Cold Fusion

Windsor Chorlton, Orion 1999


The scenario is set in the early twenty-first century, some years after a meteorite has struck the Greenland ice cap. Unlike most current future shock scenarios which envisage an Earth dried up and wasting away, Cold Fusion portrays a planet thrown into a sudden Ice Age, with the great northern cities such as Washington, New York and London buried beneath the snow and life scarcely liveable above a the latitude of Arizona or the Mediterranean. So much has the situation deteriorated, in fact, that the US has set up an exclusion zone to keep anyone out from above this new snowline, with guards ready to shoot to kill.

The story starts with a brief but graphic illustration of the fate of some of those who seek to cross the line into the greener southern lands and of those who make a living from trying to aid them. It swiftly moves on to the main character John Cope, a man who awakes with virtually no memory to find himself in what he believes to be a spaceship but is in fact a cryogenic capsule. Apart from the female doctor attending him who has developed a strange affection for him that becomes infatution, the other two characters that bear directly on his consciousness are the two men Byron Grover and Grippe. Cope is gradually released from his prison but still knows nothing of how he came to be incarcerated in it. Meanwhile Grover and Grippe call on the services of Dr Mhairi Magnusson, a Scotswoman who managed to escape from Canada before it was sealed off. They persuade her to leave her research to take charge of Cope's care, mainly in view of her knowledge of neural research. Reluctantly Magnusson agrees, only to find out too late that she is riding a tiger.

Cold Fusion is something of a departure for Windsor Chorlton given the gritty realism of his last book, Latitude Zero and his previous works. This is his first venture into the realm of science fiction and future shock, but he carries it off well while retaining most of the film-noir atmosphere of his other writing. Thus the southern, habitable lands are portrayed as swarming with illegal refugees from the North, while the North itself is a polar desert of the desperate, the ruthless and frightened, including lunatic militia and religious oddballs and psychopaths. Indeed, one of the central figures in the book, although shadowy, is the apocalyptic figure of who has set up his camp right next to the launch base of a spaceship that is to travel ten light years to a planet which it is hoped will be able to support human life. As usual in this genre, human technology has advanced while human nature has remained unchanged. Cybersex has become a daily reality to millions of people who have their own equipment to provide erotica on tap, but there are few permanent relationships portrayed in the book. One of the most telling characters is Grippe, a ruthless man who as son of a Baptist minister once considered the ministry himself but who has now given himself to a bleakly neo-Darwinian view of human nature and the universe.

While drawn with somewhat lighter strokes than the very heavy Latitude Zero, Cold Fusion addresses some of the contemporary fears and issues of the early 21st century, including the possibilities offered by cutting-edge medicine and the realisation that our planet is vulnerable to outside forces as well as human action. It is not a great book in the way that Latitude Zero is, but it is a good book, very readable and thought-provoking and worthy of your attention.

Back to Future Shocks | Back to Books | Back to Culture | Back to Home Page