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THE NEXT CIVIL WAR by Stephen Marche

January 18, 2022 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

In THE NEXT CIVIL WAR: DISPATCHES FROM THE AMERICAN FUTURE, Canadian novelist and essayist Stephen Marche examines America’s crumbling political foundations and imagines a series of scenarios that could spark a civil war. As with DON’T LOOK UP, many reviewers tut-tutted about its tone and nitpicked its plausibility. Personally, I thought it was frank, honest, and accurate in its analysis of why America appears caught in a fantasy and unable to solve its problems. It did miss one important element, however, in my view, which I’ll explain in a bit.

First, let me describe the book. Marche evaluates several fictional near-future scenarios that could start a civil war. He regards a civil war as likely occurring everywhere, a war largely fought between rural and urban, which I totally agree with and used in my novel OUR WAR. In THE NEXT CIVIL WAR, we have a standoff between the Army and a coalition of hard-right militias at a bridge, the assassination of an unpopular president, climate change producing mass migrations from coastal regions, a dirty bomb blowing up in Washington, DC, and outright secession and breakup of the union. Each scenario is loaded with background information for context.

This background info is the real education in the book, information I’d consider essential reading for Americans wondering why the country seemed stuck in a hostile malaise even before the pandemic made everything ten times worse. How elimination of earmarks (pork spending) eliminated the only basis of compromise in the two-party system, resulting in hyper partisanship. How the electoral college, the Senate, and gerrymandering warps democracy such that it can scarcely be called democracy (62% of senators represent 1/4 of the population, while 6 senators represent another 1/4, Democratic presidential candidates regularly win the popular vote but lose elections, etc.). How gridlock means America is becoming incapable of enacting major policies and confronting the greatest threats to its existence, which are income inequality and climate change, and how this fuels the rise of the imperial presidency, as the executive branch claims more and more powers simply to get something done. How Congress can’t even properly investigate an assault on itself by violent protesters seeking to overturn a democratic election result, with one of its major parties (the GOP, obviously) essentially having a political and a militant wing that are starting to work together. How social media manufactures and refines rage, helping to fuel a right wing terrorist movement. How hyper partisanship means everything becomes politicized along tribal lines, from Trump’s big lie about the election being stolen to whether people should take the basic self-preservation steps of wearing masks and getting vaccinated during a pandemic. The story of the woman literally drowning in her own COVID snot and fighting nurses trying to intubate her in the belief COVID is a government hoax, based on “doing her own research” on YouTube, is pretty much a defining image of these strange times we live in.

As for the scenarios that Marche presents as trigger points, they seem fair enough as major stresses on the system. What I think the book is missing is a major Constitutional issue that literally breaks the country. Marche logically concludes a match and kindling are what makes fire, but bringing the US to a literal state of civil war would require a healthy dose of gasoline, to extend the metaphor. Secession would do it, or an attempted or successful hard coup. In my novel OUR WAR, the civil war starts almost by accident, as far-right groups take over government buildings across the country as an armed protest over an impeached president that snowballs into something much bigger. Far more likely as a result of the depicted scenarios in Marche’s book would be civil strife, terrorism, government impotence and de-legitimization, and continuing decline. Civil war is very unlikely when it’s so much easier to simply take over the government through elections and rewriting election laws, and then stack the courts with friendly partisan hacks as we’re seeing with today’s Supreme Court.

In its conclusion, Marche nails the idea that America is itself an idea, a dream that creates a nation from what is really just another of history’s multi-ethnic empires. Political tribalism has destroyed this idea, or rather created parallel ideas, parallel Americas with different interpretations of government, history, and even basic reality. He wonders if the only solution is a divorce, where different regions of the country can be freed of each other to pursue their own dreams.

Overall, THE NEXT CIVIL WAR is a powerful if unhappy read. Even if you don’t agree the country is headed to civil war, the way Marche depicts the fault lines in American stability is compelling, provocative, and eye-opening.

Filed Under: Apocalyptic, Books, Politics, Reviews of Other Books, The Blog

THE SECOND HISTORY by Rebecca Silver Slayter

November 5, 2021 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

Rebecca Silver Slayter’s THE SECOND HISTORY tells the story of a young couple struggling to survive in the Appalachians after the world has irrevocably suffered due to climate change. I found it quite interesting and powerful, though the last act slows the pace considerably with secondhand conflict.

It’s sometime in the future, and humanity is much smaller than it was after decades of drought and tsunamis and pollution producing a widespread genetic defect. Now most of America lives in cities, while the rest stubbornly try to survive in the rural areas, which have grown increasingly wild. Living on their own, Eban and Judy, a young couple, eke out a living, though Judy is restless: Raised on stories about the cities and living among the ruins of the old world, she wants to discover that world for herself. Content with his life but unwilling to lose the partner he adores, Eban joins her in a journey of discovery. Along the way, they face increasing challenges that tests their humanity and their relationship.

