The Drought
J. G. Ballard
 In contrast to Ballard's earlier novel The Drowned World, The Burning World describes a world in which water is scarce. After an extensive drought, rivers have turned to trickles and the earth to dust, causing the world's populations to head toward the oceans in search of water. The drought is caused by industrial waste flushed into the ocean, which form an oxygen-permeable barrier of saturated long-chain polymers that prevents evaporation and destroys the precipitation cycle. Since the novel was published, plastic islands such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch have been discovered, which permeate large areas of the world's oceans; the impact on ocean evaporation and the precipitation cycle has not been studied.