Ballard's classic climate disaster sci fi has never been more relevant. Dr Charles Ransom lives on a houseboat on a lake by a river, a hundred or so miles from the sea. But it hasn't rained for years, the river is drying up, fresh water is at a premium and society is starting to break down. Ransom is one of the last to leave for the coast, taking with him a few fellow strays. He has left it almost too late. The beaches are now a militarized zone, cut off by chainlink fences to protect the desalination plants. But the people are restive. Every day there is an incursion...
Years pass - this is Ballard's clever move - and the populace by the coast is fragmented. Some live miserable lives, working together to collect seawater on desalination beds. Others, like Ransom and his ex-wife, fend for themselves on the periphery. Ransom develops the belief that there is a secret supply of water inland. The best way to find it is to follow the dry river bed back the way he came. He collects another rag-tag band and sets off.
He returns to Mount Royal and Hamilton, to the very street he lives on back in normal times. The water supply is virtually next door, at the Lomax estate. Richard and Miranda Lomax were always eccentric. Now they are stark mad, eating stray people and breeding mystical halfwits with the demented shaman Quilter. Ballard makes his final section a dark, twisted take on The Tempest, which is pretty dark anyway when you think about it.
It's a magnificent book, the best of Ballard's sci fi that I have read thus far. With a great last line.
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