Just Finished Reading: The Last Gasp by Trevor Hoyle (FP: 1983)

After over 20 years of study there really was no room for error. But who would believe him and would they, indeed could they, do anything about it. That was what worried Theo Detrick. What he didn’t expect was the hostility to his thesis – that the plankton in the oceans, the world’s primary source of oxygen was dying at an unprecedented rate and that in less than 50 years there would be little oxygen left to breath. But Theo had no idea, after years spent on a remote Pacific island, that both the Soviets and the US military were busily weaponising the environment with the idea of producing the ultimate Doomsday capability – the deliberate destruction of all life on Earth. What all sides seemed to have overlooked was that a combination or resource depletion, pollution and habitat destruction had already brought the world to the brink of disaster. Very little would be needed to push things over the edge and into a deadly downward spiral until everyone and everything was literally gasping for breath.

Billed as a ‘landmark in the emerging genre of eco-fiction’ this turned out, over a much too long 524 pages, into a largely farcical tale of the world ending whilst the vast majority of people stood by and watched. OK, I can see that happening right now but my objection stands. The plot revolves around a small cadre of dedicated scientists trying everything to save the world from itself – to no effect. Ignored by politicians, actively opposed by the military, laughed at in the media and attacked by religious groups they repeated try and fail to turn things around. Meanwhile the worlds politicians make fancy speeches and disappear to mountain retreats, the military go in for weird genetic experiments (and bio-warfare) to be on top in the coming world, and the people, well, the people generally die a lot on chocking fumes and polluted food sources. But, by and large nothing is done to alleviate anything – not one thing. I found this incredibly unbelievable. No one, it seemed to me, acted rationally throughout the whole book. Time and again bad decisions were chosen over good ones and decisions made generally made things worse. I was, luckily metaphorically, pulling my hair out more than once. If this had been a film or series on TV I would have spent most of my viewing time screaming at the screen in frustration. If that wasn’t enough to deal with I found the pacing of the novel bizarre at times. We had page after page throughout the book where scientists sat in a room to discuss what was going on, thereby dragging the plot to a complete halt. At other times the narrative jumped years ahead sometimes leaving a cliff hanger literally hanging their unresolved until much later if at all. Finally the ending was completely ridiculous and made precious little sense in the context of the rest of the book. I guess it was to add a heathy dose of optimism after almost 500 pages of unrelenting disaster but felt that the author had essentially painted himself into a corner and the only way out was to produce a technological rabbit out of a very positive hat (to mix my metaphors quite a lot).

Despite the fact that this was (luckily) a quick read it hardly qualified as entertainment and I couldn’t help but feel that I was being preached at on a regular basis. In my mind this invariably gets the opposite results that the author is aiming at. Taking the above into consideration I can hardly recommend this book, so won’t.