Jamie Bartlett
Black Sky Thinking
Apocalypse How? Technology and the Threat of Disaster
By Oliver Letwin
Atlantic Books 248pp £14.99 order from our bookshop
The Rt Hon Sir Oliver Letwin has written one of the most important books of the year. But just because it’s important doesn’t mean it’s enjoyable. It’s important in the same way that an injection or life insurance is important.
Apocalypse How? is set in a gleaming, hyperconnected, smart-car-driving 2037. An extreme space weather event knocks out the national grid and our internet-dependent society, which was running so smoothly five minutes ago, is paralysed for days. Hospitals overflow, the BBC goes off air, smart cars go dumb, the elderly freeze and Google Maps stops working (help!). There’s not even any social media for people to turn to in order to complain about it all.
In presenting this scenario, Letwin is making a simple argument: as we become more interconnected in all aspects of our economy and society, we also become less resilient. In case of a black swan event – a mega-hack, a change in space weather, maybe even the emergence of some deadly new virus – we’ll be in serious trouble. You probably knew this anyway. Don’t tell me dark thoughts haven’t entered your head recently concerning coronavirus, baseball bats, tins of beans and so on. Indeed, the timing of Apocalypse
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
The first holiday camps had an 'ethos of muscular health as a marker of social respectability, and were alcohol-free. How different from our modern Costa Brava – not to mention the innumerable other coasts around the world now changed forever'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/from-mont-blanc-to-magaluf
'The authorities are able to detain individuals in solitary confinement for up to six months at a secret location', which 'increases the risk to the prisoner of torture'.
@lucyjpop looks at two cases of China's brutal crackdown on free expression.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/xu-zhiyong-thupten-lodoe
'"The Last Colony" is, among other things, part of the campaign to shift the British position through political pressure. As with all good propaganda, Sands’s case is based in truth, if not the whole of it.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/empire-strikes-back