ENGLEWOOD, Fla. - s4story -- Amidst the rubble, twisted trees  and devastation that was once the quiet, charming seaside village of Englewood, Florida, stands B Shawn Clark, his house emerging nearly unscathed from the hellscape of fallen trees in what was previously a lush, forested area that provided a habitat as much for himself as the wildlife that depended on the natural world for their very survival - very much like the "Hermitage" - an enclave depicted in the fictional neighborhood he created in his debut novel entitled 20/20.

"Saying I knew this would happen - even writing about it in some detail - is not saying much, really," said Clark as he sifted through the fallen branches and tree trunks, clearing areas so that his beloved wildlife might have a space to return to.  "By now we should all know what to expect.  We have entered a new epoch, the Anthropocene, where humankind's war against Mother Nature has triggered a furious response that is just now beginning to be fully felt."

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According to Clark, he first started writing the book, published in 2019, in 2006.  It foresees not only devastating hurricanes like Ian, but the follow-on hurricane Nicole, and how they would impact the seaside community he created in his imagination - much like how Englewood is experiencing the aftermath of Ian.  As the book reveals, there are many more to come - just more frequent and more ferocious.  But that's not all.  20/20 looks to the decade of the 20s as a time when the human-built world - and civilization itself - is buffeted by the raging winds of time, bringing to all of our collective shores the ravages of war, environmental degradation, economic privation, and human suffering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1SVnC1zLIo&...



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Likening 20/20 to Orwell's 1984, Clark rhetorically queries whether these are books that are in truth descriptive, more so than being predictive.  "1984, although, like 20/20, imagines what the future world might look like, was published in 1948 and the story goes that Orwell came up with the title by transposing the last two digits of the year it came out.  He was writing about the world as it existed in 1948 and projected that into the future."

"Both he and I are writing about what is, just as much as what is to be."

For more, visit the book website HERE.