When the Water Wins

 

Upper River Welland in flood (Feb 2026).                        Photo: Ian Bateman

There is a particular kind of dread that comes not from sudden catastrophe, but from slow acceptance: the point at which something once shocking becomes familiar, then normal, then mere background noise.

In recent weeks, flood warnings have scrolled across our phones, met with only fleeting attention. Roads close. Trains stop. Fields disappear beneath shallow seas. Insurers quietly retreat from whole postcodes. Phrases like “managed retreat” and “once-in-a-century event” lose their meaning through overuse.

Last week, that background noise briefly came into focus with the story of Clydach Terrace in Ynysybwl, South Wales.

The local authority in Rhondda Cynon Taf agreed to spend up to £2.6 million to buy up and demolish 16 homes on a residential terrace that has repeatedly flooded – including during Storm Dennis in 2020, when water inside homes reached almost two metres deep.

The homes, on a floodplain beside the Nant Clydach, were deemed so dangerous that there is no economically viable way to protect them. Natural defences are no longer viable; the risk to life is judged “high”.

Journalists covering the story described this as the first time in the UK that a whole street has been bought out and will be demolished because of climate-linked flood risk: a de facto announcement of the country’s first climate evacuees – though the word itself remains carefully unspoken.

The most frightening thing about climate collapse is not the spectacle of it, but how quickly we absorb it into everyday life.

That sense of quiet inevitability – the feeling that something fundamental has shifted beneath our feet – is what led me to write Flood Waters Down.

I live on the edge of the South Lincolnshire Fens, a landscape that exists only because we forced it into submission. Drained, straightened, regulated, pumped. A triumph of engineering and agricultural efficiency – and a reminder of a very old human habit: believing control to be the same as permanence.

The Fens are flat, exposed and deceptively fragile. They sit mostly at or below sea level, held in place by embankments, lock gates and sluices – and by faith in powerful pump engines that must work perfectly, all the time. As the atmosphere warms and the seas rise, that bargain begins to look increasingly brittle.

Historically, when the water returns to the Fens, it does not do so politely. It spreads. It lingers. It reshapes the land and the people who live on it.

The phrase – the water always wins – became a quiet mantra while I was writing Flood Waters Down. Not as a slogan, but as an observation. Nature does not need to be dramatic to be unstoppable. It only needs time.

So why turn to fiction this time, rather than reportage?

I’ve spent much of my career reporting on complex systems – space, technology, the environment. Good, honest journalism is vital. It tells us what is happening, who is responsible and why it matters.

But it has limits. In the context of climate change it struggles to capture what collapse feels like from the inside. How it alters relationships, priorities, morality. How people adapt not in heroic arcs, but in compromises and retreats. How systems designed to protect us quietly begin to outlive us.

Fiction offers the possibility of stepping beyond the headline and into the atmosphere. To explore not just submerged landscapes, but flooded institutions. Not just environmental breakdown, but the psychological weather of a society learning, slowly, that it may not recover.

Flood Waters Down is not set in some far-off, abstract tomorrow. It occupies the narrow band of time where today’s assumptions still mostly hold – but are beginning to fail.

Its lineage owes more to J.G. Ballard than to blockbuster dystopia: environments that shape behaviour, infrastructures that become characters in their own right, and futures that feel uncomfortably adjacent to the present.

The flooded Fens become a fragmented, part-rewilded zone of survivors and renegades. Elsewhere, enclaves of wealth retreat behind technology and automation, convinced they can outlast the chaos. Over it all hangs the presence of increasingly autonomous systems, designed to manage crisis, but quietly redefining what “order” means.

None of this requires a leap of imagination. We are already living with early versions of these dynamics: climate adaptation by postcode, algorithmic governance, uneven resilience, the quiet return of sovereign rule, the outsourcing of responsibility to systems no one fully controls.

Nothing transforms the world overnight – the future arrives with more of a shrug than a bang. But fiction can change how we pay attention.

Climate fiction, at its best, is not about predicting the future. It is about rehearsing emotional and ethical responses to the futures we are already drifting towards. It asks uncomfortable questions: Who adapts? Who retreats? Who decides? What do we cling to when the structures we trusted begin to dissolve?

As Flood Waters Down moves towards publication, I find myself less interested in whether readers find it frightening than whether they find it recognisable. That quiet click of understanding. That sense of yes, this feels plausible.

Because once a future becomes imaginable, it becomes discussable. And once it is discussable, it becomes harder to ignore. The water, after all, does not need our belief. It only needs our inaction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flood Waters Down is released in paperback by Cliftop Publishing on 9 April 2026 and will soon be available for pre-order.

Fighting for the Fens

 

The Fens of South Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire have always been precarious – a landscape engineered by human determination, machinery and hard labour.

Now, as ageing infrastructure meets rising seas and volatile weather, the vast area of low-lying land faces its gravest threat since it was drained in the 17th century.

According to a report this week on the Lincolnshire Live website (Jamie Waller, 29 September 2025), the county could be forced to “surrender the Fens” back to the sea unless billions of pounds are spent on new defences.

