Soft Apocalypse
By Will McIntosh
Will McIntosh is more well known for his host of short stories and of course winning the Hugo-Award (given every year for short story efforts to authors endeavors in science fiction and/or fantasy.) McIntosh himself has a Ph.D. in social psychology in which he now teaches at some University in Georgia. I believe knowing as much about phycology as he does provides an interesting view for a reader on the apocalypse, this is of course what soft apocalypse is about. Thus far I am really enjoying only reading books under 300 pages as it allows me, should I choose to, to read the entire book in one sitting (24 hours) as I had done with The Giver. I also read this book in one sitting after finishing Jasmyn.
It seems most authors that choose to wright about an Apocalypse describe the fall itself briefly before diving into how the survivors story of endurance in the completely changed landscape. Generally speaking the fall itself is glossed over and in my opinion half thought out. The common causes of human apocalypse might include zombies, plague, over-population/lack of resources, general populace upset (revolution), alien invasion etc. Once the reason for the fall has been outlined the stories seem to just follow a group of survivors with little more insight to the fall. The fall itself just isn’t all that important to the story in this genre.
I don’t dislike these stories, I love them.
Now Soft Apocalypse itself is a story about apocalypse and the survival of the human species through chaos and a complete dismantling of government structure but where this story differs is that it is about the apocalypse itself. The characters are living the slow death throes of collapse. “Soft” because it’s not an immediate collapse that people come to expect from the genre. There is no impending doom that will wipe the population and the population isn’t just dyeing out immediately. It is a story of failing government, the increasing prevalence of anarchists known as “jumpy-jumps”, and shortages of consumables. It follows a group of nomads through their journey and outlines their attempt at survival in a world that is increasingly more and more hostile.
It does take place in the near future and McIntosh takes a lot of scientific liberties so be prepared for that. One thing that I felt really challenged with was the fact that the story spans a slow collapse and is thus written that way so you will have gaps of in the story of months or even years between chapters. McIntosh does not attempt to fill you in to what has happened in between. It was hard for me as a reader to just accept that three years or even months passed without any sort things worth mentioning but somehow it worked. Parts of this book will stay with you as McIntosh is a pretty descriptive writer and understands human phycology real well. That insight allows him to paint pictures that stay with you. I think about one scene in the book in which a girl is essentially executed by fast growing bamboo and I still shiver.
The trick to understand while reading this book is that this is a story of a group of people existing in a collapse. It is about companionship, general life, discovering what it means to be a human, and love as much as it is about dodging bullets, not getting gassed, watching people get executed, and hacking rapists to pieces.
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