THE DISAPPOINTMENT, debut novel of queer loving and grieving and connecting

THE DISAPPOINTMENT
SCOTT BROKER
Catapult (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Set during a doom-fated vacation to the Oregon coast, The Disappointment follows a couple trying to hold close to one another while a bent reality—warped by personal losses and an ever-increasing drift toward the surreal—threatens to unravel them

It’s the night before a much-needed vacation, and Jack—a former playwright mourning his failed career—catches his husband, Randy, packing his mother’s urn. They had agreed: no mother on this trip. Parents, living or otherwise, aren’t the ideal guests for romantic getaways. But Randy has been carrying his mother’s remains everywhere since her death, and he isn’t ready to let go now.

Despite its natural beauty and kitschy charm, the Oregon coast does not provide the respite the couple seeks. Instead, their surroundings and encounters with locals grow increasingly surreal as the days pass. An overly-dedicated Method actor, tantra-obsessed neighbors, and a child environmentalist who may be able to communicate with the dead are but a few of the characters whose presence exposes long-simmering tensions that threaten to undo Jack and Randy’s marriage—to say nothing of their hold on reality.

Told with sly, irreverent humor, and shot through with dark currents of envy and longing for something other than what one has, The Disappointment explores the mutual exhilaration and terror of being placed center stage in one’'s own life.

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My Review: Why do we accept the cultural pressure to seek only peak experiences? Why accept that added burden on mere humans who are not capable of providing The Pinnacle all the time? Even most of the time. Often any of the time. But they're what we got, they're flawed and imperfect and a lot of trouble.

And so, being human, are we.

Among the smartest things my stepmother ever said to me was "romance is sweet and fun, but relationships are about farts and morning breath." Yuh-huh. If somene's not farting or blowing morning breath at you, they're dying. And I don't mean metaphorically.

Longing for perfection is a curse that takes us out of the tangible and plentiful joys of the moments of our lives. I'm a little salty about the chatbot illusion of intelligence and emotional personhood because it's a complete and utter lie. It reinforces the same thing Jack and Randy are battling in this story. They plan a "getaway" from their lives, a chance to decompress and reconnect with themselves and each other...but that assumes they're not connected and not always compressed, a fallacy that modern culture just *loooves* to sell you.

Verb selected very much advisedly.

It's discovering that feat of misdirection and manipulation that I found in the core of this read. Jack and Randy have bought the cultural crap. They're drifting apart because they've fallen for the illusion and can't find each other in the haze of it. Their griefs...Randy's mother's death, Jack's sense of himself as a failure...aren't the kind you can choose not to process. What The Disappointment does is set the stage for a wacky road trip to nowhere, delivers just that, and has its men lead us into themselves...without miring us in Interiority, in Reflection, in Contemplation. All those are terrific when those emotional registers are the ones you're in the mood for. That was not me at the moment I read this story. As a result I battened on the absurdism of these two in their shared moment of crises (plural deliberate, as is the separateness it implies) being enacted before me. Author Broker invokes Samuel Beckett in the text, appropriate as Jack is mourning his failed life as a playwright and who else would he invoke without lèse-majesté; he's making you think in absurd, if not surreal, terms as love molds itself around their griefs.

Because they share a grief: "My skin hugs closer to my bones, then shivers like a sheet of aluminum when he speaks," can not be spoken of someone one does not have a powerful connection to. Even when the World is doing its usual indifferent thing, even when you're gripped by desire (for someone else), even when you're wild with jealousy over trifles, this kind of connection isn't escapable. You can choose to sever it in practice but it survives, it mutates into...I don't know the word, is there one for a state of interconnection deeper than friendship but tinged with the sadness of dead lust?

Randy and Jack are looking into that nameless abyss. It's led them to a flowering of sexual awareness of each other. Is that going to last? (Scruff might play a big role in this.) I don't think I've read a more surprising, more enlivening, more vigorously honestly grounded, story of the insanely complex world of long-term couplehood.

What I loved was tinged with a little sense of déja-vu, as a lot of the story is assembled from the stuff of life. It can't be avoided and remain an honest tale of how we navigate life. The very end of the book is an "incantation with no resolve"—a resolutionless invitation to go on when you can't go on.

I'll go on.

THE SHUTOUTS, keeping apocalyptic tales oddly fresh

THE SHUTOUTS
GABRIELLE KORN
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: A brilliant queer dystopian novel from the author of Yours for the Taking, following a cast of characters on the margins of a strange and exclusive new society.

The year is 2041, and it's a dangerous time to be a woman driving across the United States alone. Deadly storms and uncontrollable wildfires are pummeling the country while political tensions are rising. But Kelly's on the road anyway; she desperately needs to get back to her daughter, who she left seven years ago for a cause that she's no longer sure she believes in.

Almost 40 years later, another mother, Ava, and her daughter Brook are on the run as well, from the climate change relief program known as The Inside Project, where they've spent the past 22 years being treated as lab rats. When they encounter a woman from Ava’s past on the side of the highway, the three continue on in a journey that will take them into the depths of what remains of humanity out in the wilderness.

At the same time, way up North, weather conditions continue to worsen and a settlement departs in search of greener pastures, leaving behind only two members, drawn together by a circumstance and a mystery they are destined to unravel together.

Set in the world of Gabrielle Korn's Yours for the Taking, The Shutouts tells the captivating story of those who have been shut out from Inside, their fight to survive, and an interconnectedness larger than all of them.

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My Review: A woman who's a teenager right now is writing letters to Orchid, her young daughter in 2041, a daughter she has not seen in some time. It is heart-wrenching because Kelly's letters are written as a mother who did the best she knew how to do tries to cross a ravaged US in a planet-scale climate apocalypse. She is not having an easy time of the trip. It is a terrible world and a terrible personal situation in that world—no one ever *wants* to leave their child behind. Switching to 2078, we have the second strand of the story, not epistolary but Orchid's third-person cinematic PoV, very close to the character.

This is the main way Author Korn creates investment in her not-very-active story. I have not read the first book, and I didn't feel the lack of the background mostly because I was always inside the field of vision of the narrator of each section. There might be apocalypse unfolding around them, but I'm...insulated...in their bubble of awareness and attention. It *should* feel slow, cut off from the world, instead I'm deeply enmeshed in the characters' feeling world, connected to their emotional responses to the situation. It works a lot better than I thought it would.

