CATALIST
W
WATERSTON E’S BOOKSELLERS
Waterstone's are proud to invite you to
the launch of
THE OTHER MCCOY
(Mainstream £11.95)
The brilliant first novel from
BRIAN MCCABE
(Author of The Lipstick Circus)
Thursday 19th April at 7.30pm.
If you are unable to attend and wish to reserve a signed copy, please phone 031 225 3436
Refreshments provided
WATERSTONE 8: CO., 114 GEORGE ST.,
EDINBURGH.
WINNER OF THE BRITISH BOOK A WARDS
'BOOKSELLER OF THE YEAR, 1989' r , T" . IFORBIDDEN' 59m?“ PLANET ‘ , F'Ct'on ; LEADING COMIC * ‘ AND «of I1 "3 SCIENCE FICTION “5" “:5::::..“- STORES "‘iiittiiét’" Oil 33II2I5 : 03I-5570428 present
ANNE McCAFFREY signing her new novel RENEGADES OF PERN on 11th April
In Edinburgh 12.30—1 .30pm; in Glasgow 5—6pm
and also LARRY NIVEN & STEVEN BARNES
signing their new novel
THE BARSOOM PROJECT on 13th April together with CHRIS CLAREMONT signing his first novel FIRST FLIGHT at the same time.
ln Glasgow 5—6pm
BANTAM PRESS
Edinburgh 12.30—1.30pm
; GREEN BOOK FORTNIGIIT
‘ Beginning on Saturday 14, the second Green Books
Fortnight is a promotion
I to encourage you to read
up on the environment,
with twelve titles selected ? for your special attention.
Below, Andrew Burnet asks Green Party speaker David Icke about his contribution, It Doesn’t Have To Be Like This, and
' we review the best of the
rest.
According to the latest opinion polls, the Greens are ahead at all the opposition parties except Labour. Everyone now agrees that Something Has To Be Done, but can the current system make the necessary changes? In this new book, Green Party speaker David Icke says not. From the BBC, where he still works as a sports reporter, he explains.
‘I wrote my book to identity why we’ve achieved this human and environmental mayhem. The real key is seeing the connection between all things. It you damage part at the world, you can cause tremendous disruption for people and nature, apparently nowhere near the first damage. For example, who would have thought that hungry children in Ghana and a Mars Bar would be connected?’
In the book, the connection becomes clear. Continued progress and expansion — the buzzwords oI capitalism - are simply untenable it we want to survive. The Iacts are irrefutable. ‘I've spoken to the Institute at Directors and the London Business School,‘ says Icke, ‘and none of them have been able to argue at the end.’
Alongside his critique ol the system condoned by the ‘grey panles', Icke describes the basic elements at the Green Party’s proposed system, covering everything from land production to unemployment, trom the economy to transport. Duite literally, it’s a scheme designed to set all the world’s problems to rights. But is it realistic or Utopian?
‘We’re not the party of idealism (though we’re certainly idealistic); we’re the party at realism. ls going on as at present realistic? The Green Party has been trying since 1973 to make the
44
establishment admitthere's a problem. The Green vote in the European elections was the catalyst. They had to admit that there’s a problem. But now people are being sold the idea that you can go on as belore with a little tinker here and there, that you can consume just as much as ever it it's got a green label on it.
‘Instead at taking an economic system and moulding ourvalues and principles to fit, the Green view is about taking values and principles and making the system tit.’
We won’t Iully see how the Green system works until such time as it is introduced by the electorate. Icke believes, however, that the time is not Iarott. ‘I think whatwill happen,’ he says, ‘is that the physical manitestations ol environmental destruction will eventually discredit the insane line we’ve been sold. But there’s another side to it. Because this system treats people as units at consumption and production, as cogs in the process, it's destroying our souls. This is why suicide, alcoholism, depression and mental problems are soaring. People are desperately looking for something else.
‘I think around five years Irom now there will be a cultural revolution oI values and outlook, akin in its speed and immensity to what we‘ve seen in Eastern Europe. And there’ll only be one party around which can articulate that new thinking.’
It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way is a brief and readily understood guide to what the new thinking is about. It’s geared to the lay person and perhaps overly chatty, but it can leave no reader in doubt as to the scale at the problem, and the necessity for truly Iundamental change. (Andrew Burnet)
It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way by David Icke is published by Green Print priced £4.99.
I The Fate ot the Forest: Developers, Destroyers and Delenders ol the Amazon Susanna Hecht and Alexander Cockburn (Verso £16.95) "Yo discover Eden is to destroy it‘ wrote Peter Matthiesen in his play about the Amazon in 1965. The exploitation of the Amazon is chronicled from the arrival of the Europeans in the 16th century to the assassination of Rubber 'I‘appers‘ leader Chico Mendes in December 1988. Here we find a perfect marriage of ecology and journalism.
Ilecht is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Planning at the University ol‘(‘alifornia and has spent much of the last fifteen years in the Amazon whilst (‘ockburn is a journalist ofconsiderable acclaim and has contributed to many publications on both sides of the Atlantic.
Still home to a countless number of undiscovered species. the Amazon is a Garden of Eden under siege. This is a story of the rape ofa land and its people. Explorers came in search of El Dorado but. blinded by greed. they failed to realise that El Dorado
78'I‘he List 6— 19 April 1990 H