The Drowned World

The Drowned World is a 1962 post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by British author J.G. Ballard. Set in a future London that has been completely submerged in the ocean due to climate change-induced flooding, it follows a group of scientists who embark on a mission to study its unique, rapidly evolving flora and fauna. The novel is an extension of a shorter story published in Science Fiction Adventures. The novel is one of the first works in the “climate fiction” subgenre of science fiction, which responds to real-world anxieties about the incontrovertible evidence supporting the existence of climate change. Widely considered Ballard’s best work, The Drowned World is a prescient warning about the potential for global warming to make unpredictable changes to earth’s ecosystems.



The novel begins in 2145, an unknown number of years after London is abandoned. The area is now an unrecognizable, steaming stretch of salt water slightly isolated from the sea by a low land bank. A biologist, Dr. Robert Kerans, leads a multidisciplinary scientific survey team to the lagoon. Their mission is at first straightforward and somewhat uninspired: they seek to create a report of the changes in biological activity in the region. After they arrive in flooded London, the team members are troubled by incomprehensible and terrifying dreams. A team member named Hardman hears that his team may soon be instructed to head further north along with the army. Without explaining himself, he escapes south from the lagoon. The team sends out a search party, but it returns empty-handed.

The remaining people in the lagoon try to escape the progressively warming region and move north. Kerans and two of his colleagues, Beatrice Dahl and Dr. Bodkin, remain in the London swamplands. Kerans falls into a reclusive, philosophical obsession with analyzing the environment’s regression into a state that resembles the Triassic period. Their short refuge is cut short when Strangman, a neo-pirate, appears in the area. Strangman’s crew has set out in flooded London to dredge up treasure from its depths. Strangman’s arrival fully destabilizes Kerans; he no longer believes in the feasibility of a peaceful future for humanity. Strangman’s team installs flood barriers that drain the water from London. Bodkin tries to destroy Strangman’s barriers using explosives but is unable to. Strangman finds and kills Bodkin in retribution after Beatrice and Kerans do little to protect him.

Strangman and the crew quickly become fed up with Dr. Kerans, an individual they first perceived as harmless. They capture Beatrice and use her as bait to capture Kerans. The brutal and ruthless pirates torture him using a number of primitive and gruesome methods, intending ultimately to kill him. Surprisingly, he survives the torture but approaches death even as he tries to save Beatrice. Kerans escapes without finding her and continues south. He meets Hardman, who has become blind and weak since he left the research party. Kerans nurses Hardman back to health as well as he can. They part ways, Hardman heading north to safety, Kerans south.

At the end of the novel, Kerans is mindlessly wandering, lost in the blighted landscapes where humans once lived. The narrator remarks that he is a “second Adam,” referring to the Judeo-Christian myth of the Garden of Eden from which humans were expelled at the beginning of time. Delusional, Kerans is bent on discovering that some form of post-human paradise awaits him at the end of his journey. The Drowned World laments that no such place will be possible should climate change continue to play out. At the same time, it comments on humanity’s mythologies about the wild frontier, which stubbornly rely on an anthropocentric view of the earth as something that must be fully discovered and exploited.