Speculative Fiction / Cli Fi
Date Published: Oct 2023
Publisher: BAD PRESS iNK
It’s 2050 and climate change catastrophe isn’t the future... it’s now. And climate refugees aren’t other people... it’s you.
The streets are a spider’s web of new tributaries. Everything is underwater. Don’t worry about us, but nothing is the same anymore.
It’s 2050 and the River Rhône has flooded the town of Arles in France so Helen and Isha leave to join their adopted daughter Jana and eleven-month-old granddaughter Ayo in England.
But at Calais, they find that if Isha crosses the Channel, she will be immediately deported as her grandparents were Ugandan-Asian. Faced with the terrible dilemma, Helen chooses to remain with Isha.
Homeless and now stateless, they decide to seek refuge in a friend’s Swiss mountain chalet, but to avoid immigration checkpoints they have to walk, following the Via Francigena, an ancient pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome, and now the preferred escape corridor for refugees fleeing climate catastrophes.
Horrified at her parents embarking on such a dangerous journey, Jana resolves to follow. However, this is not so easy.
They communicate whenever and however they can while battling with exhaustion, terror, and virulent xenophobia as people struggle to protect their increasingly scarce resources.
The journey ends in Parma, Italy, a perfect destination for reasons they could never have imagined.
Praise for Future Imperfect
"Future Imperfect is a thought-provoking and timely book that explores a not-too-distant future where environmental changes and social divisions have reshaped society… It will make you reflect on the choices we make today and the impact they will have on our future."
Kumi Naidoo: Human Rights Activist
International Executive Director of Greenpeace International 2009-2015
Secretary General of Amnesty International 2018-2020
"an incredibly good read… both deeply personal and political, it will become part of the canon climate novels."
Rehad Desai
Producer / Director: Miners Shot Down (2014), How to Steal a Country (2019) and Everything Must Fall (2019)
"This is one of those rare books that becomes part of you…. An engrossing read."
Terry Shakinovsky, author and book journalist
Review
An intriguing premise and absorbing story with surprising twists and turns at every crossroad.
Future Imperfect by Babette Gallard was an absorbing story based on an intriguing premise with twists and turns every step of the way. I was immediately drawn into these engaging characters’ stories as their world went to pieces as they attempted to make their way to safety and back together as a family.
The storytelling is superior, with the author using straightforward narratives from multiple viewpoints supplemented by the emails (Nmails) the characters periodically send to update one another regarding their current circumstances. It was very easy to read but tense as the women made their way across France.
Two journeys are occurring simultaneously, each taking a different route and encountering surprise after surprise in this future France devastated by flood, famine, and fear. Real place names are used and anchor the action to the progress the travelers are making. I was riveted to the pages from start to finish.
I recommend FUTURE IMPERFECT to readers of speculative
fiction and climate fiction, but those who enjoy post-apocalyptic and dystopian-themed
tales will also feel right at home.
About the Author
After clambering up and falling through a 20m roof at school (avoiding lessons), breaking several significant bones, Babette’s equestrian career was over until her mother suggested she continue with the safer art of dressage-riding. For this, she trained in Germany and rode professionally, but after 4 years, she returned to the UK to, as she said, grow up. She took and passed three A levels and then a Humanities degree, and with these survived as a freelance journalist and TV researcher in Bristol until she met her husband, became a hippy and got pregnant. Wanting a better life for their daughter, they decided to live off the land in Portugal, which worked for a few years.
Meanwhile, she wrote anything and everything, fiction, non-fiction, some published, some lucrative, some not, including young adult novels and accounts of her 1000km journeys along St James Way and Via Francigena on horseback. With her third husband, Babette manages their publishing company for the LightFoot guides.
Babette was born in Shropshire but has lived and worked long-term in seven countries, including on a boat and in a jungle. Now living in Johannesburg, in 2022, she received her Masters degree in Creative Writing from the University of Witwatersrand and is currently preparing for an English doctorate at Stellenbosch University, where she will undoubtedly be the oldest but most enthusiastic student.
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