Customer Reviews

Soft Apocalypse

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Jasper and his tribe of formerly middle class Americans describe themselves as nomadic rather than homeless: they travel around the Southeastern U.S., scraping together the bare minimum to survive by spreading out solar blankets or placing small windmills by the highway to collect energy from passing cars, then trading the filled fuel cells for food. Fewer and fewer people want to deal with the "gypsies" who use up dwindling resources, and often they meet with indifference or even violence. Jasper was a sociology major, but those skills are no longer in demand in 2023, about ten years after an economic depression set off the Great Decline and society as we know it gradually began to fall apart. So begins Will McIntosh's excellent debut novel, Soft Apocalypse.

One of the most interesting aspects of Soft Apocalypse, and something I've rarely seen done so well in a dystopian novel, is the fact that it shows society in the early stages of dissolution. Many post-apocalyptic stories show a finished end product, an established dystopia in which the Earth has already been torn apart and people are trying to survive the aftermath. Other stories show the events right before and during the actual earthquake/meteor strike/plague, with people trying to make it through the disaster as it happens. Soft Apocalypse instead happens during a period of gradual but inexorable decline: as the back cover says, the world ends "with a whimper instead of a bang." If Robert Charles Wilson's excellent Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd America is set in post-collapse U.S.A., when enough time has passed for society to fall back into established structures and classes, Soft Apocalypse could almost be set in the same world, but a couple of centuries earlier and during the gradual collapse of the previous system.

"Gradual" is the key here: Soft Apocalypse shows normal people clinging to the shreds of life as they knew it, while things slowly go from bad to worse. Many still hope that the economy will pick up and life will go back to what it used to be. Even though the streets are filled with homeless people and unemployment stands at 40%, others can still drive a car to work. Walmart still operates its stores, even if they raise prices to extortion-like levels whenever there are reports of a new attack or designer virus. When they can afford the electricity, people still watch cable news to find out about wars and disasters abroad, and even if there's a developing pattern of widespread war, it's all distant enough to seem unreal--until it starts getting closer and closer.

Soft Apocalypse consists of ten chapters and covers about ten years, with anywhere from a few years to a few months passing between chapters. Jasper narrates the story in the first person, dividing his attention between his struggle for survival in the slowly disintegrating society and his attempts to find love--because even during a slow apocalypse, people still crave romance, improvising dates and respecting the social niceties. When it comes to his love life, Jasper sometimes reminded me of a less music-obsessed version of High Fidelity's Rob Gordon: a generally nice, sensitive and intelligent guy who isn't aware of how clueless he occasionally acts when it comes to women. Throughout the novel, Jasper tries to find love while doing his best to survive the dangers of the collapsing society around him.

Negatives? Very few, if any, and definitely all qualified with a solid "but." Early on, the novel feels more like a collection of connected short stories because so much time passes between the chapters, but Jasper and a well-drawn cast of side-characters pull everything together until a plot emerges, and even before that happens, the story is hard to put down because of the gorgeous but bleak descriptions of life during societal collapse. Also, "bleak" may be too mild a term for some of the horrors that Jasper and his friends encounter: there were a few times I just didn't expect Will McIntosh to push things that far, but at the same time, you have to admire him for not shying away from scenes that would surely be cut from the Hollywood version. The plot sometimes seems driven by random, often violent events, but then again, life in this novel's environment would probably be full of random, violent events. More importantly, even though it may not seem that way early on, all of them have a meaningful impact on Jasper's personality, leading to an ambivalent ending that I'm still coming to terms with.

Soft Apocalypse, while not perfect, is a great achievement for a debut. It took me by surprise early on and never let go. It's a short, effective dystopian novel that should go down well with people who enjoyed the aforementioned Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd America by Robert Charles Wilson or even The Rift by Walter Jon Williams. (Maybe not coincidentally, Will McIntosh participated in Williams' Taos ToolBox workshop in 2008.) The real sadness of Soft Apocalypse is seeing normal people operating under the illusion that life will still go back to what it used to be. They try to hold down a job or complete a post-grad degree, and even though the world falls apart around them, the changes are too gradual for them to lose hope completely. It's like watching rats in a maze, unaware that their paths are slowly being closed off around them and the maze is starting to catch fire at the edges. A soft apocalypse, indeed.

