Perhaps most novels arise out of long-contemplated concerns triggered by some more momentary crisis or obsession.

600ppm was a confluence of this sort, beginning with the fact that I have written novels, or long works of fiction, during most periods of my life. This began in childhood, but became more regular in my twenties. I assume that's true for most people who write novels. Some of us who do that have early success and become famous. Most do not.

Sometime around 1989 or 1990, while working in a bookstore in Columbus, Ohio, I picked up the mass market paperback edition of High Treason by Bob Groden and Harrison Livingstone, which collected most of the information then available suggesting that President John F. Kennedy had been killed by a high-level cabal within the government.

That was news to me. I always thought Oswald had done it.

I began reading other books on the subject. The next year, Oliver Stone's film, JFK, appeared. I have continued reading books on this subject to the present day, not continuously, but periodically. I'd estimate that I've read a few score of such books, not as many as a hundred. That's an average-to-good education for a student of this subject. Some of the books are quite good, some not so good, but there is plenty of information out there for the diligent student. And plenty of information has come out since 1989.

It is now quite clear to nearly everyone who studies this subject, who was responsible for the murder and how it was accomplished. Although some differences of opinion remain, there is absolutely no doubt about the existence of a conspiracy. I can sit down and demonstrate this to any open-minded person in ten minutes with three documents. Most people with any significant knowledge of the subject can do that.  In the meantime, the mainstream media continues to pretend that the overwhelming body of evidence does not exist. An example of this continuing mass media absurdity was the appearance of Jim Lehrer on the PBS News Hour, on the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination in 2013, who announced to us with a straight face that he had "looked into all the theories" and found "nothing to 'em." Indeed, Mr. Lehrer!

Now let's turn our attention to that figure despised and hated by all right wing oligarchs and their lackeys in government: Al Gore. His 2006 film, "An Inconvenient Truth" summarized the available information and scientific projections on the issue of the effect of carbon emissions in the Earth's atmosphere. I remember now only two things from this movie: the graphs with the red lines all shooting straight up, and the prediction of the loss of snow pack in the Sierra Nevada.

I was sensitive to the Sierra Nevada issue, because, having grown up in California, I knew that the state relies heavily on snow melt for its scarce water supply. The current state of California is on track with the projections in the 2006 film, which then seemed fantastic.

What really began to kick off the creative stew that became 600ppm was reading Bill McKibben's book, Eaarth (it has two "a's" to signify a distorted Earth), which was published in 2010. I don't think I read it immediately on publication, but some time after. I began reading books and trolling the internet for information on the carbon emission problem. I wrote a short-book-length ecological memoir, using much of this information, but did not publish it.

I now had all the elements that went into 600ppm: a planet rattling apart at the seams from environmental degradation; a high-level government conspiracy which involved concealing the truth from the public; a mass media easily manipulated by secret agencies of "national security" – that is, agencies in the service of corporate oligarchs who control natural resources, the world economy, and our lives.

One day, the voice came to me in which to tell a story combining these obsessions. It was a young person's voice, the voice of an unsophisticated but naturally bright and curious mind. Kind of a Holden Caulfield voice, only ten years older and less preppy. I named him Jeff Claymarker. Once he began talking, he wouldn't stop. He wrote the book by speaking, while I listened, mostly over the course of the summer of 2014.

I'm not a strong believer in the rigidity of genres. I was willing to think of this book as sci-fi (or "cli-fi"), because elements of climate science are a necessary underpinning to the story, but a book is either good or not. I tried to make this one good in language and detail, dramatic arc, character or human interest, and seriousness in its topical and philosophical observation, by which I mean only to suggest that the exploration of where history comes from, of what is true, and of how the truth is officially determined or exploited or demeaned by its selective release to the public has, I think, some claim to being a serious subject, along with the environmental issue.

 

---Clarke W. Owens

July 30, 2015

 

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