In large part, I think, because by using this technique, Author Korn is able to bring the reader through almost sixty years of immense upheaval without making that upheaval the matter of the book. I've sort of reached a saturation with The Climate Apocalypse as the story. Author Korn doesn't make me do the day-by-day; she lets me see the horrors through the eyes of a survivor of the horrors. In 2078, I'm in the world the apocalypse left, and as I'm in the limited viewpoint I'm seeing and responding to the parts that are in Orchid, the narrator's, attention. The centrality of Ava and her daughter Brook pull the mother/daughter bond along with us as we experience with Orchid the toughness needed to survive in this world.

It's an intense experience, and it's all queer all the time. It's that piece that warmed me the most. The world's collapsed and we're still here, we're in the survivors and doing great things with the space we take up. The intense personal commitment to mitigating the horrors, to ameliorating the suffering of all while incurring intense personal suffering from sacrifices made...well...it's quite a step from the usual queer fare I see everywhere. As the world fractures and fragments it's so lovely to see these queer folk making their very best efforts to extend survival and the opportunity to thrive so generously.

I'd give it all five stars if I hadn't felt rather pulled around to little enough purpose by some of the parts where Kelly's narrating her efforts to reach Orchid...I get it, it's really demanding, let's focus on how it makes you feel not what it's exacting from you. Likewise there are moments where Orchid's in motion for, well, for the sake of it it seemed to me.

I cavil; I would not say these issues were terrible, only niggling. It's a read that stands alone, yet makes me wish I'd already read its predecessor. Fine work indeed.

ALL THE WATER IN THE WORLD, good iteration of my delight the "Now what?" post-apocalyptic tale

ALL THE WATER IN THE WORLD
EIREN CAFFALL
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 Kindle edition, available now

One of Ancillary Review of Books' 2025 Notable Books!

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In the tradition of Station Eleven, a literary thriller set partly on the roof of New York’s Museum of Natural History in a flooded future.

All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science. When a superstorm breaches the city’s flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson. They carry with them a book that holds their records of the lost collections. Racing on the swollen river towards what may be safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality. But they are determined to find a way to make a new world that honors all they've saved.

Inspired by the stories of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war, All the Water in the World is both a meditation on what we save from collapse and an adventure story—with danger, storms, and a fight for survival. In the spirit of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Parable of the Sower, this wild journey offers the hope that what matters most—love and work, community and knowledge—will survive.

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My Review: I really liked Station Eleven a lot. I'm a sucker for this story: After the Fall, now what? Maybe proof of this enduring fascination is my championing of Earth Abides (now a TV show) and Day of the Triffids. The genre presents a long tail of goodwill, then, as well as wide scope for action set in the present. This story is split between the present crisis...being flooded out of their home on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History...and how things came to be so terrible that this is where their home needs to be.

A really good story idea, one that has a lot of genuine and affecting emotional resonance; then uses up its narrative momentum by structuring the past as flashbacks. Once or twice, okay; more than that it becomes a real drag. Start the story in the past. Trust the reader to invest in the characters, and rip our lungs out by showing us in real time what's happening. It felt to me the author was cushioning the blow by using this method of storytelling.

So no fifth star from me.

Four stars were assured when this happened:

“Hell, it was happening, I saw it happening. But I couldn’t picture it, you know? I couldn’t picture how we’d lose the seasons, how it would be tropical heat in November, but still have blizzards that melted into heat waves. I couldn’t picture the way the storms come and then come back. Not the polar cold fronts in the south. Not the new hurricanes, the hot winters, the king tides, the typhoons going east then west then east again. It should have been easy to see. It was in the data.”

This is exactly and precisely how I've been feeling about others' apparent inability to retain the thread between the past climate events and their all-but-certain genesis. My problem is that I *can* picture it and am cursed with seeing it before my appalled eyes...it's like, in the space of thirty-nine years, I've moved from New York to Maryland. Without moving an inch.

I won't live long enough (I hope) to see this novel's world in the flesh. I expect that, if I'm cursed to do so, it will look a lot like this. It was Author Caffall's gift to me to make me a lot gladder that I'm really old and fairly infirm.

The reason I hope you'll read it, though, is that its sisters Nonie and Bix are the kind of kids we should all strive to raise. They are resilient, they are resourceful, they are respectful of the limited resources they can command and mindful of their good fortune, they are angry enough to work for more and humble enough to know what "enough" means.

They made the issues I had with the structure into cavils. Had I not had them to invest my emotional energy into, I would've enjoyed the story a lot less. As it is, I do recommend it, and hope you'll take this as your nudge to see what a wounded planet will do to heal itself.

SAINT ELSPETH, character-driven post apocalyptic story

SAINT ELSPETH
WICK WELKER
Indepently published
$7.99 Kindle edition, available now (non-affiliate Amazon link)

Rating: 4.8* of five

The Publisher Says: Why did they come?

When they appeared across the sky, speculation wheeled around the world—the aliens were from heaven, the invaders were from hell… or they were proof that neither existed. But when they landed, curiosity gave way to suspicion and the nations reacted with nuclear force, setting off a chain reaction that left the world in ruins.

Twenty years later, instead of nearing her retirement, Dr. Elspeth Darrow struggles to forget the loss of her child and husband by plunging herself into the work of operating the last remaining hospital in San Francisco. With medical supplies running out and working herself to exhaustion, Elspeth must embark on a risky salvage mission into the heart of the Neo California danger zone. Here, she discovers the disturbing truth: the aliens have returned.

As the mystery of the aliens' purpose on Earth unravels before her, Elspeth must hide what she discovers from reactionary despots, all vying to bring Neo California under their control. Aided by a band of pre-war scientists and new-world medical students, Elspeth races against astronomical odds to reveal the terrifying truth that might save the world—or finally destroy it for good.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM PRIME BECAUSE OF THAT BASTARD BRYCE. USE THEM OFTEN, THEY PAY AUTHORS FOR OUR USE.

My Review: End-of-the-world stories don't work because the author just uses them as a backdrop, instead of setting a story that really can't be told another way in that milieu. That was what happened between me and The Road. This always gives me the eyeroll disease, the one where I see my brain from rolling them away from Mad Max-level violence and artificially amped fridging stakes.

