Peter Kruger

Peter Kruger is the author of The Genesis Modification. He is lives in Cambridge UK.

Is it likely we will see an environmental disaster on the scale of the one you describe in The Genesis Modification?

The risk is there - and from a scientific, or systems engineering, viewpoint that risk is significant. There's more farm animals than people in the US and Europe. We keep those animals in conditions that encourage disease. Antibiotics are used to keep disease under control reducing their effectiveness when used in humans. There is also the risk of anti-biotic resistant bacteria evolving within the animal population.

But the disaster you describe is caused by GM crops

Which leads to an epidemic within animals. Over the last ten years, reaction to one environmental problem has led to another. In Europe the measures taken following the BSE outbreak made it easier for Foot and Mouth to take hold.

GM crop experiments are particularly dangerous as they are carried out on-line. It's a bit like a computer engineer upgrading a network while it's running - without a fall back version of the software. I'm sure a number of Internet users have seen that happen. GM trials can contaminate the crops we need to support the food industry. If crops failed we would need an alternative source of protein - farmers would be encouraged to cut corners to increase meat production.

But there have been environmental problems in the past and these have been solved.

Yes that's true - and it's made us complacent. People see the benefits of intensive farming and think the risks are minimal. So far we have seen only minor problems - but if BSE had been as bad as initially predicted then the Europe's health service would have collapsed under the weight of extra patients.

In the book you are not particularly sympathetic towards the Green movement.

The Green movement are like any other politicians and they are moving into a space left as traditional parties converge on a consensus that does not address the threat of globalization. Last century, the socialist movement promising an end to the oppression of workers. But, today, we are not oppressed as workers - global businesses oppress us as consumers. Consumerism, rather than production, is the biggest threat to us - and the environment.

However, just as 'Vote for me and I'll set you free.' became a bankrupt slogan in many 'socialist' countries so the Green movement's 'Vote for us and we'll save the world' would be truncated to 'Vote for Us' when they discover people won't willingly give up their cars and air conditioning.

As well, there will be little room for opposition parties. What could they campaign on - not saving the world?

You describe, in graphic detail, Europe and the US after the advent of an environmental disaster - how do you know it will be like that?

As far as cities decaying and being reclaimed by nature - this happens surprisingly quickly once people abandon them. You can see what happened to the towns near the Chernobyl nuclear power station. As far as the political situation is concerned, while the story is set in 2041 the book is backward, rather than forward, looking. The breakdown of society is based on events that occurred in the first half of the twentieth century.

There is a lot of emphasis in the book on the relationship between the detectives: Allchurch and Tyler.

Yes, Allchurch was in his teens when the environmental disaster struck. He can remember what life was like before the social and political collapse. Tyler is much younger - all he knows of the early of the twenty first century has been gleaned from the Green Movement's own version of history.

While Tyler feels life is improving, Allchurch realizes the world he knew, as a young man, will never return. Through the relationship between the two men I'm asking whether, if our economic and political system did suffer a total collapse, would we attempt to rebuild the way it is now, or would we move on?

What are you working on at the moment?

A novel about a spy who is struggling to rebuild his career following the end of the cold war. He has been asked by the government to infiltrate a dot com - which develops Internet security products - to determine whether the latest version of an encryption software package is as powerful as everyone claims.

The Genesis Modification is published by Steinkrug Publications

The Genesis Modification

For Mike Allchurch the investigation, into the death of an American in a run down London hotel, was just another case his under resourced department would not be able to solve.

When leads started falling into his lap and the finger of suspicion pointed to leading members of the ruling Green Party, Allchurch knew it was time to stamp the file 'Case Closed.' However his young assistant, Brian Tyler, had other ideas - intrigued by anomalies in the case and links to the destruction of a GM crop trial some forty years earlier, Tyler becomes engrossed in an aspect of Green politics his teachers had omitted from history lessons.

The two detectives turn up a trail of bodies and soon find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

The Genesis Modification is an action packed thriller set against a background of an industrialized world that has been devastated by a series of environmental disasters. Cities are choked by vegetation and the parts of the countryside which haven't been reduced to a wilderness are farmed by prisoners and patrolled by the army.

The action moves from London to the Ukraine and then to California, where Silicon Valley has become a wasteland

While The Genesis Modification is set in the future it is an exciting and entertaining comment on the way we live today and the failure of our political parties to deal with the dangers of globalization. The novel is also a warning of what will happen if we continue to treat our environment as a waste disposal system.

Discuss The Genesis Modification, Peter Kruger, environmental disasters, etc.

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