense that human civilisation survives to look back on the past with scorn:

"As I understand it, if I've followed the historical line correctly, they knew what was coming to them just as we know what is ahead of us. Yet they did nothing about it."
"They fell into destruction because they could do nothing about it; they had started a sequence which had to run its course in unbalancing the climate. Also, they were bound into a web of interlocking systems - finance, democratic government, what they called high-tech, defensive strategies, political bared teeth and maintenance of razor-edged status quo - which plunged them from crisis to crisis as each solved problem spawned a nest of new ones. There was the tale of a boy who jammed his finger in the leak in the dyke - I think it's still in the kindergarten primers. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries the entire planet stood with its fingers plugging dykes of its own creation until the sea washed over their muddled status quo. Literally." She gestured. "It's all there for you to read."

That paragraph is curiously similar to one that particularly struck me in War with the Newts. Both emphasise the terrible power of path dependence in global systems and how impossible it seems to turn them from a path of destruction. Turner examines environmental, economic, and social breakdown in the 2040s via an Australian family. As the story begins, they descend from the employed middle class ('Sweet') to unemployed underclass ('Swill') when the father's job is automated. Turner's examination of class is very acute:

I could not then articulate what I was beginning to perceive, that when the gap between the rich and the poor is vast and the middle ground the haunt of an endangered species, snobbery was a defence against terror. The Sweet had to believe in their superiority or admit that they tore their possessions from the fingers of the Swill.
And so we did.

His analysis of globalised capitalism has also aged depressingly well:

The Third World (a concept whose meaning has been lost) had, before I was born, renounced indebtedness to the West (another dubious term) and driven money into a no-win situation wherein the Third World had to be shored up financially by the West because it was the West's profitable junk market. The idea of selling to people who bought with money lent by the seller lest the system collapse was more than idiotic; it was the final self-criticism of a system that could exist only by expansion and when expansion ceased for lack of markets must eat its own body.

This was only a part of what was happening to the world but was the most visibly urgent part. Wealth was in the hands of a few and governments were hunting down the sequestrators of wealth before they could hunt down the governments. The only strategy of power was to place the entire planetary population in the position of poor relations, fed on what could be salvaged from the necessities of armament equality and the maintenance of a crumbling technology in which research and development shrank as they became too costly. Once there had been a 'space program'!

Over this desperation presided a monstrous joke, the ravenous armament factories belching out weapons, which became obsolete on the very design screens and must be replaced in the moment of production... for a war nobody dared start for fear of nukes and an industry nobody dared stop.

That final paragraph is very much anchored in the Cold War, yet still has relevance in the era of the War on Terror and militarisation of borders and civilian police forces.

The use of multiple narrative points of view is very effective throughout. It isn't such a mosaic as the work of John Brunner, but there are more than six voices telling the story. This only becomes slightly confusing when a single chapter is split between two, otherwise it's an excellent means of digging into the complex socio-economic dynamics of this future world. Turner has evidently devoted significant thought and research to world-building, although the plot and characterisation are also strong.

To my mind, the main weakness of The Sea and Summer is its perspective on fertility and overpopulation. This is by no means unique to it, but stands out all the more given how well the rest of the world-building has aged. I'm starting to notice a pattern in late-twentieth century sci-fi about overpopulation written by men, e.g Stand on Zanzibar, Make Room! Make Room!, and The Futurological Congress. While these novels examine population growth in interesting and original ways, they all centre upon male perspectives. Each predicts extraordinary rises in population that have not actually happened, because when women are given control over their own fertility most do not want to have masses of children. Indeed, some do not want to have any children at all. This is not something that any of these excellent novels acknowledge or consider the consequences of. I don't think I've ever read a sci-fi novel by a woman treating overpopulation as an inevitable global threat - I'd be interested to know if any such exist.