Saint Elspeth doesn't do that. Elspeth's character doesn't change...she was always basically a good (if cynical) person, always motivated to do the right thing...and the world around her does change though not the ways one would wish them to. So, a lot like Life, I'm sure you'll agree.

Setting the story at a time of great change and making Elspeth the solid referent not Humanity's scumbaggery shifts this from "how many End-of-Everything stories do we really need?" to "we really need more people like this to shine their light" without making the entire enterprise cloyingly sweet. It's down to the way the story is made: the setting doesn't alter her; she unfolds into the new world, becoming more herself and offering more and more of the genuine help and healing she's always given instead of being forced to find them in the awful new world.

I'm making this sound terrible. It isn't. I give it five stars because I was involved and excited by the action, and invested in the main character, all the way through. I finished the book about an hour ago and am contemplating a re-read already. I even followed the author. I never follow authors.

It's really good stuff. Read it soon...2024 is pretty damn dystopian, one needs an antidote. Here's one that takes you into the dark corners, pulls your heartstrings, and then allows you to believe that a decent if flawed person with a good heart *can* make a positive difference.

WEAVER will make a weaver of the reader in this post-apocalyptic tale

WEAVER
KELLY ANN JACOBSON
Livingston Press
$19.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this Cloud Atlas-style speculative novel, humans are the alien invaders. The reader learns through many documents—police reports, legal depositions, speech transcripts, and diary entries—that a human company named HealthCorp has attempted to enslave two alien the Laffians stranded on a planet-wide ocean and the feline HoFe living on a bed of hofellium. Now, those same aliens have come to Earth in the hopes of using the planet to safely repopulate. The overriding question becomes whether these three groups can reconcile on Earth without killing each other first. . . .

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My Review: Definitely a message I endorse: anti-capitalist, anti-racist, greedshaming, selfish, tribalistic thoughts and actions disparaged and criticized in a post-apocalyptic novel that is very queer-inclusive. The author's previous two excursions into mostly YA storytelling but that are suitable for adults to enjoy too (ROBIN AND HER MISFITS, TINK AND WENDY) were favorites of mine earlier this year.

Author Jacobson's storytelling chops, in this book, are aptly held up against David Mitchell's famously fractured framework in Cloud Atlas and, while I wasn't a fan of that book, I felt this iteration of that multi-documentary style worked...and didn't work...in the same ways here. It makes the worldbulding, particularly important in a story with an alien species introduced to Earth, a bit spottier and harder to follow than is my personal sweet spot for reading.

What definitely works is Author Jacobson's certainty that all her queer-coded characters are central to the narrative of humanity's survival. It is by no means certain that humanity will survive, but we're giving it a good, solid go in our confict with the superior forces of an uncaring galactic horde. The story is moe than rich enough in detail to make the average teen reader use their pattern-spotting skills, keeping track of the many different threads of the story.

A terrific choice for the experienced SFF reader, the young queer or questioning reader will find themself in here too, and the grown person will enjoy this non-triumphalist, question-authority vibed tale of working for survival.
Highly recommended for the Booksgiving choice to unwrap and dive right into.

40: A Novel, more than I expected and as much as I'd hoped for from Heathcock

40: A Novel
ALAN HEATHCOCK
MCD x FSG
$27.00 hardcover, available tomorrow

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From the award-winning author Alan Heathcock comes an American myth of the future: a vision of civil war, spectacle, and disaster of biblical proportions.

In a future America ravaged by natural disaster, pandemic, and political unrest, a fundamentalist faction emerges. As the Novae Terrae gain power, enticing civilians with bread and circuses, a civil war breaks out between its members and the US government.

Mazzy Goodwin, a young soldier, only wants to find her little sister, Ava Lynn. One day, she wakes in a bomb crater to find wings emerged from her back. Has she died? Been gifted wings by God? Undergone a military experiment?

The world sees a miracle. Mazzy is coaxed into seeing it as an opportunity: to become the angel-like figurehead of the revolution, in return for being reunited with her sister. Her journey leads her to New Los Angeles, where the Novae have set up the headquarters for their propaganda machine—right in the ruins of Hollywood. Aided by friends old and new, she must navigate a web of deceit while staying true to herself.

Told in sharp, haunting prose, as cinematic as it is precise, Alan Heathcock’s 40 is a dizzyingly fantastical novel about the dangers of blind faith, the temptation of spectacle, and the love of family. In a tale by turns mythic and tragic, one heroine must come to terms with the consequences of her decisions—and face the challenges of building a new world.

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My Review: Regulars to this blog will recognize the name Alan Heathcock from my warbling my fool lungs out about his collection, Volt: Stories. One big reason for that is that Author Heathcock does not mess around when he makes his imagery work your brain:

"...I knew it'd come to this, you say. I knew I was right. The power of knowing the despair you ordered has finally come to pass makes you feel like a god. Let's be honest. It's what you want. You want this world to collapse. Want people to be every awful thing."

–and–

Grief was a demon of possession. When people talked of time healing wounds, they only meant that over time you become accustomed to that demon inside you, and what at first felt like an invasive presence, alien and nefarious, slowly became integrated into your being, the imp of sorrow crouched within you for the remainder of your days.

I don't know how much clearer the man can be than that. I can feel these words, see the world through their gravity lens, perceive the distorted light that comes from every other direction than the original one to form the ghost of the initial thought behind them.

Which is why I, devout atheist and committed anti-religion crusader, read a whole novel about a post-apocalyptic world run by and for evangelical evil-doers with hearts colder than emptiest space. Which is why I'm here telling you to go and get one of these books, these beautifully designed books (that jacket design!), or to pre-order the Kindle version so you'll open the device tomorrow morning and join Mazzy and Ava Lynn in the hellscape that Jo Sam the evangelist of doom designed and brought forth.

Betrayal is only the beginning of Mazzy's journey. It's certainly true that she's not a trusting, sunny-hearted soul for a single second of her life. Her sister Ava Lynn calls out the only tenderness she allows herself to externalize. The child, whose fate is not ever easy, confounds Mazzy in her extremely self-possessed certainty. Mazzy being incapable of a single sustained good mood for more than the absolute minimum of time, she envies Ava Lynn and vows to protect her. Which, this being a novel, means that Mazzy is unable to do so.

