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If you aren't familiar with Tobias S. Buckell, here's a primer: Buckell is a Caribbean-born New York Times bestselling author who now lives in the Midwest. His work has been translated into 15 different languages, and he's been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Prometheus, and Campbell awards.
For prior novels, Buckell has specialized in science fiction set on other worlds, but now he's brought his A-game to Earth, with a John Joseph Adams near-future thriller that looks to be one of those hot, page-turning novels that readers will want to read voraciously and recommend to friends.
What's the premise? Global warming has transformed the Earth. The Arctic Ice Cap has all but melted, and the international community is racing desperately to claim the massive amounts of oil beneath the newly accessible ocean. Enter the Gaia Corporation. Its two founders have come up with a plan to roll back global warming. They plan to terraform Earth to save it from itself"”but in doing so, they have created a super-weapon the likes of which the world has never seen.
Enter Anika Duncan, an airship pilot for the underfunded United Nations Polar Guard. She's intent on capturing a smuggled nuclear weapon that has made it into the Polar Circle and bringing the smugglers to justice. From there it just gets messier and more pulse-pounding.
When Omnivoracious checked in with Buckell recently to talk about Arctic Rising, we found out the novel has a long history"”starting with a collaboration with Karl Schroeder on a short story in 2007.
"Often in science fiction you posit a great big 'what if?' idea and just run from there. Our great big 'what if?' seemed a bit out there [at the time]. It was 'what if' the polar ice cap completely melts. Sure a lot of people were talking about it receding, but we decided to go full on science fiction and explore the consequences of a fully melted cap. But as the story wound its way to print, we kept seeing changing estimates. Not estimates walking back from receding caps, but moving closer and closer to our science fictional vision."
The idea stuck in Buckell's head, so he decided to write an entire book set in the new polar north ocean. "Ever since I'd written that story, I kept coming across more intriguing, related news articles about companies anticipating the same scenario we'd set up. In fact, companies were filing for mineral and oil rights based on it. Shipping companies had plans for it. Insurance companies were trying to gauge what the fallout would cost them. And more intriguingly, I was reading declassified reports from the military trying to anticipate how much setting up an entire fleet for a whole new ocean was going to cost."
By the time Buckell was well into writing Arctic Rising, the concept of a completely open polar north, was being referred to in military documents as a very feasible scenario.
For Buckell, the Arctic setting had a specific appeal. "I grew up in the Caribbean. For me I've enjoyed writing about the cold because for me it's the ultimate exotic setting. I still have this fundamental disconnect when winter arrives in the Midwest. It feels like I'm on an alien planet. It just doesn't feel right that the entire world has turned into a freezer. It's bizarre to me on some deep, basic level. After eighteen years of living in the north, I'm only just now learning how to layer and deal with the cold, and I still keep my house impossibly warm. Visitors are always taken aback."
In addition to researching the area, Buckell put a lot of time into looking into the US military's own research about the challenge and situations that will come due to global warming. "For a group of warriors, I've joked that the US military is actually the biggest group of hippie environmentalists around. They throw more money at alternative energy research and equipment than most. And since they're one of the largest consumers of oil, they're very motivated to gain independence from it, as it increases their ability to outlast the enemy and simplifies supply lines if they're not having to helicopter in oil to run their humvees."
Buckell found the hardest part of writing Arctic Rising was "leaving interesting stuff on the table. There's so much interesting stuff just around the corner that I wanted to fiddle with, and a lot of it didn't fit the story. I wanted a lean thriller, and some of it would have gotten in the way."
Buckell will be doing a West Coast tour for Arctic Rising"”check out his website for details. He's also working on a new novel titled The Infringement. "It's an adventurous look at how innovation and free spirits survive after an alien occupation of Earth."
