I remember a few months ago being involved in a short conversation online regarding how much time it would take after a planet wide apocalypse before we lost the knowledge of how maintain modern technologies (computers, medical, chemistry, etc), and collapse into a new dark ages. I think the consenses was that knowledge would last a generation or two, and then fall by the wayside as people died or stopped seeing a reason to pass seemingly useless knowledge on.
S. M. Stirling's Dies the Fire answers the questions in that conversation in a brutal fashion. Right off the bat, some kind of EMP has gone off in the upper atmosphere, affecting electronics, vehicles, steam engines, guns, and anything else that requires any kind of chemical reaction to work. The focus of the novel isn't the cause of the EMP (if that's what it was), but on the survivors and how they expect to live their lives after what becomes known as The Change.
The story follows two main groups in Northern Idaho and outside Covallis, Oregon. Readers who are familiar with these areas will surely recognize cities, roads, and other landmarks. When airplanes start crashing to the ground, and cars stopped working in Corvallis, Juniper MacKenzie, hippie-ish musician and practicing Wiccan priestess, knows something is very, very wrong. She collects as much of her coven as she can, and after “liberating” a covered wagon from a local museum and whatever other supplies they can find, they decide to head out to her family's farm in the Willamette Valley. In Northern Oregon, Mike Havel, contract pilot, is flying the Larssen family to their vacation spot in northern Montana, when after a flash of light in the sky, everything in the plane goes done. One good crash landing later, and Mike earns himself the task of getting this affluent family to safety. The main plot of the novel follows Mike Havel and Juniper MacKenzie's groups as they learn how to survive and cope in this frightening new world.
The first concern for the two groups is food, and rightly so. What can they forage, what can they steal, what can they grow, what can they hunt? Believing that the cities are soon to be cesspools full of starvation, disease, and death, both groups stay to the country. Minimal safety can be found in rural areas, where abandoned farms can be taken over, roaming farm animals can be captured for meat or milk, and game can be hunted. In one scene, Mike and his group come across a large group of city folk who have left a city on foot, and are aimlessly walking the abandoned interstates. He agrees to accept people into his group who can prove they have usable skills, such as medical, farming, or old fashioned weaponry. As I read this I got to thinking, if I was in that situation, how would I convince a clan leader to accept me? Being able to keep a tomato plant alive does not count as a farming skill, knowing how to apply neosporin and a bandaid does not count as a medical skill, and having watched some choreographed sword fights at the Renaissance Festival does not count as weapons skills. Everything on my resume would make me beyond useless in Stirling's post apocalyptic world. It's not the horror of a changed world that is was frightening to me, it was the horror of knowing I'd be useless in that world that kept me up at night biting my nails.
Time goes by, and our two “clans” grow and evolve, and meet other groups of survivors, some militant, others so desperate for food that they resort to cannibalism and attacking other groups to use as food. Stirling keeps the action tense and suspenseful. The scenes involving the cannibal groups were reminiscent of horror movies and a few other apocalypse books where prisoners are kept alive and slowly amputated as the tribe needs to feed. If the fear of being useless in this new world doesn't keep you awake at night, these pyschologically horrific scenes will.
On a positive (yet plot devicy) note, each clan luckily has members who are Renaissance Festival alumni, members of the SCA, or have experience working with and making non-modern weaponry, such as swords and crossbows. Since guns are no longer working, the quickest way to get dinner is via bow and arrow. It was easy to laugh while reading about characters who are wearing blue jeans and t-shirts under their chainmail, carrying crossbows and long swords. Good thing the characters laugh at themselves too. They know they look rediculous, but that this is what enables them to live.
Along with a weapons expert, each clan has someone with some kind of engineering experience, and someone with some kind of medical experience, be them nurse or veterenarian. This where the conversation gets interesting regarding the loss of knowledge of modern technology. The engineer and the doctor aren't about to forget anything they've learned, and purposely share the knowledge with anyone who will listen. But without CAD, or pnuematic tools, or electricity, or refridgeration, or digital thermometers, or even a nailgun, how much use is technical engineering knowledge or medical knowledge going to be? The danger here isn't loss of knowledge, it's loss of a paradigm to use the knowledge in. Some of the most interesting parts of the book are where people who used to be engineers and carpenters try to get together to build something with only the tools at hand: water they can haul from the river, 50 pound bags of dry cement, hand saws, and any rope they can make themselves.
Juniper MacKenzie struck me as a maternal, wisened woman in her late 40's or early 50's, willing to take on life's challenges as they came, but not above complaining about the annoyances such as an unplanned late in life pregnancy, so it shocked me to find that she is supposed to be only 30 years old. I'll be turning 30 later this year, and she just struck me as such an old thirty. The base of Juniper's clan is her wiccan co-religionists, and a large percentage of new clan members ask to be initiated into the Wiccan faith. It is truly unfortunate that many of her prayers and rituals come off as hokey, as I'm sure Stirling did a lot of research and meant for them to be respectful and reverent. I don't want to sound disrespectful to a religion that I am completely ignorant of, but many of the later scenes involving Wiccan rituals came off as a cheap and easy opening for anything rediculous and magical to happen, quite the opportunity for Deus ex Machina. The last thing I'm interested in is for The Change to have been caused by anything mystical or magical. There are more books in this series, so we shall see what happens.
Dies the Fire has an epic feeling to it, parts had the feel of a modern day George R. R. Martin epic series or space opera feel. Characters are heavily fleshed out and have fairly typical reactions. No one enjoys this dangerous adventure, but everyone knows they've got to adapt to survive. As you may have already guessed, this novel hit me in a very personal way. Sure, there were parts that greatly annoyed me, but overall it was an enthralling page turner. Originally a library book, the day I took it back to the library, I purchased a copy for myself. This is the first book in a very long time to hit me in such a personal way.
