Future Eden

Subtitled A Brief History of Next Time, Colin Thompson's deliriously inventive Future Eden is full of the sort of fractured and quirky satirical SF that has become almost a self-contained genre. But can Thompson cut it in the mad universe of Douglas Adams and Co.? This tale of future history and chickens has all the pizzazz and cutting-edge wit of the masters of the genre, and even justifies all the cod blurbs that the publisher had emblazoned over the jacket.

Everything is grinding to a halt in the Earth of the year 2287. People muddle by as society collapses about their ears, some more capably than others. Thompson's hero Jay is finding it a struggle, and since the day his parents vanished he has been fending for himself in a world where many are prepared to kill to maintain what little they have.

Jay makes the decision to leave his home and see just how spectacularly society is collapsing, announcing to his pet chicken (his only link to his lost past), "It's time to go, man". But when the chicken replies, "Ok", Jay finds he has more to cope with than the fire about to consume his building. And with his newly articulate companion he is soon on an odyssey through burnt out cities, new religions, potatoes and well-stirred gene pools. And then he encounters the beguiling Ethel...

Thompson's dialogue always has the correct demented edge:

When The Oracle arrived on earth a few thousand years ago, she chose a woman's body--not a frightfully clever thing to do. She assumed that as women were the most level-headed creatures on the planet, they'd sort of be in charge. But when the first body wore out, The Oracle decided to try another species, and since then she has been working her way through every living creature on the planet and at the moment The Oracle is a fish.

--Barry Forshaw


Genre: Science Fiction