I loved this book because it is one of the best disaster and post-apocalyptic novels. Most of them tend to describe some sudden and drastic disaster (plague, comet, bomb, whatever) and how humanity copes afterwards. What makes this novel different, fresh, and interesting, is that it considers the different and more likely scenario that human civilization will slowly collapse under the weight of overpopulation, increasing scarcity of natural resources (like oil), and derivative causes like famine, disease, and criminal breakdown of social order. Although such a scenario seems slow and mundane, the author manages to actually make it very vivid through the eyes of the narrator and interesting cultural vignettes.

The novel is set in and around Savannah, Georgia, in the late 2020s through 2030s. It features a mix of all elements you could possibly expect in a novel about the collapse of civilization: global warming, peak oil, epidemics (with human-designed viruses), rampant gangs, curfews, breakdown of large organizations, genocide, propaganda, fringe groups forcefully pushing various agendas, guns, gold, nomads, urban tribes, civil war, and so forth. There are even some romantic and sexual relationships to keep just about any reader interested :) Overall, the mood in the book is grim. The future world starts recognizably similar to our society, except that most amenities are gone from common people's lives, out of reach of anyone but the wealthy. Unemployment, poverty, and crime are rampant. The way people live, travel, feed and entertain themselves, is not nearly as easy and pleasant as today. There is a sense of profound loss: from major characters who gradually leave or die to the mere lack of what we today consider normalcy. In fact, merely surviving in that future world is rather hard; life is brutal. So this novel is to some extent similar to the Road, only more varied and much easier to read. Yet hope remains throughout, and especially at the end.

Overall this is a page turner and a relatively short book. I found it very well written - I like the author's style, the way he describes scenes, the metaphors he uses, the characters's speech, the way this short novel is well paced and covers so much ground.

Definitely one of the top three apocalyptic fiction books I have ever read, up there with Lucifer's Hammer and better than most of the so-called classics of the genre. Plus very interesting and thought provoking - what would you do to avoid such a future?

In Will McIntosh's debut novel, Soft Apocalypse, the world as we know it ends with a whimper, not a bang. The end of America and the rest of the world comes out of our over indulgence, use of resources and all of the problems in society reaching a dull roar that tears down the world as we know it. This story takes a small cast of characters and looks at them over a much longer point of time than more novels, providing a unique perspective on what the future might hold.

Unlike most post-apocalyptic fiction, there's no dividing line between what was then, and everything afterwards, where stalwart survivors push on to rebuild a broken landscape the day after the world ends. In this future, everything is far more subtle: there's one instance that changes everything forever: no nuclear attack, change in the climate, overbearing governmental officials driving society into the ground, but a multitude of small factors (including the ones just listed) that drags society down into the depths, and takes the main characters, Jasper, Colin, Sophia, Phoebe, Cortez, and Ange, (and the various others that come and go) along with it.

Starting in 2023, Soft Apocalypse stands out because it takes its time to tell the story over a much longer period of time: chapters jump ahead days, weeks, months, hours and years at a time, pulling the characters along as they work to continue living in this new world as the world falls down around them. There are a lot of speculative fiction elements here: science, dystopian and post-apocalyptic parts are all here, as well as some intensely personal stories from the vibrant cast of characters that rotate in and out of sight. This is a story that takes a lot of the big events and science and shoves it into the background in favor of a strong character story.

McIntosh's story here is frightening because it feels like it could very well be one of the more realistic end of society (not necessarily the world) stories that I've come across. Barring major political screw-up, we're no longer likely going to be blown into dust by nuclear annihilation, and climate change is more likely going to have more of a gradual impact on society, rather than something sudden and jarring. People will survive, adapt and work to rebuild. What McIntosh demonstrates here is the biggest change that people will need to readjust to: finding a new set of realistic expectations for their standard of living. As the United States faces ecological and criminal elements, everything changes.

Amongst this new world, we follow Jasper, a sociology major, and some of his friends. He isn't an influential figure in the world, or even someone who's prepared for the new world, but is caught up with the events, capturing energy from alongside highways and the sun and trading charged batteries for food. We follow him and his friends over the course of a decade, as they take comfort in themselves and with others that they come across, falling in and out of relationships, gangs, and ecoterrorists along the way. Genetically engineered viruses decimate the human population as corrupt governments attempt to control populations, crazy social scenes open up, crime runs rampant, and a bunch of rogue scientists engineer a strain of bamboo designed to overtake infrastructure to slow down the government and its practices.

