Seed by Bri Lee

In Antarctica there is a seed vault hidden in the Transantarctic Mountains, a replacement for the bombed Svalbard seed vault in the Artic. It is where all the world sends their seeds to be categorised and stored for a future time when man has destroyed everything. The seeds will be used to bring the Earth back to life.

Mitchell and Frances are two colleagues returning to the Anarctos Project in Antarctica. For Mitch returning to the stark white landscape, a place without people, it is like returning to the home he loves. For Frances, there is hopeful anticipation that her kelp application will mean the future inclusion of the marine plants she cares about. They are the committed ones returning to an environment they are very familiar with; they both know all the routines, how to get the chores done, and how to co-exist in the cold and isolation.

But strange things start to happen. Firstly there is a surprise ‘contaminant’, a cat found inside the top-secret building, and then gradually an accumulation of malfunctions, which means that the two of them are cut off, alone at the ends of the Earth. With unknown danger threatening them Mitch and Frances finding themselves confiding secrets that they wouldn’t normally share. They are both desperate to survive.

Bri Lee depicts a dystopian world visibly suffering from the effects of climate change. The Anarctos team is driven to save the planet. Mitch is vegetarian, a commited anti-natalist, refusing parenthood on moral and ethical grounds. However, his ex-wife Kate, the search and rescue helicopter operator, finds elation in rescuing people from the most dangerous situations. They both want to save the planet, but the essential conflict is between saving the planet from people or saving the planet for people.

The tension ratchets up as Mitch and Frances are forced to make drastic decisions in order to survive. Seed becomes a nail-biting suspense, where the reader is impelled to turn each page faster and faster to find out what happens next. It is an extraordinary novel which moves from a dystopian scenario to an intense examination of the human qualities of love, friendship, forgiveness, and acceptance.

Themes: Dystopia, Antarctica, Climate change, Survival, Love, Humanity.

Helen Eddy