Chapter 2 of The Sea and Summer begins, 'In 2041 the population of the planet passed the 10 billion mark.' I looked up how plausible this is and found myself fascinated by the UN World Population Prospects 2022 [pdf]. (The key points on page 12 about COVID-19's demographic impact are eye-opening!) From this report I learned that the world population is expected to reach 8 billion in November 2022, 8.5 billion in 2030, and to peak around 10.4 billion in the 2080s. In 2020, the population growth rate fell below 1% per year for the first time since 1950 and in 2021 average fertility stood at 2.3 births per woman over a lifetime, having fallen from about 5 births per woman in 1950. This is projected to decline to 2.1 births per woman by 2050. Certainly the global population continues to grow, but not to the extent predicted in the twentieth century, not at all evenly across the world, and at a declining rate.

In light of this, I found the perspective on reproduction in The Sea and Summer rather unsettling. After a dismissal of voluntary family planning and restrictions on child-bearing as totally ineffective ('contraception was, after all, freely available'), there is this statement: 'Take away the core of sexual existence, procreation, and emotional energy seeks an outlet. The alternative to creation is destruction. People want children.' While there's a lot to unpack there, I think the assumption that people must want more than two children underpins this overpopulation panic. Historical fertility levels are treated as immutable, rather than as shaped by medical technology, availability of contraception, social expectations, religion, gender inequality, etc. To its credit, twenty-first century climate change fiction is a great deal better at recognising this and focusing on important environmental issues around population: that hundreds of millions will be displaced by climate change and that a tiny minority of the wealthiest consume a disproportionate share of resources.

Notwithstanding this critique, I undoubtedly found it thought-provoking that The Sea and Summer's angle on population hasn't aged too well. Along with the quotes above, the male characters' abject horror at the possibility of sterilisation seemed a bit strong. The plot twist that a sterilisation virus was being trialled on the Swill was very interesting. Sci-fi fascinates me for what it tells you about when it was written, as well as how it reflects upon when it is read. In 2022 The Sea and Summer still has remarkable relevance and insight, conveyed via a compelling plot and range of narrative voices.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

1987 Australian SF novel about a world-wide dystopia caused by global warming, overpopulation and the automation of most jobs. Good, but it could've been better without the story-within-a-story framework.

[Matīss Mintāls · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ļoti laba ekoapokaliptiska distopija.
Siltumnīcas efekts ir savu paveicis un 99,9% cilvēces dzīvo nožēlojamu dzīvi uz pabalstiem milzu debesskrāpjos planētas augstākajās vietās, kamēr atlikušais 0,1% strādā, uztur sistēmu/valsti un bauda daudzmaz normālu dzīvi. Divi spoiled brats nonāk tajā lielākajā cilvēces daļā un katrs iet savu ceļu, katram ir savas ilūzijas, kādai jābūt viņuprāt labai dzīvei, un atbilstoši tām arī viņi uzvedas. Beigas gan varēja nebūt tik optimistiskas, tad šķistu ticamāk, bet kopumā man ļoti patika, tāpēc labs piecinieks.

[Tripp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me oh my oh, the Australians know how to show the slow slide into apocalypse. Mad Max shows a world not too different from our own, but terrible in its changes. In that movie, the changes are never really discussed, but they are the subtext of the film. Australian author George Turner's Arthur C Clarke Award winning Drowning Towers (known as the Sea and Summer in the UK) tells a similarly bleak tale of life after the decline of civilization.

The book is framed by a story of the Autumn people (so called because they await the coming of the new Ice Age or Long Winter) who live some centuries from now in Australia. Much of the coastal cities are now submerged under the risen seas. The Autumn people are disdainful of the Greenhouse people who failed to stop the sea from rising. An artist among them using diaries to try to reconstruct how the Greenhouse people live.

The Greenhouse people story centers on a "Sweet" family that has fallen among the "Swill." The Sweet are the tiny upper-class, generally state workers, who have health care, jobs and live cleanly. The Swill are the underclass who live in squalor in towers that are routinely flooded by the seas. Much of the story is a political drama involving this family.

The political story drags a bit, but Turner's point is that people focus on these short term, often political, issues while ignoring the larger problems around them. The State is entirely focused on dealing with economic issues when the environment is about to make all of them irrelevant.

