Working Together Sustainably

This new Sci-Fi novel exposes the dangers of exceeding the limitations of our environment.

As someone interested in history, I often wonder what it would be like to transport a person from the middle ages and observe their reaction to a 21st century environment. It couldn’t happen, of course, because we don’t yet have the technology to carry it out. But just suppose that several centuries from now humanity does develop the technology and takes a small group of people from our time in order to observe their behaviour in an artificial environment, how might that pan out?

That is the basic premise of Ms Arvey’s novel. The narrative follows the life of Elaine, a woman who wakes alone and naked with no memory of a past life. She is in a strange place . A place with no colour. Where everything is gray. How can she survive: find food and water, construct a shelter, fabricate clothing? We observe her as she discovers how to do all of those things. So does the professor who has devised and is running the research project from her future time.

In parallel with Elaine‘s story is the life of this professor and her research assistants. Their culture is very different from ours yet clearly embodies some ideas that are familiar to us.