The Book of SANA’A (A City In Short Fiction)
A frightening look into the future, set in LONDON
17th July 2023
One by Eve Smith – a frightening look into the future, set in London.
One is a book brings together two major themes in the world and projects them into a London of the future. The first is the ability of women to control their own fertility – most notorious, perhaps, was China’s one child policy – but a number of other countries now follow similar restrictive policies, and some countries (such as the US following the repeal of Roe versus Wade) are putting ever stronger anti-abortion laws into effect. The reverse of the same coin. The second theme is the global climate crisis and its impact on weather patterns across the globe.
Project forward (probably a couple of hundred years into the future). The UK has suffered major major floods and climate induced events. Technology has solved many of the problems (including artificially grown crops and environment friendly infrastructure) but resources are very scarce. A strict one child per family policy is in place to ensure enough to go round. At the same time the UK has become a magnet for those around the world seeking a better life away from the ravages that have been inflicted on their own countries. Immigration control is extreme with people being housed in squalid camps and some being deported to other ‘safe’ countries (ring any bells?).
Kai works for the Ministry of Population and Family Planning. Her job – as a ‘baby reaper’ – is to ensure that the one child policy is enforced. She insists on abortions, and increasingly (as technology advances) she works on the implantation of long life birth control chips into women to reduce the number of pregnancies. She believes she is working for the good of the whole community. Then her life is turned upside down when she discovers she has an illegal sister. She makes contact with her sibling, who is a key member of FREE – an organisation intent on exposing the corruption and cruelty pervading the government of the country. The ONE (One Natural Earth) party is totalitarian and tolerates no dissent. It spreads its message of unrivalled, but dubious, success through a massive propaganda campaign. But much of what they talk about is a lie. Kai begins to learn about the solid conditions in which immigrants are kept and the medical experiments that are carried out on them, plus the fate of ‘spare’ children taken from their parents and kept in horrific orphanages – sometimes allowed to die. sometimes trafficked abroad as house slaves or child brides. Eventually Kai confronts her boss, the Minister, with very surprising results.
One is a very good and thought provoking book. It is not that hard to see the type of society that exists in this portrayal of the future actually coming about. We need to be very aware of where politics, climate change, and science can lead us.
Tony for the TripFiction team
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OMG! I really do need to read this book, as I can so relate to one side of the argument the storyline presents, although I am not going to say which side, as my views are probably very much in the minority.
It will be interesting to see what reasoning, through her characters, the author uses to back up her opposing viewpoints.
Thanks for featuring this book, a great review!