The Last Day

It was a good novel, but not as good as I thought it would be. The premise got my sci-fi mind drooling. Just think of it...the rotation of the earth slows then finally stops. I’m asking myself, “What happened and how can it be fixed? What countries are now permanently in the dark and cold? Which ones are now permanently sunny and hot? Are there some countries that will straddle the line and have great weather? If so, will they try to rule the world?” So you can see how tasty this novel could be. Andrew Hunter Murray wrote a good story, just not as strong as it could have been. He is somewhat talented in the descriptive end, but a little shallow in keeping the reader excited. I also had the feeling that he was trying to write at the same pace Dan Brown writes novels. Murray’s main character, Dr. Ellen Hopper (an ocean scientist studying currents) is trying to solve her mystery at the same breakneck speed Dan Brown’s, Professor Robert Langdon (see my review of Origin on 10/24/2017), a religion symbologist, does. The only thing similar is they both have unusual occupations. So here’s a little taste of the novel. 

Early on (page 38 of 407 pages), the reader finds out how earth’s problems started: “Eventually, the cause was discovered. A white dwarf star, a rare celestial creature the size of earth but two hundred thousand times as dense, loosed from its own star system by a supernova explosion, now free to barrel through space disrupting everything in its path. It was traveling at two thousand kilometers a second through this part of the Milky Way, its trajectory and enormous gravity dragging the earth slowly backward, its path as perfect as if it had been designed by some malign heavenly committee. It was already millions of kilometers away by the time it was spotted, speeding from the wreckage, its damage done.” So you see, it doesn’t seem like anything could have been done to avoid the inevitable...maybe if we could have gotten Indiana Jones involved. Haha, just kidding.

The novel starts in the year 2059, thirty years after the slowing earth finally stopped. We meet our heroine, Dr. Ellen Hopper, out on a rig in the North Atlantic charting the new currents and whale patterns. Whoopi! (sorry). Anyway, two mysterious people from Britain helicopter onto the rig to bring her back to London. It seems a famous Oxford professor Edward Thorne (on his death bed) has something he only wants to tell his ex-student, Ellen Hopper. What’s so secretive that he will only speak to her...not even to the prime minister. This reminded me of how Dan Brown’s hero, Robert Langdon was whisked off to the Vatican City in Angels & Demons. This is where the story takes off and where I’m going to leave you to agree or disagree with my review… after you read it. 
 
RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: There is a novel that I read and reviewed on 3/28/2013 that dealt with the earth’s slowing rotation... The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker. Walker’s novel dealt with the slowing rotation viewed through the eyes of an adolescent girl in California. It was more about how gravity sickness affected a town in California. Gravity sickness was never mentioned in Murray’s novel. Neither novel reached apocalyptic proportions, which was refreshing.

The first work of apocalyptic fiction goes to Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville, who wrote Le Dernier Homme in 1805. Wow, that was a mouthful! It translates to The Last Man. Lord Byron’s 1816 poem Darkness deals with the sun’s extinction. And Frank Lillie Pollock has a second sun incinerate earth in his 1906 poem, Finis. Popular H.G. Wells wrote The Time Machine in 1895 and has his time traveler witness the sun’s expansion, wiping out the earth’s population.