First Fiction Fridays: The Wintermen by Brit Griffin
Today’s First Fiction Friday features The Wintermen, a novel about climate change-induced endless winter, corporate centralization and control, and a scrappy band of northerners trying to keep things the way they were. See why author Tony Burgess calls this debut, David-and-Goliath dystopia “crazy fun”, below.
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What: The Wintermen (Scrivener Press, 2014; no longer available)Who: Brit Griffin was publisher for ten years of HighGrader Magazine out of Cobalt, Ontario. She was also a regular contributor to the magazine, and wasn’t afraid to mix the diesel with the fertilizer. With Charlie Angus she co-authored We Lived a Life and Then Some: the life, death, and life of a mining town (1996). She still lives in that town: Cobalt, ON.Why you need to read this now:You need to read this book because the climate is changing. You need to read this book because the central government is cutting support to the regions. You need to read this book because what we’re told is in our best interest increasingly isn’t. You need to read this book because sometimes you’re mad as hell and just don’t want to take it anymore! And you need to read this book because the dovetailing of traditional genres into something new is strangely empowering.I’m writing this in late January from Sudbury, Northern Ontario. It’s minus 30 outside with the windchill, and it’s white. I’m counting down the hours till spring—only 2160 to go till mid-April, with luck…. I can’t imagine what Northern Ontario would do if winter decided not to end.But Brit Griffin can! In The Wintermen she envisions a near-future, climate-changed world of endless winter. The government has contracted with the Talos Corporation to implement its centralizing plan to move Northerners down south into the “City”, which the GTA / Golden Horseshoe has become. Not surprisingly, not all of the Northerners want to go. Griffin combines the features of the dystopian sci-fi tradition from Orwell and Huxley to Atwood and McCarthy with the familiar strokes of the traditional Western from Zane Grey to Elmore Leonard to create a genre she calls the Northern. The central conflict pits the Northerners’ self-reliance, survival skills, scrap snow-machines, and sheer savvy against the juggernaut of corporate weaponry, greed and hubris that is gunning its stealth snowmobiles up the last highway to take out the pocket of resistance. It’s a classic showdown—and it’s timely. What Others are Saying:“Brit Griffin’s The Wintermen is crazy fun…terrific hard boiled flow to the prose and solid northern elements added to a classic genre. Griffin’s got it pitch perfect.”—Tony Burgess, author of Pontypool Changes Everything “A taut thriller set in a post-apocalyptic Northern Ontario darkened by permanent winter. Enjoy the chills!”—Hal Niedzviecki, author of The Peep Diaries“A contemporary and incisive story skewering life in today’s north, as gritty and humorous as the people it portrays.”—Louie Palu, documentary photographerLearn more about The Wintermen
