Out West Books suggests three titles that lean toward dystopia

Each week as part of SunLit — The Sun’s literature section — we feature staff recommendations from book stores across Colorado. This week, the staff from Out West Books in Grand Junction recommends a nonfiction comic about nuclear tests in Colorado, a dinosaur story and a cautionary water novel.

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From the publisher:  This graphic history tells the history of Project Plowshare in Colorado. Plowshare was an attempt to use nuclear explosives for peaceful uses, like earth moving or energy exploration. The Atomic Energy Commission did two underground nuclear tests in western Colorado’s Piceance Basin to see if nukes could help free natural gas — Project Rulison in 1969 and Project Rio Blanco in 1973. This graphic history details the arguments for and against these tests, their outcome, and their legacy on Colorado’s landscape today.

From Marya Johnston, owner: “Plowshare” is a graphic novel that packs an enormous punch.  What this little book does in a few short pages brings more light to a little known part of Colorado history to which many of us have never been “exposed.” 

My incredulity encompassed the many, many crazy AEC ideas of the time, including using nukes to build a second Panama Canal and to build a new harbor along the coast of Alaska (Project Chariot). But the most incredible part of the story is that the AEC didn’t test this technology unsuccessfully only once in northwestern Colorado, they did it twice!  This graphic novel is a must to complete your Colorado history shelf.

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From the publisher: Tif Tamim wants nothing more than to be a dinosaur buckaroo. An orphan in search of a place to rest his head and a job to weigh down his pockets, Tif has bounced from circus to circus, yearning for a chance to ride a prehistoric beauty under the sparkling lights of a big-top.

To become a buckaroo, Tif needs to learn the tools of the trade, yet few dino maestros want to take a scrawny nobody from nowhere under their wing. But when Tif frees a dino from an abusive owner and braves the roving gangs of the formerly-American West to bring the dino to safety, he catches someone’s eye. And boy, how those eyes dazzle Tif from the back of a bucking carnotaur.

From Didi Herald, bookseller: In a dystopian future where the U.S. has splintered, traveling groups take dinosaurs, snatched from their time, to rodeos traveling from town to town. When Tif loses control of a dinosaur that bolts, causing damage, it is shot but not killed and cannot be used in the performances anymore.

Tif is kicked out of the group he was working for and sets out on a bicycle armed with poison and the leashed, lead filled dinosaur. The wounded dinosaur must be taken back to the location it was taken from so it can be sent back to its own time. While it is a future dystopia, folks who like Westerns will relate to the characters and their lives. A romantic young daredevil with a conscience is always fun.

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From the publisher:  In the near future, the Colorado River has dwindled to a trickle. Detective, assassin, and spy, Angel Velasquez “cuts” water for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, ensuring that its lush arcology developments can bloom in Las Vegas. When rumors of a game-changing water source surface in Phoenix, Angel is sent south, hunting for answers that seem to evaporate as the heat index soars and the landscape becomes more and more oppressive.

 There, he encounters Lucy Monroe, a hardened journalist with her own agenda, and Maria Villarosa, a young Texas migrant, who dreams of escaping north. As bodies begin to pile up, the three find themselves pawns in a game far bigger and more corrupt than they could have imagined, and when water is more valuable than gold, alliances shift like sand, and the only truth in the desert is that someone will have to bleed if anyone hopes to drink.

From Didi Herald, bookseller: Angel Velasquez is a water knife, someone who will go to any lengths to protect the water rights of their employer and will do anything to secure more — which has deadly consequences when rumors of a lost water rights deed appears. This violent tale is horrifyingly on target, foretelling a future when the wealthy thrive in verdant water-rich arcologies and the poor must drink their own recycled urine just to exist. As climate change impacts the West, this cautionary thriller is more than timely. Bacigalupi, a Coloradan, has won several major science fiction awards including the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards.

From Marya Johnston, owner:  I’ve never been the same since reading “The Water Knife.”  I can’t pass by Cimarron and Blue Mesa without thinking about it.  Though I’m old enough to remember what the river looked like before Blue Mesa Dam, it’s fun to imagine it reverted to a great trout fishing mecca again, once the dam no longer exists (as in the book).  When flying over Phoenix, I  see the swimming pools at every home and green golf courses, and think of this book. 

This might be one of those summers that we don’t have to imagine what things might look like without water.

Type of Story: Review

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