Corvus

by Harold Johnson

Overview

Corvus welcomes readers to a dystopian future not unlike our own where the illusions of an ideal society have been destroyed and rebuilt using technology and class warfare. By joining classical elements of speculative fiction including surveillance, forbidden relationships, and political dissent, to the traditions of aboriginal storytelling and the legends of the Trickster, Harold Johnson invites readers to consider the consequences of our current way of life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771870924
Publisher:	Thistledown Press, Limited
Publication date:	10/01/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
File size:	588 KB

About the Author

Harold Johnson is the author of four novels and one work of non-fiction. After a stint in the Canadian Navy, which began at the age of seventeen, Johnson became a packsack miner and logger across northern and western Canada. In 1991 he quit the mines to pursue a bachelor’s degree in law from the University of Saskatchewan and a Master of Law degree from Harvard University. He now works as a Crown Prosecutor in La Ronge, Saskatchewan and lives “off the grid” with his wife Joan at the north end of Montreal Lake where they continue the traditions of trapping and commercial fishing common to Harold’s Cree background.

Read an Excerpt

James Lovelock had been right when he warned at the turn of the century: "There is nothing you can do about global warming. Move north and when you get there build nuclear power plants because the people will want electricity." The man who conceived the Gaia hypothesis was old when he made that statement, too old to act on his advice himself, and no one listened. Populations did not begin to shift until the south became too uncomfortable, until the Great Plains began to become the great desert.

There were still people who lived in places like San Diego but they didn't come out in the summer, stayed huddled in air conditioned spaces and waited for a cool breeze off the Pacific. But places like Phoenix and Houston were completely empty. The determined ones tried to stay, tried to keep their cities alive, but nothing lives without water, and when the reservoirs dried and the aquifers drained, the people left. Those with portable wealth left first, those with land tried to stay, but when heat stroke became the leading cause of death, they too followed the exodus north until only the very poor remained and the sand and dust from the desert came on the hot wind and buried them. By the time Arizona got its solar power projects up and running, it was too late. Even with power for their air conditioning, people couldn't live without water.

La Ronge became a city, small at first, manageable, mostly a tourist centre, a place where people came to get out of the heat, and resorts ringed the lake. There had been political and legal battles, some hard fought, mostly over energy and resources that the corporations won easily, won the land on the shore, won hotels and spas, won fishing concessions and water rights.

More people came, people who couldn't afford to indulge in the resorts, people who came to stay, brought their families with them, wanted homes and schools and hospitals, and with their mass of numbers, crowded out the resorts and reclaimed the buildings as condominiums.

And more people came and filled the spaces between the buildings and spread into the forest. The trees they didn't take to build their homes, fell in the storm winds. Sometimes a tree didn't fall, come crashing to the ground, sometimes the winds plucked it, twisted it up, and spun it across the sky.