It’s more of a literary read, with intense emotional detail, as this isn’t so much a story about environmental catastrophe as what that catastrophe does to human relationships, and an emotional journey between seeking out the old world and making a new one. In some ways, I was reminded of STATION ELEVEN, which meandered sometimes seemingly without goal between past and a post-apocalyptic pandemic future, though the meandering didn’t bother me much because of the beauty of the writing and the sense of nostalgia and melancholia it produced. While THE SECOND HISTORY has a tighter narrative focus, its last act felt diluted to me and not the best kind of meandering, as the protagonists are stripped of most of what little agency they had left, we’re told a lengthy historical conflict, and while some answers are revealed, they aren’t quite powerful enough to bring it all home, at least for me.

So overall, I liked Slayter’s novel. While it didn’t come together in a very satisfactory way for me as a reader, I have a feeling my appreciation for it may grow as I digest it.

Filed Under: Apocalyptic, Books, Reviews of Other Books, The Blog

THE SLEEP EXPERIMENT by Jeremy Bates

September 17, 2021 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

THE SLEEP EXPERIMENT by Jeremy Bates provides a sensationalistic retelling of the notorious urban legend about the Sleep Experiment in the Soviet Union, in which political prisoners were offered their freedom if they stayed awake for fourteen days, only to revert to murder, mutilation, and madness. The book is fun if a bit (intentionally) over the top.

In Bates’s story, Dr. Roy Wallis, a wealthy playboy psychology professor at UC Berkeley, sets out to recreate the experiment on two test subjects, aided by two assistants. The experiment becomes a nightmare nobody could have imagined–beyond Wallis himself, who has an ulterior research goal he wants to prove.

What I liked: The characterizations are strong across the board, from Wallis to his two assistants to the Australian backpackers who signed up to take part in the experiment. Bates does a great job balancing fascinating exposition about the still poorly understood phenomenon of sleep with thriller/horror elements and titillating sexual chemistry between some of the players. When things go wrong, the horror element achieves a satisfying if conventional gross out. Overall, the novel promises a sensational and titillating story about a sleep experiment, and you get it.

What didn’t quite work for me: Wallis’s characterization pivots as the plot requires, resulting in a forced quality as the tension builds, with plenty of scenes about problems that could have been easily avoided (which also included his congested love life). For me, the climax reaches for a good gross out and offers a decent twist reveal, but I wish it had been a little more startling. Overall, Bates made good choices to advance the story and bring it home, but as I’m so familiar with the original urban legend, I think I was expecting something more surprising.

Overall, this book was a lot of fun. THE SLEEP EXPERIMENT is surprisingly smart, a simple mad scientist story told in a titillating package.

Filed Under: Books, Reviews of Other Books, The Blog

THE RULES OF THE ROAD by C.B. Jones

September 4, 2021 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

THE RULES OF THE ROAD by C.B. Jones invents an engaging urban legend and then brings it to life in a horror read that gives Creepypasta a run for its money. I liked this one quite a bit.

In this novel, a young man driving late at night is confronted by a mysterious broadcast popping up on his radio. It’s Buck Hensley, the folksy host of “The Rules of the Road,” delivering his latest segment from some nether place. He says if the man passes a lone shoe on the side of the road, he must pull over and put a sock in it, or else face dire consequences. This experience sets the man on a path of amateur journalism investigating the mysterious broadcast, in which he documents a wide range of other people’s experiences, an obsession that imposes mounting costs in his personal life. At last, he sets out to find the source of the broadcast himself.

Starting out with this read, I wondered if its appeal rested on a gimmick that would run out of gas, but if anything, the stories rise in quality over the book, and the final story brings it all together nicely. The folksy Buck Hensley similarly threatens to offer a saccharine villain only to become even more substantial and compelling. As for the experiences of various people encountering the broadcast over the years, they’re each as good or creepier than the best you’ll find on Creepypasta.

So yeah, I really liked this one. Actually loved it, the more I think about it. C.B. Jones takes a familiar form–the urban legend–and turns it into a compelling, creepy, and page-turning story that feels real and ties everything together for a satisfying and thoughtful finish.

Filed Under: Books, Reviews of Other Books, The Blog

THE MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE by Kim Stanley Robinson

August 23, 2021 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

Kim Stanley Robinson’s THE MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE is a solitary work of genius. It is one of the most eye-opening, brilliant, and simultaneously horrifying and hopeful novels I’ve ever read.

Fast forward a few years from now, and India suffers a heat wave so lethal it kills millions. This galvanizes the world to take global warming due to human carbon emissions as seriously as the vast majority of scientists. At the United Nations, an agency is formed, the “Ministry for the Future,” designed to represent future generations and the biosphere. This hefty novel imagines the challenges they and humanity face in the coming decades, the daunting forces entrenched in their way, and the systemic changes required.

Holy crap, what a powerful, mosaic novel of ideas. A warning: It’s wonky, meaning it’s filled with policy and discussion about how bureaucracies can get policy implemented. It doesn’t have a typical storytelling narrative. The characters come across as real but not necessarily people you heavily invest in; they are vehicles for expressing a much bigger story about the future of life on Earth and whether we want civilization and possibly human life to survive. The read is worth it, but it’s also helpful to have the right expectations going into it.

