Greetings Picklesversians,
The Ides of April are upon us already! It’s hard to believe the year is marching on so fast. Those of you with excellent memories may recall that April 13th is a special date for the world of ArkTech because it happens to be Charlotte Vance’s birthday! 🥳🎂
Yes, our friendly neighbourhood Head of Awkward Questions was born… wait… will be born on the 13th of April 2074, which is exactly 50 years from today. So Happy Minus 50th Birthday to her!
She shares her birthday with her non-identical twin sister Violet, so perhaps that’s who’s depicted above in the AI-generated image. I don’t think Charlotte would wear quite that much purple… or be able to afford a cake like that. But who knows? Maybe Ben pulled a few strings.
Anyway, in honour of Charlotte’s big day, I thought I’d share with you a mini-timeline of some important future-historical events from the world of the ArkTech series. Here you go:
📅 A Timeline of Future History
2037 – The world invests in a geo-engineering solution intended to address global warming.
2048 to 2057 – The Melt
2061 – ArkTech’s three co-founders launch the company together.
2074 – Charlotte and Violet Vance are born.
2076 – Solar Shards are launched, revolutionising renewable energy storage. The Citrine disaster represents the greatest loss of life on the North Sea since the Piper Alpha disaster in 1988.
2091 – Charlotte’s 17th birthday.
2101 – We meet up with Charlotte and Ben for the events of Beware the Ides of April, Artificial Selection, and Time Hack.
We’ve only got to wait 77 years for the present to catch up with the events of the ArkTech series (but you won’t have to wait that long until the books are published… I promise!).
As you can see, technology designed to combat climate change is part of the backdrop to the series. Recently, one of you wrote to me to ask about the green themes in Beware the Ides of April, so I thought I’d dedicate a little space in this month’s email to this.
The Fenland Sea
My aim is to write entertaining mystery stories. I chose to set them in the future because I find it fun imagining the different ways things might turn out. These days, it’s hard to think about the future without considering the impact of global warming.
Something I’ve learned while working on this series is, as an author, it’s much easier to destroy everything than it is to fix everything. (Perhaps this is also true in a more general sense!) I didn’t fancy writing about a Mad Max style hellscape where almost everything is dead and the remaining humans fight over resources (not that there’s anything wrong with these stories… it’s just not the fictional world I wanted to build). Instead, I wanted to explore one version of what it might take for human civilisation to make it through to the other side of the climate crisis.
I’ve approached this in a number of ways, but today I’d like to tell you about the Fenland Sea, where ArkTech have their headquarters.
To help set the scene, here’s a photograph I took of a Fen not far from where I live in Cambridgeshire, UK. (If you’re not familiar with the term, Fens are a type of wetland.)
As you can see, it’s both flat and watery. (In fact, “flat and watery” is the phrase I would use as the tagline for a Cambridgeshire tourist office marketing campaign… I bet they’re glad I don’t work for them.)
Roughly 400 years ago, this area was just as flat, but a whole lot more watery. That is, until King Charles I spotted a business opportunity. By turning the wetlands into farmland he could earn money from taxing the local farmers. So, he hired the expertise of Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden to drain the Fens. People at the time weren’t very happy about it because their way of life depended on the wetlands, although it’s probably worth noting that this wasn’t the reason Charles I ended up getting beheaded… Apparently, he did other things to upset people, too.
Anyway, the point is that much of the area of England where I live now is land that lies at or below sea level. As the average global surface temperature increases, causing ice to melt faster and faster, this part of the world (like many low-lying coastal regions worldwide) is increasingly under threat. I recently went to a talk by a conservation scientist called Charlie Gardner, who recently walked 180 miles from Cambridge to Norwich on land that will soon be under water to try to raise awareness of the pressing problem. He learned that people in this region are actually already aware… they just feel like there’s nothing they can do to stop it.
Climate Central has created interactive maps where you can see which regions worldwide would be underwater if sea levels rise up to 10 metres. As you can see in the image below, the Fens is a big red splodge. (The image also helps to illustrate why the engineers who drained the Fens came from the Netherlands!)
In the ArkTech series, I’ve taken the concept of sea level rise to its most extreme limit. I do my best to keep the books scientifically accurate wherever possible (while also leaving creative space for breakthroughs that lead to new technologies), so I haven’t gone with the Waterworld approach of raising sea levels by 7600 metres (24,900 feet). Where would all that water even come from?! Current estimates suggest that the maximum sea level rise possible is somewhere between 60 to 70 metres (196 to 229 feet).
But that much melting would only happen in reality if triggered by some deeply unfortunate series of events. (Enter me.)*
In the ArkTech series, the Fenland Sea was formed as a result of massive sea level rise. I find it an interesting scenario to explore. And I hope by talking about the worst impacts of global warming, we can make it less likely they’ll be allowed to happen in real life. 🤞
OK, that’s all from me this month.
Hoping all’s well in your own personal universes.
Until next time…
Marianne
PS. For those of you who enjoyed the AI-generated images of my trip to Spain in December, here’s a rendering of me narrating an audiobook at the recording studio.
*Yes, that was an obscure Easter Egg for all the Lin-Manuel Miranda fans out there. What can I say except you’re welcome?
