What happens when resources become scarce and society starts to crumble? As the competition for resources pulls America's previously stable society apart, the "New Normal" is a Soft Apocalypse. This is how our world ends; with a whimper instead of a bang. New social structures and tribal connections spring up across America, as the previous social structures begin to dissolve. Locus Award finalist and John W. Campbell Memorial Award finalist Soft Apocalypse follows the journey across the Southeast of a tribe of formerly middle class Americans as they struggle to find a place for themselves and their children in a new, dangerous world that still carries the ghostly echoes of their previous lives.
From Publishers Weekly
In this moving debut from Hugo-winner McIntosh, the prosperous world of 2023 ends not with a bang but with a crackle, the sound of genetically engineered bamboo growing overnight and destroying roads and buildings. Naïve college graduate Jasper struggles to trade charged batteries for food as his "tribe" wanders the Georgia countryside, dodging local cops and designer diseases. Settling in Savannah, they try to find some stability in a crumbling city beset by anarchist gangs and the "scientist-rebels" who release tailored organisms to hasten societal collapse. In the end, each member of the tribe must decide what to give up in order to survive. The novel, expanded from a short story, shows some unevenness in tone, but McIntosh strongly delineates his characters and makes Jasper's struggles very affecting. Though it may be soft, this apocalypse has plenty of sharp edges. (Apr.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review
Bottom line: If Soft Apocalypse isn't nominated for a Hugo or Nebula Award, I will eat the entire book page by page...
--Paul Goat Allen
(McIntosh) has written a first novel that's compelling, credible, and relentless, who's best and most disturbing moments will stay with the reader for a long time. --Locus
McIntosh's first novel is a grim glimpse into a future that is not all that improbable...This is the sort of thoughtful sociological SF we see too seldom today--the kind of work Pohl and Kornbluth did in the 1950s. Well worth a read.
-Peter Heck, Asimov's
About the Author
Will McIntosh is a Hugo award winner and Nebula finalist whose debut novel, Soft Apocalypse, was published by Night Shade in 2011. His short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s (where his story “Bridesicle” won the 2010 Reader’s Award for short story), Strange Horizons, Science Fiction and Fantasy: Best of the Year, and others. A New Yorker transplanted to the rural south, Will is a psychology professor at Georgia Southern University, where he studies Internet dating, and how people’s TV, music, and movie choices are affected by recession and terrorist threat. In 2008 he became the father of twins.
Description:
What happens when resources become scarce and society starts to crumble? As the competition for resources pulls America's previously stable society apart, the "New Normal" is a Soft Apocalypse. This is how our world ends; with a whimper instead of a bang. New social structures and tribal connections spring up across America, as the previous social structures begin to dissolve. Locus Award finalist and John W. Campbell Memorial Award finalist Soft Apocalypse follows the journey across the Southeast of a tribe of formerly middle class Americans as they struggle to find a place for themselves and their children in a new, dangerous world that still carries the ghostly echoes of their previous lives.
From Publishers Weekly
In this moving debut from Hugo-winner McIntosh, the prosperous world of 2023 ends not with a bang but with a crackle, the sound of genetically engineered bamboo growing overnight and destroying roads and buildings. Naïve college graduate Jasper struggles to trade charged batteries for food as his "tribe" wanders the Georgia countryside, dodging local cops and designer diseases. Settling in Savannah, they try to find some stability in a crumbling city beset by anarchist gangs and the "scientist-rebels" who release tailored organisms to hasten societal collapse. In the end, each member of the tribe must decide what to give up in order to survive. The novel, expanded from a short story, shows some unevenness in tone, but McIntosh strongly delineates his characters and makes Jasper's struggles very affecting. Though it may be soft, this apocalypse has plenty of sharp edges. (Apr.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review
Bottom line: If Soft Apocalypse isn't nominated for a Hugo or Nebula Award, I will eat the entire book page by page...
--Paul Goat Allen
(McIntosh) has written a first novel that's compelling, credible, and relentless, who's best and most disturbing moments will stay with the reader for a long time. --Locus
McIntosh's first novel is a grim glimpse into a future that is not all that improbable...This is the sort of thoughtful sociological SF we see too seldom today--the kind of work Pohl and Kornbluth did in the 1950s. Well worth a read.
-Peter Heck, Asimov's
About the Author
Will McIntosh is a Hugo award winner and Nebula finalist whose debut novel, Soft Apocalypse, was published by Night Shade in 2011. His short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s (where his story “Bridesicle” won the 2010 Reader’s Award for short story), Strange Horizons, Science Fiction and Fantasy: Best of the Year, and others. A New Yorker transplanted to the rural south, Will is a psychology professor at Georgia Southern University, where he studies Internet dating, and how people’s TV, music, and movie choices are affected by recession and terrorist threat. In 2008 he became the father of twins.