Whakaari

Early in the new millennium terrorists threaten to trigger an eruption in the Taupo Volcanic Zone. The last big Taupo caldera explosion blew a chunk of debris the size of Auckland into the stratosphere. Advice to New Zealand – and the world’s – first Green Government is to pray it is a small eruption like Tarawera in 1886, which only killed 105 people. The Honorable Wiremu Waka, Minister of Financial Development in the new Green Government of New Zealand, is in Edinburgh seeking an eight billion dollar load for tourist development of the Taupo Volcanic Zone. His aim is to change New Zealand's image from clean, green and boring to hot, red and exciting. The main part of his pitch is a state-of-the-art holovideo recreation of Maori volcan myth. On the night of his presentation to the Scotch Table he dies violently in a Scottish sauna. His reluctant companion Neil Munro returns to New Zealand pursued by the killer he is determined to unmask. He scarcely recognizes the country he grew up in. Maori radicals and fascist Pakeha youth clash at the Minister’s bicultural state funeral and secret state video surveillance manipulates a country that on the surface appears to be leading the world once more in innovative legislation. Munro is an unheroic man in his early forties, balding, paunchy, too short for his own self esteem, suffering from PFD – Post-Fame Depression – following the collapse of his television career and his marriage. Gourmet tastes on a budget deficit require him to take the only job going, a Fire Tour Video through the Taupo volcanic region from Taranaki to White Island in company with dyspeptic scientist who loathes the late Minister and the Minister’s father, who blames Munro for his son’s death. This satirical eco-thriller goes beyond tomorrow’s headlines into Taranaki oil production sabotage, Ruapehu ski resort bombing, the firing of the world-famous Rotorua Pink and White Terraces theme park, a terrorist threat to reprise the Tarawera hydrothermal eruption of 1886. Maori fire myth, scientific research and high-tech developments are necessary elements of a future shock fable about the extremes of politically correct Maori and Pakeha positions, the possibilities for electronic manipulation of public opinion and the coming tourist exploitation of our mightiest unspoiled mountain reaches.