Splinterlands (Dispatch Books)

Splinterlands is an amazing start to a brilliantly constructed and gorgeously crafted trilogy about an already broken future which can still be fixed.

This short speculative novel by John Feffer presents a chilling view of a global collapse just around the corner. A literal splintering. For those paying attention to the direction globalization is taking us, the narrative is convincing. Not so appealing is the “presentation” of the “content.” Therein lies the problem: the narrator, an academic and acclaimed author Julian West describes his literal displacement by Hurricane (ahem) Donald in 2022 which floods and decimates Washington, D.C., forcing West to his roof. Thank you, global warming.It is not clear at the outset why, but some twenty-five years later, aged and in ill-health, West is bedridden and decides to contact his three estranged children and wife, all scattered across the globe. He does this with a virtual headset and avatar, Virtual tours plus “face to face” meetings in venues as diverse as Brussels, China, and Africa. West’s children have all taken separate paths, adjusting to the collapse in their own ways, but all have misgivings with their father. So we basically have three separate dialectics which doesn’t make for fully fleshed out drama. The splintering of the family is directly analogous to the splintering of the geopolitical landscape. Like the Syfy series, “Incorporated,” there are green and red zones.This is less of a problem in the concluding two chapters where human interaction is more compelling. West contacts his estranged wife of 25 years, Rachel, also once a scholar researcher, who turned her back on academia to join a commune in Vermont, quite successfully as it turns out. West is receiving some experimental treatment for a pandemic staph infection. Rachel is ill, too and Julian wants them to be together to share the treatment. The transmission is cut off before she can answer.In the final chapter we learn why West is receiving the treatment and from whom as well as other ulterior motives for contacting his family. It’s worth a look and makes for a quick read.

Its a well written near future by a careful writer who understands English and the coming climate breakdown and its concomitant collapse of our civil society and its collapse with European and Asian scenarios where the authors kids have chosen to live. It's nice to know I can visit them by hologram from my hospital bed. A different world; different endings and realities just beyond tomorrow. Its worth reading - and thinking about. Definitely a 4.5 rating

Splinterlands is a book predicting how society may collapse, about a man who predicted how society would collapse and was right over and over again.Generally a great book is going to need an engaging plot, characters, setting, and interesting new ideas. Splinterlands has a perfunctory plot and characters who, aside from the protagonist, have no inner life and experience no conflict, growth, or development and in fact have had their lives develop in essentially straight lines with their personalities in life goals as teenagers leading directly and without detour to the people they find themselves to be decades later. The protagonist spends most of the time complementing himself for how presciently he predicted the historical events of the last several decades and arguing with the more pragmatic folks who surround him who have simply accepted the new world for what it is and do their best to survive in it.The settings are dystopian but not in the way you'd expect from the early pages of the book. While the effects of climate change are touched upon early -- the reference to what will have happened when olagalla aquifer ran out even as sea levels rose what drove me to purchase and read the rest of the book -- most of the dystopia has more to do with changes in world governments (which are argued to have resulted from declining resources which where in turn brought about by climate change) than either the declining resources or climate change themselves.If you read Splinterlands it should be because you are interested in learning more about the author's ideas and predictions for the future. If that is your motivation you will not be disappointed. If you are instead reading it in search of either piece of engaging fiction, or for a frighteningly plausible and well developed vision of a darker potential future, then I fear you'll end the process rather unsatisfied.A minor point: the University of Nebraska is not in Omaha. That would be like saying the University of California is located in Los Angeles. Similarly there is a campus of the state university system located in Los Angeles, but it has its own name (UCLA), just like UNO.

Part dystopia, part mystery, part satire, part fake scholarly report, this multilayered tour de force is at once delightful when Washington DC is flooded out by “Hurricane Donald” and all-too-real when the secretive forces of corporate greed from “CRISPR International” ensnare our hero in the final, climatic scene. Except that many a footnote makes sure that we know that in 2050 it is still true that all heroes are flawed and need to be roundly punished by pundits and scholars for their transgressions of political correctness.A marvelous device is that our hero conducts deathbed interviews (via his “avatar”) with his own adult children to explore the deplorable state of his badly fractured world, torn by inequality and poverty. For these children are no ordinary survivors, but personifications of the greed, extremism, and cynicism that seem to overwhelm all goodness in this world of decay, yet must be confronted with respect, not demonization. Only the ex-wife emerges unscathed in her utopian commune, until…?Yet this book is not as dystopian as some. After all, will all these virtual reality devices survive the collapse of much of the global economy and population, as nations split into myriad fragments, presumably run by local war lords?

