Elsa is struggling to survive in the wastelands of SoCal. It’s 2195, and the world has been ravaged by ecological disaster. GreenCorps has the monopoly on food and other human essentials. The population desperately scrabbles amongst the detritus of the Anthropocene age, looking for anything of value that may have been discarded in more affluent, careless days. While Elsa digs precarious tunnels into SoCal’s largest landfill, her hard-nosed, shotgun-toting Gran keeps guard for any interlopers. Elsa usually uncovers old plastic tubs and rotting textiles, but sometimes she hits untarnished metal—and by 2195, stainless steel can be as valuable as gold. Plenty of others want to get their hands on the good stuff, even if GreenCorps only shells out meager plastic credits for the recovered recyclables. It’s dangerous and demoralizing, but there is no other way to stay alive.

By chance, Elsa uncovers a mysterious metal canister unlike anything she has found before, a treasure too precious to trade in at GreenCorps. When its secret is revealed to be a map to lost Doomsday seed banks, Elsa sees a way to finally break GreenCorps’ stranglehold on the world’s food crops. But Elsa’s discovery has not gone unnoticed; GreenCorps agents are after her now. She hooks up with Walker, a charismatic drifter, and makes her escape riding the railways. There is finally a future to look forward to, but it will be hard-fought. Elsa and her raggle-taggle followers have a long way to go.

SWITCHING TRACKS: Out of the Trash, the opening volume of a new series by author Lena Gibson, will be a real fillip for fans of dystopian fiction who have been growing weary of the genre’s tendency for formula and repetition. The book is very well-written; the author skillfully builds her world with the opening scenes set in the cloying, fetid mounds of rotting trash. Elsa digs out her finds amongst “wadded-up clumps of mushy paper, broken bits of plastic, disposable diaper balloons, and chunks of rotten wood.” A tunnel collapse is always possible. It’s filthy, dangerous work for slim reward. Elsewhere, the very air that people breathe is described as “greasy smoke.” And whilst Elsa digs the dumps, others are left sifting waste on ruined beaches in the hope of uncovering any recyclable nurdles of plastic that could be sold for a pittance.

Whereas many post-apocalyptic novels ramp up the otherness of their destroyed environment, Gibson clearly shows how very close to our contemporary world this version of 2195 may be. The book reads as a warning for what is happening right now—an eco-disaster occurring in front of our eyes, with many societies on the brink of collapse. GreenCorps, a monolithic monster of rampant capitalism, is easily read as the logical descendant of so many avaricious corporations at work around the world today.

Told in split narratives, Gibson slowly introduces other characters whose stories will coalesce. There is romance, as well as danger. And the subsequent flight—hopping train lines across the country—is an excellent mirror to the desperate wandering of depression-era America. The book may be set in 2195, but some of Gibson’s warnings are rooted in the past. By looking at history, the novel aptly warns of what might await in the future.

Lena Gibson’s SWITCHING TRACKS: Out of the Trash is a gripping opening to a new book series that breathes new life into many of the tired tropes of similar genre titles.

~Kent Lane for IndieReader