The Sea and Summer Read online

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  The Sea and Summer

  GEORGE TURNER

  www.sf-gateway.com

  Copyright

  A Gollancz eBook

  Text copyright © George Turner 1987

  Introduction copyright © Graham Sleight 2012

  All rights reserved.

  The right of George Turner to be identified as the author of this work, and the right of Graham Sleight to be identified as the author of the introduction, has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2013 by Gollancz

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

  London, WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  A ClP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 0 575 11870 6

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  Dedication

  For John Foyster

  who gave sound advice

  Contents

  Cover

  Gateway Introduction

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Epigraph

  The Autumn People 1

  The Sea and Summer 1

  1 Alison Conway: AD 2061

  2 Francis Conway: AD 2041–2044

  3 Nola Parkes: AD 2044

  4 Francis: AD 2044–2050

  5 Nola Parkes: AD 2050

  6 Francis: AD 2050

  The Autumn People 2

  The Sea and Summer 2

  7 Teddy Conway: AD 2044–2045

  8 Captain Nikopoulos: AD 2044

  9 Teddy: AD 2044–2045

  10 Nick: AD 2045

  11 Teddy: AD 2045

  12 Alison: AD 2044–2047

  13 Teddy: AD 2045–2047

  14 Nick: AD 2050

  15 Francis: AD 2050

  16 Teddy: AD 2050

  17 Nick: AD 2050

  18 Nola Parkes: AD 2050

  19 Alison: AD 2051

  20 Nick: AD 2051

  21 Teddy: AD 2051

  22 Nola Parkes and Arthur Derrick: AD 2051

  23 Francis: From his diary – AD 2056–2061

  The Autumn People 3

  Postscript

  Acknowledgment

  About the Author

  Also By George Turner

  Website

  INTRODUCTION

  How much should science fiction aspire to be prophecy? How much, in other words, should SF writers be held to a standard of ‘realism’ in what they describe? There are as many different answers to this as there are writers. Ursula le Guin, for instance, has talked of her SF being principally ‘metaphorical’ rather than extrapolative – and so argued that scientific rigour is not what her readers should be seeking. But there are also works at the other end of the spectrum, and The Sea and Summer (1987) is one of the finest.

  George Turner was born in Melbourne in 1916, but did not publish any SF until Beloved Son in 1978. From then until his death in 1997, he produced six SF novels. The Sea and Summer (published in the USA as Drowning Towers) is the best known of them: in the UK, it won the second Arthur C Clarke Award. Alongside his SF work, he was a distinguished literary figure in Australia: he published several mainstream novels, an autobiography, and a good deal of literary criticism.

  The Sea and Summer tackles a subject that’s a common part of public discourse now, but was much more marginal then: climate change, and the effect it might have on our society. There are two threads to the book. The main one, ‘The Sea and Summer’, takes place in the mid-21st century, as these effects have become visible: Melbourne is flooded and basking in the warmth of an endless summer. A framing narrative, ‘The Autumn People’, is set centuries later. A new Ice Age is in prospect, and a writer is trying to make sense of how people thought in the ‘Greenhouse centuries’.

  The Sea and Summer isn’t just about environmental issues, though. It has far broader political concerns – and, moreover, a sense of how all the influences on a society interact and affect individuals. Turner’s 21st century is one of sharp divisions between the rich and the poor (the ‘Sweet’ and the ‘Swill’), with a sense that it’s all but impossible for people to move up the ladder. The story is told from several different perspectives and across a number of years and avoids simplistic explanations of what might have caused this situation or how it might be solved. In this respect, it’s reminiscent of John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (1968), Thomas M. Disch’s 334 (1972) – or, more recently, Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312 (2012). These books – which might be called mosaic novels – use multiple viewpoints to give a sense of their society at all levels. Several of them also track characters progressively growing older, their attitudes shifting as their experiences do. In The Sea and Summer, there’s also a serious attempt to discuss how history works and how people might be able to influence it. Consider, for instance, Teddy’s encounters with ideas of Utopia in Chapter 13. Both this and the framing narrative can be seen as offering further perspectives on Turner’s world. It is not in any sense predestined that things have to be this way; so how might they be otherwise? How could a different world be built? That’s not to say this book is only about ‘issues’: the characters are sharply differentiated, and the writing is vivid and sometimes beautiful (for an example of the latter, see Alison’s paean to summer in Chapter 1).

