Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Don <g@crcomp.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: "Holding Their Own VI: Bishop's Song" by Joe Nobody
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2025 14:52:46 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 64
Message-ID: <20250315b@crcomp.net>
References: <vqstvp$2qh07$2@dont-email.me>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Injection-Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2025 15:52:47 +0100 (CET)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="0b2ed7e03980df3d5a8798dbb9fff9ce";
	logging-data="3925125"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19TsMnyXmnQnGi05B4Gn2jp"
Cancel-Lock: sha1:4vHKgBXe6sCPezXoeEFSh2FVhmQ=

Lynn McGuire wrote:
> "Holding Their Own VI: Bishop's Song" by Joe Nobody
>    https://www.amazon.com/Holding-Their-Own-VI-Bishops/dp/193947373X/
>
> The sixth book in a series of nineteen alternate history books about the
> economic collapse of the USA in 2015.  I reread the well printed and
> well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback self published by the
> author in 2013 that I bought new on Amazon in 2014.  I own the first
> eleven books in the series and am rereading the first ten before my
> first read of the eleventh book.
>
> Um, this series was published in 2011 just as the shale oil and gas boom
> was really getting cranked up.  The book has crude oil at $350/barrel
> and gasoline at $6/gallon in 2015.  Not gonna happen due to oil well
> fracking in the USA so the major driver of economic collapse in the USA
> is invalid for the book.  That said, the book is a good story about the
> collapse and failure of the federal government in the USA.  The book is
> centered in Texas which makes it very interesting to me since I am a
> Texas resident.
>
> The $6 gasoline was just the start.  The unemployment rises to 40% over
> a couple of years and then there is a terrorist chemical attack in
> Chicago that kills 50,000 people.  The current President of the USA
> nukes Iran with EMP airbursts as the sponsor of the terrorist attack.
> And the President of the USA also declares martial law and shuts down
> the interstates to stop the terrorists from moving about.  That shuts
> down food and fuel movement causing starvation and lack of energy across
> the nation.
>
> The accumulations of these serious problems cause widespread panics and
> shutdowns of basic services like electricity and water for large cities.
>  The electricity grids fail due to employees not showing up to work at
> the plants.  Then the refineries shutdown due to the lack of electricity.
>
> After the fall of the USA government in the financial disaster of 2015,
> Bishop and Terri try to restart their lives in the zero electricity and
> almost zero energy world of 2016.  The civil war has started and is
> temporarily under a cease fire since nothing says "I love my neighbor"
> like two Abrams tanks firing at each other.
>
> Going home back to Tennessee from Texas is dangerous, very dangerous.
> Cannibals, thieves, federal troops, etc.  Kind of like Texas in the 1800s.

Stories such as THE TIME MACHINE by Wells and BLACK TUESDAY by Mayer
mostly mention cannibalism (with a small "c") in passing. It's
diabolically done by Other People.
    THE HEIRS OF SAWNEY BEANE by Watt-Evans broaches taboo about such
demonic Other People. Are these fiends perhaps plausibly present in
our midst?
    Poe stories tend to flesh out the Interior Life. THE NARRATIVE OF
A. GORDON PYM OF NANTUCKET is Poe's sole novel. It's an allegory for a
whaling vessel transit gone wrong off the deep end.
    THE NARRATIVE speaks to Cannibalism (with a capital "C") in a more
personal tone. It almost flat out asks, "What would you do if you were
starving with three other men on flotsam out in the middle of the
ocean?"

Danke,

--
Don.......My cat's  )\._.,--....,'``.     https://crcomp.net/reviews.php
telltale tall tail /,   _.. \   _\  (`._ ,.    Walk humbly with thy God.
tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'    Make 1984 fiction again.