I really need to stop reading books like this.
Soft Apocalypse, by Will McIntosh, is a classic example of the "It's the End of the World And We Know It" genre of books, and it deserves to quickly become a classic OF the genre as well.
The book follows the trials and tribulations of Jasper and a circle of his friends and acquaintances as they deal with the slow but thorough decline of the American way of life which takes place, in their case, in and around Savannah, Georgia. Unlike most books in this genre, there is no one big reason for the collapse of society, nor does it happen all at once. There's no big nuclear war, no super virus, no asteroid impact... things just get remorselessly worse with every turn of the page.
I... I _really_ like this aspect of the novel. It made me immediately begin to wonder if we are currently living in the starting era of what could become something like this book. As it begins in the early 2020's, close enough to our time to almost taste and therefore a world entirely recognizable and familiar to the reader, and also references some events from our times as precursors to the worse happenings in the novel's own world, well... let's just say that this is an amazingly effective way to establish emotional resonance and impact with the reader.
This impact is multiplied by the fact that Jasper is no superhero, he's just a regular Everyman trying to get by. Likable, and one certainly finds themself rooting for him, but he also makes questionable moral decisions here and there and is by no means perfect or perfectly good. He's relatable and you're either very much like him or can easily name a half-dozen people you know personally who are.
The greater theme of the book considers: is our current way of life (that of 2012 America) sustainable long-term for all the billions of humans on earth? And, if not, what do we do about it? Do we uncomfortably watch a very large number of generally good and innocent people die horribly because their ancestors lived too high on the hog? Do we join the reactionary forces who will regress to increasingly smaller and insular communities and violently either shun or take from all others around them to maintain an ever-shoddier facade of their former way of life? Or do we sacrifice a core essence of our own humanity to join those who have made the decision that simply being a modern Western human is no longer sustainable, and therefore Big Changes must occur but, if you accept them, you will most likely survive?
The journey Jasper goes on to find his own answer to this question takes him down some seriously troubling roads. There are at least three scenes in this novel that dumped me into a straight funk for a while, due to their horribleness happening to recognizably me-like characters. Reading a well-described, very detailed version of America turning into the worst of what I imagine Mogadishu was like during the most violent phases of its civil war, with an additional helping of all-new horrors piled on top of that, is just disturbing.
While I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, I do have some disagreements with the ending, mostly with the appearance, for the first time, of assumptions that a large number of things will actually go the way they need to go for the good happenings to keep on happening. It's jarring in tone to the rest of the book.
It is a minor complaint, though, in what is otherwise immediately right up there with Kaleidoscope Century and Warday for the best of the End of the World genre for me. I pair it with the former for its much-more-realistic depiction of slow decline over a period of time instead of relying on the Instant Global Shattering Event, and with the latter for taking a very recognizable world and then, in great detail, putting the hurt to it in an emotionally-impacting way. I hope to read more in a similar vein from Mr. McIntosh soon.
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