  In his Postscript to the novel, Turner strikes a modest note about the power of predictive SF: ‘This novel cannot be regarded as prophetic; it is not offered as a dire warning. Its purpose is simply to highlight a number of possibil
ities that deserve urgent thought.’ But we shouldn’t be surprised if, given the detail and thoughtfulness of his extrapolations, much of what the book describe does come to pass. For instance, he posits a collapse of the financial system in the mid-21st century. Although the world did not suffer such a collapse in 2007–8, it came perilously close to one: it was certainly possible to see what that abyss looked like. Not exactly a prediction come true, then, but certainly an issue that deserves urgent thought.

  The word that most comes to my mind when trying to describe The Sea and Summer is ‘scope’. Even though it focuses on only one place, it seems as if Turner has thought about every aspect of his future. Everything fits together, we are shown precisely what we need to understand his world, and his vision has an encompassing power that is as compelling as prophecy.

  Graham Sleight

  ‘We must plan for five years ahead and twenty years and a hundred years.’

  Sir Macfarlane Burnett

  THE AUTUMN PEOPLE

  1

  1

  The sun, high in early afternoon, sparkled on still water. There was no breeze; only the powercraft’s wake disturbed the placid bay. The pilot’s chart showed in dotted lines an old riverbed directly below his keel, but no current flowed at the surface; the Yarra now debouched some distance to the north, at the foot of the Dandenongs where the New City sheltered among hills and trees.

  The pilot had lost his first awe of the Old City and the vast extent of the drowned ruins below; this was for him a routine trip. He carried hundreds of historians, archaeologists, divers and sightseers in the course of a year. His thought now was simple pleasure that the sun had power enough to have made it worthwhile to shed his clothes and enjoy its warmth on his skin.

  There were not many such days, even in midsummer, and the southern wind would bring a chill before nightfall. Enjoy while you may, he thought, snatch the moment. And if that edged a little too close to hedonism for a practicing Christian, so be it. He believed in the forgiveness of sin rather than in the possibility of his own perfection.

  When this sunken city had reached its swollen maximum of population and desperation, a thousand years before, the sun had blazed throughout the four seasons, but that time was over and would not return. The Long Summer had ended and the Long Winter – perhaps a hundred thousand years of it – loomed. The cold southern wind at nightfall, every nightfall, was its whisper of intent and the pilot was happy to be living now rather than earlier or later.

  Not every wall and spire of the Old City lay below the bay. The melting of the Antarctic ice cap had been checked as the polluted atmosphere rebalanced its elements and the blanket of global heat dissipated; the fullest rise of the ocean level had been forestalled though not soon enough to avert disaster to the coastal cities of the planet. To the north and northeast of the powercraft’s position lay the islands which had been the higher ground of Melbourne’s outer suburbs, forested now and overgrown, but storehouses of history.

  The other ruins, the other storehouses, part submerged, were clusters of gigantic towers built (with the blind persistence of those who could not believe in the imminence of disaster) in the lower reaches of the sprawling city. There were ten Enclaves, each a group of nearly identical towers whose designs had varied little in the headlong efficiency of their building. The Enclave now approached by the powercraft was one of the largest, a forest of twenty-four giants evenly spaced in an area of some four square kilometers opposite what had been in that far time the mouth of the Yarra. It was shown on the pilot’s chart as Newport Towers, with the caution Erratic Currents, a notation common to all the Enclaves. These ancient masses, each more than 100 meters on a side, created races and eddies at change of tide.

  Marin knew that what he saw were only the lower hulks of buildings which had stretched at the sky. Their greedy height had not withstood the eroding sea and the cyclones of destabilized weather patterns. Not one had endured entire; most were only sub-surface stumps of their hugeness, splintered jawfuls of broken teeth. It was difficult to conceive of them in their unpleasant heyday, twenty-four human warrens, each fifty to seventy stories high and verminous with the seething humanity of the Greenhouse Culture.

  He lived in a world where architecture favoured concern for surroundings, where stairways were thought of as an inconvenience and two-floor dwellings a rarity; processing conditions occasionally demanded excessive height in factories and these were bounded by restrictions of design and position. (It was estimated that in Old America some structures had approached a kilometer in height and there was much argument about the pressures that had produced such extravagance.)

  He was bored with the Enclaves as such; there seemed little more to be discovered in their catacomb silence although today’s fare seemed to find them a lifetime study. And not so much ‘them’ as a particular one.

