The Drowned World
A founding text of both the New Wave and, retrospectively, climate fiction; its psychological inversion of the disaster story remade the form.
Book Entry · Science Fiction
What is This Immortal about?
Conrad Nomikos — arts commissioner of a depopulated, radiation-mutated Earth, several centuries old and cagey about it, possibly the Great Pan and possibly just a Greek with a limp — is assigned to escort a blue-skinned Vegan dignitary on a tour of the planet's ruins, knowing half the party wants the alien dead and the other half may be right. Mythology breathes under every Aegean rock, the banter is permanently cocked, and the question of whether Earth becomes a souvenir or a homeland turns on Conrad's stubborn, secret love for the place. Serialised as ...And Call Me Conrad.
Why it matters
Tied with Dune for the 1966 Hugo — the upset that announced the New Wave generation. Conrad's immortal wise-guy voice became a genre standard issue.
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