Why Not By Rain?

In April 2014 I wrote a feature script with the working title ‘The Alley’. The concept was simple, based on an idea that came to me in the old town streets of Bordeaux the previous autumn.

A gauntlet. A girl with the unique qualities appears. She’s born to make a difference in a world in which humanity is governed by desperation for resources and the lack of them. Simple.

Right, says I; solid idea. Build a foundation.

I like reading. So, I read a bunch about Akira Kurosawa, the legendary Japanese director who popularized a technique involving telling a single event through the eyes of several different witnesses. Because each person is unreliable, self-serving, or simply sees the world differently, the "truth" becomes subjective and contradictory in his 1950 masterpiece, Rashomon.

While the film gave the technique its name—often called the "Rashomon Effect"—it was based on two short stories by the writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. I’d forgotten most of these details, until I prompted my friend Gemini a few minutes ago, by the by…

Point being, I thought it would be a simple means of using a (mostly) two-direction linear film engine - either Up or Down ‘The Alley’, depending on whether we were tracking characters to the seemingly closed End of it, or towards the Gateway, which is the only truly open end of a dry, dusty, oppressive conduit between half-ruined buildings.

I kinda realised that solving the water crisis is much like a Rashomon story – everyone sees the ‘truth’ of the resource through the lens of their own self-interest. To fix it, we need a common language (L).

Throw in a few interiors, via sets built in a sound stage, and we might have had a very interesting, extremely cost-effective production. The powers that be with the money loved it, until the depth of concept unravelled, and exposed the dark reality of future, if not present circumstance in half of societies on our planet. I’ll never know for sure, I can only conjecture.

I digress: WHY did I write Not By Rain?

I spent many years working in the water infrastructure industry as a civil engineer. (Including Yarra Valley Water; ergo the Murray River basin, Australia) I have a passion to protect this resource. (Let’s not get onto plastics just now, we’ll shelve that atrocity for later).

I could never understand why the average woman in rural Africa must walk about six kilometres every day to haul 20kilos of water, when as a species we have the technological resources available to enable equality of distribution, across borders, across watersheds, for every living being.

What can I do about it? I can write. I can help with awareness (A). Maybe. And for that I will need your help, but for now I hope you just enjoy my silly little tales…

So, back in 2014, I guessed we were headed for a world where "Day Zero" wasn’t just a catchy movie title, but a Tuesday in Cape Town. I accessed scientific water estimates on the forthcoming realities of Sao Paulo, Melbourne, Jakarta, London, Beijing, Istanbul, Tokyo, Bangalore, Barcelona and Mexico City. This is a shitload of thirsty people waiting to fall into despair and disease.

Archive Notes on Water from 2020 - “Wall Street Commodification”

In 2017 I began work on turning the trilogy of feature films into a television series. Took about 14 months of developmental hell, but the story grew in depth and substance.

In 2020, I scribbled a note about Wall Street trading water as a commodity. I thought I was being "gritty" in stating facts, to raise money for a television production of the same “Alley” project. In 2026, turns out, I’m just an accidental historian.

The UN recently declared us in a state of "Global Water Bankruptcy." Oh, gosh, bugger me timbers, treating our most vital resource like a disposable plastic fork has consequences. Who knew? (Besides me, in 2014. And most scientists. And probably you, if you’re reading this).

At Oratales, we use a simple model to keep from sometimes screaming into the void:

Empathy = Language x Awareness²

If we don't have the Language to talk about "Water Bankruptcy," we don't have the Awareness to fix it. We just have a lot of expensive dust. My goal with this trilogy of novels is to change the language before the taps run dry. Also, to implore those with Empathy to care beyond their own bathtubs and imagine life without clean water and sanitation, for perhaps a day or so. That’s all.

O.A.S.I.S intro from Not By Rain

In my novel, which launches July 1st, we meet Rebecca. She’s born within an underground hive arcology that has water. It has an atrium where the "sky is on time." An 80-meter marvel of algae purification and vertical farms.

It’s lush. It’s green. It’s alive. But most importantly? It’s a choice.

If you find the prospect of a "scheduled sky" fascinating (or terrifying), I’d love to have you along for the ride. It’s a small part of the present novel, but a large part of the next.

The Mission: I’m going to be sharing more from my notes and the "Vault"—stats that keep me up at night and tech that gives me hope—every two weeks.

One Small Step: Reply to this email and tell me: If water cost as much as gas tomorrow, what’s the first thing you’d stop doing? (I’ll go first: I’d stop trying to grow lawns and alfalfa crops in a desert).

Subscribe to stay in the loop. Not By Rain is available to buy.

The novel "Oasis" is under construction, as is our new company, so thanks for listening and forgive us for not having everything well-watered just yet…