The amount of manipulative chicanery Mazzy experiences after she (unexpectedly and without external stimulus) becomes winged is, of course, the bulk of the novel's action. Her bewingèd state makes her very valuable to the evildoers around Jo Sam the evangelist, unsurprisingly, and so they use Ava Lynn to extort obedience out of Mazzy. The sheer outrage I experienced over this...! It's an effective tool, of course, the safety of one's child (dead mother) being hard coded into our protective circle by evolution. That it is never a violent threat, "we will hurt her," made me able to continue to read the story. They keep Mazzy from being with Ava Lynn to keep her working for their vile controlling cause.

The day dawns, of course, when Mazzy is no longer suitable for their use; a series of things occurs that, in several moments, made me think I was being played by Author Heathcock. It's a pleasure to report that he played fair...but the ending of the story is still a major surprise. Yes, I saw the twist coming, but I think that's to be expected. A truly successful twist, in this case, means the expected event occurs but something you-the-reader would've dismissed as improbable happens after. Job done, Author Heathcock.

I'll say that, after reading many, many chosen-one narratives and even more post-apocalyptic religion-used-for-evil tales over the past seven decades, I'm not sorry I read this one. I think it's well-made and well-written, I suspect it's something the author has allowed to simmer for a very long time before committing to words for others to read, and I'm pleased with the results he has achieved.

THE MIKE CHEN PAGE, three fine reads you need to get into before his latest appears

A BEGINNING AT THE END
MIKE CHEN
MIRA Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$13.49 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: How do you start over after the end of the world?

Six years after a global pandemic wiped out most of the planet’s population, the survivors are rebuilding the country, split between self-governing cities, hippie communes and wasteland gangs.

In postapocalyptic San Francisco, former pop star Moira has created a new identity to finally escape her past—until her domineering father launches a sweeping public search to track her down. Desperate for a fresh start herself, jaded event planner Krista navigates the world on behalf of those too traumatized to go outside, determined to help everyone move on—even if they don’t want to. Rob survived the catastrophe with his daughter, Sunny, but lost his wife. When strict government rules threaten to separate parent and child, Rob needs to prove himself worthy in the city’s eyes by connecting with people again.

Krista, Moira, Rob and Sunny are brought together by circumstance, and their lives begin to twine together. But when reports of another outbreak throw the fragile society into panic, the friends are forced to finally face everything that came before—and everything they still stand to lose.

Because sometimes having one person is enough to keep the world going.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: First, read this:

“See, relations are people with the same blood. But family, that's different. Family is about who gives you hope, who gets involved. And earns the right for forgiveness. Or at least starts down the path.”
–and–
As a community, we still emphasized the importance of familial ties but finally understood that the definition of family wasn't about blood or even who or what you'd lost. It was about what gave you hope and who was willing to get involved.

You're fully in the thick of this book's ethos with those two quotes.

Post-apocalyptic Britney Spears story, full of the expected drama, and all the better for it. The book was published very early in COVID times, so it really felt too on-the-nose for me to get much distance to do more than gibber incoherently at it. Author Chen's first novel, see below for Here and Now and Then's review, was a very good, if simplistic, rendering of an extremely complex story. In this sophmore effort, he's definitely learned from the crafting of a novel for sale to the public and applied those lessons. In the manner of telling, in the effort to craft sentences, every way this book shows the growth of an artist who listens and learns.

Many are the comparisons made between this book and the superficially similar Station Eleven...post-pandemic societies with survivors doing what people always do, muddling through as best they can to get their livings, as much like they always have as possible. This story's focus isn't on a complete collapse, as Station Eleven focuses on; instead it's more like this present moment, issues and hitches and ongoing crunches; then all Hell breaks loose.

That is where Author Chen shines in his craftsmanship. All the stuff you've read until now, thinking "hmmm is this actually worth going a-dystopianing?" snaps into focus. Author Chen does not stint. Because it's not the World that's ending again; it's the world of each character's own making.

In other words, Life Goes On.

That's the post-apocalyptic novel I want to read, and the one I got here. The one where we're talking about "Post Apocalyptic Stress Disorder" or PASD. I absolutely devoured it because each story, the Britney Spears one and the fatherhood-in-dystopia one, kept me fanning pages as fast as I could.

Author Chen is, it is clear, a father, and that makes his storytelling from a father's perspective. That is very much what I want to read. And, I hope, to read his work when he becomes a grandfather...though it's not likely I'll live that long...because it's a refreshing change to find a man telling the emotional story of his parenthood against this backdrop.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

WE COULD BE HEROES
MIKE CHEN
MIRA Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The super hero book you need to read right now!

An extraordinary and emotional adventure about unlikely friends and the power of choosing who you want to be.

Jamie woke up in an empty apartment with no memory and only a few clues to his identity, but with the ability to read and erase other people’s memories—a power he uses to hold up banks to buy coffee, cat food and books.

Zoe is also searching for her past, and using her abilities of speed and strength…to deliver fast food. And she’ll occasionally put on a cool suit and beat up bad guys, if she feels like it.

When the archrivals meet in a memory-loss support group, they realize the only way to reveal their hidden pasts might be through each other. As they uncover an ongoing threat, suddenly much more is at stake than their fragile friendship. With countless people at risk, Zoe and Jamie will have to recognize that sometimes being a hero starts with trusting someone else—and yourself.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: First, read this:

“I’ll figure something out” probably wound up being the last sentence said by a lot of people in difficult scenarios.
–and–
“If you're the one everyone relies on, if you take on people's burdens, sometimes there's just not that much left of you.”

There. That's the emotional core of this read, as I see it anyway; how can you live up to your best and still do your life's miscellany? Who gets to drain you of your reserves with your permission, and why?

Answering those questions outside the framework of a Romantic Relationship is the central conflict in the story of Zoe and Jamie. They aren't, and don't become, lovers; they are friends. They are bonded by something weird, that is being without memories but with superpowers. And they are very, very unlikely to remain friends when their pasts recrudesce.

Screw that, says my imaginary avi of Author Chen, Real Life has lots of examples of friends who don't fit! He is, of course, correct, and he makes sure that the story develops in such a way that they must come together to use their superpowers but only together will they work to stop...a villain who wants to feed the whole, overcrowded world...?!

Wait. What?

