Dissolution by W. Michael Gear

 

There's a "diary entry" in this book that talks about how, when the triggering event occurred, our politicians and media had done such an effective job of setting Americans at odds with each other that there was not enough trust left between factions, and society by and large simply imploded. Doesn't require much in the way of science fiction's "willing suspension of disbelief" to accept the premise, I'm afraid.
I've often said over the last decade or so that money is a ficitional concept, based on nothing but the agreement to treat it as a valid form of exchange between consenting adults; a bunch of ones and zeroes in cyberspace, for most part. Our fiat currency, the US dollar, used to be backed by an actual "hard" asset, gold, but that was done away with around fifty years ago, so Gear's story about hackers taking down the banking system and destroying, first, the US, and later the world economy could happen at any time.
Do you have faith that your fearless leaders in the free world actually understand economics and could rapidly restore or rebuild our system without running roughshod over our liberties? Better read Gear's book to see how things could all end up in the crapper.

I've been reading Gear's books for decades, and this author hasn't disappointed yet.

Other series of note:
Way of the Spider
Donovan

Patriot Dawn by Max Velocity

This one has got a little bit of everything for the tin-foil hat crowd. A major terrorist attack on Washington, DC, determined to have been sponsored by Iran, sparks reprisals by the U.S., causing the total meltdown of the Middle East, and a domestic economic collapse prompts a totalitarian-leaning administration to suspend posse committatus laws and take control.

Of course, resistance arises in scattered pockets around the country, and this novel details the beginning of one such campaign, in the Shenandoah River valley, mostly consisting of retired military men and their families, supported by preppers and farmers in the area.

What follows is probably a pretty good descriptive guerrilla warfare story, but unfortunately even after reading about half of the book one evening, I didn't give a hoot about any of the characters, including the main protagonist - it's telling I can't even recall his name a few days later. Nothing wrong, technically, with the writing, but I couldn't bring myself to care how it turned out.

Happily, it was a free download.

Micro by Michael Crichton and Richard Preston

It seems as if I've been reading Crichton's books as long as I've been around, sometimes. I was wondering to myself just how old he is, and whether he's still alive or not, as I began this book, and was saddened to see that he died in 2008, while in the middle of writing Micro, and the book was finished by Preston.

In Hawaii, a private investigator and the men who hired him are mysteriously murdered in a locked room, apparently stabbed to death, after he breaks into a facility owned by Nanigen, a research company investigating pharmaceutical prospects of biological compounds, using a new sort of nanotechnology. The police are stumped, and there's nothing tying the men's deaths back to Nanigen, so the investigation goes nowhere.

Meanwhile, a group of grad students doing research at Cambridge is approached by the brother, Eric, of one of the students, Peter Jansen, with a proposal to fly to Hawaii all expenses paid for a recruitment pitch by Nanigen's CEO, Vin Drake. The night before they depart, Peter receives a cryptic text message from his brother telling him not to come, and when he arrives in Hawaii he finds that his brother is missing, presumed dead, after a boating accident.

After the police show him a video taken by picnickers in the area of his brother's leap into the sea, Peter becomes suspicious of Nanigen's CFO, Alyson Bender and Drake, and resolves to confront them about their involvement in Eric's death. Things go horribly awry when he does, though, and he and his friends are all subjected to a process which shrinks them to about a half-inch in size, and then stranded in the Hawaiian rain forest, trying to make their way back to the Nanigen facility so that they can be un-shrunk.

Was it Asimov that wrote Fantastic Voyage? This is not quite as extreme - they're not inside the human body, but the concept is pretty much the same.

The students have to make their way across very hostile territory, where all of the insects and arachnids are at least their size, and where even the smaller creatures, such as nematodes, mites, and worms, can be very unsettling. The entire time they're trying to get back to Nanigen, Drake and his minions are trying to kill them, so they won't reveal the company's dark secrets.