The slow Armageddon of the book (written in 1987) will disturb modern readers. The global capitalist economy falls to pieces (thanks to failures of the emerging economies) and the rising sea slowly eats the world.

[Xabi1990 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Distopia en un futuro cercano en Sidney, con desastre ecológico, económico, social, con efecto invernadero y todo eso. El mar va subiendo de nivel. La gente vive del estado, por caridad, prácticamente en guetos y con paro casi generalizado.

Y toda la novela son críticas más o menos evidentes a la corrupción, al capitalismo y a todo lo que se le ocurre al autor. Alegría en estado puro, vamos, la alegría de la huerta es esta novela.

Los personajes no hay Dios que los aguante. Las tres estrellas son generosas.

Y no la leáis si andáis un poco depres, no os vayáis a cortar las venas.

[Francisco M. Juárez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una espectacular construcción de mundo que parece escrita ayer.

Las consecuencias del cambio climático se exploran de manera precisa y realista, mostrando un futuro más que probable, oscuro y asfixiante, sucio y peligroso.

Me recordó en varios sentidos, como la estupenda creación de personajes, a La chica mecánica de Paolo Bacigalupi, escrita más de 20 años después.

Una distopía climática de cruda actualidad que recomiendo encarecidamente.

[Andrés Conca · Rating 4 out of 5]

(english below)
Leí este libro hace unos años, justo cuando la gran recesión que empezó en 2008 llegaba a su punto álgido. No pude dejar de notar las similitudes entre la crisis real y la que se presentaba Turner como desencadenante del mundo futuro descrito en las novela. Se trata de una sociedad amenazada (más bien ya casi destruida) por la crisis económica y por el cambio climático y el creciente nivel de los mares. Sólo algunos (los supra) consiguen conservar sus empleos y pertenecer a la clase acomodada. La mayoría (los infra) vive de los subsidios estatales y no tienen acceso a prácticamente ninguno de los servicios estatales, ni sanidad ni educación reglada. Se narra la historia del descenso al infierno infra de una antigua família supra tras perder el padre el empleo. Intentan acomodarse a su nueva realidad mientras, al principio, no pierden la esperanza de volver a ascenser al nivel supra, aunque pronto se verá imposible. Mientras tanto, a su alrededor la sociedad inicia su descomposición final. Un libro muy recomendable, ya veremos si se torna profético.

ENGLISH:
I read this book a few years ago, just as the great recession that began in 2008 was reaching its peak. I couldn't help noticing the similarities between the real crisis and the one Turner presented as the trigger for the future world described in the novels. It is a society threatened (almost destroyed) by the economic crisis and by climate change and rising sea levels. Only a few (the sweet) manage to keep their jobs and belong to the wealthy class. The majority (the swill) live on state subsidies and have access to practically none of the state services, neither healthcare nor formal education. The story is told of the descent of an old sweet-family into swill hell after the father lost his job. They try to adjust to their new reality while, at first, they do not lose hope of going back up to the sweet level, although it will soon prove impossible. Meanwhile, around them society begins its final decomposition. A highly recommendable book, we will see if it becomes prophetic.

[Estibaliz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una vez más, he tenido ciertas dudas a la hora de valorar esta novela. Sé con certeza que se encuentra en el 3.5, y aunque tal vez pueda superarlo un poco, me ha parecido que las cuatro estrellas serían excesivas.

Como novela distópica o postapocalíptica, resulta interesante sobre todo en su construcción de la sociedad en un mundo que se derrumba, y en la aproximación realista a las causas de tal derrumbe, en el que todavía se encuentran los personajes inmersos en la novela dentro de la novela.

El arranque es potente y la introducción de los personajes atrapa el interés del lector con efectividad; sin embargo, para mí la cosa ha perdido un poco de fuerza una vez que se empieza a dar vueltas a la trama en sí de la novela, más allá de constructos de decadencia. A tal punto que algunos personajes me han empezado a parecer menos coherentes o atractivos. Reconozco que el problema pude ser mío (de concentración), pero lo dicho: me esperaba más después de una parte inicial tan potente.

