Books: End of the World Edition
by rrusczyk, Jul 26, 2009, 5:50 PM
I'm so hopelessly behind blogging books, I'm going to skip ahead and blog a couple I've recently finished.
One Second After by William Forstchen. I'm guessing a lot of you have heard about this book, as it's received a lot of press. The basic story is that there's an EMP that wipes out essentially all electrical everything in the United States (and a number of other countries, though the book is entirely set in a small town in North Carolina). As you might imagine, all sorts of nasty stuff ensues as civilization collapses.
While the book is intended to highlight how exposed we are to such a terrorist attack (or an attack from a less willfully malevolent source), I think the book also exhibited how deeply interconnected the world is. That is, it is not only electricity that we are deeply dependent on, but on world trade and world markets. These are miracles of societal construct that have made the world a much, much richer place, and if they disappeared tomorrow, it would be with disastrous consequence. That said, at least some folks are taking Forstchen's warning seriously. I don't know what to think about the science of an EMP, but I agree with the linked article that a centralized electrical system is a nontrivial security issue. Distributed system, such as the internet, or human production, are much safer, I think.
As for the book itself, it was entertaining, but I think it would be interesting to read the same book written by a left-winger instead of a right-winger. The number of times a character exclaimed something like, "But this is America!" in shocked reaction to someone doing something awful was borderline comical.
Genesis by Bernard Beckett. A while ago, I believe djcordiero remarked in the comments (or maybe it was in an email to me) that a lot of science fiction is about what it means to be human. This short book is a very intriguing treatise on that topic. I've seen some complain that the book is too short, but I think it is exactly the right length, and neatly distills a lot of the science fiction I've read on the topic (and on dystopias) into a concise, compelling story.
One Second After by William Forstchen. I'm guessing a lot of you have heard about this book, as it's received a lot of press. The basic story is that there's an EMP that wipes out essentially all electrical everything in the United States (and a number of other countries, though the book is entirely set in a small town in North Carolina). As you might imagine, all sorts of nasty stuff ensues as civilization collapses.
While the book is intended to highlight how exposed we are to such a terrorist attack (or an attack from a less willfully malevolent source), I think the book also exhibited how deeply interconnected the world is. That is, it is not only electricity that we are deeply dependent on, but on world trade and world markets. These are miracles of societal construct that have made the world a much, much richer place, and if they disappeared tomorrow, it would be with disastrous consequence. That said, at least some folks are taking Forstchen's warning seriously. I don't know what to think about the science of an EMP, but I agree with the linked article that a centralized electrical system is a nontrivial security issue. Distributed system, such as the internet, or human production, are much safer, I think.
As for the book itself, it was entertaining, but I think it would be interesting to read the same book written by a left-winger instead of a right-winger. The number of times a character exclaimed something like, "But this is America!" in shocked reaction to someone doing something awful was borderline comical.
Genesis by Bernard Beckett. A while ago, I believe djcordiero remarked in the comments (or maybe it was in an email to me) that a lot of science fiction is about what it means to be human. This short book is a very intriguing treatise on that topic. I've seen some complain that the book is too short, but I think it is exactly the right length, and neatly distills a lot of the science fiction I've read on the topic (and on dystopias) into a concise, compelling story.
February 2012
January 2012