Sailor Song

Set sometime in the 2020s, roughly three decades ahead of its time, American author and countercultural activist Ken Kesey’s speculative fiction, Sailor Song (1992), takes place on a future Earth that has been ravaged by anthropogenic climate change. A sequel to Kesey’s 1964 work, Sometimes a Great Notion, it concerns the same small fishing town of Kuinak, Alaska. Though the native residents of Kuinak live in happy ignorance of the destroyed countries to the south, protagonist Isaak “Ike” Sallas uses it as a refuge from his former life as an eco-terrorist. When a corporation hoping to transform the town into a theme park threatens Kuinak, Ike and several others defend the town. Lauded for its insightful exploration of many social consequences of climate change that have already started to develop, the novel won several major speculative fiction awards.

The story begins in the midst of Earth’s ongoing and seemingly unsolvable climate crisis. Almost every civilization on earth has faced its devastating consequences, but a few places, like Kuinak, as yet, remain unscathed. Disconnected from global events, the people of Kuinak have a routine, but happy existence. Among them lives Ike, formerly known as “the Bakatcha Bandit” and notorious for his past activism work. After his daughter was born with fatal birth defects due to the misuse of chemicals by corporations, Ike committed several acts of terrorism at carnivals, for which he spent time in prison. Now a lowly fisherman, Ike lives mostly in isolation. His only close friend is a fellow former activist, Emil Greer. Ike works for a British ship-owner, Michael Carmody, and his wife, Alice, a native of Kuinak. Ike’s developing romantic relationship with Alice occurs in the background of the town’s political crisis.

The precarious sociopolitical bubble that contains Kuinak is finally breached with the arrival of Nick Levertov, a top admin for the company Foxcorp. Levertov brings with him an extensive film crew to film a Hollywoodesque movie about a native Alaskan girl, Shoola and the Sea Lion, eroticizing and exaggerating the perils of those who live in the north. Intending to exploit the townspeople of Kuinak to take part in the charade, Foxcorp plans, eventually, to turn the whole town into a permanent amusement park.



Levertov, who happens to be the son of Alice Carmody, shared a cell with Ike while he was in prison for a financial crime. Now power-hungry and resentful, Levertov plots to ruin the lives of Ike and the others whom he feels have worked against him. Levertov swindles some of the townspeople with his promises of easy money, but Ike and many others resist him. Ike tries to organize those who oppose Foxcorp into a political unit. However, the townspeople seem to support the amusement park by a majority vote.

Before this tension reaches a breaking point, a massive electromagnetic storm, enabled by the growing hole in the ozone layer, strikes Kuinak and many other parts of the world, destroying all devices that run on electricity. Ike receives an SOS signal from his friends who are trapped out at sea in the middle of the storm. He ventures out to rescue them, risking his life. Saving them, he is swept out to sea himself. Luckily, he manages to steer his small dinghy to the shore. Having no idea where to go, he almost loses hope, until he sees fireworks in the distance, set off to signal Kuinak’s location to those stranded in the storm. He makes it back to Kuinak and reunites with Alice, while the ultimate fate of the town and human civilization remains ambiguous.