Bookworms: Slow Apocalypse (2012) by John Varley
Many fans of thought-provoking science fiction are aware of the work of John Varley. From stories like The Ophiuchi Hotline to novels like Steel Beach and on to his Gaea Trilogy, Varley has approached science fiction from a slightly different angle than almost anyone else. While often compared to Robert Heinlein (and openly an admirer of his), Varley is, in many ways, unique. He presents grand ideas but does it with a much more personal touch with his characters than Heinlein usually did. And he loves to poke and prod at what everyone accepts as normal, but does it through the characters he creates, rather than purely through the plot.
I’ve been a fan of his writing for almost twenty years and so when I heard last year that he’d have a new book out, I was excited. In his newsletter from February 2012, he had this to say about the new book ‘Slow Apocalypse’:
“This novel is my attempt to reach a larger audience, which I will never do with hard science fiction like my Gaea Trilogy or the Thunder and Lightning series. As such, the book begins with a more-or-less science fiction premise in a more-or-less present-day setting, and proceeds from there.”
Now, with most other authors I like, I’d be worried if they told me, “Hey, you know all that stuff I wrote that you liked? Well, my next book is going to be completely different.” But somehow with Varley it didn’t really worry me. His stuff is almost always different in some way from what he’s done before.
And Slow Apocalypse is certainly different. Based essentially in the here-and-now and focused on a single family living in Los Angeles, the book takes the question of petroleum depletion and turns it up to 11. The quandary of what we humans will do when those oil deposits run dry is still, in most people’s minds, an intellectual exercise. We all know it’s going to happen some day, but what if that “some day” was tomorrow? And that in essence is the entire premise of the book.
In the hands of many authors, such a premise would come across as preachy and a stretch plot-wise. Varley, while obviously writing with a viewpoint in mind, manages to simply layout an interesting story with well-developed characters and focuses on the outcome of such a situation, not the details of how it happened. This is a story about effect, not cause.
The narrative starts out with Dave Marshall, a mildly successful, but unhappy Hollywood TV writer. Through a source he’d been cultivating as a story consultant, he discovers that something has gone horribly wrong with the world’s oil fields. Before he can even really process that information, his source – a retired Marine colonel – is neutralized (with extreme prejudice) by someone; presumably government operatives.
Left wondering if this information is even legitimate and with nowhere else left to turn, Dave begins his own research and realizes there’s enough evidence to start preparing for the worst. What follows are some amusing scenes where Dave goes on a pre-apocalyptic shopping spree and tries to discreetly inform some of his best friends (all part of the team on the last TV show he worked on), all the while trying to not attract attention and figuring out how to tell his wife and daughter.
Throughout the book, one of the details I appreciated the most was the handling of the dynamic between Dave and his family, as they are forced to adapt and come to terms with each other, and the fundamentally changed world, while also just struggling to survive. The dysfunctional-family-that-comes-together-through-adversity is hardly new, but seldom is it handled as well as Varley does here. As he’s done in the past, his characters have flaws and strengths, but they aren’t frustratingly stupid or unbelievable.
Aside from the story arc of the Marshall clan, obviously the main part of the story is the oil, or lack thereof. The offered mechanism for the destruction of the world’s oil supply is a bio-engineered twin of the type of bacteria that’s been tried on cleaning up oil spills. The difference is that this bacteria affects oil deposits in the ground and it mutates beyond what was originally planned — it becomes transmissible through the air. The result is that refined petroleum products like gasoline are okay, but crude oil the entire world over becomes unusable.
This is one of the other interesting points about the novel – many apocalypse stories rely on the direct deaths of humans to justify being included in the genre – asteroids, zombies, plagues, floods, etc. But in “Slow Apocalypse” we see a worst-case scenario for the entire human race where human frailty or biology is not the cause of our downfall, but the frailty of a worldwide civilization dependent on a finite resource. It’s a fault built-in to the basic design of what we consider the modern world, and as individuals, most are completely unprepared for what might happen if that all disappears.
“We all love after-the-bomb stories. If we didn’t, why would there be so many of them? There’s something attractive about all those people being gone, about wandering in a depopulated world, scrounging cans of Campbell’s pork and beans, defending one’s family from marauders. But some secret part of us thinks it would be good to survive. All those other folks will die. That’s what after-the-bomb stories are all about.” ― John Varley, on the attraction of apocalyptic stories
Ultimately, this is the story of humanity’s hubris. Not the typical science-fiction hubris of believing we can populate the stars, solve the mysteries of matter and energy, or leverage the power of biology. Just the hubris of thinking we can have 7+ billion people living on a planet and relying on an energy source that we know will be gone sooner rather than later.
As Dave and his family struggle to survive the myriad effects of no more oil, they are also forced to deal with earthquakes and fires (one of the effects of the bacteria is that is causes an outgassing of explosive, flammable hydrogen). But the scariest and most disturbing parts of the novel are where the danger is not any of those, but other humans. Varley repeatedly highlights how when the veneer of civilization is removed, all that we’re left with is the brutality humanity has exhibited throughout most of history.
With most of the story taking place in and around Los Angeles, Varley obviously could not have picked a better location to highlight the dependency on oil. A Los Angeles without oil is a city of millions (and a metro area of tens of millions) in a desert without food, water, power, fire & rescue, or any semblance of government. It’s the ultimate urban ‘Lord of the Flies’ environment. And Varley does an admirable job of including the geography and neighborhoods of the city. If you love LA, you’ll likely suffer a bit at how utterly it fares.
Do Dave and his family have anything more than mere survival to look forward to? What kind of world is there left to survive in? These questions are answered in the story, but in this case, it’s the journey that’s important, not the destination. Varley starts with a simple proposition and through his characters and the story, examines the effects and outcomes to an incredible degree.
And perhaps there is too much examination. This is not an action-packed or quickly paced narrative, as many of Varley’s previous novels have been. I believe the author’s intent was to allow and encourage the reader to be fully immersed in this could-be world he created, and while it mostly worked for me, I can see others being impatient with the storytelling. Those occasional moments when the story bogged down, like it was trapped in the famed La Brea Tar Pits, from detailed descriptions of the L.A. geography were really the only part of this book I had any quibble with.
Any science fiction story is basically a game of “what if” and ultimately how satisfying the story is, I think, relies on how entertainingly that question is answered and then asked again. In “Slow Apocalypse”, Varley asks and answers this question many times — and throughout, he’ll have you doing the same.
‘Slow Apocalypse’ by John Varley (Publisher: Ace Hardcover) was published September 4, 2012. A paperback version is coming June 25, 2013.