As someone who lives on the edge of the Fens, I read his account from Lincolnshire County Council’s Environment Committee with unease – it could almost have been lifted from the pages of my upcoming novel Flood Waters Down (to be published Spring 2026).

Amy Shaw, flood risk manager for the Environment Agency (EA), didn’t sugar-coat it. “The cost is likely to be billions, not millions,” she told councillors. “The problem will be here before 2100 – within the next 10 or 15 years we will need to have a clear direction.”

This is no longer a hypothetical dilemma for the future. Decisions made now will determine whether the Fens and low-lying lands of Lincolnshire remain habitable for future generations.

Breaking point
Most of the area’s pumping stations and sluices were commissioned in the 1960s and recent Environment Agency studies show what would happen if those pumps stopped: vast swathes of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire would be under 1.5 metres of water.

Combine this with rising sea and tide levels, and it’s clear why the issue is urgent. Daniel Withnall, chief executive of the Black Sluice Internal Drainage Board, laid out the scale of the threat. “If we do nothing, we are surrendering the south of Lincolnshire – that’s how drastic it is,” he said.

The Fens 2100+ partnership (a consortium of local authorities and interested organisations) has begun preparing proposals to bid for government funding. But the scale of the ask is daunting and political priorities are often short-term.

Councillors at the meeting made no attempt to disguise the severity of the problem. Tom Ashton (Conservative) said: “I’m pleased our ambition to defend the Fens matches the ambition of our ancestors to create it. It will come down to money, and a huge amount of it. It’s unfortunate that river maintenance money is going down, not up.”

Raymond Whitaker (Reform UK Ltd) warned about the decrepit state of existing infrastructure: “If we have a couple of big storms, the pumping stations could break down and Lincolnshire could flood.”

And Ashley Baxter (Independent) brought both history and climate politics into the room, citing an ancestor who first came to the country as a refugee to help drain the Fens. “Now, four centuries later,” he warned, “climate change is the elephant in the room.”

Battling against nature
The Fens have never been entirely “won”. Every field, every straightened river and drainage channel is part of a centuries-long battle against water.

In dry summers, the black peat soils shrink and crack. In wet seasons, pumps groan under the strain while the North Sea, higher now than at any time in recent history, creeps upward year by year.

Locals know this instinctively. Farming families talk about the land “sitting on borrowed time.” And yet, the Fens are more than well-drained soil: they are one of the UK’s most productive agricultural regions. A third of the nation’s vegetables come from these fields.

Foreshadowing reality
When I began writing Flood Waters Down, my aim was to push the current fragility of the Fens into the future, imagining a scenario where sea defences are neglected, climate extremes accelerate and political will falters.

The novel explores the consequences for communities forced to adapt to flooded landscapes – some clinging on with technology, others turning to new ways of living. It’s a speculative narrative rooted in the science of climate change and infrastructure decay.

Blurring the lines
It’s rarely comfortable when fiction and reality come together. Reading the Lincolnshire Live report felt like opening a chapter of my own novel – except this time the decisions rest not with imagined characters but with government ministers, councillors, engineers and all of us who live in this landscape.

The Fens have always been a battleground between human ingenuity and nature. Four centuries ago, our ancestors chose ambition and succeeded. Today, the question remains: do we defend or retreat – or just prevaricate until nature decides for us?

To stand still is to gamble because, as Councillor Whitaker pointed out, one or two big storms could push fragile pumping stations past breaking point.

Perhaps this is the true value of stories like Flood Waters Down – to bring perspective and help us imagine potential consequences before they unfold. Either way, the clock is ticking.

Deadly secrets and dystopian fears

The title of this Newark Book Festival talk – Deadly Secrets and Dystopian Fears – could hardly have been more apt. 

In the intimate surrounds of the town’s National Civil War Centre, speculative thriller author Eve Smith took centre stage, joining crime writer Eva Björg Ægisdóttir for a compelling discussion hosted by Dr Tim Rideout. 

But from my perspective it was Smith’s chilling new novel The Cure that dominated the hour, offering a potent blend of science, ethics and imagined futures that now feel all too plausible.

As a writer immersed in my own climate-themed speculative fiction, I found Smith’s candour and insight both reassuring and unsettling. 

Here is someone working at the very edge of what fiction can do – holding up a mirror to the world as it is now, while asking what it might look like just one bad decision (or breakthrough) down the road.

A cure worse than the disease?
Smith’s latest novel (published this spring by Orenda Books) pivots on a discovery no less extraordinary than the mythical fountain of youth. 

Her protagonist, Ruth, stumbles upon a cure for ageing while researching a disease that killed her daughter. It's an accidental find – science as side effect – but one that is quickly hijacked by corporate ambition. 

The resulting gene therapy promises eternal youth but at catastrophic cost. A future where humanity can no longer die naturally demands grim sacrifices to keep the system functioning.

