According to your research, how far into the future is the Kent coast predicted to be flooded to the extent depicted in Dreamland ? Brutal, hopeful, too current, so human, full of soul — a very difficult mix to pull off, let alone in a near-future dystopian. I genuinely must say that large chunks of this brilliant book are five star but I struggled with other elements a lot! This book is stunning. There is so much ugliness within the story, but it is told with such realism and such beauty it has touched me and I don't think I will ever forget it. It is the repository of untold secrets and last seen on Taryn’s grandfather’s bookshelves – so the searchers are convinced Taryn knows its whereabouts.

The Best Near-Future Dystopias | Five Books Expert

My girlfriend’s the one to speak to about that. She’s a diplomatic advisor to the Marshall Islands, low-lying islands in the Pacific which are an average of 6ft above current sea levels. She says, and for what it’s worth, I entirely agree with her: “We have to stay optimistic. Failure is not an option, because mass devastation is the alternative. Those on the frontlines of climate crisis fight in every forum for this. Ultimately we can’t let interests of a few cause destruction for so many.” You have to hope, and you have to fight.I looked out of the window and along the coast. There was this spreading out of light, all of it like fern unfolding in a nature documentary.” A beautiful book: thought-provoking, eerily prescient and very witty” Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half I can’t decided if I love or hate the vague information about the services offered in this dystopian (but very real future) Rosa 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. Set on the Kent coast, her dystopian novel imagines a terrifying future, disturbingly close to home. Many of the issues she explores are based in fact. Deep-rooted inequality, extreme weather conditions and the implementation of harsh policies against the vulnerable are all recognisably part of the world we live in today. Rankin-Gee underlines this reality by including relevant sources at the end of her novel. Dreamland suggests one possible ending to the bleak trajectory we are on.

Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee review – seat-edge tension in Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee review – seat-edge tension in

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. Yes, you’ll be interrupting each other, responding to previous points, or firing off messages part-written, in chunks, to avoid long gaps of ‘silence’. The region has been frequently ill-served by its politicians too. In the early 1980s a Tory councillor got six years for fraud and forgery. Jonathan Aitken was the MP for South Thanet when he was convicted and imprisoned for perjury. A decade ago a former Conservative leader of the council went to prison for property-related misdemeanours carried out during his time in office. For all its constantly overlapping transformations Margate endures, bathed in the richness of its light, home to the washed-up, the hopeful, the displaced, the aspirational, the vulnerable, people carried by different tides to this curious corner on the coast. What comes next for Thanet is, as ever, impossible to predict. In her new novel, however, Ramsgate-based author Rosa Rankin-Gee posits a horrifyingly plausible near-future dystopia for Margate, the island, Britain and the world beyond.

courtesy Penguin Random House) If really good sci-fi is all about to taking a great big, long, hard look at the dark soul of humanity, and the best of it is, then Voyaging Vol. 1 – The Plague Star by George R R Martin with art and adaptation by Raya Continue Reading Even so, for all this bleakness, and the ominous presence of Chance’s mother’s abusive younger boyfriend Kole, Chance somehow keeps keeping on, driven largely by a need to love and protect Blue, but also by some innate sense that life, damaged and broken as it is, is worth fighting for. He got away with everything,” says Caleb, probably the closest Chance will have to a father figure. “All this call-me-by-my-first-name, I’ll-drink-a-pint-with-you bulls**t.”

Rosa Rankin-Gee

There were so many edges, edges everywhere. It’s just you never know where exactly the edge is until you tip over it.” (P. 46) To go off on a slight tangent, the ending reminded me of a question I've been turning over since attending this excellent book festival event: how do you end a climate novel? The majority of novels about climate change I've read have not been Kim Stanley Robinson-style attempts to write a way out of the climate crisis; they have explored its specific emotional and/or social impacts either now or in the near future. Examples I've read recently include The Last Migration, The Sunlight Pilgrims, The Inland Sea, Weather, The Ice, Stillicide, Always North, and Gun Island. A novelist writing such a book is left with the difficult dilemma of how hopeful to make their ending, on both a character and setting level. In the examples listed, the ending is generally open and ambiguous on either or both levels, as indeed it is in 'Dreamland'. I think climate change poses a particular narrative problem, as it prevents life from just going on. If the characters survive until the end of the book, the reader cannot assume that they would continue to do so in a destablised world. 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 next near-future dystopia that you want to recommend is Oana Aristides’ book Under the Blue. Would you give us an overview?

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