Customer Reviews

Aftermath

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

They (some reviewers, copy on the back of books) always say Sheffield is "the" or "a" top hard-sci-fi writer. Well, that must not be coming from the ones I've read--definitely not this one. This is a good airport novel. That's where I picked it up and read it. It's got a big disaster, plenty of sex, a daring return from a mission to Mars, desperate cancer survivors, a Hannibal Lector type character, a visionary cult leader, and some political intrigue, all thrown together pretty cheesily. It's fun to read but you wont be telling all your friends about it. Most of the characters are one dimensional, and he has a lurid, exagerrated view of politics--the President "runs" the country, and politicians are far more sleazy in interesting ways than in real life, and execute far more bloodthirsty and deft maneuvers than they manage to pull off in real life. Would make a fun trashy cable mini-series.

Mr. Sheffield begins with a novel in which the world has just barley survived a disaster comparable to the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. But wait, the good old U.S. of A. manages to muddle through with barely an interruption in cable service, while the rest of the world is all but wiped out. Fortunate for the U.S., but too contrived to be particularly interesting in a novel.

Honestly, the book began well. Unfortunately, within the first 100 pages, the plot had become a morass of sub-plots, characters and ideas that were never destined to be fleshed out. A big problem was that there were far too many sub-plots that went nowhere as the book progressed. (For example, sub-plots involving either White House aid or that involved a former Presidential mistress that just faded into nothing. Rule: If a sub-plot goes nowhere, kill it.)

However, even when a sub-plot was played out to the bitter end, it concluded with a contrived yet feel good device. (The escape of Dr. Death.) Worse yet, the main plotline involved the President of the U.S. and even that ended with a device stolen from any of a hundred 'B' movie made in the fifties.

The problem seems to be that Mr. Sheffield lost track of what he was writing about some half-way through the novel. Perhaps he was thinking series but only got paid for the one book. With so much going on and less than 50 or so pages used to tie it all together, Mr. Sheffield is forced to fall back on some very weak devices to get it done. If the last 70 or so pages were cut from this book and re-written as a sequel, Mr. Sheffield would have produced a much better work. As it is, the ending is far too contrived to be satisfying.

Overall, Mr. Sheffield took on an idea that was far bigger than the book he produced, inevitabley leaving the reader a bit disappointed.

I enjoyed the first third of this book when the disaster was unfolding. Once the people moved front and center it was still interesting, if a lot less exciting. But, while the premise held promise (if no scientific credence),things started going downhill rapidly when the focus turned more to diddling than disaster. Am I the only one who finds pages devoted to whether two old guys get laid a bit out of place here? And, as we started running out of pages, I realized I was going to have to buy ANOTHER book to find out how it ends. That may make the author rich but it's patently unfair to the reader. I bought a whole book; I expect a whole story. Lucifer's Hammer is, hands down, one of the best. This is, hands down, not.

Here's a typical tale - you pick up a book that has a surefire plot - Alpha Centauri goes nova and all microchips on Earth are destroyed. You read the first few pages or so at the bookstore and become convinced you have a winner. At home, though, after the initial action over the nova settles down you begin your journey to Dullsville.

There's the matter of survivors and they're not your next door neighbors. Group 1 is a cult that worships a lady who has been arrested and placed in a penitential coma (think "Minority Report"). Group 2- three cancer victims who just happened to need the help of someone who - guess what? - is also in a coma. Then there is a scientist and a madman joined in a symbiotic relationship. Where are the real people you and I know???

It gets worse. The "science" is, well, take one randome selecgtion: Millions of chips are found in a mountain hideout but are too old to use. So some guy "slaps a bunch together in parallel" and now they can create holograms. Right, and I'm Elvis. President Steinmetz gets in on the action with a lot of fakey dialogue...politics as usual. He tries to hold the world together and sure enough, gets the advice he needs at the last minute to save the day. But no, at the end we discover that the REAL danger is not here yet - "energy particles that can rip through both skin and the flimsy shield we've constructed. What to do, what to do? Oh well, the sequel will provide all the answers.