From this perspective, we get an interesting story, especially over the time that this post-apocalypse takes place - a decade. The book starts off a bit mixed, and if you'd asked me after the first chapter, I would have described it as a story about a hipster at the end of the world trying to continue some form of shallow existence, but after moving through the book, it's clear that that's a vital starting point, and by the end of the book, the changes that all of the characters go through is very clear: most of the trappings that they (and by extension, we) have become accustomed to, are superficial and won't help us in the basics of life. There's some rather pointed commentary here throughout the story, which makes the book all the more relevant. Considering this year, we've seen things like a nuclear disaster, a distrust of executive authority and other natural disasters: this book could very well be underway.

Soft Apocalypse also tracks an interesting progression in society that also helps it stand out: not everything collapses equally: throughout the novel, we see the activities (often corrupt) of police, fire, military, civil defense and gangs, and there's certainly a shift in how these organizations interact with the public. Once again, the slow death of America here turns this style of story on its head, and by doing so, it tells some stories that might not have otherwise surfaced.

Particularly interesting throughout the book is the way that people adapt and rebuild, even as everything comes down. Jasper and all of the other characters continue to run into each other over the years, not just out of coincidence and for story convenience, I think, but because they need some level of normalcy: Jasper likewise seeks some sort of romantic interactions with various people over the years, not because of the sex, but because it's normal, something to distract him from everything that's going on. At the end of the book, we see people adapting to a new life: there's new political and social structures, pushed because of the onslaught of bamboo outbreaks and genetically engineered viruses that change people's minds. Rebuilding and society occurs because it's natural, just as it seems particularly natural for a collapse to wipe away some of the darker things that we've done as a society.

By the end, Soft Apocalypse is certainly one of the better books that I've read all year, which surprised me quite a bit for an impulse buy, one that's given me quite a bit to think about, fitting in with a lot of things that have been on my, and the general public's mind, for a while, especially when it comes to consumerism and waste in society. The book is a triumph in linking together the story and themes into a cohesive, strong character driven narrative.

Originally posted to my blog.

I love apocalyptic fiction and this one rates very high on that list. After reading through most of the negative quotes I find the things that they found frustrating exactly what made this story compelling.

If there is anything I hate about end of the world books it is the fact that the writers are written into a corner and we, the reader, have to put up with pages of being locked in house while the "bad" thing outside passes by. This book eliminates that problem by jumping forward into the future to the next logical problem.

Piece by piece, chapter by chapter, "Soft Apocalypse" paints a very realistic world gone to hell, and I would be lying if it did not linger in my mind in the hours I was not reading it.

I love anything regarding disaster, end of the world, post-apocalyptic (or in this case during an apocalypse), and this book totally hit the spot. What's great is that the author took a genre and went with an idea that was new to me (as opposed to the usual zombies, nuclear war, etc.) and executed it very well. The slow collapse of a nation felt realistic and the author portrayed it at various stages which really drew me in. It's a fast-paced and intense story. The characters felt solid and were easy to connect with. I'm glad that I read this book.

Soft Apocalypse
Will McIntosh
eBook (Nook)
218 pages
Publisher: Night Shade Books;
Publication Date: March 29, 2011
ISBN-13: 978-1597802765
ASIN: 159780276X

"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper"
- T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

Have you ever wondered what the end of the world might look like if the actual events leading up to it happened slowly, over years or decades? Will McIntosh's Soft Apocalypse is an unusual end-of-days story in that the devastating changes that force the collapse of modern civilization do not happen over-night in a tragic flash of all-out nuclear war or global pandemic disease but in a slow, some would say, glacial, multi-layered sequence of events. Unemployment is estimated at a staggering 60%. There are the destitute, the sometimes poor, the always poor, and, as in every age throughout history, the filthy rich. But the jobless middle class has become a mobile nation. Tribes of those who were once office workers, film makers, artists, accountants, or secretaries have lost their positions in The Last Great Depression and now roam the country-side freely. They subsist only on what they can find in the wild or by what they can barter with neighboring tribes for drugs, alcohol, sex, or energy. Outbreaks of designer viruses and the spread of bio-engineered super-bamboo erupt where least expected. Some of the most deadly viruses are neurologic, others flesh eating, and still others cause zombie-like symptoms. Strange things - gases, diseases, pollutants, industrial wastes and whatnots - are rumored to be floating in the air making the gas mask the newest fashion accessory. In Soft Apocalypse we see something completely unusual in a story of this nature - the end of the world is coming but its many miles down the road and moving rather slowly. We're able to take a step back and sneak a bird's-eye-view at it and while we can't stop it we can contemplate the events that lead up to it.