Judging by the bibliography at the end of the book, it was extremely well researched, as far as its attention to details of biology and the behavior of all of the creatures the students encounter. The shrinking machine and some of the nanotech on display require us to willingly suspend our disbelief to get into the swing of the story, but some of the nanotech may not be too far away. I'm definitely going to have to put some of these books on my TBR list.

Nothing wrong with the addition of Preston as co-writer, he did a superb job of finishing in the usual Crichton style. I am going to miss him, though.

Rule 34 by Charles Stross

If William Gibson had waited twenty years to write Neuromancer, it might have turned out to be very much like Rule 34. Gibson had no idea what kind of odd things might crawl out of cyberspace in a couple of decades, but Stross seems to capture a near future that's far too real for comfort. The story takes place in the same milieu as Halting State, not too much later, but doesn't seem to have many of the same characters.

There are several separate story lines and characters that Stross follows from beginning until the end, when he weaves all of the strands back together again. It's a little confusing on that score, as well as trying to learn the new slang that all of the characters spout so naturally.

Detective Inspector Liz Kavanaugh is the head of the Rule 34 squad, which is tasked with monitoring the internet and heading off memes that can mutate from harmless fetishes and amusements to criminal activities. When some ex-cons turn up dead, in various locations around Europe, some disturbing coincidences and their manner of death leads Liz to believe that there's a common entity and purpose behind the bizzare killings.

A muslim immigrant from India, named Anwar, has just been released from jail on probation. He needs to keep his nose clean, not associating with the petty criminals, including his brother-in-law, who got him involved in dubious undertakings to begin with. One of his old friends, and sometime lovers, Adam, puts him onto a job lead, working as a part-time consul for a breakaway republic of Kyrgiztan, Przewalsk. Unfortunately, though the job appears to be quite proper, Anwar soon finds himself involved in some unsavory activities, and realizes that the entire consulate may be a huge scam.

A representative of The Organization (like a high tech mafia), who goes by the name of The Toymaker, arrives in Edinburgh to interview executives for a new operation he's begun. Unfortunately, both candidates for the position are among the recently deceased, and he suspects "enemy action".

So what do a bunch of spammers' murders have to do with the economy of Kyrgiztan and the plots of The Organization? You'll have to read through this tortuously twisty book to find out. Very imaginative vintage Stross, though he paints a rather dismal view of the digital future.

Zendegi by Greg Egan

It's a little hard to believe that I've never, to the best of my knowledge, read anything by Greg Egan before. I saw this little number at the library and thought I should give it a try. It reminds me a lot of some of the early William Gibson cyberpunk novels, in a good way.

Zendegi takes place in the very near future. In fact, it begins in the early years of the Obama administration, apparently, and Egan makes note of the inaccuracies in the world situation that is portrayed here in his afterword, but that doesn't harm the story much. Part of the story takes place in Iran, during something analogous to the Green revolution, where a reporter from Australia, Martin Seymour, witnesses the dramatic events leading up to the liberalization of Iranian society and politics, and the removal from power of the mullah-ocracy. In the course of this, he makes some lifelong friends, and meets his future wife, Mahnoosh.

Halfway around the world, an Iranian ex-pat named Nahim, one of Mahnoosh's cousins, is working for the Human Connectome Project, an attempt to map the brains of humans into computers. When the project threatens to grind to a halt due to a lack of funding, at the same time as the revolution in Iran succeeds, Nahim and her mother decide to return to their home country, where she takes a series of jobs over the next few years, leading eventually to one writing software for a virtual world called Zendegi. Zendegi's biggest competitor is a world created and run by a company in India, and once again Nahim is facing losing her job as venture capital runs dry.

In the meantime, Martin and Mahnoosh have married and had a son, Javeed, a precocious and charming child, but whom Martin fears will be contaminated with many of the racial prejudices and overt sexism displayed by the Iranians around them. When Manoosh is killed in a car accident, and Martin later develops liver cancer, he decides he must find a way to raise Javeed "himself" after he has passed away, rather than leaving him to be raised by his Iranian god-parents.

