Thursday, June 18, 2009

Top 10 environmental disaster stories

Liz Jensen's latest novel, The Rapture, is an ecological thriller about a psychotic teenage girl who warns of an earth-changing cataclysm. Available now in the U.K., The Rapture arrives in America in August.

Among the early praise for The Rapture:
“A first-class apocalyptic thriller of futuristic science, geophysics, and religion. It's clever, intelligent, and—most terrifying of all—plausible”
—Kate Mosse, author of Labryinth and Sepulchre
Jensen named her top 10 environmental disaster stories for the Guardian.

One novel on the list:
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Comedy and horror jostle for supremacy in this masterfully-conjured post-disaster novel. Genetically-modified animal species, defrosted tundras, and a new creation myth to explain it all to a new race of bio-engineered humans: wonderful. But Atwood has a deeper purpose, and while the narrative entertains, the big, dark ideas are whirring as furiously as a wind turbine in a hurricane.
Read about all ten stories on Jensen's list.

--Marshal Zeringue