This is an excellent book and I am pleased to see it re-released by Simon & Schuster as it is as timely as it was when originally released in the late 1970’s. The book is a first person narrative by the pilot of a trans-Atlantic flight. It starts on the flight into New York, spends an interesting scene setting time in New York and then gets into the main topic of the book, nuclear war and how one group deals with it.

The book is set in a post US collapse world where the US economy has fallen apart because of oil and America is a shadow of its former self. The first part of the book deals with this aspect and does a good job of exploring such as collapse, both on the macro and micro level. It is a scarily realistic scenario, especially in present circumstances.

Then the flight back to London begins and the world goes to hell in a hand basket following the Israeli nuking of surrounding Arab capitals in apparent retaliation for the poisoning of the water supply killing many Israelis. The predictable response of Russia and China leads to a full exchange. The unfolding of this and then the attempts of the people on the plane to survive forms the bulk of the book.

The book becomes suitably claustrophobic as the plane’s options dwindle and even when hope rises there is plenty of tension to the story. I won’t give the plot away further but there appear to be two endings of this book in circulation in different printings. My copy, a UK Pan paperback, has a sad ending. A couple of page shorter version with a positive ending also exists.

The book is as relevant today as when first published, maybe more so. The current huge debt America carries along with the arrive of peak oil makes the opening scenario even more possible, as does a resurgently aggressive Russia and the rise of China and the ongoing failure to sort out the Middle East make the scenario of the rest of the book likely.

It is a sad but stirring read. There is enough heroism to counteract the generally bleak outlook and the characterization is well done, even if a couple of the main characters are a bit clichéd. I would highly recommend this book and would not be surprised if the reason it has been re-released is that it has been optioned for a movie. It would make a good one though probably not with massive appeal.

This is an excellent read.

In Portent, Herbert explores the end of the world and the Gaia theory of Lovelock, with a twist. The twist is a supernatural dimension to the story, from Voodoo-like practitioners to identical twins.

The story works extremely well. It follows the process of discovery (and conversion) of the main character, a meteorologist, through various twists and turns. This is set against a backdrop of escalating natural disasters all around the world. The disasters are well portrayed, as are the characters that get caught up in them. The one exception to this, that I found a bit clumsy, was Herbert’s use of colloquial Australian slang in an early chapter. Apart from that, it is done well.

The book has a decent pace and made me want to keep reading. So this is another Herbert that is definitely worth a read.

It follows these events through the eyes of a group of people and one person who is investigating the cause of the event. The book is well paced, energetic and highly absorbing. Characterization is good and the writing is first rate.

This is an excellent book that is well worth a read as it forces you to consider just how quickly all we know could become unraveled. Scary.

Although this book is the sequel to Keene’s book The Rising, I have not read the earlier book. Thankfully this book stands quite well by itself. There is enough back-story covered within City of the Dead to allow you to go straight into this book, whilst there is not so much that it would be repetitive if you have read The Rising.

Keene has taken a new and most interesting twist on the zombie story and actually addressed the supernatural cause that so many authors fail to tackle or dance around. And a good supernatural cause he has come up with. I will not spoil it for those who have not read The Rising or one of the spoilers that is out there. Suffice to say it is clever and well considered.
This book is graphic and gruesome to the extreme, so it will not suit some. Yet I did not find it inappropriate or merely done for shock value. Rather it is an inherent part of the story and the way Keene tells it.

One of the cover quotes describes Keene as the next Stephen King. I am not sure about this and it seems a large stretch, no matter how effective this book might be. I did not find myself caring about the survival of Keene’s main characters to the same extent as in some of King’s books. In fact I noticed this as I was reading it. Also the book is not very surprising in the directions it takes. I hate to say this but it almost seems as if Keene’s creativity ended with the great development of the zombie idea and he had little left for the storyline within the book itself. So many things were predictable and that was a shame.

I did reasonably enjoy this book, despite its faults. The novelty of initial idea carries you through, just to see how it turns out. IS it worth a read? Yes, I think so. I think I will go back and read The Rising to see how it starts. The ending of the book seems to make a sequel difficult, but you never know.

Domain is the third book in a four-book series by James Herbert. The first two, The Rats and Lair, were to do with the creation and then spread of a breed of super rats in London.

In Domain a nuclear exchange devastates London and the book focuses on a group of survivors who battle with the rats, radiation, other survivors and the fears of whether the rest of the world is all gone too.

This whole series of books (well, the first three as I have not yet read the last one) is well written and extremely scary. Domain expands the scare factor by developing the fear that we have all had since the 50’s of global thermonuclear war: of how we might survive and what would happen to our loved ones; with the immediate scare value of the mutant rats. It is a combination that works well. The characters have huge fears not only for their immediate survival but whether surviving is even worthwhile if the whole of England and the world have been similarly destroyed. It is only right at the end of the book that there is any indication of a world that is not totally destroyed.

As an end of the world book, Domain offers a limited, very focused view. Many may dismiss it because of the killer rat angle, but you shouldn’t. The combination of the fears present in this book works well to create real tension, to offset the close, personal fear of something eating you in the dark with the bigger fears examined in the book. It thus becomes a very disturbing book because of these multiple levels.

If you can cope with very scary books, this is definitely one to read.

At the time it was released there was unanimous condemnation from the climate science community as being farfetched. Yet a mere three years later and science reports of a 30% drop in the strength of the North Atlantic current prompted this film to be mentioned in serious news coverage. While the exact climate consequences in the film may be very wrong, the thing about sudden shifts is that you don’t know what will happen exactly until it does. All of recorded history has occurred in a period of relative climate stability, and so there is no direct experience of a sudden climate shift to draw on. People naturally extrapolate from their experience, and so ideals of gradual climate change prevail.

Directed by Roland Emmerich with the story also by him and the screenplay by him and Jeffrey Nachmanoff, the film is a special effects heavy film of stunning visuals. From the opening sequence over the Antarctic ice sheet on, there are memorable scenes throughout.

Without giving too much away for those who have not seen it, the film follows one family through the disaster, primarily focusing on Dennis Quaid’s character (a climate scientist) and his son. The film has been criticized as having poor character development, but I don’t find this completely true. While some characters do seem under-developed, such as Sala Ward’s character, I don’t find this true of most of the main characters.

The film divides into two clear parts. In the first part the focus is on the emerging weather issues and the realization of the problem. The second is the focus on Dennis Quaid’s journey to rescue his son. So the film progresses from a pretty wide scope to a more narrow focus. The first part works very well, offering snapshots of extreme weather and a pretty accurate reflection of how the US government reacts to anything that might have a negative impact on the economy. The second also works but in a slightly less satisfactory way, because while you might want to know much more about what is happening to the rest of the world, the attention is on a few people. But others might see this as a satisfactory approach of concentrating on the personal.

I like this film very much, despite the few issues. It is spectacular, believable enough, at least in the big picture areas and has enough action to keep you interested.

Recommended.

We aim to cover the end of the world in fact, fiction and speculation.