Lost Ark Dreaming

Lost Ark Dreaming
By Suyi Davies Okungbowa

Lost Ark Dreaming is a short book – though I think the claim on the back cover that it’s a novella is a stretch – that hits on a couple of popular contemporary SF tropes. In the first place it fits into the category of CliFi or climate change fiction, being set in a future Nigerian community of sky-high apartment towers whose lower levels, while still inhabited, are now submerged due to rising ocean levels. Second, it paints a picture of a rigidly stratified social structure, with the working classes and plebs living at the bottom of the tower while governing elites enjoy life at the top. It’s so bad that Uppers, Midders, and Lowers don’t even talk to each other on the rare occasions when they meet.

I enjoyed the set-up here, but the climax, where forces from below break into the upper levels in the sort of highly localized revolution you find in books that Okungbowa acknowledges as inspiration, like High-Rise and Snowpiercer, left me a bit confused. It’s certainly ambitious, going beyond politics and technology to some kind of mythic transformation of humanity (another inspiration is the novella The Deep), but it felt rushed. I really liked the meat of the story though and the personal issues that the main characters – one each from the three castes in the tower – struggle with.