Living without plastics

kw: book reviews, science fiction, near-future, technology, sociology

Look around your house, your schoolroom, your workplace…can you find many objects that do not contain at least a little plastic? Maybe you won't always recognize it. Almost anything that isn't wood, stone, metal, silk or cotton is probably plastic or contains a lot of it. By "plastic" I mean manufactured polymers, from polyethylene to nylon, from Lucite to ABS (bullet proof windows in banks). Even printing ink contains polymers these days. The wires in your computer and phone have plastic insulation.

There are tens of thousands of polymerized materials that are entirely artificial. There are polymers in nature, including all fibrous materials: cotton, silk, linen, etc. Even protein and DNA are aperiodic polymers. But nearly all manufactured polymers have a periodic structure, and are simpler than the natural polymers.

Let us now assume that our plastics begin to disintegrate, turning to goo and then to liquid, one after another. Now what? This scenario is how Drop by Drop, by Morgan Llewelyn, begins.

The idea is a great one. Many SF stories surround troubles with computer equipment or electrical technology either failing or going rogue. But plastic? We are not fully aware how much of modern life depends on them. Actually, in the novel, I was wondering when the author would introduce widespread electrical failure as insulation melted off wires and the generating equipment shorted out. She doesn't go there, and I suppose there was just so much dystopia she was willing to handle.

There is a little tech discussed by characters in the book, but that isn't the author's point. This is her first SF novel, but not her first novel. She has many books in print. Her focus here is on people's reactions to a Change. In the face of overwhelming and irreversible change, some people persevere and even thrive, and some go off the rails. All sorts of reactions are explored as the people in a small town cope (or don't) with The Change, with losing contact with the rest of the world except via a network of ham radio operators who build crystal sets that use no plastics, for example; with the asphalt on roads turning to goo, and then the tires of the autos.

The book is well written, entertaining, and made me wonder, what could bring about such a change, and what would most of us do about it? What if the things that failed weren't made of plastics but of steel?