futurista

This is an interesting end-of-the-world book where the major disaster is a large comet that crashes into the ocean in the 1970s. The book kept me doing nothing else but turning pages all day on Sunday. Even though I knew the comet was going to hit, I wanted to see what happened in the chaos afterward.

However, I couldn't give the book 5 stars because there were so many characters with so little personality that kept popping back up on page 600 after last seeing them on page 6. And the author sometimes would call them by their first and sometimes by their last name. You also met 30 people at the beginning of the novel only to have half of them die within a few pages. I would have preferred a gradual introduction of fewer characters rather than meeting all of Los Angeles all at once.

Some people have not liked the book because they think the authors shouldn't have dated it with cultural and political references. However, I found it interesting to read a post-apocalyptic story written and set during a time when the US is still afraid of Russia pushing the "red button" to send nuclear bombs, when the space program is practically brand new, and when there are no cell phones or internet connections for people to rely on for initial news of the early effects of the comet hitting. Some of the initial story would be different today, but the end results would surely be the same: tidal waves, weather change, communication break-downs, fights for socio-political dominance, humanity rebuilding, etc. Any lover of post-apocalyptic fiction should read this at some point ... if they can actually find a copy.