The ocean is on fire. The ocean is on fire! Off the coast of British Columbia, two supertankers have collided, spilling a combined 600 million gallons of oil that ignites into an unstoppable inferno. As the conflagration rages, the rickety diesel trainer sub HMCS Swordfish is given an impossible task: rescue the Vice President of the United States of America, currently stranded on a 30 foot fishing trawler directly in the path of the FIRESPILL!
This is pure, sublime disaster fiction: our modern, interconnected world, which we're uniquely poised through our high technology to burn to ash. American and Soviet oil tankers, an out-of-order collision radar, a surly crew of post-Vietnam submariners and a cast of Presidents, Prime Ministers, and sheiks, all of us like children playing house with our finger on the button. It isn't just one broken link, one failed piece that brings destruction, it's the whole rotten edifice, the whole out-of-control monster we call civilization. It's inevitable, it's inescapable, it's the final judgment for guilty and innocent alike! There's no special dispensation for main characters, no plot-armor for heroes, no - these, then, are the damned.
It's a very Canadian disaster as well, dealing as it does with the nexus of superpowers and global trade, of stiff upper lip fait accompli decisions made to save face in the face of the unthinkable. A fierce debut novel from author Ian Slater, who would later find his niche writing a series of WWIII thrillers.
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| Armageddon on the brain ... |
For its killing heat and a searing finish, Firespill earns four flames out of four:
McClelland & Stewart-Bantam Limited, 1977
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