Flood

This is a well written deeply distrubing view of the future. Chosing to view the story through the eyes of the hostages was brilliant. I think the responses to the rising sea levels mirror what is happening today. The time jumps gave a since of urgency without forcing the story to get boged down in techo babble. Baxter fleshes out each character. Their stories their struggles kept me involved. This one of the few books of this genre I would purchase. Bater aviods reducing this work to the level of stock villians. Its not the typical man is the cause of earths problems but rather the earth is changing. Its asks what would happen? Then it takes each response and plays it out to its logical conclusion. This story does not even make the show more United States the center of all the solutions. It truly comes at the topic from an international perspective. Nor does it needlessly bash religion but it does look critically at it. show less

At the start of this book a group of hostages are being transferred to yet another hiding place in Spain. Some of them have been held for five years and they are just about to return to a changed world. This gives Baxter the chance to explain the situation - severe flooding and rising sea levels are affecting the world. Following the ex-hostages over the years we learn theories for these changes and the effect this has on society.

I found this gripping and readable. In some places, maybe, there was a little bit too much info dumping but on the whole Baxter manages to keep the pace up. In some ways this is an old-fashioned end of the world disaster novel and that isn't a bad thing. The use of maps to chart the affect that the rising sea show more levels have on the remaining land gives a real idea of how fast things can change. A good mix of possible science and a diversity of characters made this an appealing work of speculative fiction. I'll definitely be reading Ark, the follow up novel, soon and I will be reading more of Baxter's work as well. show less

Interesting spin on an apocalypse theme with a few scientific stretches (the rising sea level is not entirely due to global warming!) and presented as a sprawling family saga. Baxter makes an admirable attempt at showing a drowning Earth from all angles---social, geopolitical, scientific, evolutionary---while deftly avoiding the usual sermons on evil reckless Capitalism or warm fuzzy Socialism. But the results are not quite riveting enough to warrant 480 pages. Edit, edit, EDIT!

I used to love Baxter's writing back in the Xeelee Sequence & Manifold Trilogy days. Then there was all that "alternative history" stuff and I lost interest. BUT... along comes Flood and I'm hooked again! Here Baxter writes like some of the Greats (Wells, Wyndham) and, while it is definitely "hard" s/f, it is also "social" in that you get a good look at what people most likely would do (are doing now, as a matter of fact) in the face of extreme climate change. The book has been haunting me since I finished it with visions of a future that hasn't, yet, happened.

A rare treat, this - a proper global DISASTER story! And the author sets a cracking pace. Within the first hundred pages London then New York fall prey to spectacularly rising tides, and the rest of humanity is left fighting for the last of the Earth’s higher ground before much longer. Surprisingly, considering it’s where stories like this can fall down (especially Hollywood ones ;p) the characters give an affecting human perspective on the catastrophe without, ahem, annoying the hell out of the reader. Also, as you might expect if you know Mr Baxter’s books, it’s packed with awesome ideas and unforgettable moments. Brilliant.

Stephen Baxter’s Flood gives us a well-researched, original take on how we might get from ordinary global warming to a rise in sea level that submerges Mount Everest. Unfortunately, the mix of telling and showing is skewed too far to lecture mode, and the decades-long storyline leaves gaps in the lives of characters we care about. It was a bit of a snooze for me.

But if you’re looking for a modern-day wet-world dystopia, you might like this one.

An interesting book about global warming, at first, then it delves into a cause that lies square in conspiracy-theory land. It follows a handful of characters over the course of their entire adult lives as the earth slowly becomes flooded to the point of the last of the land disappearing in the final chapter. How they deal with the flooding is the heart of the novel, and that's what makes it interesting - the human drama, rather than the eco-story behind it.

It feels long, overly so. At times, the characters and their stories simply aren't that interesting. Overall, it's a good book, though not one that'd be read cover-to-cover in a single sitting.