Gridlock: Ben Elton

The world is driving itself to its own funeral. The car, so long the symbol of freedom and liberation, has become society's ball and chain. In environmental terms it wreaks more destruction than decent-sized wars and in return it carries us around our cities rather more slowly than a bicycle. How did it get to this? Everyone wants to unblock the jams - or perhaps they don't. Everyone wants cleaner, more efficient engines - maybe. We all long for the day that filthy, poisonous expensive oil will no longer be the blood in the veins of our way of life. Isn't that the bottom line? It depends on what we are prepared to lose: like, the wasted hours of gnawing the steering wheel and just wishing everyone else on earth would get out of the sodding way; the billions of tons of pollution; the endless death and destruction; the wholesale ruin of our environment. But there are those who would lose something much more important: Money - and power...Cover art by David Scutt.