I thought that Rolfe’s novel was the worst I’d ever read, but this one gives it a run for its money. To be kind, it’s horribly dated – casual racism and even use of the n-word acceptable in 1962 – and I can’t see for the life of me why, having read it over forty years ago, I bothered to keep it…
It’s marketed as SF, so that’s probably the reason: a new ice age moves in, and Britain (for that’s the sole concern of the writer, really) is uninhabitable. But this is merely a backdrop for a silly tale of domestic affairs and infidelity between barely credible cardboard characters, along with the casual assumption that Brits can just emigrate to warmer climes, the ex-colonies, to escape the worst of the global cooling. Chaos and anarchy in the UK are described briefly in this very sub-JG Ballard catastrophe tale, and the only slightly entertaining aspect is the Brits who decamp to West Africa finding that the boot is very much on the other foot in terms of relationships between the races… However, all the tired old tropes about the inefficiency, disorganisation and corruption of those countries are peddled ad nauseam. Of course, a clever white man can soon sort them out, although the power dynamics are somewhat different.
It really is that bad. I don’t usually get cross with a book, but I wanted real SF: the initial premise is interesting enough, even if barely credible nowadays. Instead there was maudlin tosh involving unconvincing characters. It reminded me of the Alistair MacLean and Hammond Innes adventure fiction I devoured in my early teenage years – only they devised better plots and wrote better yarns.
So Britain is abandoned by its government and eventually a Nigerian expedition sets out to establish a claim to the territory, in an expedition in hovercraft, helped by our token white hero who makes the Nigerians’ incompetence clear, as well as their barely-disguised savagery. The ending is utterly predictable.
I won’t go on. You get the idea. One to avoid.