I strongly recommend this thoughtful and fascinating novel. It's based on a series of five posts called "How It Might Happen" that Greer, best known for nonfiction about peak oil and civilizational decline, wrote on his blog The Archdruid Report a couple of years ago as a fictional example of how a relatively fast collapse of the American empire could plausibly occur. You can go and read it for free to see how you like the basic plot structure. Briefly, an incompetent U.S. administration tries to overthrow one government too many; the intended victim runs to China for help; China, exploiting well-known flaws in the American way of war, kicks our tail; the collapse of our imperial wealth pump leads to further domestic impoverishment, thence to public protests, militarized repression of protest - that doesn't sound plausible at all, right? - and ultimately a threat to impose a military dictatorship to keep the Union from disintegrating. A semi-happy ending may still be hoped for, once hubris has been forcibly removed.
The original writeup was a just-the-facts recounting of future history, with only occasional glimpses of individual personalities where they were crucial. It's been well and thoughtfully turned into a novel. Most of the original plot has been retained, but there are several additional subplots, some of which add substantial meat to the scenario, and the second president's attempted coup d'etat has become much scarier and comes much closer to realization. There are far more named characters (including many foreigners from half a dozen countries, and an Australian war correspondent whose peregrinations provide an excuse for viewpoint scenes almost anywhere), and much more character development, including a sorta-romance. Greer seems to do a careful job of researching and depicting the technical issues associated with use of a variety of military technologies (though this is something I am not personally competent to judge).
Like pretty much everything Greer writes, this is thoughtful, subtle, and avoids false dualities. Unlike most facile thrillers that assume America will always and forever be able to subjugate all potential rivals, because USA!, this novel takes it as a given that foreigners who find themselves on the receiving end of American power are as smart as we are, and will have both interests of their own and the capacity to act in their defense. However, it does not fall into the opposite mental trap of portraying the American empire or its actions as being specially evil. Its plot and style are thus very rare for the genre, as they are not driven by a hamhanded effort to show how Good or Bad either the author's nation of origin or its competitors are. Instead, they reflect a coolly objective view of history in which every nation or government is out to protect its own interests, and no nation's ability to dominate others can be expected to endure forever. This book would be a valuable read for those who want a broader perspective on the potential range of possible futures we face.
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Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2014
- Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2015
- Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2014
- Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2015
- Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2014
Top reviews from other countries
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- James MccumiskeyReviewed in the United Kingdom on September 14, 2018
The collapse of an empire
- Michael StevensReviewed in Canada on December 23, 2016
Amazing story! Well written and thought out
- vlado stojcevskiReviewed in Australia on September 4, 2019
The Fall of the United States
