Flood (Fiction Picture Books)

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Now you know how Keyes got captured by the Covenant and why his bridge crew from The Fall of Reach is completely absent after the first level. I really wanted to like this book. I really did. I am a huge fan of apocalyptic fiction. On the surface, this book seems to fit the bill. The seas are rising, the earth is flooding - what will humanity do to survive? What's not to like - right? Well, it turns out - quite a bit.

Humanity's last hope lies with the crew of the Pillar of Autumn — the indomitable Captain Jacob Keyes, Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson, the AI Cortana, hundreds of fearless marines . . . and Spartan 117, Master Chief. Shower Scene: The Chief, of all people, gets one at Alpha Base in the original version of the book. It's played for a bit of character-building, as we learn that a two-minute hot shower is a genuine luxury for him. Hunger", a poem depicting the thought process of a Flood victim, on Installation 04, in the process of transformation. It is not just natural forces that are a threat – official neglect may compound their effects, as Rebecca Solnit argues in A Paradise Built in Hell. When Hurricane Katrina flooded 80% of New Orleans in 2005, the damage caused by what she calls the “somewhat natural disaster” of the storm was compounded by the “strictly unnatural disaster of the failing levees”. After this humanmade catastrophe came the “failure or refusal of successive layers of government to supply evacuation and relief”, which led to the “appalling calamity of the way that local and then state and federal authorities decided to regard victims as criminals and turned New Orleans into a prison city.”

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Flood is a truly amazing experience. The descriptions so vivid that I could see everything playing out inside my head. Stephen Baxter does a fine job at blending in lots of scientific facts with the human condition. The science balanced out the human struggle, and vice versa. The book’s strength is, oddly for a “hard” science fiction effort, in the characters. Each is a well crafted and unique personality. Most are personable enough that we care about their fates, sometimes grudgingly, others are distasteful enough that we also care about their fates, although perhaps with animosity. But our affection or disdain won’t last nearly as long as the book — the end simply takes too long to reach. The first half or so moves adequately fast, when the extent of the disaster is still being revealed, but once we are clued in to the world’s ultimate fate... the details of how individuals react are undoubtedly necessary, but not riveting enough to keep things interesting. He also does not include the accepted components of fiction, such as a coherent plot, some character development or finely crafted sentences. Perhaps this book is experimental fiction, or perhaps it is just an incompetent mess.

It starts out as almost a fantasy as flood waters the world over start to rise. Each major section of the book starts with a map showing the changes to the world as the sea level creeps up and up. But the science it, as is typical of Baxter, quite real, quite believable and all rather scary.Fictional Document: The 2010 re-release to celebrate the launch of Halo: Reach includes a series of documents and transcriptions further expanding on the EU. I imagine this book happened this way. A group of intelligent science fiction writers were sitting around a table and drinking perhaps a bit too much and they were making a list of the worst science fiction movies of all time. Stephen Baxter who was a little drunk at the time shouts out "Waterworld!" and everyone laughs especially at the fish gilled Kevin Costner character. And seriously where did all that water come from! And then Stephen got a glassy look on his face and said you know what? I can make that work! I can make Waterworld plausible. His friends all laughed in his face, so Stephen got determined and unlike most ideas we get when we are drinking he said not only will I make Waterworld plausible I'll create a TRILOGY! So there you have it whether you asked for it or not you now have a plausible version of Waterworld.