En definitiva, lectura interesante y amena, que recuerda un tanto a la serie "Silo" de Hugh Howie siendo fácil establecer un paralelismo silo-torre... aunque esta claro que donde "Las Torres del Olvido" gana en originalidad por antigüedad, la trilogía de Howie vence en personajes y trama que atrapa.

[Catherine Siemann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me when I was looking for a novel about ecocastrophe to teach; it's very much a pity that it is out of print. It was published in 1987 and the concerns it reflects are still very much in the forefront, particularly economic collapse and ecological catastrophe.

In mid-21st century Australia, there is 90% unemployment, the small and tenuous middle class (the Sweet) are in constant fear of losing their jobs, but buck themselves up with their scorn of the Swill, who live in tower blocks and barely eke out an existence on government subsidies. When a father's job loss and suicide lead a mother and her two sons from a comfortable Sweet life to the Fringe of respectability, they meet an extraordinary man. But, unlike the movie-trailer phrasing I've just used, things are complicated by class prejudice and the continually deteriorating landscape. I would have preferred there be some more emphasis on the environmental issues as well, but the explorations of how human society might react to the crisis it finds itself in are worthwhile and frightening in the face of . . . oh, the current economic downturn and the likelihood of our not changing our behaviors enough to deflect the severity of the global warming trend.

[Landon Shimpa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. This book had strong "Enders Game" vibes for me, though I didn't think it's story wrapped in a way that was quite as compelling. George Turner excels, however, at building a horrific future that I can see our current times heading right for. Using climate change as a catalyst for the new world order was fascinating, and I believe quite successful. Would recommend pretty heavily for most lovers of science fiction.

[Alistair · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredibly prescient novel (published in 1987) set in a 21st century Melbourne that is drowning, literally, as the Greenhouse Effect has made chaos of the weather and food production. Only the tallest towers and the Dandenongs remain above water as the haves and the have-nots battle for survival.

[Steen Ledet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, thought provoking science fiction from an author I've never heard of. A multi-pov novel that uses two separate futures to comment on the inability of representing the whole throug the part, but also the inability of doing anything else. The calm, measured unfolding of almost inevitable events builds into a terrifying intensity at the end of the novel.

[Arturo Sierra · Rating 5 out of 5]

2024 re-read. Bloody masterwork. I want to curl up in the fetal position and cry myself to sleep, but that's besides the point. Impecable on every front: infinitely complex characters, superb worldbuilding, precise prose, potent thought. Masterwork.

..................................................

Obra maestra total, una de las mejores distopías jamás escritas, junto con Oryx y Crake.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant -- a lengthy novel but never once dull, with prose far above simply competent, and the characterization of a master. Prophetic, relevant even now, etc., etc. I believe it was released (possibly cut?) in the United States as "Drowning Towers."

[MaguiWorld]

Para este libro no tengo mas que palabras de amor ya que fue un libro que comencé sin saber exactamente de que iba a tratar y me enamoré completamente.
"Las torres del olvido" se sitúa la mayor parte del en el año 2044 en adelante donde el planeta Tierra esta en su total estado de destrucción, con grandes inundaciones, clases sociales muy marcadas entre ellos los marginales "infra" y los de clase alta. Ser un "supra" alta significa ser una persona con un trabajo, acceso a comida y fuera del peligro del agua que acecha a todo momento.
La historia comienza cuando un actor se contacta con una historiadora para poder llevar adelante una obra de teatro sobre la era pasada. Y aquí conocemos la historia del personaje principal a través del cual gira la historia: Billy Kovaks.
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La historia es contada desde la perspectiva de todos los que forman parte de la historia menos, irónicamente, de la persona a la que el actor se encontraba interesado en representar, Billy. Esto es magnifico, leer como cada uno de ellos vive esa realidad y lo magnífico es que realmente uno puede entender porqué la viven así y comprende como piensan.
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La lectura es muy fluida, el libro tiene mas de 587 páginas pero se me pasaron realmente rápido. Podría haber leído 1000 paginas mas sin ningún problema. Mi intensión era leer 50 paginas por día pero terminaba leyendo casi 100, eso ya les dice algo.