The year is 2026. An Earth run by supercomputers is forced to revert to animal instincts to survive when a nearby Supernova causes the failure of all microchips. Caused by an unseen cataclysm, the Earth and human civilization are paralyzed and anarchy ensues. After the reader is accustomed to the underlying threat, author Charles Sheffield takes him/her on an adventure using the lives of a derranged serial killer, a group of near death cancer patients, the first human Mars expedition, and the President of the United States. The research required to write such a story is apparent in the facts and theories presented. An interesting topic and a fast read. If you enjoyed reading the Aurthur C. Clark Odyssey series or Tom Clancy novels, I highly recommend this book!

There is a story here, but the story rapidly spins away from what promised to be a fascinating exploration of the effects of a near-by super nova and into a series of tedious and mundane journeys in and around Washington D.C. Perhaps my greatest pet peeve is books that open new series but do not stand alone. "Aftermath" does not stand alone. I would not have expected Charles Sheffield to engage in this kind of writing: 547 paperback pages that could be easily condensed into 100 or so. A couple of characters hold promise, but no character-and no character arc-comes to conclusion in this book. There are also characters (especially the character portraying the President of the United States) whose actions and motivations make no sense whatsoever.

So why didn't I just put the book down and walk away?

Because some of the science was fascinating, and because one always holds out hope that the author will bring everything together by the end of the book. Sheffield does not do this. Instead, there are hints at what could come in the sequel: a technology-crashed planet, a supposedly impossible super nova that may not be a natural phenomenon after all, and a massive project in space to help shield the Earth from the super nova's effects. The mind already races ahead-three, four, five books into the future-to see the possibilities of this series, but what about these characters in the here and now? Will their mundane journeys parlay into something more interesting? It is obvious that some of these run of the mill characters will discover that they have radically extended life spans and so could fit into stories that must leap far into the future, but couldn't Sheffield have show us that in this first book?

So the real question is: Move on to the sequel-take that chance-or just drop the whole thing here?

Like many others who have posted reviews here, I have been a big reader of 'end of the world' novels for many years, from the excellent and highly recommended "Lucifer's Hammer" and the strong (but a bit dated) "Alas, Babylon" to Frank Herbert's dreadful "The White Plague." "Aftermath" has an appealing premise, an EMP pulse that is generated by a supernova causes problems for all of humanity (on top of the weather impact of the supernova, itself). But we don't get to see much of humanity or the nitty-gritty of what a disruption of all microcircuits would do to food distribution, medical care, etc. These events occur offscreen, as it were, and seem trivialized. The problems of the President, the crew of the Mars exploration ship, a serial killer, and special medical patients take the stage, instead. That could be interesting, I suppose, if there wasn't so much focus on their sex lives and so many plot coincidences, along with some facts/science that don't seem to make much sense (like the southern breezes that bring snow to D.C. and the lack of any appreciable entourage for the President). The slow pace of the book does nothing to help the situation. I won't be reading the sequel. Donald J. Bingle, Author of Forced Conversion.

I gave it two stars because I never actually finished it and it could have magically gotten better at the end. The beginning never takes off in my opinion. If the nation is in chaos I want to know how people are surviving, not have to plod through pages of the prez's get together with his "beautiful" aide while he internlly moralizes to himself about whether or not he should sleep with her. YAWN. Lucifer's Hammer, Alas Babylon, Cancticle for Liebowitz all MUCH better.

I've always tried to avoid trilogies, at least until all three parts are available for purchase at once. While there is no statement anywhere on the book that this is just part I of a 2, 3 or 4 part story, it obviously is just that. Major plot points are just throwaway lines, never dealt with in this dull volume. I kept reading to the end hoping that these points would be developed, and they never were.

In addition to one of the most unrealistic portrayals of life in the White House I have ever read, we see a bizarre world where disaster has struck the world, but the president still has time to whine about his personal life.

It would be nice if someone took this good idea and wrote a good book around it. Sheffield hasn't done that.

What begins as a thrilling hard-SF novel painfully developes into a hodgepodge of uninteresting characters and sluggish storylines. The "Aftermath" of a world cataclysm is seen through the eyes of loners, racists and a hauntingly "Clintonesque" president. What's missing are real people. Where are the communities, cultures and societies that must rebuild the world? I don't think children are even mentioned except as a few underground cult members.

This is my 4th Sheffield novel and it doesn't compare to his earlier works. It lacks excitement, surprise and humor. "Tomorrow and Tomorrow", "Godspeed" and "Cold as Ice" are much better reads and, the lame attempt to attract my attention at the end of this novel only convinced me not to read the sequels.