My life in books

Three novels about the end of the world, from three authors, writing at three points in time - the 1970s, the 1990s, and the 2010s.


Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Time of the Fourth Horseman

An early Yarbro science fiction novel (from 1976) set in a (now alternative) timeline in which overpopulation due to improvements in medicine has brought about massive social problems and a burgeoning, underserviced underclass. Suddenly, in the city of Stockton, diseases thought to have been eradicated begin showing up, but no one recognises them - or at least admits to doing so. The novel focuses on the efforts of a small group of dedicated maverick health care workers who discover that the diseases have been intentionally reintroduced into the underclass population as an experiment in population control, with a side order of eugenics.

From the initial horror of one doctor's realisation that the man closest to her is responsible for running this "experiment" to the ambiguous ending which may or may not presage the spread of plague worldwide, this is an interesting read, albeit one that is in some ways dated, and that lacks the careful characterisation and attention to detail that marks Yarbo's later fiction.


Jack Womack, Random Acts of Senseless Violence

I had not heard of this book until Jo Walton reviewed it on tor.com. Then an acquaintance of mine with excellent taste in books (we like many of the same things) read it and couldn't stop raving. So I read it. It is amazing. And the last few pages chilled my soul. More people should read it.

This is what Walton said:

Random Acts is written in the form of the diary of Lola Hart, a twelve year old girl in a near-future New York City. As the book progresses she changes from being a sweet middle-class child to a robbing murdering street girl as society changes around her. Presidents are assassinated and money is devalued and martial law is declared as she worries about her sexuality and groans about being forced to read Silas Marner for school. At the start of the book she's writing in standard English with the occasional odd word choice, by the end she has progressed into a completely different dialect, and you have progressed step by step along with her and are reading it with ease. I can't think of a comparable linguistic achievement, especially as he does it without any made up words. (Random example: "Everything downcame today, the world's spinning out and I spec we finally all going to be riding raw.") I also can't think of many books that have a protagonist change so much and so smoothly and believably. What makes it such a marvelous book is the way Lola and her world and the prose all descend together, and even though it's bleak and downbeat it's never depressing.

So, why haven't you read it?

Back in the 90s when this book was written, i'm not sure I would have accepted the premise that the veneer of civilization we cling to is so fragile that it can disintegrate into chaos in just a few months. But we've come so much closer to the edge now, and that makes the events of this book that much more believable to me.

It's brilliant. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Don't be fooled by the fact that the protagonist is 12 years old. This is not a YA novel.


Alex Adams, White Horse

A novel (first in a planned trilogy) of considerable power. As it begins, The protagonist, Zoe, is living a perfectly normal life working on the cleaning staff at a pharmaceutical company, trying to save money to go to college. Then one day, she wakes up to find a mysterious jar in her apartment. The mysterious appearance of the pot, which she does not touch, seems to signal the beginning of the apocalypse, in the form of a mutagenic plague that kills most of its victims from rapid, lethal change; those who survive no longer seem human. Zoe is one of the few immunes, and the novel details most chillingly her struggle to survive and find the man she loves in a world that is filled with monstrous brutality.