El mundo que vemos en el transcurso de "Las Torres del Olvido" es uno muy complejo desde mi punto de vista, y George lo mostró, explicó y acercó de una manera realmente increíble.
Los infra, supra y todo lo que los rodea es, a mi parecer, algo complicado de pasar a palabras ya que es nuestro planeta dentro de unos veinte años... Y si uno se pone a pensar detenidamente, no me extrañaría que algún día ocurriera algo así.
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Una de las frases que me vino a la cabeza apenas lo termine de leer fue: "¡que libro magnifico!"
Y es que realmente lo es. Si tienen la oportunidad, definitivamente tienen que leerlo.

[Nestor · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.9/5. Excelente. El libro brilla no solo por la historia que nos narra, si no que también manda varios mensajes en pro del cuidado y la preservación de la vida en la Tierra. Quizás el único "pero" que se les puede poner a la obra es que se trata de una novela dentro de otra novela, por lo que al avanzar en la historia y cambiar de una a otra se siente ese bajón de tensión, aunque sucede muy pocas veces; fuera de eso solo hay pequeños detalles que no afectan demasiado. Por lo demás se trata de una historia interesante, una narrativa bastante fluida, personajes memorables, una edición que cumple, aunque la portada podría ser más llamativa, pero por su precio somos nosotros los que salimos ganando. Lectura más que recomendada.

[Andreu Escrivà · Rating 4 out of 5]

L'edició de Navona és fenomenal. El llibre és premonitori. Ben filat.

[Rojo Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sci-fi (speculative) must. Very enjoyable, well written and absolutely premonitory. Fantastic world building. Climate change? Yup.

[Liz Barr · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’ve never been an advocate of the idea that you must be familiar with certain writers and works in order to call yourself a science fiction fan, but sometimes I find a gap in my reading that’s frankly embarrassing.

So it was with George Turner, the Australian, Melburnian author of acclaimed SF and literary novels. Until The Sea and Summer was quoted in Sophie Cunningham’s Melbourne, I had never heard of him.

Born in 1916, he was already an accomplished critic and novelist (winner of the Miles Franklin Award in 1962) before he started writing SF in the late ’70s. Wikipedia describes his science fiction writing as being remarkable for “detailed extrapolation and … invariably earnest approach to moral and social issues”. Joe Haldeman called The Sea and Summer “didactic”, and apparently meant it as a compliment.

My curiosity was piqued, and The Sea and Summer — published in America as The Drowned Cities — has recently come back into print. I bought the ebook and settled in.

Francis Conway is Swill – one of the millions in the year 2041 who must subsist on the inadequate charities of the state. Life, already difficult, is rapidly becoming impossible for Francis and others like him, as government corruption, official blindness and nature have conspired to turn Swill homes into watery tombs. And now the young boy must find a way to escape the approaching tide of disaster.

What the publisher’s blurb doesn’t tell you is that this is a novel about two brothers, Teddy and Francis. As the novel opens, they’re “little Sweet” — in a society with 90% unemployment, their father has a job, which means they’re lower middle class. Then their father is laid off and cuts his own throat, and so the Conway family becomes rapidly downwardly mobile. They are not actually Swill, but fringe-dwellers, living just a few blocks from the vast skyscrapers that hold the Swill population.

Teddy is “gifted”, so he’s swiftly spirited away by the State, to train in police intelligence. Francis, left behind, is a skilled mathematician in an age where mental arithmetic has been forgotten, and so he becomes involved with a white collar criminal who needs to hide her records from the government.

As a kid in the ’80s and ’90s, I read a lot of didactic science fiction about climate change. I didn’t really enjoy these books (for one thing, my parents were/are climate change skeptics, and regarded environmentalism as a left-wing plot, and as a wee child I absorbed these ideas), but in those heady, pre-internet days, reading SF filled the gap between episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

(The best of those earnest middle grade novels was The Lake at the End of the World by Caroline MacDonald, which surely deserves an entry here if I ever find my copy.)