I heard of Splinterlands from the author being interviewed by the journalist Chris Hedges on his podcast, The Chris Hedges Report. Splinterlands is a short science fiction novel set in 2050. The main conceit is that nation states have fractured, climate change effects have started to kick in, in a way even the first world cannot ignore (Washington has flooded, after ‘Hurricane Donald’), and, well, everything is not only falling apart, it has fallen apart and we are dealing with the wreckage in a very new world. The narrator is Julian West, who, as amusingly revealed through footnotes and inferences you lift from the text, is an extremely selfish academic who has pioneered a new field in research called ‘geo-paleontology’. West’s classic work, which has the same name as this novel, is now rather old hat, and a now dying West has been commissioned to write a report to update his conclusions. This involves West visiting, via a virtual link up, his estranged family members, each of whom sheds some light on what happened in the past, and how the world works in the future.I found Splinterlands very interesting and convincing on the trajectory of world politics in the near future. I was unsurprised to learn that the author is a foreign policy specialist in his day job. Example: “…the United States spent itself into enormous debt to maintain a huge military…at home it self-destructively refused to invest in the country’s decaying infrastructure…in 2023, when the dollar fell from its perch as the global currency, the US governmetn went into receivership and its vast overseas military footprint became unsupportable”. All this sounds alarmingly plausible (or perhaps optimistically, depending on your view), and this plausibility is one of the main interests of the novel – escapism it is not. Whether Splinterlands works as a story is another question. The early chapters where it is setting the scene are a little too heavy on information and light on character or plot to make us care while we are reading. The middle section of the book involving his meetings with his estranged children, picks up a bit. The conversations that take place flesh out more about the world West is inhabiting, the winners and losers, and the political stakes at play, but still the story is quite static until well into second half of the book. Then, events happen, and there are reversals, surprises, a sinister corporation in the William Gibson tradition. If this were a 400-page slog, I wouldn’t recommend it, but its very short length means that it works as a sci-fi novella, even if the story is really just a showcase for ideas, with characterization, and really any emotional involvement not really very developed.Splinterlands reminded me of a couple of other novels I have read. Dave Hutchinson’s Europe in Autumn (and sequels) deals with similar themes of fragmenting states and extreme nationalism, although it projects this on a genre thriller background, specifically the spy story, quite successfully. Canadian sci-fi author Karl Schroeder has written several stories featuring his nuclear detective Gennady Malianov, in which fractured nations come into play, including the idea of virtual nationalities, that is nations which exist in a kind of metaspace. We live in an insecure world, where all our certainties, like the nation state and the great superpowers, seem more fragile than we thought. Authors like this peer into the near future and pose interesting and frightening questions about what is around the corner, and how people can find security in an age where nothing is permanent.

this is GREAT, I recommend it to everybody, both science fact and fiction. it has everything!!!!

Nous sommes 30 ans après la grande catastrophe de 2022. L'universitaire Julian West anticipait dans son roman "Zones de divergence" les évènements qui allaient bouleverser la planète et notamment les Etats-Unis, après le passage de l'ouragan Donald qui allait détruire Washington.L'Europe n'existe plus, le terrorisme se répand, le réchauffement climatique est à son apogée. Julian West, malade, alité, décide de rechercher ses trois enfants qu'il a perdus de vue depuis longtemps en envoyant son avatar à leur recherche. Il parcourt ainsi les continents du fond de son lit et découvre ce qu'est devenu le monde.Voilà un roman d'anticipation très noir, très pessimiste, mais cependant passionnant sur la survie de l'humanité et les méfaits du monde capitaliste. Premier roman de John Feffer très réussi.

Excellent novel. The breakup of the main character's family parallels the breakup of the world's polities. There is also a great twist at the end.

Jonh Feffer a projeté dans notre avenir proche les conséquences naturelles de nos actes. Impressionnant ! A conseiller à tout ceux qui pensent qu'il n'y a pas de problèmes et que tout va s'auto-réguler.