Rubicon Beach is a novel split into three sections which interlink with each other. The first is set in a flooded Los Angeles, following a man named Cale who has recently been released from prison and keeps seeing a girl decapitating a man, who he believes is already dead. The second section follows the girl, Catherine, from childhood and documents her journey to America and what comes after, while the third section follows a gifted mathematician who is never very precise with dates or ages.
The book is very surreal which suits its apparent interest in the roles dreams play in our lives: for example, the American dream.
As I am looking at the handling of the issue of climate change in science fiction, I couldn’t help but be interested in Erickson’s descriptions of the characters surrounding environment, such as Cale’s numerous boat journeys through flooded Los Angeles, visiting places that we see intact in other sections of the book, such as a hotel that the girl, Catherine visits.
The book was a very different read to the first book I read for this blog: The drowned world by JG Ballard, in that, while The Drowned world can be surreal itself at times, you always have a sense of what the author is trying to tell you, while, in Rubicon Beach, much is left up to the reader’s interpretation.
Science Fiction and Climate change 