One Second After
by William R. Forstchen
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Book Reviews of One Second After
Book Review: Promising subject, poor execution
Summary: 1 Stars
I am an enormous fan of the post-apocalyptic subgenre. Like many other fans, I read just about any book on the subject I can find. There have been many, but in my experience just a few stand out from the crowd. THE ROAD is a wonderful example of recent years; previous standouts include EARTH ABIDES, ALAS BABYLON, THE STAND, ON THE BEACH, and so forth.
Unfortunately, I cannot include ONE SECOND AFTER in this group. I have two reasons for the single-star review:
1. Poor writing.
2. Unrealistic scenarios.
These are pretty generalized reasons, so I'll elaborate a bit.
Poor writing:
Mr. Forstchen may in fact be a college professor with many books to his credit, and that's unfortunate, because I'd be more forgiving -- perhaps -- of low-quality writing with a first-time author, or perhaps one without an academic position. In ONE SECOND AFTER, the grammatical errors, clunky structure and the reliance on uncompelling exposition manage to distract so greatly from the story that it's difficult to appreciate its merits. Other reviewers have mentioned the abundance of characters who speak incorrect English ("should of" instead of "should have" or "should've", for example) or just distracting English (overuse of darn, damn, etc.), but the problems go far beyond this.
Elmore Leonard has a few rules for good writing, and whether you enjoy his novels or not, the points are reasonable and worth considering. One in particular applies to Mr. Forstchen's novel:
"Never use an adverb to modify the verb ''said''...
...he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange."
And this is exactly what occurs in ONE SECOND AFTER, again and again. Characters very rarely seems to just say anything. Instead, they say things 'sharply'. Or 'quietly'. Or 'coldly'. They also shout an awful lot. Trust your readers, Mr. Forstchen, to understand the tone you're writing in.
Additionally, a writer who establishes setting well does not not find it necessary to dredge up popular cultural references to support his setting. For example, the characters in ONE SECOND AFTER so often compare what they're seeing or thinking to a popular movie, book or song that Mr. Forstchen eventually finds himself writing that the characters are "yet again" reminded of XYZ:
a. "Sounds like that movie INDEPENDENCE DAY," Jeremiah interjected.
b. "I kept thinking of that movie, OXBOW INCIDENT."
c. "Damn," John sighed, and yet again movie images, the ROAD WARRIOR films and all the cheap imitations of the genre...
d. ...but we all know that at the end of the film, except in OLD YELLER and THE YEARLING, things will be OK.
e. Strangely, an old Civil War song flashed into his mind, a line from "Lorena"...
f. "I don't think so, John. The times, as the old song went, are a-changin'."
g. "You know, the Doors. The song 'This is the End', been thinking it a lot."
h. "I don't like this," Kate interjected. "The old line from ANIMAL FARM that pigs are more equal than other animals."
i. "The rest of you here?" Kate shouted. "Now you do have ANIMAL FARM; you have the commissars and the famines in Russia."
Unrealistic scenarios:
To be fair, this particular issue is a more difficult criticism to make. The book's writing is easy to cite, but the scenes that play out in it are obviously a fiction, and therefore impossible to paint as ... well, impossible. Having read many works in this genre that have unnerved me with their realism, I must confess that this book didn't make me uneasy a single time. Every scenario felt rushed. I don't doubt that society would collapse to such a degree that public execution would occur, but I do have some difficulty buying into a collapse that occurs so far fast that public executions happen less than a week after the EMP has knocked out power.
As other reviewers have mentioned, the book plays a little loose with food scenarios as well. The characters do not seem to think about any natural food supply other than hunting squirrels and opossums, or raiding local cattle stock. I was surprised that nobody talked about agriculture at all.
Many of the issues here are directly created by the inconsistency of the protagonist. While I believe Mr. Forstchen intended the character to be a representation of an everyman who was confronted with increasingly desperate situations, and forced to make difficult moral decisions, I don't believe the character was well-developed enough to begin with. This made identifying with his moral struggles fairly impossible. This was particularly disappointing, because there was so much opportunity here to show the conflict the character was struggling with.
