The Deluge

Stephen Markley had high ambitions for his book: "emotionally reorient the reader around what's happening, so we can actually feel in our hearts what the stakes of this moment actually are."

This moment refers to the ongoing predicament of our biosphere: The Deluge is climate fiction.

As with any book, it won't work for everyone. Especially if you don't believe rapidly reducing our carbon emissions is necessary, or if you feel the current American political & economical system generates enough equity, The Deluge might annoy you for ideological reasons. Markley does try to be balanced -- more on that below -- but it's no denying this book advocates progressive measures rather than conservative ones. It's impossible to write books that appeal to everybody on the political spectrum, and this book won't convince anyone who doesn't already think society is in peril because of human emissions. But for those who do, it will put the urgency in much, much sharper focus.

So, for me, Markley did achieve his goals: the novel gave me new insights, and it affected me emotionally. I cried numerous times while reading it, and it put a knot in my stomach -- tight and then even tighter.

The Deluge is set in the US, and its 880 pages chronicle 2013 to 2040. It is a big, big book of the sprawling kind, told through the eyes of seven characters -- a scientist, a poor drug addict, an ecoterrorist, a Washington policy adviser, an advertising strategist, a high profile activist and her partner.

These characters all have families and friends, and it is trough their well-drawn relations Markley managed to evoke strong emotions in me, as the cast experience climate catastrophes and political upheaval primarily while they are connected to other human beings. In a sense, this book is as much about love and friendship as it is about ecological systems and politics: we fear for what's coming, because we fear for our loved ones.

The Deluge is immersive, cinematic reading. Stephen King called it the best book he read in 2022 and "a modern classic (...) Prophetic, terrifying, uplifting." I concur. At times I felt 14 again, utterly absorbed by The Stand. Markley wrote that kind of book -- with the occasional boardroom debate thrown in. It's arguably better, as The Stand had no real-world stakes.

The novel was 13 years in the making, and so Markley had to constantly revise and change stuff he'd already written to suit new political and scientific developments. It makes it an exceptionally timely book: to really experience what Markley pulled off, you need to read this now -- not in 10 years.

So what exactly does he achieve in The Deluge -- aside from showing, on a basic level, what could happen the coming decades: drought, fire, flood, food scarcity, inflation, migration & death?

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Full review on Weighing A Pig Doesn't Fatten It