  He asked over his shoulder, ‘Tower Twenty-three, Scholar? As usual?’ and she agreed, ‘As usual.’

  The powercraft was a large one and the two passengers astern were sufficiently removed to speak quietly without his hearing, but he had the usual human awareness of being talked about, sensing the small alteration of timbre in the susurrus of speech.

  The man asked, ‘Does he always use the formal address? That must be the tenth time.’

  ‘Always.’ The historian was amused. ‘The Christians are a punctilious lot, always polite but conscious of sanctity – not plainly apart but not wholly of the common herd.’

  ‘Insulting!’

  ‘No, only defensive. They feel themselves to be a rapidly decreasing minority as the contemplative oriental philosophies gain ground. And fools do tend to sneer at them.’

  ‘Do you wonder? Anyone who thinks he can draw a line between good and evil is at best mistaken, at worst demented. The Christians as I understand them want to save mankind from sin without first understanding either sin or mankind.’

  She smiled at him. ‘Do you believe that or are you roughing out an epigram for your play?’

  Because she had prodded a real weakness the actor-playwright contented himself with an enigmatic shrug; she had an unerring aim for small vanities and in the twenty-four hours of their acquaintance had made him aware of it. There was, for instance, his claim to Viking ancestry, based solely on his name, Andra Andrasson, though a strong Aboriginal strain coloured him unmistakably; the dark skin made it necessary for him to use a heavy Caucasian makeup for most roles and as a consequence he often went unrecognized in the public street. ‘Who wants to be pestered by fans?’ he had asked and had been almost able to hear her unspoken, You’d love it. Which he would.

  Establishing the tutor-student relationship, no doubt. That was better than a predatory interest in a good-looking young man (thirty – er, – five is young enough); he had learned a healthy fear of footloose older women at first-night parties. This one, at any rate, was all tutor and chattily disinterested when not busily informing.

  Lenna Wilson was not, in fact, wholly disinterested, merely unaroused – more accurately, a little disappointed. She had been properly excited at the request for consultation from one of the foremost stage personalities of the day and more than a little stimulated by his presence and his easy handsomeness. Then, on this first excursion, he had seized the chance to sunbathe and demagnetization had set in. In the nude he was curiously shapeless – tubular was her mute description – as though form were the gift of his tailor, and in movement he displayed little grace. Yet on stage he could mesmerize with a gesture, put on majesty, collapse into clowning or be instantly a nameless man in the street.

  Well, each to his talent and hers was for history. She was as respected in her niche as he in his (though about one tenthousandth as well known) and he had confirmed his knowledge of this by the string pulling he had done to obtain her agreement to coach him for a single force-fed week.

  She said, ‘Don’t expect too much here. It’s easy to be let down at first sight.’

  ‘I expect to be horrifie
d.’

  ‘By empty rooms?’

  ‘By ghosts.’

  ‘That will need conjury.’

  He sat up, speaking more loudly. ‘Conjury is my business. I must call up visions before I can construct a play.’

  The pilot looked over his shoulder as though he expected to catch a large theatrical gesture to smile at but saw only the set face of a man who took his work seriously and chose to express himself in metaphor.

  Andra grinned quickly at him and said, ‘In all this wreckage there must be a few ghosts on call.’

  ‘Dirty, stinking ghosts, Artist, crowded, lewd and violent.’ His urgent Christianity spurred him further than was wise. ‘They were evil people.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ Lenna said, ‘they were the stuff of history.’

  Marin, competent at his work, was also an academically ambitious man; his formal address of Lenna did not indicate respect, only a distancing. With the certainty of the indoctrinated he insisted, ‘They were wicked – they and those like them ruined the world for all who came after. Scholar, they denied history.’

  ‘Perhaps so,’ she replied equably, ‘but if history is to record the ascent of man it must also recognize the periods of his fall.’ Oh, dear, now we’ll get the Garden of Eden.

  He was not such a fool as that and knew he had overplayed dogmatism. He pushed up a smile. ‘In a few minutes, Artist, you will be able to question the ghosts for yourself.’

  It was not much of a jest but it served to end discussion. He pulled the wheel hard over and the powercraft swung smoothly past two drearily tumbled steel and concrete monsters. The remains of broken walls that protruded above the water for a forlorn story or two were black with the grime of centuries, pitted with friction and a thousand agents of corrosion; glassless windows gaped.

  ‘Twenty-three,’ said Marin, gliding them into the shadow of the tower that stood like a sentry on the northwest corner of the Enclave.