“Activist” by Dïana Bélice: when global warming meets science fiction

MISE À DAY

2042. Global warming has taken the world to its critical limit. Mathis and his friends campaign for the preservation of the environment. Mathis has strange new superhuman powers… Author Dïana Bélice's excellent new duology is alarming and captivating!

Where did this incredible idea come from? a fiction that mixes global warming and science fiction?

I wanted to talk to young people about climate change, but I didn't want it to be moralizing and boring! The real beginning of the Militant series dates back to 2014. I had participated in a meeting where we were talking about young people who made humanitarian trips outside the country. Several years later, I met my spouse. He told me about an idea that had appeared to him in a dream: a small ball that enters someone and gives them powers. I combined these ideas and the Militant duology was born! 

It's a different literary genre than your novels in the Taboo collection, for example.

< p>Yes, but I'm a big fan of superhero movies like Avengers! With Militant, I want the reader to be held in suspense, to be at the end of his chair.

Your plot takes place in 2042 in known places such as Mount Royal, Cégep du Vieux Montréal, etc. Why?

I wanted the reader to be able to find himself, to “feel” Montreal and the surrounding area. I find it fun that readers who have enjoyed my story make the connection by walking to places where Mathis and his gang – my characters – are also walking.

Do you see this series as a possibility to send a message to the younger generation?

Yes. We realize that the situation is declining, more and more. This novel is my cry from the heart! There are gestures that are made, when we think of young people like Greta Thunberg who go up to the barricades for our common home which is the planet. I think it's super important and it's my way of telling them to keep it up! Unfortunately, we tend not to take our youth seriously… Me, what I would like to say to young people is to give a damn about what other people think at this level! Keep up the good work for the planet!

In your novel, you mention the Saguenay flood and the ice storm. Do you have a particular personal memory of an extreme weather event?

I remember the ice storm very well in 1998. I was very young. We had no electricity and we had lost all the food in the fridge. We went to live with family members who had electricity. They in turn lost the current; we moved again! It gives a glimpse of what might be to come and it gives me chills every time I think about it…