Stephen King I once received high praise for a powerful dystopian fiction book that showed that real-life scenarios can be as terrifying as any pure horror book out there. That book is the 2018 YA dystopian fiction by father and son duo Neal and Jarrod Shusterman. The book delves into the near future in which California ran out of water completely after conservation measures failedand neighbor turns against neighbor as the terrible reality of a life in which water is the scarcest resource takes hold.
King is clearly no stranger to dystopia, having written some classics in his day, including The positionwhich is getting its own anthology series, The end of the world as we know itand The Dark Tower series, with Roland's world moving forward. It's true that King's most dystopian novels have introduced an element of horror, whether subtle or overt, but This doesn't mean that elements of horror, fantasy, or even science fiction need to be present in a dystopian book for it to be an excellent example of the subgenre. This is the case with Drythat takes a real-world premise and extends it to entirely possible ends.
Stephen King's Praise for Neal and Jarrod Schusterman's Dry Is Right
The book is being sold as a potential film
The king's praise for Dry went straight to the point: "Dry, by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman: Fantastic, well-written novel about California running out of water. I couldn't put it down."King isn't the only one who's really loved the book since he reviewed it in 2018: these days, Dry it has 4.5 stars on Amazon and 4.0 on Goodreadswhere it has been winning praise for its inventive plot and great characters. The synopsis of the dystopian YA book shows exactly how unique this plot is:
The drought – or Tap-Out, as everyone calls it – has been going on for some time. Everyone's life has become an endless list of things we shouldn't do: don't water the grass, don't fill the pool, don't take long showers.
Until the taps run dry.
Suddenly, Alyssa's quiet suburban street turns into a war zone of despair; neighbors and families turned on each other in search of water. And when her parents don't return and her life – and her brother's life – is threatened, Alyssa has to make impossible choices if she wants to survive.
Father and son adapted the book into a screenplay, which was acquired by Paramount in 2018 after a bidding war between half a dozen studios. Unfortunately, as has happened with many projects, Neal Shusterman revealed (via Reddit) that Paramount has ruled out the 2021 adaptationfeeling that the dystopian book-to-film adaptation would be too much for a world already in the grip of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, it appears the Shustermans are still working to secure a new production and distribution deal for the book.
Why Dry Is As Horrible As Any Horror Book (And Scarier Than Some)
Running out of water in California isn’t some crazy fiction – it’s already happened
The story sounds like a distant future climate change dystopia, the kind seen in Roland Emmerich films. Although the fictional story is told on a broader scale, the lack of water in California is a very real concern – this has already happened in localized areas. California has been hit by three droughts severe enough to be officially categorized as droughts in rapid succession: 2007-2009, 2011-2017, and 2020-2022. The first of these is the first time California has declared a statewide emergency. The second drought was the longest in California history. These consecutive droughts have led to some dire consequences.
For starters, the second drought, which ultimately caused California to reach a level of drought the earth hadn't seen in 1,500 years, killed millions of trees across California. This, in turn, has led to devastating and historically severe wildfires: 9 of the 10 largest wildfires in California history have occurred since 2017and 17 of the 20 largest since 2007. Drought conditions meant there was less water to draw from reservoirs to fight these fires, but also that the ground was dry as flammable material, creating the perfect conditions for historically serious wildfires.
Even now, California and Arizona argue over who gets water rights to the Colorado River — a river that has been unsustainably low in recent years.
Additionally, water scarcity has led to several legal battles between indigenous groups, other citizens, water management entities, and agricultural workers. Small, more rural cities in California, such as Coalinga, Teviston, and Cambria, opened the taps and discovered that the water had dried up. Even large cities like Los Angeles and San Diego have been in and out of water management rationing. Even now, California and Arizona argue over who gets water rights to the Colorado River — a river that has been unsustainably low in recent years. Stephen King knows that the scariest fictional dystopias come from a grain of truth. In case of Drythere is enough truth to be terrifying.