In my opinion, and for what it's worth, I believe that the Soft Apocalypse may be a more realistic and authentic finale to our way of life than the so-called big bang. I think McIntosh's idea of a lumbering catastrophe that takes years to develop is a brilliantly creative departure from the formulaic tried-and-true cataclysm story. The suggestion that the end of the civilization will culminate in a slow, erosional collapse rather than a quick "wow-look-at-all-those-bombs-falling" event is an intriguing notion. So, in his version of the apocalypse the world does not end in a single, major tragic event but, over time, in a slow, many-fingered, multi-causal string of unfortunate incidents that force almost every aspect of society to fail.

Soft Apocalypse is, in my estimation, an excellent debut novel. It is well-written, fast-paced, and the amount of detail McIntosh has included concerning his vision of a disintegrating society is disturbing. One could almost say he's founded a new and creative genre of post-apocalyptic story - the Slow-pocalypse or the Decline-ageddon or, better yet, the Soft Apocalypse. Whereas past writers of this form typically resort to the immediate or near instantaneous destruction of civilization Soft Apocalypse depicts a sluggish yet steady decline as society morphs from the norm in measured increments. There are other works that give us the feeling of this slow death (Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood and Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delaney come to mind) but this is the first time I've actually read an account of the gradual deterioration fully fleshed out in all its gruesome and morose phases. It proves that in the right hands an interesting concept that's become almost cliché can be re-written from a fresh, original, and imaginative perspective.

4 ½ out of 5 stars

The Alternative
Southeast Wisconsin

A dystopian tale of the USA crumbling starting in 2013. The protagonist has a degree in Sociology and is one of the first to become a "nomad". The novel covers 10 years and things go from bad to real real bad. Buy your guns and ammo now and get a degree in engineering or accounting !

The causes of society failure in the USA are listed as gasoline and water shortages cascading into major joblessness (40% unemployment in 2023). Fringe elements of society make problems significantly worse with designer viruses and rampant lawlessness.

One story fault that I have is that the author continuously talks about cell phones and tv being used but little about the internet. I think this to be wrong as I think that phones and tv are being engulfed by the internet and will not be distinguishable very soon.

In the not so distant future resources are scarce and jobs are even scarcer. Water is a commodity. Biological agents are being released around the world and society is slowly degrading into tribal-like groups just out for survival. Anarchy is reigning over everything as society looses their way and Jasper is just trying to find his way through it all and hopefully a girlfriend.

Will McIntosh, winner of the Hugo for best short story, has certainly impressed me creating a believable future and understandable characters. Soft Apocalypse is McIntosh's horrifyingly realistic debut of an apocalyptic nature. Only he turns the idea of an apocalypse a bit on its ear by showing it through the rise of the everyday unprepared people rather than the survivalist who instinctively "knows" what to do and frames it around the love life, or lack thereof of one character skipping ahead through time by months and sometimes years to see how he and the world develops.

The reason apocalyptic stories rarely get stale for me is because of the human factor and unexpectedness of the characters reactions during conflicts and McIntosh loads Soft Apocalypse with conflicts aplenty. I mean, does everyone know what they would do if their friends were being attacked by a crazy group of militants? Most would think they'd like to help, but when the things gets real many would just turn and run.

Soft Apocalypse really gets inside the head of its main character Jasper. We slowly see how each situation he finds himself in changes him from a very naïve post-grad leading him into what he becomes and why he makes certain decisions. At times he can seem like a wimp or a pushover yet he isn't faced with easy choices, but Jasper is, generally, able to move on and find the resolve to do what needs to be done. People faint of heart should beware. Soft Apocalypse is often an unsettling book in many ways. People and animals are dying all around, many of which happen from unspeakable acts that occur daily.

Soft Apocalypse is made in the mold of Earth Abides by George Stewart yet even more believable. Thoughts of a prequel in the world of Mad Max also come to mind. McIntosh shows that even in the worst of times life goes on, but it is ever changing. While not perfect Soft Apocalypse is an absorbing read right up to the somber ending. McIntosh has a heck of a career ahead of him and has already signed the contracts for his second novel Deadland with Night Shade that will probably be out in 2012.

There are so many reasons why I dislike this book that I decided that a point by point review would be the only way to organize it efficiently.

