HOW TO SURF A HURRICANE

An inventor stages a high-seas robbery to steal back his own technology in Medema’s debut SF novel.

Young engineer Moro Petroff is on the cusp of inventing a new lithium-sulfur battery technology that could change the way people store energy. His uncle, who claims that Moro’s research is costing the family’s utility company too much money, has pulled the plug on the project. Rather than let his prototypes gather dust in the company’s Pittsburgh warehouse, Moro decides to steal them right off of the cargo ship Pyxis Cloud while it’s en route from France to the United States: “He’d never stolen anything before, much less a shipping container full of batteries…but how hard could it be? At the end of the day, everything is an engineering problem, right?” An engineer needs a team of specialists, of course; luckily, Moro knows some people who’d like nothing better than to strike a blow against Petroff Power. There’s Anne Le Blanc, a salt farmer whose marshes are threatened by the company; Miki, a former oil worker who desperately needs money to help his sick father; and Victoria Wood, an innovator in the brand-new sport of hurricane surfing, in which pilots of small, specially built watercraft attempt to set speed records in potentially deadly weather conditions. Is it the perfect team to pull off the riskiest corporate heist of all time? Maybe—but only if the weather cooperates. Medema weaves imaginative climate-related technologies into his story, from the luxury ski habitats that Miki builds on top of snowdrifts in Alaska to the hurricane seeding that Moro undertakes to ensnare the Pyxis Cloud: “It’s about applying a small amount of leverage and waiting,” he explains. “The government’s been experimenting with this technology since 1947. I’m just the first private citizen to seed one. For all we know.” Hurricane surfing is a particularly inspired creation, as well. Despite some early pacing issues, the premise is a winning one, and readers will quickly find themselves caught in the cyclone of Medema’s story.

An inventive heist adventure enlivened by fun cli-fi tech.