Narrated by an Archaeon, a 3.8 billion year old species, the oldest on
earth, Downdrift is a work of speculative eco-fiction that describes the
impact of ecological pressures on animals that are adopting human
behaviors, with droll and sometimes alarming, results. The book follows
a year of changes and the travels of a housecat and a lion who are
inexplicably driven towards a rendezvous. At first, a few isolated
harbingers of change appear, but they quickly escalate. Squirrels take
up manic knitting, wild hares steal earth-moving equipment, rats go in
for disco music and form-fitting metallic leisure-ware. Data-sorting
abilities appear among urban populations of birds, and frenzied domestic
pets seek celebrity careers. Droll, melancholic, and poetic, the tale is
crammed with witty vignettes and poignant reflections on the ways the
pressures on the once-natural world are accelerating mutations in
behaviors among the animals. Genetic material alters. The differences
between animals blur. Odd mutant forms appear-goat-chicks and dog-flies,
fish-birds and flying lizards-as if some mad rush is propelling genetic
code to propagate across every form of flesh and living matter. As
large-scale infrastructure projects make their appearance, each of the
animals takes the role appropriate to its disposition--or not.
Melancholic rather than apocalyptic, the book is a celebration of
species as well as a mourning of the damage done in our time.
Throughout, the emergent voice and character of the Archaeon
extremophile records events as well as a slow coming to consciousness
about its own identity as a hyper-organism.
