Schätzing, Frank

"The Swarm" is big. It has been one of Germany’s best-selling books ever. And it is a big best seller. Not only is it nearly 900 pages long even in large paperback format, it has also been bought by Uma Thurman to be made into a film. And believe me, it will be a major movie. There’s no doubt about that. The book reads like an extended screenplay. I have no doubt this book will be as much a cinematic blockbuster as it is a bestseller in Germany and is attaining that status in the English-speaking world.

The Swarm is not a literary novel. This book is aimed at readers who like facts, thrills, a little bit of sexual tension and the odd touch of terror. It is speculative fiction, with its premise in the question: what if?

The length of the book allows Frank Schätzing to demonstrate how much research he conducted and the enormous amount of scientific information he absorbed to create this work of fiction because, despite the Herculean research work, this book remains very much a work of fiction. The list of acknowledgements on pages vii to ix is extensive and well worth perusing. Amongst many others, Schätzing offers thanks for the expertise and support of Professor Gerhard Bohrmann and Dr Heiko Sahling of Bremen University and Clive Roberts, a Vancouver shipping company director and his father in law. These names are also used for characters within the book, which adds a touch of verisimilitude and coaxes the reader into accepting the extraordinary events Schätzing relates.

The extent of the research was initially the cause of claims of plagiarism. Schätzing’s descriptions of underwater events and research programs were said to be too close to the scientific originals. However, the book has also been credited with being responsible for saving the lives of German tourists in South-East Asia when the Boxing Day tsunami hit in 2004. The tourists realised the significance of the ocean draining from the shore and were able to run for safety. Uma Thurman will face a challenge turning the book into a movie. It has an enormous range of settings. It begins in Peru, and then flicks to Norway, then Canada, then the North Sea, back to Canada, then Norway all by page 71. Later, it moves onto the pack ice of the Arctic, North Sea oil well platforms, a luxury hotel in Canada and an enormous troop carrier in the Atlantic.

But the special effects department will have to be top-notch to keep up with the action. For a start, there’s an underwater landslide in the North Sea that creates a tsunami so powerful it floods much of Scandinavia, Britain and Germany. Not to mention the lobsters exploding and disseminating killer bacteria in the three star restaurants of Paris. Then there are the crabs that poison New York, Boston and Washington, plagues of killer jellyfish in Australia and whales smashing boats into smithereens.

There’s an explanation for this entire calamity, of course, but it takes the world’s scientists several hundred pages before they can conclude there is an unidentified intelligent life form in the world’s oceans. This life form, christened the yrr through want of anything more meaningful, is attempting to destroy humankind in retaliation for the centuries of abuse inflicted on the natural environment. The yrr are in fact single-celled organisms that create their intelligence by coming together in a swarm.

Some of the scientific concepts may at first seem far-fetched. One example is the worms eating methane on the bottom of the ocean, but the author manages to link established facts with some of his spurious ones to spin a wonderfully topical yarn. He also sets up strong characters, In Canada, readers are introduced to Leon Anawak, a cetacean expert and an Aboriginal Canadian who has run away from his Inuit heritage, and Jack O’Bannon, a dolphin-trainer who goes by the name of Greywolf and maintains he is an Indigenous American. These two comes to blows over the fact that normally peaceful whales are attacking small boats singly and larger craft in pods. Greywolf claims the whales are sick of being looked at. Anawak realises their behaviour is the result of some abnormality, but he has no idea what it is. In Norway, Sigur Johanson, a 56-year-old marine biologist, is called in by the State Oil Company when masses of worms are found on the continental shelf chomping away at the frozen methane hydrates. Johanson is a handsome ladies man, but loses the woman he has feelings for in the tsunami that results when the worms munch through the hydrates to the gas deposits.

Later, these same worms start munching on the hydrates under the Canary Islands off Africa. If they succeed in causing a landslide there, the resulting tsunami would be so large it would send a hundred-metre wave over the African coast, flood North America from Miami to New York and most of South America, and create havoc in Europe. It is the potential end of the world. Fortunately, the United States has General Judith Li in command of emergency operations. She has the strength and vision to collect together to required scientific expertise to commence means of attempting to communicate with the yrr. World leaders waste no time in providing Li with the resources and authority to act.

Ultimately, the enormous powers vested in Judith Li are not enough. But this does not mean the yrr triumph. It would be churlish to give away more of the plot. Suffice it to say the world does not end, but that does not mean it does not undergo much suffering and destruction.

With a concentration on science and preponderance of strong male characters, the book is likely to appeal to most male readers but it will also appeal to all readers who are concerned about threats to the environment and ecological balance. There are some interesting religious and political statements to be found between its covers, as well. For example, Johanson and scientist Sue Oliviera ponder the impact on the Church of the discovery of an intelligent life form other than human over a bottle of Bordeaux. As to politics, few readers will warm to the obese CIA Assistant Director, Jack Vanderbilt, the character does seem to typify the arrogance of a United States that knows it stands paramount as world power. Vanderbilt is perhaps too much of a cliché to be taken seriously. Schätzing can overload his narrative palette with too much of this sort of colour from time to time. And, while I found some of the descriptive passages very visual, they did not always add to the power of the story. They seemed to be there more to guide the screenplay writers and the director of the film than to propel the narrative. That said the detail of the descriptions is ultimately fascinating. The section where Leon Anawak is out on the ice with his Inuit uncle is dramatic and confronting even though it is redundant to the plot.

The English translation also suffers from some grievous typos and misspellings. It’s a pity that the publisher did not spend more time and care on the production process. Nevertheless the book remains a ripping yarn, if you like this sort of thing that is.
I do, and I did.

The Book

Schätzing, Frank: The Swarm: A Novel of the Deep /translated by Sally-Ann Spencer -
London : Hodder&Stoughton, 2006. - 881 pages
ISBN 0-3408-9523-3
Original title: Der Schwarm (German)