From the TPL, a short description of the book:
- "In the aftermath of the supervolcano’s eruption in Yellowstone Park, North America is covered in ash. Farmlands cannot produce food. Machinery has been rendered useless. Cities are no longer habitable. And the climate across the globe grows colder every day."
- "Former police officer Colin Ferguson’s family is spread across the United States, separated by the catastrophe, and struggling to survive as the nation attempts to recover and reestablish some measure of civilization… "
At the end of "Eruption" cities on the west and east coasts were habitable and doing OK although the one Ferguson son in Maine was facing a hard winter. Colin's POV indicated some shortages (no potatoes to fry, the horror, the horror) but L.A. was coping. Seeing he is described as former officer, it does suggest country wide collapse of society. ML4E (talk) 16:38, September 22, 2012 (UTC)
My copy came a couple days ago. I've been rather busy, but I've gotten to pg 80 something. Starts out slow, with the characters in California commenting on how cool and green everything is in June, and how a full tank of gas is an amazing thing, but otherwise moving along ok. Rob in Maine, with its 9 months of winter and Vanessa in the camp in KS are the only hints that maybe not everything is ok. However, things are starting to snowball (the little Maine town is having to adopt "communism" to survive; various suburban police departments band together to make sure they get a shipment of oil, and cut the LAPD out of the deal with threats of force; various crews are going into the ashcovered areas and gathering whatever goods can be found, etc.)
- Sounds reminiscent of Birmo's book Without Warning. That one was good, if grim. Turtle Fan (talk) 05:44, December 14, 2012 (UTC)
The first volume was supposed to start "next Memorial Day", i.e. if you read it in December, 2011, then it started in May, 2012, but if you read it in June, 2012, then it was set in May, 2013, etc. Turtledove seems to have backed away from that: in a quick conversation about Orwell, Colin (who is 51 or so) remembers the actual year 1984, but Kelly Birnbaum (who is in her late 30s) was a little kid and barely remembers it. So this series is set in the 2010s or 2020s now.
A Vice President of the United States appears. He's unnamed, but there are oblique suggestions that it is Biden, including: the fact that he ran for the presidential nomination, but certain gaffes derailed him; a penchant for repetition in his speech; the fact that he's seen as having returned the office of VP to it's barely relevant status after the "excesses" of the first years of the century. No appearance by the POTUS as of yet.
- We've created articles on hints like that before. I feel like doing one on a living, active American politician should require something more concrete. But at the same time I feel like having an article on a living, active American politician would be freakin awesome.
- Incidentally, that comment about relevance and excess is another possible hint into Turtledove's own politics, if anyone still has any interest in trying to extrapolate those based on textual references. It's possibly even less helpful than others that have been advanced for those purposes. Turtle Fan (talk) 05:44, December 14, 2012 (UTC)
Not sure where "former" police officer Ferguson comes from. He's still a cop at page 80, and a quick flip through of the book suggests he's a cop at the very end. Another instance of the cover-copy writer not having read the text of the book s/he was writing about, I guess. TR (talk) 17:50, December 13, 2012 (UTC)
- " . . . prompting Jake Featherston to retaliate with his newest weapon, the atomic bomb." Oh, The Grapple, you dream-crushing thing. . . . Turtle Fan (talk) 05:44, December 14, 2012 (UTC)
- I haven't read it yet (I have a library reserve waiting for an available copy) but did skim through one at a bookstore. It had the same statement as cover copy but I did read the last few Colin scenes and think it may be deliberate mis-direction. If so, then I won't say any more until you (and TF if he is reading it) have finished. ML4E (talk) 21:33, December 13, 2012 (UTC)
- I'm afraid this one still hasn't caught my interest, and from all I've been able to learn that's unlikely to change, so don't hold up on my account. Turtle Fan (talk) 05:44, December 14, 2012 (UTC)
- No problem. I'll make my comment once TR has finished the book. ML4E (talk) 22:19, December 14, 2012 (UTC)
- I've gotten my copy from the Library and am about half way through. I have skimmed ahead and my thoughts on Colin and the cover blurb was that it was to deliberately mislead the reader to think he was going to have to resign at the end of the book. In short, towards the end of the book, Colin and a few fellow officers investigate and then bust the Police Chief's son for dope dealing. This divides the police force especially after the Chief commits suicide in apparent shame. Most of the force then treat Colin as a turncoat and it looks like he is going to be forced to quit. Then DNA tests show the Chief was the South Bay Strangler and Colin is redeemed. My thought was the blurb was a bit more misdirection to make that twist a bigger surprise. ML4E (talk) 19:35, December 22, 2012 (UTC)
Finished it over the weekend. My feelings are somewhere between "It was Ok, I guess" and "Meh." It's not a bad book, precisely. HT seems to be far more optimistic about such disasters than others; the government doesn't topple, people don't start eating each other, etc. The supervolcano effectively kills the middle of the country, but when one considers other such natural disasters on a smaller scale, that needn't be a national death-wound. People tend to work together, or at the very least, do their best to carry on as best as they can with reduced resources. On the one hand, the optimism is rather refreshing.
