The Culling

Robert Johnson's first novel tackles an issue that most in the media, the arts, and entertainment industry—even the environmental community—are afraid to discuss directly: overpopulation.

The fear of offending powerful individuals who profit in the short-term either culturally or monetarily from the nonstop propagation of our species is strong.

This thriller explores various angles of the problem, including this reluctance to challenge those powerful leaders and the inevitable consequences. Although the real suspense doesn't really start until about 70 pages in, once it gets going, Johnson has the reader ensnared in the story, needing to know which team of geeked out scientists will save the world.

And make no mistake: both teams believe they are saving the world.

On one side are five preeminent biological scientists led by a rogue WHO virologist, who having studied the data and seen the real world effects of the glut of humans that currently use up the resources of 1.5 Earths*, the attendant extinction of record numbers of species, and the fouling of the planet we rely on for life have come to the conclusion that humans have proven they are not willing to change their foolish ways within a meaningful time frame.

Consequently, they’ve chosen to stop dithering around with more reports that will be ignored and force a change by implementing a plan to unleash an engineered super-virus that will cull the world's population down to approximately two billion—a number calculated to be sustainable in terms of the earth's resources while providing everyone with a roughly European standard of living.

On the other side is a virologist from the CDC who discovers the plot and recruits his colleagues to stop the epidemic.

Scientific facts along with ethical and philosophical quandaries regarding survival and what kind of world we want to live in abound. For example, when does long-term survival of the species and its home take precedence over a concern for the individual lives of a well-heeled elite on one end and the masses that increasingly constitute the miserable teeming slums on the other end? This prompts one character to wryly observe: “Like the Goddess Shiva, the Earth has many armpits.”

Have humans themselves effectively become a super-virus or cancer on the planet? If so, how does that affect the values of freedom of individual choice that we normally hold so dear in the modern world? Most importantly, as agents of choice how do we begin to take responsibility for our collective dumb choices? If someone with early stage cancer chooses to ignore the problem or avoid treatment and the cancer metastasizes, then the choices for survival become more drastic, like having to hack off a limb.

When we've insisted on making continuously dumb choices, do we eventually lose our freedom of choice by default and leave ourselves open to Machiavellian figures who will hack off a few limbs for us? This dilemma is reflected in an interaction between the leaders of the two sides about halfway through:

“We’re good, reasonably intelligent people who didn’t come to this decision lightly. We agonized over it. We’ve thought this out. Not a one of us want to take an innocent life or inflict suffering, but we’ve each come to the conclusion this is the only way of preventing far more death and suffering. Exactly what part of this don’t you understand?

“. . . Rationally, he knows they are right, but emotionally, he knows or at least thinks he knows, they are wrong.”

Despite the potential for despair or preachy diatribes, the gravity of the issues is woven into the story with plenty of colorful characters, gallows humor, and a suspenseful plot that unravels across continents, making for an entertaining and thought-provoking debut.

*According to the Global Footprint Network, we are projected to use the resources of two planet Earths a year by 2030.