SLOW APOCALYPSE

One of my favorite writers, John Varley, writes a “been there, done that” book. What I mean is that there are only so many ways you can pen a apocalypse/survival novel. Is this novel similar to William R. Forstchen’s One Second After and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road ? You betcha! After the disaster, do refugees flee the big cities? Yes! Do people run amok seeking food and shelter? Yes! Do we have a societal breakdown with gangs pillaging the land? Yes! Finally, does the reader follow a group of people who become the champions of the story? You bet your sweet bippy! So you might ask, “What’s different?" Well how about adding a 9.3 to 9.8 magnitude earthquake in the Los Angeles area, and top that off with a massive fire a few days later. Look, I’m not saying that I didn’t like the book, but writers are running out of ways to tell this story. This is the tenth novel that I’ve read by this author, so I think I’ve earned my say. John, stay away from these kind of stories! If you want to write another, then ape Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain . At least in that novel, the focus was on the cure of the problem (the strain mutates to a benign form with a final surprise). I’ll give the author a pass, because the writing was terrific, and the characterization was top-notch.

The novel begins with screenwriter Dave Marshall interviewing Ex-Colonel Lionel Warner (USMC, ret.) about the possibility of a new movie. The Colonel tells him that a disgruntled bacterial scientist has deployed a bacteria in Saudi Arabia that freezes oil thus rendering it useless. The scientist is seeking revenge for 9/11. Marshall doesn’t know if the Colonel is telling him the truth or not. After Marshall leaves the hotel interview, mysterious police arrive at the hotel, and Marshall observes the Colonel being shot and ejected from the eleventh floor window! Now what is Dave Marshall going to do? He has to believe he's been told the truth, so he cashes in his credit cards and buys survival supplies. He calls in his fellow writing staff (the posse) and tells them what happened. Do they believe him? Some do, and others are skeptical, while his wife Karen leaves him, and his daughter Addison is unsure. Later, the news reports that oil wells throughout the world are on fire! My God, the bacteria has gone airborne and is affecting every oil field. As Staffer’s Book Reviews states: “Like anything created in a government lab things don’t go as planned, and oil across the world begins to harden, in many cases with explosive results”. Next, the L.A. oil fields blow up, and the L.A. tar pits explode causing massive damage in urban Los Angeles. Now his writer friends and his wife Karen are starting to trust his story. The posse, led by Dave Marshall and Bob Winston, decides to head to Oregon for safety; but then, a monumental earthquake delays them. Finally, just as the Marshalls are ready to depart for the second time to the Winstons to form a caravan out of the L.A./Hollywood area, a conflagration starts in Hollywood. Now the Marshalls are on the run in their packed Escalade, dodging bullets from gangs and the advancing flames. Readers: this all happens in the beginning of the book; I’m not giving away the story.

From here onward, the great trek to safety begins. This is where this novel becomes analogous to Lucifer's Hammer, The Stand, and On the Beach. How many of these kinds of novels can one read? Somewhere out there is an author writing the ultimate apocalypse novel with a completely fresh take on the revelation that John hears involving the battle of good over evil with God appearing at the books end. Now that's a story! There are certain truisms we learn in these types of books. The first is on page 77 when Dave Marshall realizes that “Millions of Americans were discovering that what they did for a living was no longer something anyone would pay them to do”. The second truism is on page 185 when Dave says, “The big question was, say you’ve made a shelter just big enough for your family. The alarm goes off, the bombs are on the way. You seal up your shelter...and the neighbors come knocking. Do you let them in?” The third thing Dave thought about was “What did you talk about after civilization had crumbled? Dave tried to recall what they had talked about before the oil went bad, it was already getting hard to do”. Though this book was similar to lots of novels I’ve read, it was still illuminating and humanizing. I don’t want to abash the reader who hasn’t read these types of books, but read this novel with a grain of salt.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: On John Varley’s official website, he states: “Slow Apocalypse is NOT like anything I've written before. I am so pleased to see my old friend George RR Martin raking in the dough; this is my attempt to reach a larger audience, like he has, beyond all you lovely people. It is my hope that my long-time readers will enjoy it, too.” John, I have to tell you I loved your trilogy of Titan, Wizard, and Demon much better. I also thought that Mammoth was the best novel John Varley ever wrote. According to Wikipedia, John isn’t happy with his Millennium experience in Hollywood. He states: ”We had the first meeting on Millennium in 1979. I ended up writing it six times. There were four different directors, and each time a new director came in I went over the whole thing with him and rewrote it. Each new director had his own ideas, and sometimes you'd gain something from that, but each time something's always lost in the process, so that by the time it went in front of the cameras, a lot of the vision was lost." Sciencefiction-Lit.Com states the following about Varley’s characters: “Single handedly Varley has trashed the long history of the SF heroic figure - and good riddance in my opinion. His bad guys are usually likable and sympathetic, his good guys are often pathetic and desperate, basically like so many people we actually know in real life. And the women... I defy anyone to find me an author, in any genre, who writes women as well as Varley. Hell, with sex changes in his books, a good percentage of his characters start in one sex and end in another and through each change you can tell. It's subtle, but it's there. That is true understanding of the sexual differences and similarities.” I’m a big fan of John Varley!