Now he can afford to write books just for fun and the convenience of having other outlets than bookstores and the Internet, his stores in several countries around the world. After all, The Ninth Tentacle of an Octopus was also sold in Czech drugstores.
As a citizen, Rossmann deals with global warming and thinks about how to prevent it. The novel is about saving the world. In a sci-fi journey from 2018 to 2100, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and the President of America realize that the system needs to change. They form coalitions to protect the country and assert their power by force.
But what about this framework? The story of the Octopus Ninth Arm is actually not very interesting, less exciting, let alone tense. Moreover, at the time Rossmann wrote it, he must have had no idea, perhaps despite his claims of friendly relations with former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, what the Russian president would become. Reading today about how this aggressor saved the world is really bad science fiction.
Plot lines and main characters abound in this book, some appearing and disappearing without leaving a visible trace. It does not allow the reader to comfortably enter the plot, every effort is made not to get lost in it. On the other hand, frequent changes in place and time shape the character of the book. Especially the passages illustrating newspaper articles at least make a refreshing contribution to a boring story. But that’s not enough.
Being active in climate protection is certainly commendable. However, writing a bloodless novel about him was really pointless.
| Dirk Rossmann: The Octopus Ninth Tentacle |
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| Kalibr, translated by Tomáš Kurk, 302 pages. |
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