Slow Apocalypse
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3.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Despite wars with Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as 9/11, the United States’ dependence on foreign oil has kept the nation tied to the Middle East. A scientist has developed a cure for America’s addiction—a slow-acting virus that feeds on petroleum, turning it solid. But he didn’t consider that his contagion of an Iraqi oil field would spread to infect the fuel supply of the entire world…
In Los Angeles, screenwriter Dave Marshall heard this scenario from a retired U.S. Marine and government insider who acted as a consultant on Dave’s last film. It sounded as implausible as many of his scripts, but the reality is much more frightening than anything he can envision.
An ordinary guy armed with extraordinary information, Dave hopes his survivor’s instinct will kick in so he can protect his wife and daughter from the coming apocalypse that will alter the future of Earth—and humanity…
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The title of this molasses-paced story of global devastation is unfortunately apropos. Dave Marshall has advance notice of the rapid and unstoppable destruction of the world's oil reserves originally the plot of Marshall's next movie script, but now horribly true. In a device familiar to readers of Greg Bear's Blood Music and Neal Stephenson's Zodiac, oil-eating bacteria intended for use in a single region spread across the globe. Marshall and his friends survive thanks to being rich and well-prepared, while chaos, starvation, and death happen off-screen and in poorer neighborhoods, remote to Marshall and the reader. Varley optimistically posits a postdisaster "Ecotopia" of happy communism and careful resource use that serves as a traumatizing but effective togetherness retreat for Marshall's family, saving his marriage and teaching his spoiled wife "a new appreciation for real values." Varley has thought hard about the myriad ways oil is vital to our entire infrastructure, but he never really gets excited about the consequences of its disappearance.
Customer Reviews
Apocalypse Wow!
Slow Rust represents a drastic departure in John Varley's traditional science-fiction writing. The story is set in contemporary the greater Los Angeles area and chronicles the survival and escape of several families from the point of view of failing situation comedy writer after the collapse of the worldwide petrochemical system.
Science-fiction traditionally dealt with explorations of what could happen in the future. One challenge the science-fiction genre faces is with the future has happened. John Varley has met this challenge in Slow Rust by crafting a very realistic scenario set in history using characters that you were I could understand as people in our own lives.
Fans of Varley's traditional work will be a little bit surprised by the tone the novel-a little more mainstream than his previous works have ever been-but he shows in Slow Rust, possibly, an appreciation of a market that waits for quality page turners.
John Farley has been compared to Robert Heinlein many times previously. Slow Rust could be said to be the Farnham's Freehold for the 21st-century- if so it even more smoothly and realistically written than the early Heinlein classic.
Slow Rust is one of the rare apocalyptic stories that manages to present its characters and plot without preaching becoming maudlin. It does, however, serve to show how ubiquitous our dependent on petrochemical technology and our global civilization we have become.