We are told as children that we must have ambition to make something of ourselves. What we aren't told is that it must have its limits. To be sure, most people are too lazy to make the effort needed to fulfil it. They figure that just getting along is enough. Anyway, they tell themselves that the odds are stacked against them. That those who succeeded did so by cheating or were just lucky.
The Rising Sea
by Clive Cussler and Graham Brown
450pp
Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops
295 baht
There are varied levels of ambition. To be the best tennis player or golfer. To be awarded a Nobel or Pulitzer. Climb Mount Everest or swim across the English Channel. Amass billions of dollars or build the tallest building. Discover a cure for cancer or invent a machine like no other. Be a conqueror like Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan, Napoleon or Hitler.
Be elected president or prime minister. Ambition is like reaching for the stars. You may get them, but watch what you wish for. It may turn around and bite you. Others may suffer. God has shown that we are trying His patience. When exasperated, He opened the floodgates on his people. An unparalleled example of power. There are those who seek to emulate that power and its results. Clive Cussler and Graham Brown make this the theme of their sci-fi novel The Rising Sea.
The oceans are indeed causing the globe's low-lying lands to sink. This time heaven isn't the cause. Nor the melting ice caps blamed by Al Gore. Who is behind it? The author's literary creation, Numa (National Underwater and Marine Agency), is called to the rescue by the president of the United States. It isn't long before they make their way to the Orient. Japan is checked out but, no, not there. Which leaves China. Yet their powers-that-be deny that they are culpable. Though not taken at their word, the phenomenon doesn't seem to be to their advantage.
Looking further -- rather, deeper. A city has been constructed in a cavern under the China Sea. It is presided over by Han, the top boffin in the land. Even the army commander is under him. His field is artificial intelligence (AI). He's made robots which take over command functions. Believing the contrary, that humans will always be superior to machines, Kurt Austin, head of Numa, has contests with Han, both meaning to prove their point. The sea rise is Han's doing, demonstrating his power. The penultimate chapter supports the idea that unlimited ambition is fatal.
Climate changers don't come off well here. Trillions spent are wasted. Mother Earth will still have periodic ice ages. There will still be droughts and famines. Overpopulation will not be the death of us. Progress on AI is indeed being made. The future isn't bleak.
A future worry
For a pre-teenager in the Big Apple during the Great Depression, life was hard and confusing. Hard because getting 3 cents from my working father was like pulling teeth. Confusing because there were two conflicting views about the future. One was US President FDR's promise that his New Deal would make our lives better. The other was that there was no future.
The Warehouse
by Rob Hart
359pp
Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops
570 baht
I remember seeing men wearing sign boards with the message "The End Is Nigh". It wasn't the only such notice of our imminent demise. People handed out religious tracts saying the same, quoting chapter and verse. And there were the astrologers who maintained that the planets were lining up and would crash into Earth.
In the event, the New Deal proved the correct course. However, the Doomsday prognosticators are alive and well in this day and age. They have latched on to Climate Change as the new bogeyman. The heat will roast us. The cold will freeze us. The rising seas will drown us. To be sure, the scientists disagree about this. One group supports this. The other asserts that nature has done a pretty fair job keeping the planet life-sustaining so far, and will continue doing so. The debate rages. Only about over-population is there no conflict.
Authors focusing on the future are issuing Cassandra warnings about human greed. Corruption in government and underhanded business practices are rampant, as are dangerous pharmaceuticals. Since days of yore, it has been known that the most profitable ways of offering a product is by saying: "It's good for you." It may or may not be, yet profits soar until official tests are made.
Set in the near future, The Warehouse by Yank Rob Hart turns the reader's attention to Cloud, a conglomerate covering the US. It is so huge, one department doesn't know what the other is doing. It claims that whatever it makes is good for you. Workers like Paxton are content doing their shifts and getting a salary. Zinnia is dissatisfied, prying into what makes Cloud tick. Hart raises the serious question of allowing such behemoths to exist with insufficient regulations.
The plot is a good one, but observations the characters make cause you to stop and chew them over. He has a gimmick, moving back and forth among them by heading each of them, minimising the he-saids, she-saids.
FYI: Hart has co-authored crime thrillers with James Patterson and has penned a number of novels and collections of short stories on his own.
For detective buffs, you might want to read his Ash McKenna series.
