A Diary in the Age of Water by Nina Munteanu

Formats

Paperback Book Details

07/2020
9781771337373
300 pages
$22.95

Nina Munteanu

Author, Editor (anthology)

A Diary in the Age of Water

“A Diary in the Age of Water” follows the climate-induced journey of the Earth and humanity through four generations of women, each with a unique relationship to her world and to water. Water plays both metaphoric and literal roles in this allegorical tale of humanity’s final journey from home—where male sterility, heat-shock proteins, horizontal gene transfer, and virgin-births rule a changing world of water securitization through ambitious environmental manipulation (e.g., resurrecting the US Army Corps of Engineers 1960s NAWAPA/CeNAWP plan to create the 800 km long Rocky Mountain Trench reservoir and divert most of northern Canada’s water to the USA—drowning a fifth of BC). Told in far-future and near-future frames, the central part of the story is a diary by a limnologist, whose personal account creates a terrifying realism to the geo-political tension of water securitization, plague containment, and police oppression—the diary spans from 2045 to 2064 (when the diarist disappears herself). The cli-fi novel begins centuries from now in the dying northern boreal forest with young KYO, a blue water nymph with multiple arms who dreams of the past and of being a normal human. She is on her way to the library to memorize a textbook on the Age of Water and there discovers a piece of her past from that age when The Water Twins destroyed the world. “A Diary in the Age of Water” explores identity and our concept of what is “normal”—as a nation and an individual—in a world that is rapidly and incomprehensibly changing.

Reviews

In Munteanu’s (The Splintered Universe Trilogy) time-crossed heartbreaker, four generations of women witness this planet’s inevitable slide into the environmental degradation of climate change -- and then the extent that corporations will go to control the limited water supply. In the far future, Kyo, resembling a Hindu god with her blue-skin and four arms, reads a journal from the mid 21st century of how the Earth warmed and the Water Twins, Hilde and Hanna, nearly wiped out humanity. The diary belongs to Lynna, a limnologist, who chronicles in scientific, genetic, and political detail the damage that climate change has perpetrated on the world and humanity, right down to our very DNA. Lynna writes of her complicity, as she worked for CanadaCorp, a company that profited by diverting Canada’s rich water supply to America.

Munteanu’s passion for conservation illuminates passages in which Lynna expresses admiration for water’s unique properties and endless value. Lynna describes a succession of 20th century disasters, including the Great Lakes turning into the Great Puddles, the Earth’s axis tipping due to massive water reservoirs in the Northern Hemisphere, and even the rise of parthenogenesis (virgin births) in humans, corresponding with a surge in male infertility. Facing a horrific future, Lynna’s coworker Daniel laments, “the humans that were worth saving hadn’t been born yet.” Offering some relief from the crises, Lynna draws strength from her insightful mother, Una, and her naïve yet ideological daughter, Hilde.

Despite inspired passages touched with poetry, Munteanu devotes more pages to Lynna’s textbook-like recitation of environmental ruin than to the intriguing story of the Water Twins or Kyo, whose purpose and identity get relegated to climactic exposition. Nevertheless, environmentalists and readers who enjoy science fact will absorb this disquieting story’s impressive yet discouraging scenarios and illustrations. Munteanu excels at extrapolating today’s science into a stark vision of what we face in the next few decades.

Takeaway: Environmentalists, science fact enthusiasts, and science fiction fans will be shaken by this cautionary tale of a near-future Earth facing the ravages of climate change.

Great for fans of: James Lawrence Powell’s The 2084 Report: An Oral History of the Great Warming, Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A-

Formats

Paperback Book Details

07/2020
9781771337373
300 pages
$22.95

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