Mixed Pickles - the Book log 2012

Baby, it's cold outside

An interesting, '60s take on racism and imperialism as a climate change plunges Europe into deep, and seemingly perpetual, winter.  The lucky few manage to escape to Africa where they find themselves the new underclass, forced to work in the same kind of conditions that the native South Africans found themselves when subjugated by their white masters.

Although Christopher uses the story as a fable to illustrate just how wrong white behaviour was/is (obvious now, but not so evident to a sizeable proportion of the British population back when this book was written), he still falls into the trap of stereotyping black behaviour as lustful (particularly concerning white women), greedy, corrupt, incompetent, and riven by tribalism.  Which is not to say that the remnants of British civilisation maintains a "noble savagery"; far from it.  The reamaining survivors tend to a form of new feudalism (a state which Christopher has survivors of his many catastrophe novels  revert to), with only a few looking to rebuild society rather than remake it into something which supports them at the expense of others.