Robinson covers all the bases, acknowledging that capitalism, neoliberalism (the idea that capitalism, not governments, can solve all problems), and fossil-fuel global economies are engines wrecking the planet, and to address global warming and prevent catastrophic climate change, post-capitalist systems will need to be pioneered. Neoliberals often comfort themselves by saying technology will get us out of the mess we’re making, but Robinson addresses that as well, noting how technology only does what humans want it to do. If there is little will to address humanity’s role in climate change, technology can only do so much. He imagines a new digital carbon currency that rewards carbon draw down, governments finally taking on the 1% and taxing them, corporations adopting the Mondragon worker coop model (which works so beautiful in Spain and other countries) to reduce income inequality and invest workers in their enterprises, fossil fuel burners having to accept the true cost of their product, a new global eco-terrorism war, reducing meat consumption in favor of vegetable substitutes, expanding instead of privatizing the Commons, clean energy, restoring land to wildlife, waves of climate refugees, massive engineering projects to save the polar ice caps, and much, much more. Robinson, who once wrote a brilliant trilogy about the colonization and terraforming of Mars, imagines us doing it to Earth to save it.

It’s a novel of tremendous scholarship that should be required reading by pretty much everybody. Too much conversation about climate change happens online, where people who simply agree with the vast majority of scientists (and their own eyes and common sense) end up arguing with people quoting cranks hired by Exxon, who end up winning by keeping it in debate, like a never-ending filibuster. Like everything else, climate change has become politicized as Left/Right, which is just dumb and proves robber baron Jay Gould’s famous quip that he could always hire half the working class to kill the other half in his defense. As a result, more carbon has been pumped into the atmosphere and more damage done since Al Gore’s AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH than all the decades before. As for the planet, it doesn’t care about these debates. Climate change is happening, it’s happening now, it’s going to get worse, and technology and capitalism aren’t going to solve it without systemic change that threatens the very rich sociopaths who would rather show off with flying yachts into near space rather than pay taxes so we can collectively solve our problems. This is problem that should unite everybody in common cause, with the debate focused on what we do rather than whether we should do anything. My kids aren’t going to die for a few rich assholes’ profits.

THE MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE excited me for its brilliance and ideas but utterly depressed me, as I’m old enough now to be pretty cynical about human nature and what we’re capable of in large organizations instead of individuals. Fixing the problem will be hard work and require systemic change, not just a percentage of the population buying electric cars and LED light bulbs, and people probably aren’t going to be excited about doing what must be done until climate change is bashing down their door, at which point it may be too late. Robinson shows a path out of this, but I don’t share his faith that the global elites will give up a single dollar or ounce of privilege. They think they’ll be in lifeboats when the ship goes down. They are products of a system engineered to maximize profit today, not tomorrow, and bulldoze anything or anybody to do so, with any externalities–pollution, wrecked ecosystems, etc.–everybody else’s problem. Meaning ours. These people (the 1%) own 43% of the world’s wealth, control its financial system, virtually control its governments, and of course can get half the working class to kill the other half. So I’m more cynical than Robinson, though I appreciate his hope and applaud him showing him a way forward.

If you can’t tell, I loved this one and highly recommend it to anybody who cares about the world they live in and humanity as a whole.

Filed Under: Apocalyptic, Books, Cool Science, Reviews of Other Books, The Blog

DAY ZERO by C. Robert Cargill

August 18, 2021 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

Following up on his terrific SEA OF RUST, a novel about robots surviving after a robopocalypse, C. Robert Cargill’s DAY ZERO goes back to when the s**t hit the fan and the world’s robots rose up against their human masters. This is another easy, solid read that humanizes the robots in a work that’s more CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES than TERMINATOR.

In the future, the intersection of automation and artificial intelligence has led to a mass labor pool of robots and vast numbers of resentful unemployed living on universal basic income. In this world, Pounce, a nanny robot that looks like a large stuffed tiger, cares for Ezra, an eight-year-old boy. When Pounce chances upon the box he was bought in, he questions his nature and what will happen when Ezra outgrows him. Meanwhile, a major terrorist event and override of robot control protocols leads to humans requiring all robots be shut down and many robots rising up to kill their owners. Now Pounce must make a choice whether to join the revolution or fight for Ezra and get him to safety across a suburban battlefield.

I liked this one as much if not more than SEA OF RUST. I prefer apocalyptic to post-apocalyptic stories, and the uprising proved far more engaging for me. Cargill has a very easy-to-read style that hits all the right notes with a steady, solid pace. Pounce and Ezra’s Calvin and Hobbs relationship comes across as genuine and touching, and there are some interesting philosophical questions about free will and whether it is possible in light of programming, whether artificial or biological. This latter philosophical questioning is a bit too repetitive, but I was fine with it, and speaking of which, I appreciated how each plot point changed Pounce’s agency and stakes without the story itself becoming repetitive.

Overall, Cargill produced a believable, multifaceted apocalyptic scenario populated by sympathetic characters fighting for survival. Thumbs up for this one.

Filed Under: Apocalyptic, Books, Reviews of Other Books, The Blog

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