ANYONE who reviews popular novels soon learns that a major publisher, a massive publicity campaign, and glowing testimonials by household names prove nothing except that the book concerned is expected to reap major profits.

Vanity publishing, once an object of ridicule and contempt, has proved itself as the final resort for writers who are rejected by publishers: once their work is out there, it could be that the very publishers who turned them down are offering six-figure advances for their next work.

Hotter than Hell is a horror story and all the more terrifying because it is so plausible: no vampires, ghosts or aliens, just mankind, in his short-sighted greed, turning the earth into a living hell.

Canadian Mark Tushingham presents the narrative of Maj-Gen Walter Eastland of the US Army, who is assigned the impossible task of policing America and the world in the face of crippling water and fuel shortages, and the consequences of global warming.

Tushingham’s ignorance of the fundamentals of English grammar, punctuation and spelling would militate against his ever getting even a matric in this country: however, his passion for climate change and environmental issues allowed him to obtain a doctorate in the US.

And then he wrote a novel … Any decent publisher would have used spell-check to correct his approximation of English, and then recreated the text into something slick, sophisticated and readable. Since all manner of blunders and bloopers have passed uncorrected into print — not to mention more than 200 pages of sheer bad writing — one has to assume DreamCatcher Publishers are of the indecent variety.

As environmental disasters result in social and economic collapse, the US descends into anarchy and then, desperate for water, into war against Canada which, although less severely affected, is reluctant to share its resources.

Flying tanks, biological warfare, suicide cults, nuclear accidents, devastating fires, famine, drought and mass destruction spell the end of civilisation as we know it, although Tushingham also focuses on small acts of humanity — the soldiers’ sympathy for a mad librarian and their concern over saving zoo animals from death.

The global collapse might sound a little over the top, but compared with Hollywood’s take on the end of the world — especially in films like Final Impact and The Day After Tomorrow — this is no unlikely Night of the Living Dead scenario, but a reasonable and factually based extrapolation of current conditions.

In the hands of a competent publisher, Tushingham could have laid claim to a decent and popular novella, and almost certainly a screenplay for the blockbuster treatment: as it is, Hotter than Hell is an irritating and unappealing 250 pages excluding appendix.

This is a great pity, because the book is an all too convincing depiction of one of our possible futures — unless we change now. ( )