It is 2106. Seventy years have passed since our times collapsed into the mother of all depressions; strangely permanent, brutally profound. No one cares about over-population, mass extinctions or climate change, because they don’t have to. The world is a post-apocalyptic paradise—for a few.
One of those ‘few’ is Donald Aldingford, a star barrister much in demand by high society. He suffers the catastrophe of being shot down and jailed for trespassing into private airspace. And while in prison, he picks up alarming rumours about his younger brother Lawrence, who disappeared ten years earlier, aged seventeen.
Despite the risk of becoming ‘disappeared’ himself, Donald takes a deeper interest in the world around him. As he closes on the mystery of his long-lost brother, he pierces the last, most dangerous veil of a rotten society.
Sovereigns of the Collapse is a gritty dystopian saga about the world we should have seen coming. It contains adult themes and is not recommended for the under-16s.
Long ago I dived into my writing career by studying aeronautical engineering. I went on to design quite a variety of things, from the turbochargers of racing hydroplanes to industrial plants that process explosive gases at high pressure. Just to expand my literary horizons, I also studied for an MBA at an international business school, from where I joined the masters of the globalised world. Then I dropped out and got another view on life, this time from below.
Fiction has to flourish from somewhere. In my case, it’s a fascination with power: how it is cast and how it is accepted. Power must be honest enough to endure, yet be dishonest enough to serve the greed of its roots.
Humanity faces an impossible situation called over-consumption. No government will face up to that fact. How can it? No power structure can stand before its people and admit ‘We’re up against it and we don’t have a clue’. There’s just about enough energy and resources to give about one tenth of the planet what is known as ‘the affluent lifestyle’. That means a house served by public utilities, a car, holidays far away, and plenty of credit to keep things churning. The consequent pollution is already beyond—well beyond—the capacity of our environment. Yet we’re told ‘debt doesn’t matter’ and renewables will come to the rescue. Sorry people, those who live by lies shall die by lies, or to put it another way, education comes to those who wait.
How nasty will this ‘education’ be? And what will the world be like afterwards? These are questions I explore in my dystopian novels.
When not foretelling our grim prospects, you’ll find me roaming the Lammermuir Hills of Scotland on my vintage Flying Scot bicycle, prowling Edinburgh’s book shops or else swilling beer in good company (before The Bug hit us, at any rate).
Regrettably it looks like The Bug is pushing us into dystopia faster than I can write about it.
Web site: https://www.malcolmjwardlaw.