Greenhouse Summer [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

In Greenhouse Summer, humanity's abuse of the environment has melted the polar ice caps, expanded deserts beyond all 20th-century conceptions, and transformed Siberia into a powerful and agriculturally fertile nation--and the changes aren't over, as Monique Calhoun learns when she is sent to Paris for the United Nations' conference on global warming. The scientists present terrifying evidence that Condition Venus may already have begun. Condition Venus is a climactic change that can quickly turn the Earth as hot and deadly as Venus. The end is truly near. And transnational factions working covertly for their own agendas may only hasten the end of the world and the death of every living creature.

Norman Spinrad is, with Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison, and Samuel R. Delany, one of the giants of new wave science fiction. He is the author of many novels, including the notorious Bug Jack Barron, The Iron Dream, The Void Captain's Tale, and Child of Fortune, as well as several fiction and nonfiction collections. --Cynthia Ward -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

The future isn't much fun, even for the rich, in old sf hand Spinrad's satiric ecothriller portraying a time after the ice caps have melted and raised sea levels worldwide. A sort of prosperity has crept over Siberia, one of the few areas where agriculture is possible. New York City survives behind a high sea wall; no one can afford the rent, but seafood is plentiful. Third World countries at the Equator (the "Lands of the Lost") are hot, dry, and poor, suitable only for the cultivation of marijuana in domes by First World "syndics." None of this matters, however. "Condition Venus" is imminent, in which the planet will suddenly become so hot that all life will boil away. Monique Calhoun--scientist, pampered First Worlder, and reluctant employee of the syndic Bread and Circuses--rushes to save the world, along with an unlikely assassin, "Prince" Eric Esterhazy. The two are almost a love story, but love stories are beside the point in Spinrad's caustic, gleeful, meticulously modeled scenario of doom. John Mort -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

Global-meltdown yarn, part satire, part political comedy, part sober admonition, from the Paris-resident author of Russian Spring (1991), etc. Thanks to global warming, deserts are spreading, coasts are flooded, and icecaps are meltingbut Siberia has blossomed into the most prosperous region on the planet. Scientists predict the onset of a runaway-greenhouse Condition Venus that will render Earth uninhabitable. The ineffectual annual UN climate conference moves to tropical Paris. But this year, the sponsors (the Big Blue Machine, the unreconstructed capitalists who run the planet) have hired Bread & Circuses to handle spin and gloss, and are providing lavish funding. Monique Calhoun of Bread & Circuses is told by Big Blue bosses to hire a party riverboat owned by the Bad Boys, a benevolent outgrowth of mafias, triads, and drug barons, fronted by Eric Esterhazy. The boat's crawling with surveillance devices. The Bad Boys agree to a joint party with Bread & Circuses, each hoping to spy on the other's clients, while Monique and Eric attempt to seduce one another in a complicated game of bluff and counterbluff. Clearly, the Big Blue Machine is desperate to grab Siberian money for their climate control schemesbut to save their own financial hides, or to save the planet? For all his eccentricitiesthis time he's too obviously infatuated with ParisSpinrad has a social conscience and isnt afraid to exercise it in public. The upshot's often shapeless, but funny, caustic, and dead on target. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

In the not-so-distant future, the world teeters on the brink of environmental disaster caused by global warming. Hired as a spin doctor for a UN conference on the cooling of the world's climate, Monique Calhoun discovers a conspiracy revolving around a scientist's warning that the end of the world is near owing to an exponential increase of the greenhouse effect. The author of The Void Captain's Tale presents a rich and often disturbing exploration of human ethics while at the same time telling a seriocomic tale of environmental mayhem. Highly recommended for most sf collections.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

"Spinrad is back, in his own rare form, as stimulating as ever!"--Gregory Benford
"Here's a fast, fun, fearsome future, seen from the upper rungs of the economic ladder."--"San Diego Union-Tribune"
"Spinrad is famous for writing realistic and scary science fiction with outstanding characters. This is his most frightening work. Its apocalyptic scenarios and powerful editing seem inevitable in the real world. Though Spinrad is a unique writer, this book also reminds me of certain aspects of the works of Kobo Abe, Haruki Murakami, and Ferdinand Celine. Highly recommended."--Philip Jose Farmer

"Norman Spinrad has a rich and passionate imagination. Amongst the majority of his contemporaries, he excels in his love and use of language, his enjoyment of a tale well told, his intelligence and his moral involvement with the present day. At once subtle and humane, he's a very fine writer indeed, working at the peak of his gifts." --Michael Moorcock

"Norman Spinrad has written a sublime comedy--an epic, an extended narrative in the heroic tradition with grandeur and sweep. It's a Homeric space voyage, a Joycean interstellar trip, a Huck Finn saga of humanity's next adventure. It's a literary masterpiece." --Timothy Leary on Child of Fortune

Norman Spinrad's science fiction stories and novels have kept him on the cutting edge of the field since the '60s. He is one of the big names internationally in SF, a peer of Harlan Ellison, Michael Moorcock, Samuel R. Delany, and the late Roger Zelazny. He has had a long and distinguished career. A new major novel by Spinrad is an event in the SF world; Greenhouse Summer is the event in 1999.

About a hundred years from now the world is in a lot of trouble. Pollution, overpopulation, and ecological disasters have left the rich nations still rich, but less so, though the party never ends, and the poor nations-the Lands of the Lost-slowly strangle in drought and pollution. New York City is below sea level, surrounded by a seawall. And balmy. The climate in Paris is much like the twentieth-century climate of long-drowned New Orleans. And Siberia, Golden Siberia, is the cropland of the world.

Still, for the international corporations and businesses who make a profit on technofixing the environment, the Big Blue Machine, it is business as usual: sell what you can where you can whenever you can. It is better to be rich. But maybe it is all coming to a terrible end: a scientist has predicted Condition Venus, the sudden greenhouse downfall of the entire planet--but she can't say when. So now the attention of the world is focused for a week on a UN conference on the Environment in Paris, where all hell is about to break loose. Filled with sex, science, politics, and great parties, this book will be one of the most-read SF books of the year. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

The world of the future faces an out of control ecosystem in the form of overpopulation, pollution, and other environmental disasters, forcing Earth's government to convene for an emergency meeting.

Sample chapter of GREENHOUSE SUMMER available
As the author of the novel and a literary critic as well, far be it from me to render literary judgement on my own book. Suffice it to say that the first chapter of GREENHOUSE SUMMER... I'd rather have the novel speak for itself. Though on the same Web page, you will find the text of a speech I made called "The Transformation Crisis" which is a major theoretical basis of the novel. Also a long autobiography published by Gale Press in which I talk about my life, my career, and my work, as as great a length as anyone could want. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.