Yes, that's right folks, we're in the era of "superheroes aren't so great" fiction! If you've paid me the slightest bit of attention, you already know I adore Natalie Zina Walschots' HENCH for its unflinching take-down of the Cult of the Superhero. It is greatly to my taste. I think the whole MCU and DCEU are, in a word, brummagem. But there's something irresistible in the stories available to tell in them...Irresistible Force meeting Immovable Object can be played for laughs, for tears, for intensity or resolution. It is always going to find takers. But I, perverse old bastard that I am, want to find takers-on instead.

Author Chen's chops are up to it. What he doesn't seem to want to do, however, is explore pansexual Jamie's sexuality. It's not even there, it's simply referred to. If one doesn't want to use the gun, don't bring the gun out. I'm not asking for details, I'm asking for more than a mention of him having had a husband. This is the 21st century, not the 20th...don't tell me we're going there and we're not.

But that was not a fatal flaw in a story that gave me morally gray, but more goal-oriented than selfishly motivated, characters overcoming not only a handicap but a lifetime's conditioning to work together to solve a problem they could only hope to really fix if they worked together. That was worth so much to me. In a deeply divided world, it needs saying again and again: Do you want to Be Right, or fix what's wrong?

I like Jamie's and Zoe's answers.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

HERE AND NOW AND THEN
MIKE CHEN
MIRA Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: To save his daughter, he’ll go anywhere—and any-when…

Kin Stewart is an everyday family man: working in IT, trying to keep the spark in his marriage, struggling to connect with his teenage daughter, Miranda. But his current life is a far cry from his previous career…as a time-traveling secret agent from 2142.

Stranded in suburban San Francisco since the 1990s after a botched mission, Kin has kept his past hidden from everyone around him, despite the increasing blackouts and memory loss affecting his time-traveler’s brain. Until one afternoon, his “rescue” team arrives—eighteen years too late.

Their mission: return Kin to 2142, where he’s only been gone weeks, not years, and where another family is waiting for him. A family he can’t remember.

Torn between two lives, Kin is desperate for a way to stay connected to both. But when his best efforts threaten to destroy the agency and even history itself, his daughter’s very existence is at risk. It’ll take one final trip across time to save Miranda—even if it means breaking all the rules of time travel in the process.

A uniquely emotional genre-bending debut, Here and Now and Then captures the perfect balance of heart, playfulness, and imagination, offering an intimate glimpse into the crevices of a father’s heart and its capacity to stretch across both space and time to protect the people that mean the most.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: First, read this:

Somehow, he’d mistaken her being good at something for really wanting to do it.
–and–
Sometimes I feel like I can’t move forward with things. Because it’s not right that life is happening without her. But I keep telling myself that she would want us to change and move forward. She’d say an awesome quote and it’d make it all right. So I’m nervous because of how I feel. But I’m also nervous because it’s like this big life thing without Mom and I wonder how can it really be me without her. We’re all different people all through our lives, but that’s okay, as long as you remember all the people you used to be.

What you really need to know about this read is there, in those quotes.

It's been several years since I got this DRC, to my shame, and I've put off writing about it because it was...good. Okay reading. Neat ideas! And it could've been so much more. There are reasons, though, to pass on from bashing a first novel. The resulting career is a big one: Mike Chen's a significant author in SF these days. He's grown a good deal as a writer, and this promising start has paid off.

The emotional core of this crossed-destinies story is still: Did a missing past even matter anymore compared to human touch in the here and now? It's a clear-cut choice and Kin, the point-of-view time traveler, must make it. What happens to him, as a result of making his choice, isn't a perfect ending. It is a happy one, and worthy of the suspenseful story that led to it. But...and this is a key consideration...there's a reason none of my quotes are dialogue.

Go in forearmed. Enjoy the good things the story offers, and be entertained.

BIRD BOX, four years late to the party but reviewed at last...and highly praised

BIRD BOX
JOSH MALERMAN
Ecco
$15.99 trade paper, available now

ONLY $2.99 ON KINDLE!

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Something is out there, something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse of it, and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from.

Five years after it began, a handful of scattered survivors remains, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, she has dreamed of fleeing to a place where they might be safe. Now that the boy and girl are four, it's time to go, but the journey ahead will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboat--blindfolded--with nothing to rely on but her wits and the children’s trained ears. One wrong choice and they will die. Something is following them all the while, but is it man, animal, or monster?

Interweaving past and present, Bird Box is a snapshot of a world unraveled that will have you racing to the final page.

My Review: So I was packing this up to send to a longtime friend when I ran across a review of another Malerman, Unbury Carol, and got to thinking about whether I'd reviewed this book or not. Checking it out, turns out I never did! Well, I got it from Ecco in 2014, and that was the year I went crazy, so I guess I have an excuse.

Now that we're into 2018, we're in for a film of the book! Eric Heisserer wrote, Sandra Bullock stars, Netflix distributes the five-years-coming feature, which sold to Hollyweird before the book came out. Say what you will about Heisserer's Arrival as an adaptation of Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life", it was a well-written movie qua movie.

I was amazed at how proficient Malerman's prose was when I read the book. It's the artifact of a lot of rewrites and it's been guided by skilled hands. He did his mom proud. (He dedicated the book to her.) I was so happy with the way Malerman unfolded the story. He was careful to make that the sensation of reading the story...unfolding, like an origami crane being reverse engineered or a time-lapse film of a sunflower blossoming.

Malorie is one hard-luck chickie. She no sooner gets free of her hick-town upbringing than she gets caught. She no sooner tells her mama she's gonna be a grandmother than the whole world goes batshit crazy and starts killing themselves and each other. She no sooner gets to a safe haven than someone sabotages it...but this time she's got some luck! She manages to keep herself and her baby, oh and another woman's baby because why have trouble when you could have double trouble?, alive! Yay?

The way Malorie survives is astoundingly grim. I don't honestly know why she kept going. To do what, accomplish what? Blindfolds are the only protection from seeing whatever it is that makes normal people do violent and abnormal things. She and the two kids are almost always blindfolded it seems. But is this a way to live? Malorie asks herself this all the time, but appears to reach no answer and by default keeps herself and Boy and Girl alive. (That's what she calls them, not me being cute. After all who needs names in a group of three?)