An example: He travels to the supermarket and finds that it has been raided, and is dismayed that people didn't pay for what they took. He seems uneasy with doing the same until a store clerk tells him to take what he needs and just go, that it's alright. So he does, but with some reservation.
And that's a promising start. But shortly after, he visits a pharmacy where he intends to collect insulin for his diabetic daughter. There's a terrific opportunity to demonstrate his internal conflict here -- here is a man who ostensibly has respect for order, as the supermarket showed us, but who also has great responsibility as a father. What does he do? Well, he jumps the line of people, and without paying, leaves the pharmacy with five times the insulin anybody else is being given. He displays no internal conflict at this choice. Later in the novel it is revealed that over a hundred people in town are diabetic and will soon run out of insulin and die. He still has a good supply of extra at home, but doesn't offer to share, despite the fact that his insulin hoarding isn't much of a secret.
I don't take issue with a character behaving like this -- not at all. But it's a missed opportunity to allow a character to behave in so many contradictory ways without exploring the personal dilemma that character must face while making those choices. The protagonist would have been much more sympathetic if some time had been taken to further develop this aspect of his behavior. Since it wasn't, it makes some of his actions more reprehensible than they might have seemed, and makes his sentiment for the America that was ring extremely false.
One final note about the characters: Characters are capable of suggesting their deeper religious or political beliefs without the author pinning them into a corner. In the novel, characters describe themselves as left- and right-wing, liberal and conservative. It's more than apparent who stands on which side of the line. Again, Mr. Forstchen, trust your readers to discern these things about your characters. The more the characters are boxed-in, the less we interpret them, and the more caricatured they become.
On the more positive side -- and this is likely my own personal preference, as I've seen many reviewers comment negatively on this point -- I appreciate that Mr. Forstchen spends as much time as he does exploring the nature of the temporary government that rises up during this scenario. While the dialogue is unwieldy sometimes, and the flaring emotions in the room a little hollow, the many scenes revolving around the daily council meetings and the hard decisions they must make (food rationing, perimeter blockades, dealing with feral animals, etc.) are actually quite interesting and paint a very compelling picture of just how different our rules might be in a serious and long-term disaster scenario.
A final note, and again a personal preference: It's nice to see a plausible end-of-the-world story that doesn't turn everybody into zombies, vampires, or leather-clad marauders. While I doubt that much of the detail surrounding the actual EMP event and its consequences is as accurate as presented, I appreciated that this was a book about something that might occur in our own reality. There aren't enough post-apocalyptic survival books. This one fails to realize almost all of its potential, and is a difficult read as a consequence, but the intention is a good one.
Book Review: Psychologically and factually very wrong
Summary: 2 Stars
I wish I had liked this book better. Good premise, and books about EMP attacks always interest me. But Forstchen makes a lot of irritating missteps. His professor hero becomes the town leader even though he's caught completely unprepared, even to lacking insulin for his daughter. Canny local survivalists are regarded as a mere resource rather than as the natural leaders, presumably because they lack a PhD.
People start immediately fleeing en masse from the cities toward the book's rural setting. All wrong, as the history of disasters shows repeatedly. People will die of starvation rather than abandon their homes and possessions - not that they should, but they do. And in Forstchen's post-EMP world, with very few working automobiles, the idea of tens or hundreds of thousands flooding via foot from the metropoli of Greensboro and the Triangle out to the country is absurd (for one thing, it's a big mental wrench to leave Granny and Baby at home, presumably to starve, while those capable of making such a trek act in a rationally utilitarian manner to save themselves. It eventually happens, but it takes a good while to get to that point and it's far from universal). As for a 1000+ member paramiliary gang of ex-biker convicts terrorizing the state...well, Forstchen is indulging in more fantasy writing here (see his pretty good Midkemia book).
Forstchen does address the issues of clean water and medicine. With the hero's daughter being a type 1 diabetic, that issue at least is thoroughly represented. He overemphasizes the food problem, and it is presented very one-dimensionally as well. It mostly focuses on foraging (from grocery stores, that is), rationing, and confiscating existing food. Then there is some hunting. But actual, you know, agriculture, barely gets a nod. Even when there is a brief discussion of farms it centers on whether to immediately consume all the livestock or save some for breeding. The idea of going out and planting something in the ground simply never comes up, as incredible as that sounds. There is a late mention of a harvest from an orchard, but that's about it.