Martin and Nahim join forces to map Martin's brain and personality so that he can live on after his death in the world of Zendegi. The serious portion of the tale is relieved by the adventures that Martin and Javeed experience together, based on Persian fables, in Zendegi.

One of the things I really liked about this was that many of the "inventions" in the story were so close to modern technology that I found myself asking, every so often, "Hey, do we have that already?" Not much willing suspension of disbelief required for most of this book. I suppose I'm going to have to hunt down some more novels by Mr. Egan.

What So Proudly We Hailed by James Howard

Recently I received a review copy of this book from Mr. Howard, and last night after dinner I picked it up to read. Couldn't really put it down until I finished it, right around bedtime. A quick and interesting read.

This novel is set in the very near future, in an America which I'm sure you'll all recognize. A man and his son are out getting some school supplies from the grocery store in a small coastal town in South Carolina when they see a mysterious contrail, possibly from a missile, light up the sky. When they get home and turn on the radio, they find out that the U.S. has been attacked by nuclear missiles.

The targets turn out to be the crucial nodes in the electrical power grid across the country, or at least those that can be reached from a sub in the Gulf of Mexico with intermediate range missiles. The perpetrators are the North Koreans, using an old surplused Yankee class Russian submarine (bought it at a yard sale? LOL. Not really, just the way my mind works sometimes). When I read that bit, I flashed back to reading a book called Blind Man's Bluff, about the cat-and-mouse games the U.S. and U.S.S.R. used to play with each other under the seas during the Cold War.

The father, Jason, realizes very quickly that things could get ugly very fast. Much of the social fabric that knits our nation together in times of disaster or war has unraveled over the years, as the entitlement mentality has spread, and the mob has become addicted to the bread and circuses of the modern media. He gathers up all the supplies he can get quickly and locally, and evacuates his family from the area on a 26 foot cabin cruiser he's been restoring. They "hide out" in the maze of the barrier islands, keeping track of events on the mainland by short wave radio.

The first bit of this book reminds me a bit of Farnham's Freehold, by Heinlein. Jason is the only one in his family who immediately reacts to the danger of social disintegration that is bound to follow, and some of his family refuse to leave with him. There's also the addition of a non-family member to the party, his daughter's friend, Julie, and there's at least the potential for a love triangle to develop there, as it did between Hugh Farnham and Barbara in that novel.

However, Jason is a Christian man and faithful husband, and when Julie pushes for a physical relationship with him, he relies on self-control and the power of prayer to resist. Refreshing, in a way, not to see people leaping into bed headlong in all the books I read. There was a bit of this scene that just didn't ring quite right. It's hard to believe that Jason, who has two grown children and one teenager, had never been faced with this type of situation before, in fact he seemed quite surprised by it. I think most Christian men have faced down these sort of issues more than once in the course of a two decade marriage. But that's a minor quibble.

The overall theme and plot of the book also resembles the Left Behind series by Lahaye and Jenkins, in that Jason's family and other christians are struck by the similarity of world events as they begin to unfold, and the Biblical prophecies concerning the end times. I gotta guess that Mr. Howard is a post-Trib Rapture believer, as there was no evidence of anyone vanishing from the christian communities before the persecution of christians starts.

Predictably (at least to anyone paying attention), multiple groups, from the radical Islamists, to the Chinese, to the militias, the politicians and petty tyrants, take advantage of the disarray and disaster to pursue their own agendas. A self-proclaimed Mahdi arises in the Middle East, and much of Europe bows to his demands, and even the Vatican begins negotiating with him. The novel leaves things dangling a bit at the end, and I have to wonder if Mr. Howard has more in store for us with a series here. Great stuff from a new author, without any graphic sex and violence, just a scary scenario to consider.

Press Release - What So Proudly We Hailed by James Howard

I haven't read this one yet, but have requested a review copy.