So there it is...post-apocalyptic set-up par excellence. I was drawn in to Malorie's living arrangements and compromises and was rocked along by the pace of the story. I am really impressed by Ecco's production of the actual physical book. The cover is a lovely photo of the titular birds; the jacket has a cut-out to the bird image; the title page has a wonderfully creepy tree motif that the chapter titles echo. It's all of a well-thought-out piece. It gives the novel a very evocative and appropriate book to home itself in.

What a treat it was to read it. I can see that it's got terrific film potential. I'm not at all surprised that it's ended up at Netflix, it's a perfect fit for their catalogue. I hope you'll read the book, and expect that if you do, you'll want to see the film.

WHO FEARS DEATH, a post-apocalyptic shapeshifter's survival tale

WHO FEARS DEATH
Nnedi Okorafor
DAW Books
$18.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

***2017 UPDATE***HBO BRINGS THIS TO TELEVISION WITH GEORGE RR MARTIN EXEC PRODUCING!***

The Publisher Says: An award-winning literary author presents her first foray into supernatural fantasy with a novel of post- apocalyptic Africa. 

In a far future, post-nuclear-holocaust Africa, genocide plagues one region. The aggressors, the Nuru, have decided to follow the Great Book and exterminate the Okeke. But when the only surviving member of a slain Okeke village is brutally raped, she manages to escape, wandering farther into the desert. She gives birth to a baby girl with hair and skin the color of sand and instinctively knows that her daughter is different. She names her daughter Onyesonwu, which means "Who Fears Death?" in an ancient African tongue.

Reared under the tutelage of a mysterious and traditional shaman, Onyesonwu discovers her magical destiny-to end the genocide of her people. The journey to fulfill her destiny will force her to grapple with nature, tradition, history, true love, the spiritual mysteries of her culture-and eventually death itself.

***2011 WORLD FANTASY AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL***

My Review: Who fears Death? I suppose most living things fear death. Onyesonwu, our title character, is the product of a genesis no one should have to carry with them: She is a child of rape, a product of brutality that should have made her mother hate her. Instead, her mother names her “who fears death” and never from that moment on, despite the both of them being outcast and made into The Other, never fears anything again.

I had a very hard time with this book, wanting to Pearl Rule it on average three times per reading session. I did in fact abandon it when a major major major anti-man hot button issue occurred near the end. But this is what earns the book four stars from me: I could not not read the rest. I had to know why what happened, happened.

Am I happy I read it? Not really. It was harrowing for me. I don't like man-bad-woman-good books. There are two unforgivable things in my moral universe: Abusing animals and rape. I'm no fan of supernatural/magjicqkal stuff (Onye's a shapeshifter). What on the surface of the earth persuaded me to read this thing?! I mean, it's even praised by Luis Alberto Urrea forevermore! I shoulda stood home, as the saying goes.

But Dr. Okorafor is a sorceress. She cast a spell on me. She reached out from inside this book and she made sure my brain needed to know this, and needed it so much I'd overcome my prejudices and make it part of my mental furniture.

I will step on her foot if I ever meet the Doctor in person.

She set the book in a post-nuclear-holocaust Africa! I love postapocalyptic fiction! How am I gonna resist that? And she made explicit a disdain for the rotten, evil-souled uses of religion in oppressing and abusing people of all types. I think I purred. I know I smiled.

It's also a joy and a pleasure to me to see women, and women of color, and women of immigrant parentage, enter the lists of American English-language speculative fiction. It makes me feel that this world has a shot at survival after all. Writers are not ignored because of their bodily plumbing or skin color or weird names. (Sorry, but I'm still an old white man, and this lady's name is really seriously weird to me.) This is the world I grew up wanting to live in, and now I get to...for a while anyway...and that, more than any other factor, made me stick with the book long past my usual stop.

Should you read it? Should you turn page after page of non-European-named characters, landscapes bursting with heat and searing miseries of spirit, heroes whose lives are blighted by origins beyond their control?

Yep.

THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS, apocalypse now all over again?

THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS
JOHN WYNDHAM
Modern Library
$11.99 Kindle editior, available 22 April 2022

Rating: 4 worried, sky-searching stars of five, with a pair of dark goggles at the ready

Don't forget there is a 3.5* film adaptation as well...free to view here...and cheap at twice the price.

The Publisher Says: In 1951 John Wyndham published his novel The Day of the Triffids to moderate acclaim. Fifty-two years later, this horrifying story is a science fiction classic, touted by The Times (London) as having “all the reality of a vividly realized nightmare.”

Bill Masen, bandages over his wounded eyes, misses the most spectacular meteorite shower England has ever seen. Removing his bandages the next morning, he finds masses of sightless people wandering the city. He soon meets Josella, another lucky person who has retained her sight, and together they leave the city, aware that the safe, familiar world they knew a mere twenty-four hours before is gone forever.

But to survive in this post-apocalyptic world, one must survive the Triffids, strange plants that years before began appearing all over the world. The Triffids can grow to over seven feet tall, pull their roots from the ground to walk, and kill a man with one quick lash of their poisonous stingers. With society in shambles, they are now poised to prey on humankind. Wyndham chillingly anticipates bio-warfare and mass destruction, fifty years before their realization, in this prescient account of Cold War paranoia.

My Review:

It must be, I thought, one of the race's most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that "it can't happen here" — that one's own time and place is beyond cataclysm.

In this time of fearful concern over genetically manipulated Frankenfoods, the triffids should give this book a fresh and timely aura, IMHO. For Soviet manipulation of plants, read Monsanto, and, well....

One of the big issues with the book is the Dreaded Infodump, pretty much all of chapter two. I know why folks don't like long expository passages, but there is always a certain amount of world-building to do in any novel, especially so in SF. So, in the end, I come down on the side of the flow NOT being interrupted by the backstory. I think it was well handled, well as well-handled as such a thing can be; Wyndham starts the chapter with "This is a personal record." That's the jumping-off place for the character's memories. That was, for me, an adequate narrative frame for the purpose of keeping the important sense of forward momentum present in the 18pp (in my Modern Library reprint) it takes to put readers in the picture.