Forstchen's second-biggest gaffe is probably his failure to understand which regions are self-sustaining and which aren't. He does seem to get that California produces some sort of food. But he completely mangles the relative situations of the Midwest, the book's North Carolina setting, and Florida. The corn belt isn't the human-devoid cornucopia he imagines it to be (and Iowa for instance has a much shorter growing season than NC); he probably sells North Carolina's food production potential short; and he completely strikes out on Florida - like California a populous state with a year-round growing season which produces a huge overabundance of vegetables, fruit, and other food. Just googling 'Florida agriculture' before he committed himself would have saved him from looking like a fool. The last thing people would be doing is fleeing north from Florida - and that's even only considering food.
Fleeing north when there's no power...what was that other gaffe? Oh yeah, winter. In a country with no power. We'll never know how they handled it, because Forstchen skips from early summer to the next spring. But the idea that anyone would have been heading north from the subtropics is absurb. People, and their modern homes, simply aren't built to take winter without power. Once you've burned the furniture, then what? And of course caloric requirements go up as temperature goes down, so the LAST thing you'd do in a food shortage would be to go north. Incidentally the same logic applies to altitude, and one of the reasons the mountains have always been sparely populated compared to the coasts is simply that the coasts have less severe winters. This would be another reason for the city dwellers to stay in their lowland bergs and not impose themselves on the hill dwellers.
But the biggest annoyance was the lack of a plan. Forstchen thinks his busybody town council has a plan, but it really doesn't. Though lucky enough to have a working car, his hero uses it for unnecessary joyrides into town. He and the town repeatedly expose this valuable resource to needless risk (why not drive down NEAR the next town, then leave the car guarded and walk in the last mile, telling a little white lie about how far you walked if anyone asks? That way you don't tempt them. Or if you don't like that plan, some other plan. Any plan. Not just cluelessly failing to anticipate that a car is now worth confiscating by force or even killing for.)
Where his post-apocalyptic scenario misses the boat is in trying to reinvent the wheel spoke by spoke. Just because it originally took almost 200 years to go from steam power to nuclear doesn't mean that you have to go back to square one and take another 200 years to get back to where you just were! All the stuff's still there, it just needs replacement chips (better-shielded ones this time). Anything else is just a stopgap while you get civilization up and running. But when we find out what the powers that be are up to, it's more putting out local fires rather than actually addressing the main issue. True, you'd have to do both.
What did I like? Some of the self-sufficiency. And I thought he had a good commonsense and humane plan for dealing with food rationing and people who may already have their own food stores: you can apply for ration coupons, BUT you must then allow your house to be searched for all food. That way no one can douple-dip. At the same time, there's no forcible confiscation of food from those who did look ahead, no approved theft by the grasshoppers from the ants.
The novel as such is pretty cheesy. The widower dad with the sick daughter, the convenient new lady friend who drops in from heaven (okay the interstate) and just happens to be an attractive single nurse. The former mother-in-law who conveniently has a pair of vintage auotomobiles without the vulnerabilities of a lot of electronics. I don't think realistic fiction is the author's strong point, so I wish he had foregone the lame story attempt and just written a book about the actual physics behind and effects of an EMP.
Book Review: Interesting premise, but desperately needs an editor.
Summary: 3 Stars
At the advice of a friend, I read One Second After, by William R. Forstchen (copyright 2009 Tor/Forge). It's the story of what might happen to Americans in the event of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack that took out our electronics and communication net. It's told from the perspective of a history professor at a small Christian college in the mountains above Asheville, North Carolina, and his family. He's retired military, raising two daughters after losing his wife to cancer. He has settled in a small town called Black Mountain.
As far as the general populace is concerned, the EMP comes completely unexpectedly. And it's not that dramatic: The power goes out. Vehicle engines stop and the cars come to a stop. Cell phones stop working. It's an inconvenience to most; travelers are stuck on the Interstate, nobody can call home.