Charleston, SC - November 15, 2010 - Imagine what would happen if eighty percent of the United States were without power for three or four months. All banking and commercial transfers locked up; funds inaccessible. Wholesale and retail distribution shut down; no computers to manage sales. Passenger and freight lines grind to a halt; no electricity for the fuel pumps. No cell phone or landline service; systems down indefinitely. And the worst aspect of all; a total breakdown of law and order.

This is the setting of What So Proudly We Hailed. The unthinkable has happened; a limited nuclear missile strike has destroyed the power grid beyond any immediate repair. The protagonist, Jason Ribault, sensing the societal breakdown to come, flees with his family in an old cabin cruiser to wait out the worst of the chaos behind the deserted barrier islands of the South Carolina coast. There they listen to unfolding events on a short-wave radio, not the least of which concerns a hostile political influence seeking to seize control of a nation struggling to right itself once again. 

Pursued by their own immediate dangers, the family is pushed farther and farther into the desolate salt marshes where they find other families in hiding. Eventually, anxious to unite with a family member in danger, they turn back into the chaos, to see the full extent of what has happened to the America they knew.

Electric with page-turning suspense, What So Proudly We Hailed is an eye-opening book every American must read.

About the book:
What So Proudly We Hailed by James Howard
ISBN: 978-1453672433
Publisher: CreateSpace
Date of publish: July 2, 2010
Pages: 280
S.R.P.: $12.00

About the author:
James Howard is a veteran of the US Navy's nuclear weapons program. He has also spent twenty years working in heavy industry, including electrical power generation and distribution, and knows much about our nation's power grid. These experiences, combined with his study of Bible prophesy, world history, and Islam, make him uniquely qualified to write this novel.

Hidden Empire, by Orson Scott Card

If we've ever talked about Card's books, you know that whenever I get my hands on a new title, I pretty much have to set aside a dedicated block of time to read it. Anything Card writes inspires me to power on to the finish, so I can get into big trouble starting one of his books just before bedtime. Once again, he's remained true to form.

I've been trying to figure out what has inspired Card on one aspect of his recent writings; his tendency to include extremely precocious, articulate children in his stories. Think of nearly the entire cast of his Ender's story arc, for example. He's done the same here with the children of Reuben and Cecily Malich. If you've ever raised children, you know that sometime during their teenage years, they suddenly become infinitely smarter than their parents. This condition generally lasts until they move out, get jobs and have children of their own, after which point their parents' IQs increase dramatically. Was Card just taking an assumption to its amusing conclusion? "What if kids actually did become smarter than their parents?" Or did Card end up raising some truly precocious and improbably logical children, thus providing fodder for his books?

Hidden Empire is, of course, the sequel to Empire, in which we saw the rise to power of Averell Torrent, a president of the USA who may or may not have the desire and ability to become a caesar in fact, if not in name, over a world empire ruled by America. The novel centers around an ebola-like plague that originates in Nigeria, which has the potential to wipe out 1/3 to 1/2 of the Earth's population, if it goes unchecked. Torrent's administration gets word of the disease very quickly, and moves boldly to quarantine the entire continent of Africa, as there seems to be no way to stop the spread of the disease past the Nigerian borders.

The quarantine is generally successful, though it is acknowledged that it won't succeed in the long haul, and the disease will eventually spread around the globe. However, a large contingent of ordinary citizens from the United States, moved by compassion, demand to be allowed to go to Africa to care for the victims of the disease. Through their actions, serendipitously (if one can call anything deliberately written in a novel such), much is learned about how to make the disease more survivable, and that fact gives us hope that the plague will not destroy civilization as we know it.

At the beginning of each chapter is what is purported to be an excerpt from a speech by President Torrent. Don't skip these, they are really interesting politico-social commentaries straight from the brain of Card himself. Whether or not he personally believes any of it is a moot point; they're all good grist for the grinder.

I'm looking forward to the next installment in this series with great anticipation.