Drowning Towers

by George Turner

Book Overview

Francis Conway is Swill - one of the 90% in the year 2041 who must subsist on the inadequate charities of the state. A young boy growing. Life, already difficult, is rapidly becoming impossible for... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 038078601X
• ISBN13: 9780380786015
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Avon Books
• Length: 387 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 4.2" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

A frightening but realistic scenario

The late George Turner has captured science, fears of global warming and society change into a brilliantly read book. His scenario may not be entirely feasible, but it is indeed a possibility of a future that we are creating and have no control over.

Bleak future

This novel pictures a world facing the rising sea with the resulting decline of the land mass. It based in the middle of the 21st century Australia. The unemployed form more than half the population and they are massed in specially built high rise towers and kept there by the police and the army. The story traces the fall of a family from sweet (i.e. employed with reasonable income) into the hell of unemployment.the story from the viewpoint of four main characters and more minor ones. While this may seem confusing at first, the author managed to turn this into an interesting way of examining different personalities each with its own selfish motive and self centered view of the world. this one of the best novels of what I call "Future fiction" as opposed to authentic science fiction

Fascinating, absorbing, powerful, wonderful!!!

George Turner has an extraordinary way with characters and situations in a human culture rapidly on its way down. This novel is an enthralling snapshot before it hits bottom.No aliens, no hard sci-fi, just an appalling vision of a degraded society reduced to "sweets" and "swill". Turner requires few words to paint a dense and intense reality peopled with unlovable but heroic and respectable individuals.The story is told in the several voices of its players, a well employed technique that permits insight into the otherwise obscure internal worlds of the actors.The main plot is concerned with a relatively brief incident that becomes a fulcrum on which are balanced and revealed remarkable revelations of the past that led to this extremity and of the possible futures that inaction and lack of forethought might well bring.A most thought provoking and worrying novel, an intense good read, a plea for wisdom and more than just being.Read this book!!!

Essential Sci-Fi

Drowning Towers is the first George Turner novel I've read and I certainly plan to correct that problem from now on. I was immensely impressed with the well-developed characters, the feasible futuristic world and how the plot itself kept moving and evolving right to the end. The novel was set in Australia but it could well have been set in any developed country. Though Turner's imagination delves into the politics, economics and technology of this future world it mainly is a human story. Its shows the possible results of how the communities and countries of the present could bring the future generations close to extinction. The main part of the novel revolves around 1 futuristic family and other individuals connected with it and their fight for survival and quality of life in a world that is spiralling into self-destruction. The switch between narrators gives the characters dimension and mortality. Turner's chapters, even his sentences, are rounded out and stand so well on their own - so many are poignant - but you don't get the feeling he was trying to show off...the wordiness works for him. By the end of the novel I felt attached to the characters and prompted to consider what seems to be a very realistic and well thought-out view of the future, hence, essential Sci-Fi and a very good read.

Good book!

The author of this book invokes the future with realism and intrigue. The book is about human overpopulation and how culture interacts more than the melting of the polar caps and the rising of Earth's oceans. The characters were realistic to the point of being frightful. I hope that as a race we realize that we do have control over our future. If you want a book that makes you think, this is it