Of course, when a few days go by and there is still no power and no contact with the rest of the world, it's much more than inconvenience. The story follows the breakdown of the things we take for granted: That our fire trucks will run. That food will fill the grocery shelves. That we can get the medicines we need. That our pacemakers and insulin pumps will work and that dialysis will be available when we need it. That people will show up to take care of our loved ones at the nursing home. (This one hit me hard.) That one way or another we can feed our children. That people are basically good and will look out for one another.
Before long, people are dying, from illnesses that were easy to manage with medication and regular care; food is starting to run short, and people are scared.
If you think you're pretty good at handling crisis, that you're pretty independent and self sufficient, try reading this book and see if you still think so.
My friend recommended the book to me after a discussion we had about emergency preparedness. I had said to her that I hoped I would never get so desperate that I would not be willing to share with a hungry neighbor. I guess I wasn't thinking so far as that I'd be willing to share with just anyone, neighbor or not. She asked me, if it meant my child starving, and I knew it, would I share? What if that someone took the food away from me and my child, rather than sharing? Or what if it was a neighbor in need, but someone I knew had never been careful with anything in his or her life, rather had depended on people fixing things for him or her at every turn? Would I still feel the same? We also talked about home defense. I said I couldn't see myself taking up arms against fellow Americans, and she said this book might change my opinion on that. And yes, it did. The people of Black Mountain eventually do organize and band together to take care of each other, but that means they are a nice juicy target for the ruthless and lawless, who are better organized. Black Mountain must take up arms for very survival.
The book has given me a lot to think about. We need to have some basic things in mind in case something were to happen and help could not get to us for a few days, or weeks. Or months. It never hurts to plan.
With that said, I have to say that this book reads as though the second draft accidentally went straight to the publisher. I don't know who is Forstchen's editor, but evidently that person was having a bad week/month/year. Forstchen does not write dialogue well at all. Part of the problem is that his characters are about a half a centimeter deep. Blow on them and they will fall right over. And then when he makes them talk to one another, they get even thinner. So that's part of the problem. Poor characterization, stupid dialogue. On top of that, you have just plain bad proofreading and wonky punctuation. I found it very distracting. I almost got a pencil to make edits. (I've done that. I really have. It usually makes me feel better. I didn't go quite that far this time.) As an example, if you are writing dialogue, and one character is monologuing, and it runs to more than one paragraph, you don't put a closed quote at the end of each paragraph, you just use open quotes at the beginning of new paragraphs to remind the reader that the character is still talking, and when the character finally wraps up whatever it is he's trying to say, you close THAT paragraph with closed quotes. Sorta obvious. Didn't happen in this book. At least not consistently. I was already mad at the irritating conversations these paper people were having and then, having a problem figuring out which one was saying what, on top of that? Grrr.
And there was other stuff that should have been caught by somebody even if Forstchen didn't. Here's an example: In one scene, the main character is talking to his daughter, who is lying on a sofa. She's kind of mad at him. Here's the scene, minus things that would spoil the story for you:
Jennifer turned away, features pale.
"You're lying, Daddy. You never could lie to me."
"No, honey. It's the truth. [Spoiler redacted.]"
She said nothing, just looking at him.
"Sweetie, would you like me to read to you?"
Head turned away, she nodded.
See the problem? Where the heck is Jennifer looking? Her head is turned away, yet she's looking at him. Maybe there's a mirror in the room. Maybe she has eyes in the back of her head.
Anyway, this sort of stuff is all through the book and I find it distracting. It's easy to make these mistakes when you're writing because you get too close your words, but that's the editor's job, among other things, to notice stuff like that and bring it to the author's attention to be fixed.
So, final point: I recommend the story as an eye-opening though scary read, and I hereby ask for a job as a copy editor at Tor/Forge.
Book Review: Fails to live up to its potential
Summary: 2 Stars
I decided to read this book because the subject matter intrigued me; there are more thorough explanations of the premise in the official summary and the other comments, but the gist of it is that civilized society erodes in the aftermath of a terrorist attack that shuts down all electricity.
