Burning Sky: A Novel

by John Darnton

Overview

This novel brings to life a nightmare scenario in the not-too-distant future when scientists undertake a misbegotten scheme to tame the power of the sun.
 
In Burning Sky, three generations of a family confront the life-and-death challenge of global warming. The first, a cantankerous climatologist, raises the alarm. The second, a brilliant scientist with a lust for power that spawns a dictatorship, constructs “the Cocoon,” a stratospheric shield to deflect sunlight. When it cuts the Earth off from the blue sky and majestic stars and plunges our planet into an eternal miasmic fog, it is up to the third generation—the very son and daughter of the scientist—to try to overthrow him and dismantle his pernicious works.
 
In aiming to undo the damage of their ancestors, perhaps the younger generation can set humanity on a wiser course. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781648210242
Publisher:	Arcade
Publication date:	05/14/2024
Pages:	408
Sales rank:	347,357
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

John Darnton has worked for forty years as a reporter, editor, and foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He was awarded two George Polk Awards for his coverage of Africa and Eastern Europe, and the Pulitzer Prize for his stories that were smuggled out of Poland during the period of martial law. He is a bestselling author whose previous novels include Neanderthal and The Darwin Conspiracy. He lives in New York.

Editorial Reviews

"This compulsively readable and beautifully written novel has everything: a thrilling mystery, a sweeping family drama, and a profound look at human nature in the face of the most pressing threat of our time.  Simply put, this is one terrific book."—David Grann, New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Wager

"A haunting story about an all-too-possible future. It's a page-turner that's also a wake-up call.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction

“We’re only just beginning to imagine the strange new world being brought into being by climate change—and what we may do in scrambling to adapt. Vivid and lyrical, imaginatively conceived and brilliantly plotted, Burning Sky sets a new standard for climate fiction. Vital.”—David Wallace-Wells, New York Times bestselling author of The Uninhabitable Earth

“A riveting dystopian thrill ride. Burning Sky is not just a smart, speedy, scary novel, it’s a profound warning about what can happen when science goes wrong. It’s also a call to arms: We’re going to have to pay rigorous attention and make real sacrifices—starting now—if we want our children to enjoy blue skies and green pastures. The stakes are only . . . life as we know it.”—Joseph Klein, author of Primary Colors and Charlie Mike

“A major achievement—a future-facing tale about the future we all, on this planet, must face. John Darnton manages to yoke ancient and recent history to the fast-approaching horrors of climate catastrophe. He gives us a family story, a multi-generational saga of science and scientists run amok, as well as those brave few who rise up in opposition. This novel is itself a rainbow stretched across the sky.”—Nicholas Delbanco, author of Why Writing Matters
 

From the Publisher

2024-04-17
A speculative thriller about the effects of global warming.

Terrestrial temperatures will soon reach the point of no return, and authorities come up with a cockamamie scheme: Populate the stratosphere with sulfur particles to filter out much of the sunlight and cool things off. It’s called the Cocoon and covers the Northern Hemisphere, which is all the powers that be care about. The result is an utter societal and ecological disaster beginning with the Great Cull in 2039, with rising oceans and the deaths of millions of people and countless trees and animals. Social media collapses. No one can see the sun, the moon and stars, or the sky. And if that isn’t crazy enough, authorities ban the color blue so people will forget what they’re missing. A Color Guard tries to kill all birds with blue feathers and universally prohibits the display of Color X, as the 470-nanometer wavelength is officially called. Even the American flag is forbidden. The leader of this police state is a man named Messian, an obvious hint at "messianic." Meanwhile, a young man named Yon travels to South America and learns, among other things, that shadows exist. The story spans decades as people try to figure out how to deal with the hot mess they’ve made of the world, and then they make it worse. The Cocoon “was supposed to save everything,” but clearly it’s one big screw-up. Now people wonder, “What was it like before they stole the sky?” Some plot elements seem straight out of a thriller writer’s handbook: a scientist’s suspicious death down an icy moulin, requisite bad guys, a Resistance with an unexpected connection to the Power. It’s a justifiably bleak novel and a rather preachy one: Stop polluting now, folks, or this is what you could be in for. And there’s an attempted execution by hanging that—gotta say it—is quite a stretch. The ideas of launching sulfur-laden rockets to Save Us All and of banning blue seem implausible, but they are entertaining. Meanwhile, the question remains: What will we do when Earth heats beyond its tipping point?

An enjoyable novel that should spark important discussion.

Kirkus Reviews