Review: One Second After

I’ve just finished reading William R. Forstchen’s One Second After. It’s one of the newer entries in the post-apocalypse genre, and one whose basic premise is very much in fashion among the survivalistas.

As a work of literature and of science fiction of the post-apocalypse genre, it gets a pass if only a grudging one. The characterization is very spotty in places, some characters mere sketches without much to make you care what happens to them. The plotting and pace are utterly unsurprising, without much to keep you on the edge of your seat. The predictable human dramas unfold in a somewhat plodding manner, and of course the de rigueur cannibal horde makes its appearance toward the end of the book complete with climactic battle (For my money, that was done far better in Lucifer’s Hammer)

The book also suffers from interminable inner monologues wherein the main character reminisces about how much better everything used to be before the disaster, when he’s not reminiscing about how wonderful America was before it got all soft and complacent. Heart clutching patriotic moments are interspersed liberally throughout the book, and one begins to suspect that the author secretly longs for his disaster so that Americans can ‘rediscover’ themselves and their pioneer spirit. Pretty standard right-ish writing, but what did you expect from someone that authors books with Newt Gingrich?

All in all, if you’re looking for a great work of literature, this definitely isn’t it. But it’s readable for a bit of entertainment on a rainy afternoon, if nothing else. It does have other value that should put it on most prepper’s reading list, though.

The apocalyptic event envisioned by the author is an EMP attack on the continental USA. Very rightly, he feels the consequences of such an attack (or for those that don’t see terrorists under the bed, a coronal mass ejection the size of the Carrington Event) would be utterly devastating. Absolutely everything would grind to a halt, and the human suffering as portrayed in the book is likely on the mark, or very close to it.

To Forstchen’s credit, he has not written a cozy catastrophe of the Alas, Babylon type. There is no deus ex machina that pops up and solves the problems of the main character and his town. Characters you might have come to like, regardless of how badly written, are mown down nearly indiscriminately throughout the book, and (spoiler!) even the main character’s pet dogs are not spared.

In fact, the book’s tone is relentlessly downbeat. For most of the book, things go from bad to worse, people surviving one event only to be crushed by the next. It is only at the end of the book that there is an upbeat moment of sorts, if only a very qualified one.

Are things ever going to be as bad as this book portrays? I hope not, but it still makes sense to read this book, just to get us to think about the worst case scenarios we might face. After all, a big chunk of preparedness is mental preparation, and this book should help us understand that should we get a catastrophe even remotely the scale of the one described, there will be nothing cozy about it.

Originally posted April 30, 2010 @ MPN