I was ultimately disappointed, however, by the book's clumsy storytelling. It veers towards melodrama (WOE IS MEEEEE! All. the. time) and its characters are bland and underdeveloped (if you're a good character, you're Good with a capital "G," and anything morally dubious you do is for the greater good: putting the needs of the many above the needs of the few. If you're bad, you're *very* Bad, and are generally faceless, nameless, and incomprehensible, with no apparent redeeming qualities or sense of humanity. I found it hard to empathize with anybody--I could sympathize, yes, but nothing compelled me to care for the protagonist or the other characters on any level beyond the superficial. Frankly, the death in this book that disturbed me the most--and there were a lot to chose from--was a dog's, and I attribute that to me being a softie for animals).
Further, the book is seriously, stylistically flawed. So much so that I'm devoting a whole paragraph to it. Every time a character "interjected" something "coldly" or "with tears in [their] eyes" or the passage wallowed in angsty, contemplative ponderings, Hollywood-style speeches, poorly-constructed conversations, symbolic deaths, film references, song lyrics, or infodumps, it would jar me right out of the story; I found myself dwelling more on the weak writing than the story itself. Also, a lot of important action occurs off the page and we're told about it afterwards, which robs the story of its immediacy and power (for example--and please don't read the rest of this section in the parenthesis if you haven't read the book yet, as I'm about to reveal some SPOILERS--we don't get to see much of John's relationship with Makala, and what we do see is generally them interacting in a non-romantic context (excepting a few extremely obvious, extremely awkward mentions of John looking at Makala's body back near when they first meet). We are *told* that John and Makala are attracted to one another, but we don't get to see it. Instead, the chapters jump forward in time and we find out through exposition that Makala has been visiting John's house and bonding with him and his family. It's regulated to a background detail that occurred in the past, and because of that we, the audience, are emotionally divorced from it. This pattern repeats all through the story; we are constantly told that John loves his diabetic daughter Jennifer and is terrified about the day her insulin supply will be used up, but we don't really get to see Jennifer as a character--we don't see her much at all, really, or her deteriorating condition, or John's increasing franticness. We don't get to see John and his family going hungry--we're told about it, but we don't *see* the empty plates or feel the clenching rumble of their stomachs--and we see even less of John's other daughter, Elizabeth, than we do of Jennifer, but for some reason we are expected to identify with these characters and care about their troubles. This pattern of skipping over action and later mentioning what happened is once again repeated in the town's battle with the the Posse; we are only shown the last few moments of the battle, and then the chapter summarizes what happened before and spends the rest of the time following John around in the aftermath, where a bunch of people we know only superficially are dying. How can I feel emotionally invested in characters I don't know, undergoing things I only find out about after they've already happened?) Mr. Forstchen obviously doesn't subscribe to the old adage "show, don't tell," and his work suffers for it.
Finally, this book's heavy-handed didacticism irritates me. The author wants us to know that not protecting our electrical components from EMP attack is Very, Very Bad and we should all cling to Christian values and male authority figures in times of crisis, and he's not shy about trying to get that message across. I felt like I was being preached to; while I did find some insight in the book's worry about modern society's dependancy on electricity in order to function, I do feel that it had all the subtlety of an anvil to the head. I also didn't like the pretentiousness of the authorial voice, the constant emphasis on religion, and the passivity and overall uselessness of the female characters in the greater narrative (the five main female characters are Jennifer, Elizabeth, Makala, John's previous mother-in-law (Jen), and the previous mayor (Kate). Three of the five are dependent on John for survival. Jen takes care of the family unit and Makala takes care of John. Makala's contributions to the community as a doctor are usually off-screen, unless she's patching John up or providing ethical guidance; she has no power to create change herself, only to react to it. Kate's only function is to let John explain EMP to her and serve as a conversational foil in council meetings; she, too, has no power to enact change herself, only to respond to the decisions of those in power. And who *are* the people in power? Who are the people we get to see doing things? Men. John, Charlie, Washington, Tom, Dr. Kellor, etc).
This novel had the potential be an insightful and thought-provoking horror story about what happens to us when the lights turn off and the careful infrastructure of our civilization is shattered. But instead it was just mediocre.
Book Review: Don't get scared, get ready!
Summary: 5 Stars
I live in Black Mountain, NC, and am a personal friend of Dr. Forstchen, so I read this latest book of his with considerable interest. I would highly recommend it.
