Writing the Deluge: Dark nights, Apocalypse and Hope with author Stephen Markley

Accidental Gods

Author Stephen Markley opens the doors to The Deluge, his ground-breaking, world-changing Climate/MetaCrisis thriller- 900 pages that absolutely squarely rips into the current system in all its deficiencies - and offers a route through to a future that might work.

This week's guest is someone who has mapped out a possible future in a depth and detail that leaves me awestruck. Stephen Markley's first published novel Ohio, was described as a wild, angry, and devastating masterpiece of a book. Stephen King called it this generation's Grapes of Wrath and there is no doubt that it's a beautifully written, lyrical, devastating debut.

But it turns out Ohio was the book he wrote in the midst of writing the novel we're going to talk about today. The Deluge is nine hundred pages of astonishing depth and breadth that takes as its topic the meta-crisis. It's an excoriating evisceration of neoliberalism and the thousands of small acts of mendacity or cowardice or sheer self-absorption that have got us to the edge of the cliff. It's an examination of just how close we are, and a portrayal of how utterly catastrophic will be the impacts if we step over. It's a deeply political book, but at heart it's also incredibly humane, with a cast of characters that spreads across contemporary American life in ways that I have rarely, if ever, encountered.

I read the book and connected with Stephen because Rupert Read, who was with us last week, called me up and said 'This is a glorious Thrutopian novel, you have to read it.' And there were times when I completely did not believe him. But he's right. it's big. It requires huge dedication. But it's well, well worth the investment in terms of the doors it opens - and the many ways it shows us how we might fail before we finally succeed.

Stephen's website https://www.stephenmarkley.com/
The Deluge https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-deluge-stephen-markley/7544942?ean=9781982123109