Ring Rise Ring Set & World in Winter

Until I finish Neuromancer here is a review of two books I read as a child. They both chart a future where the climate has snapped to become extremely cold. In Ring Rise Ring Set (1982) by Monica Hughes we have a young girl who lives in a scientific colony in the northern latitudes placed there to understand the ring of dust that circles the planet and is causing the chill. The girl feels trapped and claustrophobic in the facility and stows away on an expedition only to be abandoned by accident. She is rescued by Inuits who adopt her. Eventually she returns to her people to warn them that their experimental spraying of the snow in an attempt to melt it is killing the caribou. She is then faced with the choice of staying in comfort or continuing to live with the Inuits... A truly memorable story from my childhood that works on so many levels. The whole narrative feels isolated like the rest of civilisation doesn't exist - the outside world is not discussed. There is just claustrophobic shelter from the vast cold and dark outside.

Next we have World In Winter (1962) by John Christopher told in three parts. In part one it is the dawning of a new ice age as experienced through some people in London and their escape to equatorial regions before it is too late. Part two has the main protagonist living in Africa and being discriminated against because he is an immigrant. Part three is the return to London and battles with the people who have remained. The characters and dialogue have dated terribly badly and one can almost taste the age of the prose. It isn't a bad throwaway novel and the parts in Africa are particularly memorable it's just I feel like I could have made a better story out of it. In the hands of John Wyndham the realities of the breakdown of society would have been better explored and I can barely imagine what psychological realms J. G. Ballard might have explored.