Stephen Baxter's Flood opens a half-dozen years in the future with the release of four kidnapped hostages in Barcelona. They return to London and learn that the last two or three summers have been unusually wet. Just as they land in the British capital, the perennial rains intensify, overwhelming the Thames Barrier and flooding London. The long, drawn-out drowning of the world has begun.
Flood
Split into five sections, Flood spans more than thirty years; at first the reader witnesses a standard disaster scenario as in the novel's opening year the floodwaters rise, culminating in the swamping of London:
Houses, schools, churches, industrial developments all poked out of the muddy water, isthmuses of brick and concrete and steel and glass. An elevated section of road soared, a bridge going nowhere, cars stranded motionless on its back. The remaining population clung to bits of higher ground...rising out of the water. (p.112)
In the second part the novel becomes less an updated cosy catastrophe than a full scale Hollywood disaster in the vein of The Day After Tomorrow as one by one the European countries and the lower parts of the USA and Russia are overwhelmed. However, the connection to the sub-genre is maintained by the three survivors from Barcelona, Lily, Gary and Piers, who are spared much of the hardship caused by the rising waters through their friendship with Nathan Lammockson, a visionary billionaire determined to ride out the catastrophe.
The Drowned World
Lily and Piers hole up in Nathan's Andean enclave at Cuzco, while Gary joins the nomads of Walker City, criss-crossing the US as they seek to rejoin the relocated US Government in Denver. But a civil war between the US and Mormon secessionists in Salt Lake City disrupts their plans and instead they head south, only to be shut out of Cuzco as the inexorably rising floodwaters eventually drown even the high ground.
With little land left, Nathan launches his Ark Three, and in a distinctly Ballard-ian environment, Lily and the remnants of her family criss-cross the ocean aboard a nuclear powered replica of the Queen Mary, until the ship begins to fall apart, while the waters continue to rise...
Cosy Catastrophe
In Trillion Year Spree, Brian W. Aldiss coined the term 'cosy catastrophe' to describe the novels of the 1950s and 60s in which civilization falls apart in the wake of natural disaster; "the essence...is that the hero should have a pretty good time (a girl, free suites at the Savoy, automobiles for the taking) while everyone else is dying off." (pp.314 -- 7) Certainly the first half of Flood reads like an updated version of such novels as The Day of the Triffids and other such novels, although the psychological damage Lily and the others is never underestimated.
But Baxter is remorseless in his assessment of the effects on civilization, and there is no sign of the second part of such novels -- a return to a(n admittedly re-balanced) status quo.
Stephen Baxter
Stephen Baxter made his debut in 1987, and quickly established himself as a regular contributor to Interzone, and then Asimovs by the mid-1990s. His first novel Raft was published in 1991, and The Time Ships (1995) was a Hugo nominee -- the first of six such nominations.
Colin Harvey - Author six novels, and editor of four anthologies; professional reviewer since 2003, including six years at Strange Horizons. Member of ...