S. M. Stirling's Dies the Fire answers the questions in that conversation in a brutal fashion. Right off the bat, some kind of EMP has gone off in the upper atmosphere, affecting electronics, vehicles, steam engines, guns, and anything else that requires any kind of chemical reaction to work. The focus of the novel isn't the cause of the EMP (if that's what it was), but on the survivors and how they expect to live their lives after what becomes known as The Change.
The story follows two main groups in Northern Idaho and outside Covallis, Oregon. Readers who are familiar with these areas will surely recognize cities, roads, and other landmarks. When airplanes start crashing to the ground, and cars stopped working in Corvallis, Juniper MacKenzie, hippie-ish musician and practicing Wiccan priestess, knows something is very, very wrong. She collects as much of her coven as she can, and after “liberating” a covered wagon from a local museum and whatever other supplies they can find, they decide to head out to her family's farm in the Willamette Valley. In Northern Oregon, Mike Havel, contract pilot, is flying the Larssen family to their vacation spot in northern Montana, when after a flash of light in the sky, everything in the plane goes done. One good crash landing later, and Mike earns himself the task of getting this affluent family to safety. The main plot of the novel follows Mike Havel and Juniper MacKenzie's groups as they learn how to survive and cope in this frightening new world.
The first concern for the two groups is food, and rightly so. What can they forage, what can they steal, what can they grow, what can they hunt? Believing that the cities are soon to be cesspools full of starvation, disease, and death, both groups stay to the country. Minimal safety can be found in rural areas, where abandoned farms can be taken over, roaming farm animals can be captured for meat or milk, and game can be hunted. In one scene, Mike and his group come across a large group of city folk who have left a city on foot, and are aimlessly walking the abandoned interstates. He agrees to accept people into his group who can prove they have usable skills, such as medical, farming, or old fashioned weaponry. As I read this I got to thinking, if I was in that situation, how would I convince a clan leader to accept me? Being able to keep a tomato plant alive does not count as a farming skill, knowing how to apply neosporin and a bandaid does not count as a medical skill, and having watched some choreographed sword fights at the Renaissance Festival does not count as weapons skills. Everything on my resume would make me beyond useless in Stirling's post apocalyptic world. It's not the horror of a changed world that is was frightening to me, it was the horror of knowing I'd be useless in that world that kept me up at night biting my nails.
Time goes by, and our two “clans” grow and evolve, and meet other groups of survivors, some militant, others so desperate for food that they resort to cannibalism and attacking other groups to use as food. Stirling keeps the action tense and suspenseful. The scenes involving the cannibal groups were reminiscent of horror movies and a few other apocalypse books where prisoners are kept alive and slowly amputated as the tribe needs to feed. If the fear of being useless in this new world doesn't keep you awake at night, these pyschologically horrific scenes will.
On a positive (yet plot devicy) note, each clan luckily has members who are Renaissance Festival alumni, members of the SCA, or have experience working with and making non-modern weaponry, such as swords and crossbows. Since guns are no longer working, the quickest way to get dinner is via bow and arrow. It was easy to laugh while reading about characters who are wearing blue jeans and t-shirts under their chainmail, carrying crossbows and long swords. Good thing the characters laugh at themselves too. They know they look rediculous, but that this is what enables them to live.
Along with a weapons expert, each clan has someone with some kind of engineering experience, and someone with some kind of medical experience, be them nurse or veterenarian. This where the conversation gets interesting regarding the loss of knowledge of modern technology. The engineer and the doctor aren't about to forget anything they've learned, and purposely share the knowledge with anyone who will listen. But without CAD, or pnuematic tools, or electricity, or refridgeration, or digital thermometers, or even a nailgun, how much use is technical engineering knowledge or medical knowledge going to be? The danger here isn't loss of knowledge, it's loss of a paradigm to use the knowledge in. Some of the most interesting parts of the book are where people who used to be engineers and carpenters try to get together to build something with only the tools at hand: water they can haul from the river, 50 pound bags of dry cement, hand saws, and any rope they can make themselves.
Juniper MacKenzie struck me as a maternal, wisened woman in her late 40's or early 50's, willing to take on life's challenges as they came, but not above complaining about the annoyances such as an unplanned late in life pregnancy, so it shocked me to find that she is supposed to be only 30 years old. I'll be turning 30 later this year, and she just struck me as such an old thirty. The base of Juniper's clan is her wiccan co-religionists, and a large percentage of new clan members ask to be initiated into the Wiccan faith. It is truly unfortunate that many of her prayers and rituals come off as hokey, as I'm sure Stirling did a lot of research and meant for them to be respectful and reverent. I don't want to sound disrespectful to a religion that I am completely ignorant of, but many of the later scenes involving Wiccan rituals came off as a cheap and easy opening for anything rediculous and magical to happen, quite the opportunity for Deus ex Machina. The last thing I'm interested in is for The Change to have been caused by anything mystical or magical. There are more books in this series, so we shall see what happens.
Dies the Fire has an epic feeling to it, parts had the feel of a modern day George R. R. Martin epic series or space opera feel. Characters are heavily fleshed out and have fairly typical reactions. No one enjoys this dangerous adventure, but everyone knows they've got to adapt to survive. As you may have already guessed, this novel hit me in a very personal way. Sure, there were parts that greatly annoyed me, but overall it was an enthralling page turner. Originally a library book, the day I took it back to the library, I purchased a copy for myself. This is the first book in a very long time to hit me in such a personal way.