The Sea and Summer reminded me very strongly of those books. It’s grim, largely humourless, and contains long passages of conversation explaining human nature. I had hoped that Turner’s literary background would be reflected in the quality of his writing, and it was, but it was an assemblage of the traits that put me off “literary fiction” as a genre: a narrative that speaks for the characters instead of letting them demonstrate their qualities through dialogue, and, when they do speak, they all sound basically the same.

Part of this might be down to the framing device: The Sea and Summer is a novel written in the very far future, after humanity has survived the Greenhouse Years and is preparing to face another Ice Age. I wondered if we’re meant to think the author of the novel-within-the-novel is just not very good, but all the far-future characters are written in the same way.

(The far-future setting has no narrative of its own, save for one character — an Indigenous Australian actor who plays caucasians in whiteface — who is seeking to write a play featuring the novel’s characters. There are lots of earnest discussions about human nature, many featuring a Christian character who, as the stereytype goes, cannot speak without moralising. He’s thoroughly judgmental and unpleasant, but apparently we’re meant to find it appalling that he’s studying church history, because what a waste of intellect?)

It’s always hard to judge near-future science fiction without sniggering at the things it gets wrong. (Remember the Eugenics Wars of the late 1990s? Well, who doesn’t?) But I tried very hard, as I was reading, to separate any feelings of superiority I might have at spotting the “wrong” history from my response to the story itself.

This was difficult, though, because the novel deals with issues that are happening right now — financial collapse, harsh austerity measures, chaotic weather — and the responses of the characters, and society in general, bear no relationship to reality. If millions of people are crammed into 70-story buildings and all but left to rot, is it really going to take decades for social unrest to develop? Is it going to be years before people start thinking of re-learning the homesteading arts and becoming self-sufficient?

(As I write, within 24 hours of the government announcing its inhumane policy of sending asylum seekers to Papua New Guinea, protests were being organised by the inner-urban left wing. The Swill v Sweet policies affect the urban poor of the western suburbs — if we tried treating that demographic the way we treat refugees, there would be riots.)

The novel discusses — at great length — the extent to which this status quo is deliberately maintained by the government, but again, it’s not convincing. Coupled with the explanation that the lower classes need to be coaxed into revolution by intellectuals, and the portrayal of the Swill as anarchic and dangerous, I was increasingly uncomfortable with the subtext. There are lots of scenes where characters realise to their amazement that Swill are, in fact, people, but there is such emphasis on the special qualities of Billy Kovacs, the Tower Boss who is an object of fascination throughout the book, that it starts to feel tokenistic. Our best look at an “average” Swill is a scene with a 14 year old prostitute, who is animalistic, violent and frankly a bit stupid.

The novel’s treatment of race, such as it is, is similarly troubling. We have the intellectual, elite Aboriginal in the framing scenes, which is a nice change from the usual absence of Indigenous Australians from any future setting. (I’m troubled by the whiteface aspect, but I can’t quite articulate how. And it’s just a one-off line that I may be blowing out of proportion.) On the other hand, in the novel-within-a-novel, we also have a reference to Asians — okay, a series of racist slurs — moving into central Australia and promptly destroying the environment with artificial weather programs.

Later, Teddy recoils from the realisation that his future mentor is ethnic. I mean, he’s Greek. Now, racist bigotry against Mediterranean immigrants was big in the ’50s and ’60s, but it was dying out in the ’80s — save for a few last gasps in the form of bad comedy — and is pretty much laughable now. Nick is a great character, by far the most likeable in the novel, but I’m still confused by the attitude towards his Greekness.

