“News from the Clouds” is the third book in Robert Llewellyn’s Gavin Meckler series.  In the first book Gavin flies a small plane into a weather anomaly above Britain and ends up in a parallel earth were people live in a utopian green society.  In the second his efforts to return home send him into the future to a technologically advanced society run by women.  In the third he travels to a parallel universe where the surface of the earth is no longer inhabitable due to high winds.  Specifically hundreds of miles per hour, not unlike the atmosphere in Jupiter.  People live in giant lighter-than-air cities, a.k.a. “clouds”, or massive underground structures called “culverts”.  Small planes and weather anomalies are of course just sci-fi plot devices.  Mr Llewellyn wanted to explore alternate societies.

In “News from the Clouds” all of the materials are as lightweight as possible, living space is dynamically allocated.  Elevators are made of only the most essential components to move a person vertically.  People need to be cycled from culvert to cloud to get enough sun exposure.  Since Gavin is from 2011, many people in 2211 carry animosity against him because he is from the time when humanity brought about decimation of the ecosphere.  This book was a new world with a new set of issues, but it also reminds us that our present civilization exists in a very narrow temperature band. Sure we can send wheat to horrible places like Phoenix, AZ, but the high bushels-per-acre that allow for such transport exists in a fairly narrow temperature band.  Especially when compared to the temperature of our neighboring planets Venus and Mars.

The book is published by Outbound which does crowd-funded publication.  Since I was an original contributor my copy is hardbound, includes a page-marking ribbon, and my name appears in the back.  It is worth a read if you want to explore alternate worlds.