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Jeff wrote to me by email the other day after I contacted him and he said: "Hi Dan, here is some information about my novel Melt which you might use for your website and pass on to others in Taiwan. I will be happy to see you promote my novel on your blog.
Please contact me if you need any further information. The novel is available as an ebook on Amazon and should also be up on Amazon as a paperback soon.''
He added, after I asked him if I could call his novel a cli-fi novel: "Yes please call it cli-fi. I think that terms fits well. "
It turns out that Jeff has had some connections with people in Taiwan recently, too. He tells me:
''Hi Dan, I visited Taiwan in late December 2018 and the first weeks of January 2019 on holiday with my wife, Cath.
''I work with a forum of 19 Māori tribes and one of our interests in travelling to Taiwan was to learn a little about the links between the indigenous tribes of Taiwan and the spread of the Austronesian languages all the way to New Zealand. It is part of my interest in the expression of unity and diversity; the ways in which we are distinctive while also being closely linked. This theme plays a background role in my novel and I think climate change will enhance this theme in political dialogue.
''One thing climate change is already doing is creating migration pressures and a response to this is to build and deepen our narratives of connection. As I understand it the indigenous Taiwanese crossed to the island during an ice age, when a land bridge existed. So there is a direct link between China and the Taiwanese / Polynesian / Māori communities. I pick this up in my novel in part because Chinese migration and investment in New Zealand is large and in my novel I imagine that this process continues and becomes more important. Rather than lazily approach this influence from a fearful perspective I decided to approach it from an integration and shared genealogy perspective, allowing me to talk about ideas of integration as well as disintegration.
''My novel MELT makes a link between the indigenous Taiwanese and the Polynesian / Maori cultures.''
SOME BACKGROUND INFO ABOUT THE NOVEL:
Melt by author Jeff Murray offers a vision of adaptation to an emerging catastrophe driven by climate change. A near-term future that forces us to reconsider whether we can maintain ideas of “otherness” and keep our humanity. The novel traces lines of familial unity from Taiwan through the Pacific Islands to the New Zealand Māori community. In doing so it draws links to the communities of the Austronesian language family, including indigenous Taiwanese communities (https://en.
Vai Shuster arrives in Auckland to advocate for the delivery of a long-standing promise: a place in New Zealand for her Pacific island’s people as climate destruction makes their home uninhabitable.
Panicked, but endlessly adaptive, the world is awake to the reality of three degrees climate breakdown. In 2048 the worst effects are yet to be felt, but the destructive phase is locked in. A great reshuffle of people and nature is occurring.
But this is not an apocalypse for all. Vai finds herself in a world that the powerful and their mid-level helpers are managing to navigate, and new opportunities are emerging. There are both forces of integration and disintegration at work. Antarctica is melting and New Zealand is a gateway to the last continent. Can Vai’s community help build a new Hong Kong in southern New Zealand to serve Antarctica? Or is New Zealand fully occupied by the demands of the big three – China, America and India - as they begin to direct the settlement of Antarctica?
The scale and pace of change are drowning Vai’s voice, turning what should be a simple mission into a desperate hunt for somewhere to stand before it’s too late. Brave and resourceful, Vai sets out on an epic journey into the new world, one that is finding the poor to be superfluous. How much will she risk for her community and what price will she pay?
This novel considers the geopolitical implications of Antarctica beginning to melt; the last great prize on Earth – an unclaimed continent:
Access: We continue to move toward plus two degrees of climate change and Antarctica begins to melt. New Zealand then becomes one of the key launch pads into Antarctica for large scale settlements. Powerful nations led by China, America and India seek access via New Zealand and that small country comes under pressure from forces it has little control over. A new city the size of Hong Kong is proposed in southern New Zealand.
Refuge: As climate change continues New Zealand is confronted with how willing it is to give refuge to others that are in impossible situations. In a context of the pressures from those seeking access to Antarctica, New Zealand loses focus on its commitments to the Pacific island nations. The potential for millions of migrants and refugees to seek access to New Zealand is considered.
The novel is set in 2048 when the existing moratorium on mining Antarctica will be renegotiated.
I hope you can also draw on the blogs on my website, especially: https://www.
A REVIEW OF THE BOOK IN
NEW ZEALAND MEDIA
Melt: A Kiwi climate-change novel of big ideas and an all too-plausible future
JEFF MURRAY
Jeff Murray's 'Melt' is a novel of very big ideas.
REVIEW: For much of the 20th Century, the imagined world was destroyed with regularity.
On either side of the two World Wars, books and movies like The War of the Worlds and Invasion of the Body Snatchers depicted alien armies devastating Earth. During the era of great social displacement that came with the 1960s, fiction often portrayed human civilisation battling against destruction by its own internal flaws.
Fantasy was the playground for very real fears. Now, it seems that climate change is the primary worry of our age. It might not have reached the minds of some denialist politicians, but it has come to dominate speculative fiction.
Jeff Murray is a New Zealand writer who works in local government and iwi engagement. His book, Melt, brings a unique perspective to the subject.
Jeff Murray's Melt is out now.
It is 2048. Vai Shuster is from Independence, a low-lying Pacific Island, regularly overwhelmed by storms and rising water-levels. After an eight-day cyclone, its 20,000 people are facing the fact that they cannot return to their homes with any sense of permanence. Vai wants New Zealand to make good on its long-term promise to resettle them as climate refugees.
She travels to Auckland as an advocate for her people. There are, however, many other forces at work. Are they even welcome in New Zealand? But along with the destruction of the old world, there seem to be new opportunities. As Antarctica's ice melts, New Zealand is ideally placed to be a gateway to the southern continent and its resources.
Is it possible that Vai's community can become part of a "new Hong Kong"? What about the territorial demands of China, America, and India? Murray creates a very believable geopolitical quandary.
Murray's characters are forced to change and develop as the world around them shifts. Vai's experiences take her from an island overwhelmed by storm-waves to the machinations of finance and the expedient self-interest of others.
Along with Antarctica – particularly Marie Byrd Land, a portion of the continent that has so-far been claimed by no nation – the Southern Ocean itself eventually becomes a territorial battleground. Is the melting of the ice the final opportunity?
Melt is a novel of very big ideas. It is also a novel with a purpose – and it is here that it keeps or loses its readers. Murray is not a stylist. He is a storyteller. He also desires to teach. His good intentions are evident in the novel's structure and plot.
As speculative fiction, it rehearses an unsettling and too-plausible future. For that alone, it warrants attention.
Melt by Jeff Murray (Mary Egan Publishers, New Zealand, $35).
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