The Gaian Expedient

Erthring Cycle #2

by Wayland Drew, Darrell K. Sweet (Illustrator)

The End Of The End

Time had run out for the twentieth century, and civilization disappeared in radioactivity, heat, and fire. But farsighted men had hidden a colony to help Man recover from the War—and, perhaps, even prevent future ones.

Yet after several hundred years, time was running out for the colony as well—Yggdrasil's supplies were almost gone, the tribes she was to teach refused to learn, and nomads daily raided her borders.

And as shortages became more desperate, radical solutions were proposed by those who had lost sight of Yggdrasil's goals. If something wasn't done soon, Yggdrasil would be reduced to using the same methods that had previously threatened the planet ...

Genres: Science Fiction

259 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 12, 1985

About the author

Wayland Drew (1932-1998) was a writer born in Oshawa, Ontario. He attended Victoria College at the University of Toronto, where he earned a BA in English Language and Literature (1957). Shortly after graduation he married Gwendolyn Parrott and together they raised four children. From 1961-1994 he was a high school teacher in Port Perry, Bracebridge, and Muskoka Lakes. He also worked for the Ontario Ministry of Education.

Drew began to write seriously in high school and published a number of short stories (to magazines such as The Tamarack Review) and non-fiction pieces throughout his career, while also selling radio and film scripts. His first novel (and sometimes stated to be his best) was The Wabeno Feast (1973). While rooted in Northern Ontario, the story indicted modern industrial civilization as an extension of the European colonization of Canada by depicting an entire society's fall into ruin. In her essay on "Canadian Monsters: Some Aspects of the Supernatural in Canadian Fiction ", Margaret Atwood noted that Drew's use of the aboriginal wabeno revealed a concern "with man's relationship to his society and to himself, as opposed to his relationship with the natural environment" and she concluded that Drew's novel combined "both concerns in a rather allegorical and very contemporary fashion".

Many readers, though, surely know him better as the author of an ecological science fiction trilogy, the Erthring Cycle (1984-1986), and of several movie novelizations (Corvette Summer, Dragonslayer, Batteries Not Included, and Willow, the last three of which were translated into French and the second in German). His non-fiction also reflected his concern for the environment and interest for Canadian landscapes, as seen in books such as Superior: The Haunted Shore and A Sea Within: the Gulf of St. Lawrence. His final novel, Halfway Man (1989), echoed themes from his first, The Wabeno Feast.

Reviews

[Steve R]

This 1985 novel, the second in the Erthring Cycle trilogy, tells a highly insightful story involving the fundamental principle that mankind's relationship with his natural environment is as much if not more of a fundamentally moral question as it is a political, economic or technological problem. Set on the new world of Yggdrasil after radioactivity, heat and fires have made Earth largely uninhabitable, the fight for survival of a surviving colony depends on the cultural paradigm of the colonists becoming expansive enough to accept radical solutions on how to live and work with one another within the confines of their exceedingly straitened environment.

An outstanding example of a thinking person's work of science fiction.

[James]

Second book in the Erthring cycle, which also includes "The Memoirs of Alcheringia" (1984) and "The Master of Norriya" (1986). Wayland Drew (1932 - 1998) was a Canadian writer known for his environmental themes; his first novel, "The Wabeno Feast" (1973) is widely praised. Drew also wrote a number of movie novelizations, including "Corvette Summer" and "Dragonslayer."