in the Long Emergency Celebrated Social Commentator James Howard Kunstler Explored How The Terminal Decline Of Oil Production, Combined With Climate Change, Had The Potential To Put Industrial Civilization Out Of Business. In world Made By Hand, An Astonishing Work Of Speculative Fiction, Kunstler Brings To Life What America Might Be, A Few Decades Hence, After These Catastrophes Converge. For The Townspeople Of Union Grove, New York, The Future Is Nothing Like They Thought It Would Be. Transportation Is Slow And Dangerous, So Food Is Grown Locally At Great Expense Of Time And Energy, And The Outside World Is Largely Unknown. There May Be A President, And He May Be In Minneapolis Now, But People Aren’t Sure. Their Challenges Play Out In A Dazzling, Fully Realized World Of Abandoned Highways And Empty Houses, Horses Working The Fields And Rivers, No Longer Polluted, And Replenished With Fish. With The Cost Of Oil Skyrocketing—and With It The Price Of Food—kunstler’s Extraordinary Book, Full Of Love And Loss, Violence And Power, Sex And Drugs, Depression And Desperation, But Also Plenty Of Hope, Is More Relevant Than Ever.

kunstler's Name Is Mostly Associated With Nonfiction Works Like the Long Emergency, A Bleak Prediction Of What Will Happen When Oil Production No Longer Meets Demand, And The Antisuburbia Polemic the Geography Of Nowhere. In This Novel, His 10th, He Visits A Future Posited On His Signature Idea: When The Oil Wells Start To Run Dry, The World Economy Will Collapse And Society As We Know It Will Cease. Robert Earle Has Lost His Job (he Was A Software Executive) And Family In The Chaos Following The Breakdown. Elected Mayor Of Union Grove, N.y., In The Wake Of A Town Crisis, Earle Must Rebuild Civil Society Out Of Squabbling Factions, Including A Cultish Community Of Newcomers, An Established Group Of Congregationalists And A Plantation Kept By The Wealthy Stephen Bullock. Re-establishing Basic Infrastructure Is A Big Enough Challenge, But Major Tension Comes From A Crew Of Neighboring Rednecks Led By Warlord Wayne Karp. Kunstler Is Most Engaged When Discussing The Fate Of The Status Quo And In Divulging The Particulars Of Daily Life. Kunstler's World Is Convincing If Didactic: Union Grove Exists Solely To Illustrate Kunstler's Doomsday Vision. Readers Willing To Go For The Ride Will See A Frightening And Bleak Future. (mar.)

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• Science Fiction & Fantasy
  
  
  • Science Fiction
    • Dystopian