Why will the gas run out? Think of where it comes from, Monique. Think about what’s going to happen there now that the evil global overlord is no longer around to oppress everyone into behaving themselves. Think about what’s going to happen to the evil world financial system now that the planet’s greatest debtor nation has winked out of existence and won’t be meeting its loan repayments to anyone. Think about what happens when you take the lid of Pandora’s box and everything that we forgot about history comes spilling out to bite you in the ass. Do you know how unusual it is, in human history, for children to grow up in a place like this?” She waved her hands around to take in the city. “Never knowing the fear of someone riding over the horizon to steal their family’s crops and burn their fucking hut to the ground? All as a prelude to snatching them up as slaves for the rest of their miserable fucking lives? That’s normality, baby. That’s life as it has been lived by most human beings through most of our history. That’s what I’ve been fighting my entire adult life, variations on that theme. That’s what America protected you from. And now she’s gone. And you are all alone in the world. Except for me.”

The above is a quote from one of the characters in John Birmingham’s “Without Warning“. The novel begins just before the start of the second Gulf War with the appearance of something called “The Wave”. The Wave is an energy field of some kind that essentially wipes out most of America (not to mention Canada and Mexico, although Vancouver makes it, yeah!) in an instant. A lot of people cheer the end of the Great Satan and it’s Pax Americana. However soon they learn that a world without America is a much more dangerous and barbarous place, and that there were many things people simply took for granted. Do you really  want America to fail? Do you really want America to become “just another nation”? Be careful what you ask for, this novel warns, you might just get it (and it might not be what you expected at all).

Although I felt the novel dragged a little towards the end overall I really enjoyed it. Below is a link to an interview done with the author. It’s worth checking out:

Without Warning Interview

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