I think I was lulled into acquiescence by Wyndham's style, as well: "Such a swerve of interest from swords to plowshares was undoubtedly a social improvement, but, at the same time, it was a mistake for the optimistic to claim it as showing a change in the human spirit." (p21, Mod. Lib. reprint) Understatedly gives the reader a sense of the narrator's already extant character and informs the retentive reader that later dark musings the narrator indulges in are not due to a freshly developed case of the post-apocalyptic blahs.

Then this chilling bit:

But there were a number of not unobvious characteristics which escaped comment for some little time. It was, for instance, quite a while before anyone drew attention to the uncanny accuracy with which {the triffids} aimed their stings, and that they almost invariably struck for the head. Nor did anyone at first take notice of their habit of lurking near their fallen victims. The reason for that became clear only when it was shown that they fed upon flesh as well as insects. The stinging tendril did not have the muscular power to tear firm flesh, but it had strength enough to pull shreds from a decomposing body and lift them to the cup on its stem.

(p31, Mod. Lib. reprint)
EEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW

But how much more effective and chilling and revolting and scary when delivered in the even, measured voice of a scientist-cum-post-traumatic-stress-survivor instead of screeched at us. The narrator's reliability is well established with the reader at this point, and later horrors are subtly magnified by the unconscious impression of trustworthiness this kind of technique provides.

REAL horror, not gore: that sense of unspeakable and terrifying things happening on a Wednesday afternoon at four pm, not in some horrible abbatoir at midnight where I the reader/moviegoer know for sure and certain there are not enough wild horses to drag me.

Uh oh. I'm hearing crickets chirping. Better clam up. (But not before mentioning the 1962 Howard Keel-starring film...a twelve-years-after more horror-focused adaptation conceived and filmed during the run-up to the Cuban Missile Crisis. It has a charm all its own but it sure ain't up there with the 21st Century's adaptations!)

GREYBEARD, childless post-apocalyptic Earth--chilling

GREYBEARD
BRIAN W. ALDISS
Open Road Media (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$7.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Human reproduction has ceased and society slowly spirals in this “adult Lord of the Flies” by a Grand Master of Science Fiction (San Francisco Chronicle).

After the “Accident,” all males on Earth become sterile. Society ages and falls apart bit by bit. First, toy companies go under. Then record companies. Then cities cease to function. Now Earth’s population lives in spread‑out, isolated villages, with its youngest members in their fifties. When the people of Sparcot begin to make claims of gnomes and man‑eating rodents lurking around their village, Greybeard and his wife set out for the coast with the hope of finding something better.

My Review: The sombre story of a group of people in their fifties who face the fact that there is no younger generation coming to replace them; instead nature is rushing back to obliterate the disaster they have brought on themselves. Was slighty revised by the author in 2012. First published in 1964, at the tail end of one of the scariest passages during the Cold War, this post-apocalyptic look at the resilience and the lack of same in the human spirit was involving and affecting. It was also a disorganized mess.

spoilers! here be spoilers!

Chapters 1-3 take place in 2025 and on, or the mid-point of the story. Chapter 4 takes place as the world finds its way through the crisis. Chapter 5 has us back in about 2030...Chapter 6 is early days of the Accident, as the sterilization of Earth's humans is called...and then back to 2030 in Chapter 7. It's kind of a confused way to tell a story. Not that it's a complicated story, but it's always nice to have things move along in sequence when there's no reason, stylistic or otherwise, for them not to.

Aldiss' Introduction to the 2012 edition tells of the genesis of the story...a divorce, a general reduction of his life to solitude, and a desperate yearning for his lost kids...and I must say that this Introduction is what kept me going for the whole short 237ish pages. I could relate to his sense of loss and his almost desperate longing. I looked for those things in his text and really didn't find them too terribly often. Many things occur in the book, but few of them happen, if you see what I mean; Greybeard, the main character, and Martha, Greybeard's wife, aren't prone to overstatement. Jeff, a character whose slippery presence is highly emotionally charged, makes little impact in the end. Charley, the dopey religious nut, isn't much of a shakes for shakin' stuff up either. Dr. Jingadangelow (!) the snake oil salesman is fun...I picture Eddie Izzard playing the role in a movie...but rattles on and rockets off ballistically.

I didn't love the book, but it's got at its heart a futureless bleakness that I myownself resonate with. After 50-plus years and despiter a relatively recent revisuion, the Accident's specifics don't quite line up with reality. I really have no smallest problem imagining specifics that end us up in the same narrative place. One day soon, y'all should go read Sir Roy Calne's book Too Many People. I can see that causing the Accident with all too great a clarity of inner vision.

On the low end of the recommend-to-others scale, and then only to those who like post-apocalyptic stories.

THE ZONA, post-apocalyptic excellence

THE ZONA
Nathan Yocum
Curiosity Quills Press
$4.99 Kindle, $12.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The Storms came, and with them disease and blight like mankind had never experienced. Most died, and those who didn't were quick to scramble for weapons, wealth, and control. Petty lords gave way to new societies, and from the ashes of old came the Reformed Arizona Theocracy, or simply put, the Zona. The laws are simple, all sins are punished swiftly and violently. The enforcers, otherwise known as Preachers, roam the lands hunting disgraced men and women. But what happens when Preachers stop killing? What happens when men of honor take a stand against their rulers?

The Zona is the debut novel by award winning screenwriter Nathan L. Yocum. Cover art by Peter Schumann.

My Review: Lead is a Preacher in the service of the Reformed Theocracy of Arizona...The Zona...which means he seeks out those lost in sin and error and delivers them, either to Purgatory or to Heaven. No trial is needed, no expiation is offered, the Church has decreed them marked (the Mark of Cain) and so Lead (so nicknamed because he was in Lead Group Two during the Battle for Las Vegas, which ended in nuclear conflagration thanks to the Mormons attacking The Zona's foot army and the People's Republic of Northern California's air force, all supposed allies in the cleansing of sin from the face of the earth) may execute his duty with impunity and without stain on his soul.

He shoots them dead on the spot, or he takes them to the foulest prison imaginable, there to die. In God's name let it be done.

