The White House endgame in America hopefully provides the painful backdrop to the continuing push for a Better World, heralded by the Climate and BLM Movements, gaining traction earlier in the year.

My novel WATER MUST FALL (2020) is eligible for any SFF awards that this year may yield, although there were many fine novels published during the Covid pandemic. Water Must Fall is set in 2048 and posits a world in which end-state capitalism has tightened its grip on essential human resources, such as land and water, so that only a concerted global uprising can resist this. It is set in Southern Africa and the dry-west in America, referencing an earlier ‘The President Who Shall Not Be Named‘ (no guesses needed!) for disrupting the union of the USA. I am busy (through bouts of chronic illness) on a sequel, EARTH SHALL RISE, where indigenous and decolonial ownership of the uprisings introduce new and kinder/shared ways of being-in-the-world (and, ultimately, planetary survival). Let’s say YES to hope!

Nick Wood

January 2021