-Pacing: It's awful, plain and simple. When something is "fast-paced" that is a positive term, meaning it draws you in and never lets you go. This book is erratic and convoluted, like the author just grabbed his short stories and stitched them all together in some horrific literature version of the human centipede. An example is when the main character leaves a club, arrives at an art gallery, gets held up and then is forced to eat a fetus; all within the span of a few pages. It's like a 7th grader's imagination of what he'd consider sadistic.

-Main character: Is weak, unlikable, and detached. His world is collapsing around him. He insists food and safety is rare, and survival unlikely. What does he do to prepare and ready himself? Does he grow harder over time, more astute to this new playing field? No. The entire book focuses around his jump from one boring relationship to another. It seems to me that the author, realizing he created a character that is too aloof and weak to be believable, suddenly shoved new personality traits on him. His sudden fascination for foraging and aptitude for violence toward the end felt like mere Band-Aids for weak character growth. His insights were uninteresting and weak as well (reflecting the author I suppose).
-Side characters: All low quality, all bland. Worse yet? They all felt like they were in some little club blessed by grace. They complain bitterly of gangs, war, super-viruses, shortages, and yet get along fine. It seems that their impervious to everything bad happening to those around them. The amount of pain and destitution they see does not in any way logically come close to the amount they actually suffer

-Hip/Liberal feel: It all felt forced, horribly forced. I'm not saying there is a "bias"; the author can write whatever he likes, and a well-thought out left viewpoint is always interesting. It's that he makes these bland liberal opinions that are baseless, lack research, and say nothing about political or social theory. For instance he said at one point in the book: "When they had to choose between oil to make food or oil for cars, the choice was obvious; the oil went to cars".
Oh really? Is that so? That when food prices would skyrocket people would actively pay extravagant amounts of money to fuel their cars while they starve? As if those rich people who own vehicles actually had the ability to dictate where the oil was going; it's ridiculous. People of color and the poor are constantly shown in a kind and caring light. Whites, the rich, war veterans, are all shown as rapists and inhuman.
-"soft apocalypse": There is nothing original at all about this apocalypse and nothing soft about it either. He doesn't give you any reasons, even hint of reasons, of why this collapse occurred. This is a horrible weakness to the story as all post-collapse fiction I've read have usually interesting and well-thought out economic, societal, or religious reasons for the their collapses. Next, it's unorganized. At times the apocalypse seems to be driven forward by economic decline. Then if feels more that social strife and gang violence are the cause, only later to be replaced by the ridiculous and out of place super-bamboo. This is all peppered by "super-viruses" that don't seem very super (none of the character's die, doesn't feel like a well-done or realistic portrayal at all of what it be like to live through an epidemic).

There are no interesting, conflicting factions in McIntosh's vision of a collapsing America. The Jumpy-Jumps were colorful but overdone. I was always nagged by the idea that they could realistically be able to build the vast membership the author hints to. A fascist or communist power party taking control of America seems more relevant and possible to me. An army of clowns and costume wearing sadistic thugs does not. He turns the fire-departments into a gang as well (why not I guess). The government is portrayed as nothing more than the classic gas-masked soldiers coming in to exterminate entire populations. There are no ideologies speaking on how to rebuild the nation, no sense of rational organizations fighting for the remnants of America: unclear, unimaginative, underwhelming.

The sci-fi elements are weak as well. There is no research behind it, nothing felt believable. The super-bamboo, and why the main character found himself involved with its perpetrators was far beyond believable. How the world population is able to sustain itself at the levels the author hints to while all arable land is covered by bamboo makes little sense either.

If you like post-collapse books that explore themes of earth's indifference to humanity, of hope within the ruins, of learning to live simpler, or of the human ability for evil, then read such works as: Earth Abides, a Canticle for Leibowitz, A World made by Hand, and Lucifer's Hammer. (just to name a few).

If you want to read a book about a grown man with the insight level of a teenager, this book is for you. If you want an adventure about a character travelling across a United States filled with bad guys straight the imagination of a 6th grader right after saw the Circus de Soleil, this might be for you. Better yet, if you like your main characters to spend every waking moment concerned with adolescent love relationships that mean nothing and in no way are pertinent to plots revolving societal collapses, then by all means pick up this "Soft-Apocalypse".

I could not put this book down. McIntosh's vision of a world where warnings of climate change and dwindling resources have gone unheeded is believable and frightening. But he steers clear of political ideology and sticks to a story about a young man who is simply trying to survive in a world that he hopes will get better. This is a well crafted tale about the struggle to retain humanity in a world that is falling apart