Hello America

by J. G. Ballard

Hello America is set in 2114 AD, after an ecological collapse has rendered North America virtually uninhabitable. Most of the population evacuated to Europe and Asia. The bulk of the novel takes place when a European steamship, the SS Apollo, sails to America to try to discover the cause of increased radioactive fallout in England.

Each of the crew members has a secret agenda, and is subject to their own psychological yearnings. Most of the Apollo's crew are descended from expatriate Americans who have become assimilated into European society, while still feeling some draw to their homeland.

In the novel, the Soviet Union dammed the Bering Strait in the 1990s, thus changing global weather patterns by reversing the normally clockwise currents in the Pacific Ocean. Although the Russians were able to grow grain as far north as the Arctic Circle, a massive drought began east of the Rocky Mountains. West of the Rockies, the opposite problem was true. Further, much of coastal Asia froze over. The expedition eventually encounters survivors from a previous expedition. One of these survivors calls himself "President Charles Manson," but none of the Apollo's crew understood the historical reference.

In the end, it was implied that Europe needs America, if only as a place where the darker elements of the Western mindset can emerge without inconveniencing decent people. A kind of rebirth re-establishes something akin to the old order, allowing insanity to appear in small doses to everyone, rather than bottled up in one person where it proves to be really dangerous. Possibly for the first time ever, nuclear weapons are used for a constructive purpose, and the 'New World Order' that arises from the events of the book contains both the promise of a better future and the understated promise/threat of phantasmagoric horrors to come, though presumably in smaller doses.