Content area
Full Text
Seidel, Peter. 2045: A story of our future. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009. 338p ISBN 978-1-59102-705-8 paperback $19.00
Peter Seidel is an environmental architect and planner residing in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is the author of the nonfiction work Invisible Walls: Why We Ignore the Damage We Inflict on the Planet - and Ourselves (1998), and a contributor and co-editor of Global Survival: The Challenge and Its Implications for Thinking and Acting (2006). He holds a B.S. in Architectural Engineering from the University of Colorado and a master's degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he studied with architect Mies van der Rohe and city planner Ludwig Hilberseimer. His ideas for a new method of urban development became the subject of a documentary produced by the University of Michigan in 1968. Peter Seidel became an environmentally conscious designer and an advocate for taking action to address environmental degradation after reading Harrison Brown's The Challenge of Man's Future. He has published several articles regarding architectural planning and the irrational inaction of society in the face of necessary environmental change. He has worked in private architectural and planning practices, and as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. 2045 is his first novel.
2045 tells the story of Carl Lauer, a man who falls into a coma in the year 2010, only to awaken thirty-five years later in a strikingly changed world. After his awakening, he is reunited with his daughter and her family, who live in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Carl, who grew up and lived his adult life in Wisconsin, observes that it is much changed. Gas and bio-fuels are extremely expensive, jobs are very rare and offer little security, average temperatures have risen dramatically, kidnapping and acts of terrorism are commonplace, corporations run educational institutions, large-scale agricultural companies pollute the environment, sea levels are significantly higher, and food is scarce. Carl also travels to visit other remaining family, friends, and coworkers in Chicago, California, and Appleton, Wisconsin, all of whom are living...