Book Review: The Aviator, by Gareth Renowden

“The Aviator” is a global warming science fiction novel by Gareth Renowden. I found it because of this review by Greg Laden at scienceblogs.com. I found that in turn because it is shows up next to my own global warming science fiction novel “Great News” (FREE PDF file) in a Google search with the keywords “global warming science fiction novel”. We are both on the top page there. 🙂

I liked this book and just gave it 5 stars at Goodreads. This is a cross post from Goodreads.

For one, I think that lighter than air travel will become much more important in the future, with less fossil fuel available. I have blogged about such things as the Aeroscraft game changing new technology.

I understood why the main character would have “Newman” as a name.

I did not understand, but learned with a little research, why one of the other characters would have “Kurzweil” as a name.

I am not sure I understand what “Cock money” is supposed to allude to. Or, to be precise, I am not ready to admit publicly understanding that particular reference.

The main story doesn’t have much of a direction. This book is more like a collection of individual shorter stories, like episodes of Star Trek. Nothing wrong with that.

One of my main interests is the idea of getting large-scale desert energy projects up to speed as a countermeasure to global warming. So I was very interested in reading the episode where Desertec comes into play. I learned from the book that building solar plants in the Sahara may actually be problematic because the desert may jump to Europe, and clouds may come to Northern Africa. That’s one aspect I hadn’t heard of yet.

Other aspects of how global warming will play out are described in a quite realistic way. The only problem I have is that there are some earthquakes. Those are obviously not related to global warming, a plot problem this book shares with the most harmful book in history (State of Fear).

I understand that there will be a sequel. I would like to read more about what people in the future are doing to counter global warming, and what their chances of success may be.