You will by now have perceived that this is not the world of 2012. It is a post-Apocalyptic world, one in which The Storms have ended technological civilization, and the survivors of the initial climate apocalypse next faced catastrophic pole shift, then myriad plagues. In the space of about thirty years, humanity's glittering edifice of civilization has utterly vanished. In its place are a few shattered remnants of humankind, struggling to eke out minimum survival and to make some tiny degree of sense out of this tragedy. Up rears the Church, using its time-tested lies and bullshit to harass and hector the shocked walking wounded into a herd, dedicated to the preservation and future wealth of...the Church. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

So Lead hunts down Preacher Terence, for reasons he doesn't know...he's never told why he's going after a mark, it would only confuse his purpose...and the unthinkable happens. Lead talks to Terence, Lead listens to Terence, and Lead, for the first time since his plague-victim mother dropped dead in the fugee camp and left him to starve or not as best he could, Lead thinks. Why, he thinks., Why, he wonders. Why, he asks, am I killing people to save them? Am I saving them, or damning myself? Is this what God wants of me? Terence, who traveled this road before Lead, answers, “It's what the Church wants, and the Church is not God.”

And there it is, the basis of heresy, and it lights a rocket in Lead's soul that propels the plot into its fast, furious, fiery hot trajectory as Lead and Terence form a little family, attempt to escape the Church and its hideous, hateful strictures, share their horrific pasts (each was, in his own way, part of the Cleansing at Las Vegas, and it left them both irredeemably scarred), and evade their Crusader pursuit team.

The journey to redemption is never easy. It takes its toll on the heartiest and healthiest of men. It leads Lead through the Purgatory he sent other men to, and it sends him, naked and frightened and covered in filth, on a pilgrimage through the desert seeking New Pueblo, a purported Land of Milk and Honey, where the Old Ways still exist.

The first paragraph of the book is what did it for me. I mean, completely hooked me like I was a marlin and it was the goddamned Old Man from that Hemingway farrago.

Lead woke with the sun peeling his eyelids back like the tips of God’s fingers.  His vision shifted to focus on the haze of brown earth and the beige nothing of sand and grit.  His wrists were bound together on the other side of a sandstone boulder, pulled to an excruciating limit, shoulders popped and throbbing.  His beaten face felt like a mask worn off-center, swollen and repugnant.

I like post-Apocalyptic literature, and this novel is some good-quality stuff for my fix. It's a lot like The Road meets A Canticle for Leibowitz to produce a bastard Earth Abides. Author Yocum has a lot to be proud of in this book, and its periodic infelicities of punctuation and occasional lapses into wrong-worditis are readily overlookable because, for heaven's sake, this story is SCARILY PLAUSIBLE. Like “where did this dude get the time machine” plausible. And it's written quite well. And it's paced to maximize excitement. And it's character-development arcs are beautifully calculated to give the minor characters depth and major characters motivation and not bring the bus to a juddering halt during the info-dumps.

Applause, applause, Mr. Yocum, and may you get a mini-series contract from Starz to develop this into a multi-episode successor to The Stand yesterday at the latest. I downloaded the Kindle freebie at about 11am and did not stop reading until I was done. That's how exciting I found this book.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

EARTH ABIDES, 70+ year old post-apocalyptic excellence

EARTH ABIDES
GEORGE R. STEWART
Mariner Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$15.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A disease of unparalleled destructive force has sprung up almost simultaneously in every corner of the globe, all but destroying the human race. One survivor, strangely immune to the effects of the epidemic, ventures forward to experience a world without man. What he ultimately discovers will prove far more astonishing than anything he'd either dreaded or hoped for.

My Review: Call him Isherwood. (Cause that's his name.) On a camping trip in the mountains, Ish gets bitten by a rattlesnake and barely survives. Clearly he can't call for help on his cell because 1) the mountains and 2) 1949. After all his sufferings, Ish drives down the mountain and finds humanity...in Los Angeles...gone. Just not there. (Oddly, there are also not heaping mounds of dead bodies everywhere...he's only been gone a week or so, and the Plague killed quick. That nit being picked, I resume.) Ish spends his time alternately looking for survivors and ruminating on the justice and inevitability of the plague:

As for man, there is little reason to think that he can in the long run escape the fate of other creatures, and if there is a biological law of flux and reflux, his situation is now a highly perilous one. During ten thousand years his numbers have been on the upgrade in spite of wars, pestilences, and famines. This increase in population has become more and more rapid. Biologically, man has for too long a time been rolling an uninterrupted run of sevens.

When he stops being stunned, he sets out to contact and assess his fellow survivors. He spends a lot of the book out a-wanderin', and he picks up here and there some fellow remnants. No one is a medical research genius or a high government official or anything, thank goodness, so no one knows where this plague came from, how many are dead in other places, or any of that other stuff that pockmarks other post-apocalyptic stories I've read. I completely buy that the survivors are shocked and isolated, where I've always been hmmphy about the better-informed-character stories.

Any road, time passes, life goes on, babies are born and people die and food is grown in tune with nature. We revert, in other words, to the way things were for ~10,000 years before monoculture and factory farming. Ish ages, and the younger people without strong attachments to the pre-apocalyptic world start to think about what the meaning of life is:

If there is a God who made us and we did wrong before His eyes—as George says—at least we did wrong only because we were as God made us, and I do not think that He should set traps. Oh, you should know better than George! Let us not bring all that back into the world again—the angry God, the mean God—the one who does not tell us the rules of the game, and then strikes us when we break them. Let us not bring Him back.

If there is an apocalypse while I'm alive, I'm makin' this my post-apocalyptic mission: Disestablishing religion. Ish is my soul-brother in this regard. But as you can imagine, he's fighting a rear-guard action despite being the oldest person anyone knows, and also the last survivor of Before in the Now. Having lived through the AIDS apocalypse, some days I feel the same way.

And as it must, Death comes for Ish at last, putting an end to his moanings about the stupidity of the human race for making the same mistakes that cost us so dearly before, his pessimistic views on the sustainability of his made tribe, and his invaluable store of knowledge...despite the fact that the whippersnappers don't listen:

Then, though his sight was now very dim, he looked again at the young men. "They will commit me to the earth," he thought. "Yet I also commit them to the earth. There is nothing else by which men live. Men go and come, but earth abides."

I suspect all of us over a Certain Age feel this way to a greater or lesser degree. Plague or no plague, Youth isn't inclined to listen to Age, and apocalypse is relative. My apocalypse...the endangerment of tree books...is youth's Bright New Dawn, bulkless environmentally sound infinite stories! Yes, I'm going, I'm going, stop pushing me!