Soft Apocalypse

It's not hard for me to suspend my disbelief for a good read, especially if the genre is science fiction. And Will McIntosh's basic premise of the future breakup of society as we know it due to a meltdown of the world's economies intrigued me. Unfortunately, the details provided in McIntosh's novel were very fuzzy. In the beginning, we know that about 40% of all Americans are unemployed, and therefore there are large numbers of homeless people drifting around like gypsies, trading with each other the best they can before being run off by cops or violent locals. There is no help for anyone.

The story is told by Jasper, a young college graduate who is traveling with his "tribe," Cortez, Jeanne, Colin, and Ange. We don't know how long they've been wandering around Savannah, Georgia. At this stage, Jasper is very preoccupied with an affair he's having with a married woman--by phone. He's homeless, he doesn't have much to eat, but somehow, he's got a cell phone. And this Sophia, who is calling and meeting him around town in her car for brief visits, has a home, job, and a spouse who she is not going to leave. How and where could they have possibly met? No clue. It's a strange subplot without much purpose, other than to showcase their different lots in life. This could have been done in a more realistic way.

This strange relationship and the miraculous cell phone were early clues about how really silly this book was going to be. Jasper continues to think and do rather immature things, except when he's doing the impossible. There are some very violent and gross episodes in this story, which Jasper always somehow survives. There is even an episode when he performs an appendectomy on a teenaged girl. No, Jasper's not a doctor, but since he has his trusty cell phone, he calls a doctor who walks him through the process! We (the reader) never find out how that worked out for her, but the offending organ was indeed removed. Jasper had joined her tribe to pick some herbs and have sex with her, but after this episode, he hurried right on home.

Another subplot is referred to as the Daja Jihad, which was never really defined. There's Sebastian, who has some kind of infection in his blood called Doctor Happy, which takes all the fight out of people and makes them serene and--happy. He's out to infect as many people as possible. (This reminded me of A Clockwork Orange.) We don't find out until the end what Sebastian and his co-conspirators have in mind, exactly. This clandestine group is also planting a strain of insiduous and fast-growing bamboo everywhere for the purpose of slowing things down. I could try to explain that, but I'm not sure I totally understood the rationale myself.

This story seems to just ramble on, with violent episodes interspersed with insipid dialogue. In the end, the surviving tribe members are in such starved straights that they must join Sebastian's Doctor Happy commune--where food is plentiful because everyone works for the common good and everyone's infected with Doctor Happy. The fact that they stand outside the commune's walls, debating whether or not to join when they are sick and starving is the last of the horribly unlikely scenarios. (What? You mean if I wanna eat, I have to get happy, first? No way! Let's go off for more violence and starvation!)

Oh, brother, what a waste of time. Anyone who is in the mood for a better rendition of this type of story should read Margaret Atwood's books Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. Much better choices.

*This was a Barnes & Noble Friday freebie. Good thing.