Sky Seed — a chilling story.

Bill McGuire’s speculative fiction is timely and ice-crystal clear.

There are many reasons why novels are written. Some writers see themselves as artists, others as entertainers. Some might seek fame and fortune or self-justification — recording what they might hope to be a legacy enshrined as history. Others must deliver a message — and that, of all the motivators, is the driver that makes words spill so easily onto the page.

Bill McGuire has a message. No amount of peer-reviewed deep study, with eventual publication in top-notch science journals destined for university library shelves, can grip and hold the imagination of those whose last brush with academia was an ‘O’ Level pass in Physics with Chemistry. Fiction sometimes rises above entertainment and artistry — though these ingredients do also, of course, contribute to communication.

Cautionary tales rarely reach mass audiences. Margaret Attwood’s dystopian Handmaid’s Tale or some of John le Carré’s reportage disguised as spy novels, are honourable exceptions.

Fewer still are grounded in environmental science, and only those with cinematic potential achieve any major breakthrough.

After the traumas of 2020, Sky Seed, sadly, seems only too believable — but also great fun for any reader with a vivid imagination not already dulled by the apparent gloom-upon-gloom leadership incompetence of pandemic plus Brexit.

But why, I ask, did Professor William (Bill) J. McGuire write it?

“I have research interests in both volcanology and abrupt climate change, and how suddenly our world can be transformed in response to tweaking — either natural or technological.

Skyseed is an expansion of ‘The Fix’ — one of my shorter attempts at ‘speculative fiction’. For me, it ticks all the boxes — a volcano, a doomed and risky plan to ‘fix’ the climate emergency using geoengineering, and the rapid flip from temperate world to icehouse. Above all, I wrote the book because — despite its gloomy theme — it was great fun — certainly much more fun than writing yet another research journal paper.”

In this imagined world beyond 2028, the risks of unhinged geoengineering are ice-crystal clear, but the reader will surely also grasp the dire consequences of wasting the next eight post-pandemic years not transforming how we co-exist with mother earth.

Skyseed: ISBN: 978 1913208 882