Author Topic: Book Review: Without Warning  (Read 1195 times)

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Offline trapeze

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Book Review: Without Warning
« on: February 27, 2014, 02:03:21 AM »
"Without Warning" is escapist fiction written by John Birmingham. It's kind of tricky to categorize. It isn't science fiction. It is more of an alternate universe or different timeline sort of thing. It has spy stuff in it, military stuff, adventure stuff...so there it is, a bunch of genres mixed together in a tale of the recent past that never happened. Think of it as a sort of modern literary turn at "It's A Wonderful Life" where George Bailey gets to see what the entire world is like without the USA and suddenly Mr. Potter is everywhere wielding RPG's and AK47's with famine, plague and pestilence thrown in for good measure.

A brief plot summary: The story opens in early 2003 with a world suddenly faced with a situation that no one ever expected: The USA is gone. Literally. Almost the entire lower 48 states, much of Mexico and Canada and Cuba are suddenly, inexplicably and completely depopulated. All humans (and maybe most other vertebrates) have been disintegrated. This is a plot device and, at least in this book, the writer leaves it largely unexplained. There are two other books which follow this one and perhaps he explains this phenomenon in one of them but in this book, no. It's just a plot device. And that's because this book and its companions are pretty much about the author exploring an idea of what the world would be like if there was no America.

I think that the author had probably run into people on several occasions who had opined that the world would indeed be better off if the USA was gone or had never existed. Now, that is a ludicrous idea but it's just the sort of thing that leftists of all stripes probably dream about. I mean, you know the type...the utopian nuts and the socialists/communists who want nothing more than to take one more shot at their idiotic brand of government which would surely work this time if only the USA weren't around to screw it up. Plus, of course, if only the right kind of people were in charge of things.

So, the author decided to write about that kind of world. The only problem was what to do with the USA. So he just used a mysterious and unknowable event to make the country just vanish. Not disappear geographically but it may as well have for all intents and purposes. In the book this event is called "the energy wave," and it just suddenly appears, killing everyone, and stays there over all of North America for the entire book. No one can get in and if the try they are disintegrated. And anyone who was unlucky enough to be inside the wave is gone forever. This leaves Hawaii, Alaska, a very small sliver of Washington state and Guantanamo Bay plus several million Americans scattered all over the world not a few of whom are actively deployed in the military. But...who was really unlucky? Those killed or those left behind to fend for themselves in a rapidly descending vortex of chaos?

There is a certain survivalist element to the story with various groups of people who must somehow flee for their lives in the various circumstances with which they suddenly find themselves. There is a major theme about how the federal government is (or can be) reconstituted. The federal government is completely gone with absolutely no one in the official line of succession to the presidency left alive. There is more than a little bit about how various despots and thugs around world react to a world without the USA to keep them on a short leash. Our military, at least a very large portion of it, survives but has no one to lead it or direct it against these new threats and some bad things happen. Actually quite a lot of bad things.

A couple of other points about the story: It is truly sort of a parallel universe sort of thing because there are characters in it, not main ones but some of them do have dialogue and thoughts, who are real people in the real world. Most of them are military and political people like the governor of Hawaii at the time of the book's writing, Linda Lingle and General Tommy Franks. One person mentioned (but thankfully not given any dialogue or plot line) was the then Democrat mayor of Anchorage, Mark Begich...the author could not have known that he would eventually be elected as one of Alaska's senators. Venezuala's Hugo Chavez is involved in troublemaking. Even Microsoft's Bill Gates makes a cameo in the story. Thankfully, a certain junior state senator from Illinois must have been attending services at Reverend Wright's Trinity church in Chicago when the wave hit and thereby didn't make the cut to be in the story.

I did enjoy the author's take on what things would be like if America was gone from the world stage...just how quickly things go to hell without us to keep the peace. I found it interesting because, as some of you (and me) believe, we may not be around much longer for reasons that are much more grounded in reality but are, nevertheless, rather difficult to think about.

It's not the greatest story that I have ever read but far from the worst and I wasn't pissed off or disgusted that I had wasted time on it...I have read a few of those and I usually don't bother finishing them if they are truly awful...I would give it no less than three and probably no more than four out of five stars. The pacing is acceptable and the characters aren't too two-dimensional and that's always a plus. I did go ahead and purchase the second installment, "After America" so perhaps that's a bit of an endorsement in and of itself.
In a doomsday scenario, hippies will be among the first casualties. So not everything about doomsday will be bad.

Offline rustybayonet

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Re: Book Review: Without Warning
« Reply #1 on: February 27, 2014, 06:51:44 AM »
Trap;

Kinda' sounds similar to one of the books I read a while ago - "Days of Infamy", by Newt Gingrich [no less] and William R. Forstchen.  This was along the same lines of fiction - what would have happened if ONE thing had been different on December 7, 1941.  Both had written about Pearl Harbor so were very knowledgeable about the real attack, so speculating about 'what would have if' was within their realm.  On your 1-5 scale I'd give this a 2 1/2 - strange but interesting.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2014, 06:55:09 AM by rustybayonet »
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Offline trapeze

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Re: Book Review: Without Warning
« Reply #2 on: February 27, 2014, 11:03:34 AM »
Well, as I mentioned above, I believe that this story (or set of three) was written to explore the idea of just what the world would look like if its primary sponsor of stability were to suddenly disappear.

This is not Birmingham's only foray into alternate history fiction. He also wrote a set of books that use time travel to mess around with the past. In that series a physics experiment conducted at sea goes wrong and somehow transports a very large number of US warships (which were nearby) into the second world war. That story uses military technology from the not-too-distant future so there is an element of science fiction to it but since it is closely extrapolated from today's capabilities it has an authentic feel to it. And, again, the story also indulges itself with historical figures and how they react to these visitors from the future.

These are mostly good stories and I have a rather simple threshold for approval: Tell a good story that keeps me engaged and not bored plus don't insult my intelligence. If those items are taken care of I can read a book for pleasure. If not, it gets pretty tough to hang in there and sometimes I just have to walk away altogether. Recently I was able to get a kindle version of "The Bourne Identity" and it was sort of like that. The story was okay...mostly believable, I suppose...but the main character was made into something that lacked credibility...the author made him more cartoonish that substantive in several ways and I became so unsympathetic towards him by the end of the book that I had no desire to buy the sequel.

Anyway, now reading the second of this Birmingham series and it remains to be seen if I will enjoy it enough to buy the third installment but I will just have to find out.
In a doomsday scenario, hippies will be among the first casualties. So not everything about doomsday will be bad.

Offline trapeze

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Re: Book Review: Without Warning
« Reply #3 on: February 27, 2014, 11:10:59 AM »
Oh, and by the way...since writers like to base their stories on real events so that they are believable/credible we are probably beginning to see stories about the USA where an incredibly inept president does stupid things that set events in motion which nearly destroy the country and/or the world. A few years ago it would not have been possible...people would not have been able to do the whole "suspension of disbelief" thing necessary for that sort of fiction to work. Now? Seems like a slam dunk.
In a doomsday scenario, hippies will be among the first casualties. So not everything about doomsday will be bad.