It’s this kind of premise – eerily speculative but firmly rooted in real-world science – that defines Smith’s work. Her books, from The Waiting Rooms to One and now The Cure, begin with a simple, terrifying “what if?” In this case: what if the cure for ageing arrived before we were ready to manage it?

Listening to Smith unpack the real-world science was a revelation. She spoke of biotech companies already offering unregulated gene therapies, of a Silicon Valley outfit called Ambrosia that sold young people’s plasma to ageing elites – what she chillingly dubbed “modern-day vampire science.” And yes, it actually happened. 

The longevity industry is no longer niche futurism, it’s a multi-billion-dollar beast and her thoughts mirrored my own on observation a visit to Milan in 2024 and recorded in “A writer’s imaginative eye”.

For speculative fiction writers, who dwell in the speculative margins of science, this is fertile territory. But it's also fraught with moral complexity. 

Smith’s approach stands out because she doesn’t just pose ethical dilemmas – she drills deep into their human consequences. Her dystopias aren’t all towering glass and techno-doom, they’re rooted in the mess and pain of family, grief, ambition and love.

Fiction as thought experiment
As Smith told the audience, writing is her form of therapy. She researches obsessively – not just to arm herself with facts but to interrogate their implications. 

“If only,” she noted, “our political systems could keep pace with our science.” 

It’s a familiar refrain for any of us exploring the gap between innovation and governance – particularly in a time when climate change, AI and bioengineering are all surging ahead with few brakes in sight.

One of the most powerful ideas from The Cure is the notion of transcendence – a euphemism for euthanasia at the age of 120, required to prevent societal collapse under the weight of the undying. 

It's an Orwellian twist on assisted dying, laced with dark satire. Smith described the “transcendence ceremony” as akin to a wedding with speeches, closure and celebration before the final curtain. It’s dystopian, yes, but presented with a sardonic grin that lands it with an emotional punch.

This blend of science and social commentary felt strikingly familiar as I thought about my own forthcoming novel Flood Waters Down. 

While Smith's lens is biotechnology, mine is climate collapse, but we’re walking similar paths – fictionalising truths we’re already too close to. The dystopia doesn’t feel like a warning so much as a reflection of what’s already beginning to manifest.

Building a believable tomorrow
What sets Smith apart is her approach to world-building. She maps out the political, environmental and social landscape of her imagined futures in early detail before shaping the story itself. 

It’s a technique I’ve increasingly adopted in my own work of fiction which I like to call a “history of the future”. World-building isn't just about dressing the set it's about structuring the story’s moral and logistical scaffolding.

In The Cure, this manifests in a bifurcated future. One legal, state-controlled rejuvenation programme, the other an elite, unregulated underground version for the wealthy and powerful. 

The inequities are stark. Living space is scarce. Green spaces have all but vanished. Young people face mounting costs and diminished opportunity, unless they sign up to the government’s strict longevity contract. 

It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. We’re already watching inter-generational tensions play out, already dealing with housing crises and resource limits. What Smith has done is project them forward.

There’s also a recurring motif in her books of mother-daughter dynamics – a personal anchor in the swirl of global-scale issues. 

“I always come back to family,” she said. “That’s where you feel the impact of everything.” 

In The Cure, Ruth’s grief and guilt are the emotional lynchpins of the plot. For Smith, and I suspect for many of us writing in the speculative space, the personal and political are almost indivisible.

Genre bending for real impact
Smith comfortably straddles speculative fiction and thriller territory – a tricky balance that requires both pace and philosophical depth. Her plots move fast but not at the expense of nuance. 

She cited The Handmaid’s Tale – still painfully relevant decades after publication – as a personal touchstone. That resonance is what she’s aiming for and, arguably, achieving. As an audience member noted, her books seem destined to be re-read in years to come with a dawning sense of “Oh, that’s now.”

What I appreciated most from the session was Smith’s humility about her own genre. Speculative fiction is often viewed as second-tier literature – too bleak, too geeky, too niche. 

But as both she and Dr Rideout pointed out, the genre’s roots go deep. HG Wells, George Orwell, Margaret Atwood – and I would add JG Ballard. These writers didn’t just predict the future they shaped how we think about the present. That’s the tradition new writers are stepping into.

Cure for complacency
Towards the end of the talk, Smith revealed she’s not quite done with genetics. Her next novel will explore the idea of parents engineered from scratch – designer biology meets parental trauma. 

She laughed, noting she just can’t seem to escape DNA. But perhaps that’s the point. We’re already entering a world where our biology, once fixed, is becoming malleable. The big question, however, isn’t just what’s possible. It’s who controls it and at what cost?

As someone preparing to release a speculative novel of my own, I left the session not just inspired but sharpened. Smith reminded me that dystopia isn’t all about doom. It’s about consequence. It’s about asking the hardest questions in a format people will engage with. 

And maybe, just maybe, it’s about getting readers to imagine something better by first showing them what might go wrong.

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Photo caption: Tim Rideout with authors Eve Smith-Eva (centre) and Bjorg Aegisdottir at Newark Book Festival, July 2025. 

Flood Waters Down is on the road to publication - further details contact Clive Simpson