I don’t mean to be ticking off social justice talking points, but I really can’t not discuss the women of The Sea and Summer. It won’t take long, because there aren’t many. There’s the scholar in the framing device; Alison Conway, mother of the heroes and lover of Billy Kovacs; Nola Parkes, a public servant or businesswoman; and Vi, Billy’s wife, who is immensely fat (“gross” is one word that’s used) but also his political confidant. Oh, and there’s Carol, the love interest for one of the Conway brothers — but don’t worry, she has a couple of scenes, then vanishes from the stage as soon as they become a couple.

Suffice to say, the narrative doesn't really serve women. Although I can't say it does a great job with the men, either. Much is made of Francis being unlikeable and generally unpleasant, but until the very end, and an incident that frankly didn’t match up with his earlier behaviour, he didn’t seem like an especially weak or nasty person. Desperate, yes, and somewhat conniving, but his behaviour made sense in the context of his life, and seemed quite understandable coming from a young boy and teenager. Until the very last moment, his punishment doesn’t seem to fit his crime.

I think perhaps the age of the protagonists misled me into approaching this as a young adult novel, ie, it wouldn’t take it for granted that its audience hated and feared teenagers. The lack of sympathy for Francis — and apparent support of Teddy, who is essentially a member of a secret police force — was confusing.

With all these complaints, why did I keep reading?

Well, stubborness, and a strong sense that I wanted to talk about this book.

And it’s an Australian novel that’s set in Melbourne, my adopted city. I really loved the glimpses of the future city (even as I wonder, if rising oceans necessitate the building of sea walls, is the central business district really going to be that dry and well-maintained?), the vast towers dominating Newport and Richmond.

There’s also a glimpse of the past city, as Teddy walks through the long-abandoned Jolimont Railyard, a landmark that no longer exists in 2013 — wiped out by urban renewal, not decay.

The Sea and Summer was described as a novel of Melbourne that advanced its science fiction presence beyond Neville Shute’s On the Shore, updating the apocalyptic city for a new threat. I wonder if perhaps Melbourne is due to be destroyed again, fictionally speaking, and what the 21st century approach will look like.

(This review was first posted no no-award.net)

[Ricardo García Sánchez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mi nota es 4/10.
Tenía grandes expectativas cuando comencé a leer Las torres del olvido, en parte porque había oído hablar muy bien de la novela como una obra importante de la ciencia ficción postapocalíptica. Sin embargo, debo admitir que me ha decepcionado enormemente. Desde el principio, me costó mucho engancharme, y a medida que avanzaba, sentía que la historia simplemente no me atrapaba.

La premisa es interesante: una visión de un futuro cercano donde el cambio climático y el colapso social han dejado al mundo en un estado terminal. Sin embargo, la ejecución me resultó demasiado lenta y pesada. A pesar de que los temas que toca George Turner —como la degradación ambiental y el colapso social— son relevantes, la forma en que se presenta la trama me pareció excesivamente densa, con largos pasajes descriptivos que ralentizan el ritmo.

Uno de los mayores problemas que tuve con el libro fue la falta de conexión con los personajes. Aunque George Turner trata de profundizar en sus pensamientos y emociones, nunca logré sentirme realmente interesado por sus historias o su destino. Me costó mucho empatizar con ellos, lo que hizo que la lectura fuera un verdadero desafío en varios momentos.

También esperaba más en términos de acción o algún tipo de desarrollo más dinámico en la trama. A menudo parecía que la narrativa daba vueltas sobre sí misma, sin que las cosas avanzaran de manera significativa. El tono sombrío y desolador, aunque apropiado para el tipo de historia, a veces se sentía demasiado monótono, lo que no ayudaba a mantener el interés.

En resumen, Las torres del olvido no fue lo que esperaba. A pesar de que tiene un mensaje importante y una visión inquietante del futuro, la falta de ritmo y personajes que me engancharan hizo que me resultara difícil de terminar. Quizás otros lectores puedan apreciarlo más, pero personalmente no lo recomendaría si buscas una novela que te mantenga enganchado de principio a fin.

[Juan Pablo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lean esta joya. Mi humilde opinión les dice que les va a encantar.

[Chris Rossell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very enjoyable book with interesting characters and a thought provoking future world.