On the other hand, that optimism doesn't make for very compelling story telling. The Ferguson family is by turns interesting (and other times deadly dull), but aside from Vanessa in Kansas (and *spoiler alert* that's a temporary thing) and Rob in Maine with its vaguely not-quite-part-of-the-U.S. status, the eruption's kind of a background noise. Everyone rides their bikes or takes the bus (when those are running on time). LA and its suburbs are the new Portland, weatherwise. Power fades in and out. The economy is in the toilet. There isn't much reference to the wider world after Chapter 1. We don't have much idea of what's going on at the federal or state governmental level (admittedly, that wouldn't be necessarily more interesting--all of the characters are aware that the government at all levels is doing the best it can with the little or nothing it has, so any POV from a cabinet member would almost certainly be long discussions of logistics and formulating responses).
In a weird way, the story might have been better if HT had ditched the volcano and just tried for a conventional literary work about a family and its trials and tribulations (a stand-alone, not a series). Alternatively, the work might have been better served as an anthology, with various self-contained short works against the larger backdrop of the supervolcano. And I can't help but wonder if things might have sharpened up if HT has gone the AH route and set it during the mid-20th Century. TR (talk) 17:09, December 17, 2012 (UTC)
- I agree with TR's comments on the story; by no means awful but nothing special either. I will certainly finish it (I'm about half way through it) and will pick up any other sequels but its no TL-191. As an anthology it might be better and it could have let HT bring in other writers if they were interested but I don't think making it an AH from the mid-20th would have helped. I think HT did it the way he did is because he does have some concerns about the Supervolcano and a near future work addresses that best. You do an AH to comment on either the time period its set in or as an allegory on the present (e.g. MWtIH). Or to play What If? games with history, of course. None of that seems to fit the purpose of the books here. ML4E (talk) 19:35, December 22, 2012 (UTC)
- The only thing I really feel competent to comment on is the dullness of relative optimism. I hate to keep referring to the same example, but Birmo's Without Warning showed people (in the US anyway) surviving an even greater disaster--the obliteration of everything but Alaska, Hawaii and the Seattle metro area, plus Guantanamo and I guess other overseas possessions. Some really terrifying developments are foreshadowed, but for the most part they pass us over. Well within a year we've got a new constitution and an elected civilian president--albeit a pretty odd duck of one--and it's not until people start feeling secure and comfortable in something more than a tenuous existence that things go badly. And the story of how the worst fallout was averted initially was really the most interesting part of the story. Telling it required a mix of characters who were close to the remaining centers of political power, and characters who were farther removed but still invested enough to understand how different decisions were affecting them. Turtle Fan (talk) 18:24, December 23, 2012 (UTC)
- Although I'm not following this, after reading four books in TWTPE and from what I've read of the Amazon reviews I've pretty much figured out what HT's problem is. He spends way too much time focusing on the characters rather than the world around them. This is a terrible error to make in the field HT's writing in; This logic applies to Alternate History as well. He's creating a brand new world and part of the fun and what entices the audience in the first place, is exploring this new world. In order to make something like this work, you need three major elements. Action, Exploration, and Characters. Harry, for reasons known only to him, chose to focus too much attention on the characters and since their development is spread out over how ever many books he's chosen, the characters tend to be boring. The action is basic at best, and the world is explored in drips and drabs. Mr Nelg
- That's probably a fair assessment. I'll acknowledge that in Supervolcano, a large part of the world building is happening as the story progresses, but so much of it is taking place in broad strokes, or just off-screen, out of the corner of a given character's eye, and thus never feels very "real" or consequential.
- Which is a shame, as historically, HT has been pretty good at building solid little worlds, and using his POVs to explore those worlds while telling stories in a far more balanced fashion. Heck, as I think about it, for me the problem with TWPE isn't so much the building part (I find it, on its face, to be well-realized world but, then, starting WWII in 1938 isn't going to produce the major changes adding aliens in 1942 will), it's the fact that he doesn't always explore the most interesting parts, or the parts that most dramatically differ from our own. TR (talk) 18:17, December 28, 2012 (UTC)
- Addendum: And what's additionally frustrating is that nearly every short story he's published in the last 4 years or so has been a text-book example of world-building. And as I am discovering with my own attempts at short-form AH, getting it right in a short is HARD. TR (talk) 18:22, December 28, 2012 (UTC)