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SMALL, WELL APPOINTED FUTURE. SEMI DETACHED.
If the end of the world is nigh, then surely it's only sensible to make alternative arrangements. Certainly the Earth has its points, but what most people need is something smaller and more manageable. Of course there are those who say that's planetary treason, but who cares what the weirdos and terrorists think? Not Nathan. All he cares is that his movie gets made and that there's somebody left to see it.
In marketing terms the end of the world will be very big. Anyone trying to save it should remember that.
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Customer Reviews
The story follows a group of unlikely heros on their quests to save the planet. A planet that is now frantically buying claustropheres (self-contained, self-supporting environments), for every back yard.
The narrator changes with the characters, beginning with Nathan, an anal, struggling, British scriptwriter. He has come to Los Angeles to pitch an advert for claustropheres to marketing genius, media baron and claustrosphere empire owner, Plastic Tolstoy. "At the age of twelve Plastic Tolstoy made his first million...He wrote to the manufacturers (of cereals), suggesting that they reverse the ratio and market boxes full of snap-together plastic toys with a free corn-flake hidden amongst them. Kids went crazy for it."
Plastic is the story's villain, his main adversary is Jurgen Thor, leader of Natura, a fundamentalist version of Greenpeace.
For the romantics Rosalie Connolly, an Irish Natura terrorist, and Max, a pretentious movie star, provide the love interest.
The frequency of the environmental disasters and the twists and turns along the way make this book hard to put down-how will it all end?
Ben Elton gained notoriety writing for Blackadder and The Young Ones. He always touches on issues that most other comedians shy away from. This book is no exception. As with his other novels he has managed to put forth his opinions in a highly enjoyable and light-hearted style. This book has great entertainment value. It can be easily read and provides plenty of laughs.
"Claustropheres: who are you to deny your kids a future?"
This Other Eden seems to be his least famous work; ominously, there were no quotes celebrating the book's quality in either this one, or in the Also Available... blurbs in his other novels. Had a picked a duffer? I don't think I did at all.
The plot returns to that familiar stomping ground of Elton's: politics and the environment. They say write about what you know, and Elton certainly does know what he's talking about here. The crux of the story - the end of the world is coming sooner or later, so let's market it... and accelerate it as a by-product. Elton gives us his usual bunch of contrasting characters, and without wanting to spoil anything for you, the least promising of the protaganists had me cheering for him by the end. A masterful emotional journey this one...
It's a little slow to get going, but once the odd murder happened and the conspiracy mushroomed, I found it gripping. The climax - a cinematic showpiece, written so well I could see the camera angles - was magnificent, and even amongst the set pieces, there are so many little knowing observations and concepts I loved, some of them Douglas Adamsesque.
Of the books of his I've read so far, this is the most blatantly SF, but it hasn't really been advertised as such, and maybe that's why no one talks about it much in comparison to Stark or Inconceivable. Ben Elton? He's a comedian, he writes clever political environmental satire, not SF.
So, Science Fiction or clever political environmental satire? The answer's simple. It's both. Fiction IS allowed to be multi-tasking you know. And it's actually really good.
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