The band’s compelling story is told by a multitude of voices interviewed by journalist S Sunny Shelton. Her father Jimmy was a drummer for the band and murdered at the showcase – and she is determined to find out exactly happened. Set in 1971, this story of self-discovery, friendship and family is a life-affirming and upbeat read, with Emma Kennedy’s trademark warmth and humour shining through every chapter. Dreamland is a harrowing look into what happens when your country gives up on you and removes its responsibility for citizens as a whole. London is aptly described as a "fourth world country" by the protagonist. The story begins when Chance and her family receive a monetary incentive to move out of London to the deprived seaside town of Margate. New laws slowly come into place including Localisation, which is the total divestment of control to local councils. The result - abject poverty. I’m not an AI scientist, but it feels very convincing to me. The discussion takes the form of instant messaging, kind of like a Gchat transcript, between these two researchers. And it feels very human, very sure-footed the whole way through.

Rosa Rankin-Gee: Planet Thanet - Bookanista Rosa Rankin-Gee: Planet Thanet - Bookanista

It took Rosa 7 years to write this novel. I’m guessing a lot of the time was spent polishing the similes, which are laid out aplenty and are very good. It’s the first novel I read where COVID-19 is mentioned – it must have been worked into the plot towards the end, just before the final proofs were signed off. Here are some of the similes I really liked: Dreamland is set in a near-future Margate, an turbulent seaside town on the south-east coast of England. The main character Chance is born in the year the novel was published—so, 2021. We leapfrog to her being seven, then again to where she is 16. It’s a portrait of the nation through a very personal lens: Chance’s family are given a grant to leave London and move to the coast, just as sea levels are rising, and more extreme political ideas are taking centre-stage. And through it all, it’s a love story. The narration is extraordinarily well done. Many post-apocalyptic books have a spareness and sparseness that can sometimes feel affected. This feels incredibly naturalistic, and yet manages to be very lyrical. One review I read talked about it having a haiku-like quality. It has these clipped sentences, in a way that feels hyper-realistic to how minds think. It’s effortlessly beautiful while being violent and harrowing. If you're coming to Coles by car, why not take advantage of the 2 hours free parking at Sainsbury's Pioneer Square - just follow the signs for Pioneer Square as you drive into Bicester and park in the multi-storey car park above the supermarket. Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. You don't need to shop in Sainsbury's to get the free parking! Where to Find UsRosa Rankin-Gee’s novel is very much about this – about poor families given “grants” to move out of London in a not-too-distant future where the temperature and sea levels have risen and the rich are moving further inland. One such family happens to be Chance’s, the young queer narrator of this novel, who gets moved around from hostel to hostel with her brother and mother, until finally settling in Margate, a once thriving English seaside town that crumbled when cheap holiday flights became available to Europe. Life is at first OK for Chance, she makes friends in town and learns to scavenge abandoned homes. But as the ocean moves further and further inland, their lives fall apart. Duels to the death, weekly, in the garden. Adjudicated by my father, of course, who we both try to bribe. No – not competitive at all, just interested in similar things, though done differently I think. She’s definitely the OG speculative writer – her exceptional novel The Ice People, set in a close-future Britain where climate change has sparked a new ice age, came out in 1998 – and she moved to Thanet before I did. Come to think of it, I better get my defence lawyers ready.

Dreamland by Rankin Gee Rosa - AbeBooks Dreamland by Rankin Gee Rosa - AbeBooks

For fans of Children of Men, Years and Years & Station Eleven, a postcard from a future Britain that’s closer than we think. It is the twin sustainers of love and hope that help Chance to weather grief, disappointment and what effectively amounts to governmental genocide of its poorer citizens, and which given Dreamland such a rich, living quality, a tangible, palpable reminder that the human spirit can rise to immense challenges if given even half a chance.So Australia finds itself adjacent to the economic powerhouse of the 21st century and keen to play a bigger role on the global stage. The big question is who they will choose to play with. A love story. A tragedy. A warning. The story of one girl and an entire society. At the same time, terrifying and hopeful. Dreamland takes the familiar and twists it a couple of degrees to show a disturbing and disturbingly credible picture of our possible future. What will happen if we keep ignoring climate change, allow inequalities to widen, allow eugenics to creep into the mainstream and build walls? After the actual text (certainly in the ARC), Rankin-Gee has also included a list of resources and information about the very real versions of the events of the books. She highlights several of the existing government programmes designed to regenerate towns and to displace those from the cities. Nothing in Dreamland is as farfetched as we’d like it to be. I have family in Kent and live in Norfolk. I have seen coastal erosion and its effects first-hand, so seeing the potential impact of the climate change for these areas long-term does have a scary edge to it. As Jessie Greengrass said during the book festival event, facing the reality of climate change is a lot like confronting the inevitability of your own death. That's incredibly hard to manage and I don't blame novelists for ending books more gently and ambivalently than with 'They died'. I find it interesting to observe this trend, though. Climate change novels have only become more common in the five or so years - prior to that I looked for and struggled to find them. The recent ones I've read ( Kim Stanley Robinson aside) explore the immediate impacts through personal narratives rather than a polyphonic multiple narrator structure. I wonder if (and would like to think that) this is a first stage in Western fictional processing of the climate crisis and that we'll soon see more sprawling epics and attempts to write ourselves better futures. The ambiguous endings make for a more comfortable reading experience, while also slightly letting the reader off the hook. They leave space for the hope that everything will turn out OK on a personal level without massive socioeconomic change, so readers can assume this if inclined to. Based on the scientific evidence, I don't think that's remotely plausible and we in the rich world need to accept that massive change is happening whether we like it or not.

The Best Near-Future Dystopias | Five Books Expert

Ha, I love that distinction. First up, we have The Dog Stars by Peter Heller. It’s a post-pandemic novel. Could you tell us about why you admire it?The book is an insightful look into the way society views individuals and ranks them based on their financial value over a more humanist approach. The judgement placed on those in need, totally dismissing the impact of access to resources, as well as the ease with which people can turn on others to save themselves.