«The Water Knife» , Paolo Bacigalupi

How do you imagine a catastrophe caused by a shortage of resources? I am sure that most of us would first think of a collapse caused by the depletion of oil reserves. Our imagination would helpfully paint a picture of cities plunged into darkness, cars stuck in traffic, and ships stuck at the docks. Scary? Perhaps, yes. But in such a scenario, there is always hope that human genius will create something new, some alternative source of energy, and humanity will look back on its dependence on hydrocarbons with a slightly guilty smile.

Paolo Bacigalupi is an award-winning author of novels for adults and young people. His debut young adult novel, SHIP BREAKER, was a Micheal L. Printz Award Winner, and a National Book Award Finalist, and its sequel, THE DROWNED CITIES, was a 2012 Kirkus Reviews Best of YA Book, A 2012 VOYA Perfect Ten Book, and 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist. The final book in the series, TOOL OF WAR, will release in October of 2017. His latest novel for adults is The New York Times Bestseller THE WATER KNIFE, a near-future thriller about climate change and drought in the southwestern United States.

Bachigalupi paints a different picture—and, admittedly, a much more frightening one. The water has run out. Imagine turning on the tap and nothing coming out, not even a sound. For those who live in temperate climates, this is difficult to imagine. But for those whose homes are located in arid areas, such a thought immediately becomes terrifying.

When we heard “Water is life” in school science classes, we took it as just another boring maxim. In this book, this expression confronts us in all its brutal inevitability and literalness. Global climate change has turned the southern states into an arid desert. As always in post-apocalyptic literature, the cataclysm has led to the stratification of society and the complete paralysis of the state system. And here the author paints a picture designed to frighten the average American, to destroy the reader's idealized notions of the country.

First and foremost, the state. A common thread running through the entire novel is the idea that nature can only be resisted by working together and consolidating all available resources. In the reality described, the opposite is true: corruption paralyzes any sensible initiative, the unity of the United States as a nation turns out to be a myth, state borders are closed to migration, and state militias are formed alongside the National Guard, whose goal is to keep outsiders out.

Where the state is paralyzed, its functions are taken over by gangsters. Taxation and security (as criminal elements imagine it) end up in their hands. This only adds to the chaos and accelerates the collapse of the old system.

And then there are the businessmen. Just people who make money. Rhett Butler claimed that it is easiest to make a fortune during the collapse of an empire. Water has become a commodity, not even water itself, but its sources and reserves. And no price can be too high, even if that price is the fate of the capital of Arizona.

The author weaves three parallel storylines that come together at the end, very organically and harmoniously, as is often the case with Bachigalupi. There are no loose ends or unanswered questions; everything comes to a logical conclusion.

The post-apocalypse is like a bad dream, a nightmare that you have to tell someone about in the morning so that it doesn't come true. We can only hope that this will be the case with Water Knife, that common sense will prevail, that there is still time to reverse the processes that could lead us into the world of Bachigalupi.

Read to better understand this world. And to protect our own.

You can get «The Water Knife» by Paolo Bacigalupi at AMAZON.

This article was provided and sponsored by Harry Newman