The EMP event he describes might presently be improbable, but is certainly possible. Nicholas Taleb would undoubtedly recognize it as a "Black Swan" event: something that lies outside the range of normal experience, but that has a catastrophic impact. Taleb pointed out that humans have a tendency to excessively discount and underestimate Black Swans, so I would encourage readers to be careful not to dismiss Forstchen's book just because the scenario he paints is improbable. Furthermore, an EMP attack is hardly the only thing that might result in the substantial or total collapse of the economy and civilization; there are a range of possible scenarios, and the practical effect of living through them and their aftermath might not differ all that much from what Forstchen describes.
Some might be tempted to feel depressed after reading "One Second After", or to consider Forstchen's outlook to be excessively pessimistic. On the contrary, I consider his to actually be a rather optimistic view. Importantly, his story line assumes that the townspeople DO come together and cooperate with each other; the town government does hold together, and the town leaders do lead. The town does not devolve into "every person for themselves" anarchy, as so many other post-apocalyptic visions presume. It is also optimistic in that the townspeople do actually win in a horrific battle against a nightmarish roving gang. It is optimistic in that the protagonist and the other characters do succeed in the struggle to maintain their humanity and deepest held values.
So, read the book. But then what? Don't just set it down and forget about it. If it doesn't spur you to action, then you've wasted your time. The fact of the matter is, there ARE things that each of us could and should be doing in all of our communities right now to prepare ourselves and our communities from a whole range of vulnerabilities.
Some people are going to be tempted to rush out and stock up on non-perishable foodstuffs. Fine, but remember that those will eventually run out. What you and your community really need is to build up your local food production capacity; that is where you will find true food security. Plant fruit trees, and transform your yard into a vegetable garden. If you rent and don't have garden space, then participate in a community garden; if there is none in your community, then start one. Patronize local farmers through local farmer's markets and CSAs. Learn to can and dehydrate food, store what you grow and eat what you store -- think in terms of a whole system, operated on a long-term basis. Consider how you are going to cook food when the electricity and natural gas and propane and coleman fuel all run out; there are alternatives, including wood stoves and solar ovens.
Consider your water supply, and have a backup. Bottles of water are fine for a couple of months, but nobody can store enough water to last a lifetime. Consider having some sort of filtration system in case one must rely on surface water, and some sort of cart and barrels to haul it.
Consider how you are going to keep warm in the wintertime. Now is the time to weatherstrip and insulate. Consider getting a woodstove and laying up a few cords of wood - and having the axes, saws, and carts to cut down and haul more wood when your supply runs out. Consider installing some solar space heating panels if you have a good southern exposure.
Consider how you are going to keep well and healthy. In Forstchen's novel, many people die of disease and what are presently treatable medical conditions. Get yourself a good first aid book, maybe take some Red Cross first aid classes, and set yourself with a good set of first aid supplies. While some herbal remedy claims must be taken with a grain of salt, there are some that do work; learn the difference, and be prepared to grow or gather whatever is useful for health and healing.
Maintaining communications can be useful. In Forstchen's novel, all electronics are fried, and the town is left with no working communications. I do wish that Forstchen had mentioned that it is possible to protect sensitive electronic devices with a Faraday Cage. Put a portable radio in a cardboard box, put that inside a bigger box, wrap the package completely with aluminum foil (every square inch, no exceptions), attach a ground wire (secure metal-to-metal contact), and attach the ground wire to a ground (a cold water pipe is not ideal, but will do). He mentioned one person in a distant town having a working shortwave receiver; if several of the townspeople in his novel had the forsight to store portable radios with shortwave bands (along with some way to recharge the batteries, either by crank power or solar panel), they would have been able to get important outside news much sooner. Even more importantly, if several people had hidden away a few pairs of FRS/GMRS 2-way radios in faraday cages, then the town government, police, and militia would have had valuable 2-way communications. Do yourself and your community a favor and consider doing this; after an EMP attack is too late.
This is not a complete list; Amazon.com has a number of books with more extensive recommendations for disaster preparedness. Take this opportunity to take advantage of the time you have before something unexpected, but maybe inevitable, happens.