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Gnaritus: Every Life Matters
Is another world is possible - for the many, not the few?
At the end of the twenty-second century, Earth is slowly recovering from global warming. From England’s Lake District, the World Governing Body rules unchallenged. Due to Earth’s dwindling resources, an official relocation policy transfers many people to the desert planet Gnaritus. In truth, Earth’s elite use Gnaritus as a dumping ground for anyone they deem inconvenient or unwanted.
With cancer rates skyrocketing from the effects of climate change, Earth is desperate for a cure, and respected scientist Dr. Rod Stinguard promises an anti-cancer viral vector treatment to great acclaim. Stinguard’s colleague, Dr. Surina Mathew, discovers the medication causes lethal mutations in half of all people receiving it. However, Stinguard orchestrates Surina’s relocation to Gnaritus before she can warn more than a handful of people.
On Gnaritus, Surina learns answers to many of the dilemmas on Earth, such Who belongs? Who matters? Is another world possible - for the many, not the few? Although the new world intrigues her, she cannot forget the deadly treatment Stinguard is about to unleash on Earth. She hopes to warn Earth about the viral vector’s lethal payload, but with an interplanetary firewall blocking communication, she's not sure she'll get the chance.
At the end of the twenty-second century, Earth is slowly recovering from global warming. From England’s Lake District, the World Governing Body rules unchallenged. Due to Earth’s dwindling resources, an official relocation policy transfers many people to the desert planet Gnaritus. In truth, Earth’s elite use Gnaritus as a dumping ground for anyone they deem inconvenient or unwanted.
With cancer rates skyrocketing from the effects of climate change, Earth is desperate for a cure, and respected scientist Dr. Rod Stinguard promises an anti-cancer viral vector treatment to great acclaim. Stinguard’s colleague, Dr. Surina Mathew, discovers the medication causes lethal mutations in half of all people receiving it. However, Stinguard orchestrates Surina’s relocation to Gnaritus before she can warn more than a handful of people.
On Gnaritus, Surina learns answers to many of the dilemmas on Earth, such Who belongs? Who matters? Is another world possible - for the many, not the few? Although the new world intrigues her, she cannot forget the deadly treatment Stinguard is about to unleash on Earth. She hopes to warn Earth about the viral vector’s lethal payload, but with an interplanetary firewall blocking communication, she's not sure she'll get the chance.
ebook
Published December 12, 2015
4 people want to read
About the author
Nina Wirk
3 books2 followersNina Wirk is an astronomy enthusiast who enjoys all things to do with stars, planets, space travel, science, and the universe. She writes science fiction because it allows a unique opportunity to imagine what is possible.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 16, 2016
Wonderful novel and great read!
A mesmerizing novel by Nina Wirk that tackles issues of social justice and equity in an insightful way. The story is set in the future and takes the reader from Earth into the far reaches of space time. Beautifully written with great sensitivity to all that makes us human, this novel has been an enormously fascinating read!
Mandy
A mesmerizing novel by Nina Wirk that tackles issues of social justice and equity in an insightful way. The story is set in the future and takes the reader from Earth into the far reaches of space time. Beautifully written with great sensitivity to all that makes us human, this novel has been an enormously fascinating read!
Mandy
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January 30, 2019Author Wirk, whose bio says she is a medical oncologist, leans on impressive knowledge of healthcare and science for her debut, a science-fiction novel of fable-like directness and no particular subtlety. One can argue that it draws heavily from a tradition of Utopian narratives popular in the SF genre's naive youth.
The setting is the early 23rd century, after toxic pollution and greenhouse gases created an Earth in which cancer reached pandemic levels, cutting the population down to a billion. For a one-world government, dominated by elites in medicine, business and technology, that's still too much. Claiming to reduce the harmful human footprint, upper classes have established an expat colony on the planet Gnaritus, 10,000 light years away. Everyone deemed non-essential or not well-connected enough is banished there, including the elderly, the ill, the indigent or just troublemakers who question the arrogant bullies in authority.
One outcast, Indian-descended UK medical research-scientist Surina, learns on her 40th birthday she must report to transport to Gnaritus, a place about which almost no useful information leaks out. Surprise! Remote from the influences of rich and powerful, Gnaritus is a comparative paradise, free of the ills (including capitalism) plaguing the homeworld. After a great deal of illustrative exposition about how the exiles on Gnaritus finally Got It Right, the good guys' thoughts turn back Earthwards and how to save the human race from their own perfidy and poor choices.
Wirk uses some wonderful arcane verbiage ("cockalarum" - look it up), including some Lewis Carroll vocabularly, and sidetracks from plot momentum to pontificate upon wonders of astrophysics, a la Carl Sagan (although how the internet can transmit over 10,000 light years is left unspeculated). The last act is practically Victorian Dickensian wish-fulfillment in its abrupt, strictly black-and-white comeuppance for all the snooty top-one-percenters. Like I said, not very subtle, and maybe affected by the Occupy Wall Street fad about getting back at the rich lobbyists and Wall Street fat cats that was still kinda current around its publication.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews