{"id":3511,"date":"2013-12-13T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-13T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.military-history.us\/?p=3511"},"modified":"2013-12-03T19:57:05","modified_gmt":"2013-12-03T17:57:05","slug":"book-reviews-slow-apocalypse-by-john-varley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/2013\/12\/book-reviews-slow-apocalypse-by-john-varley\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Slow Apocalypse by John Varley"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.\/gp\/product\/0425262138\/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0425262138&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=patsmilhisblo-20\">Slow Apocalypse<\/a>\u00a0by John Varley is one of those books that only come along once every few years. \u00a0It is a book that makes you think without even realizing it. \u00a0The first Varley book I ever read was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.\/gp\/product\/0441785654\/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0441785654&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=patsmilhisblo-20\">Steel Beach<\/a>\u00a0and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.\/gp\/product\/0425262138\/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0425262138&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=patsmilhisblo-20\">Slow Apocalypse<\/a>\u00a0is on a par with that book. \u00a0It is an absorbing read and somewhat of a morality tale.<\/p>\n<p>The book itself 438 pages long and I would guess it runs about 60,000 words.<\/p>\n<p>The premise is interesting and plausible. \u00a0Imagine some mad scientist developing a bacteria that breaks the hydrogen bonds in petroleum turning oil into worthless sludge. \u00a0That is what happens in this book. \u00a0The story itself follows the journey of Dave Marshall, a struggling screenwriter as he first finds out what is about to happen and then struggles to take care of wife and daughter in the strange, disintegrating post bug world of Los Angeles and southern California.<\/p>\n<p>As Varley did with\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.\/gp\/product\/0441785654\/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0441785654&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=patsmilhisblo-20\">Steel Beach<\/a>, he has constructed a believable world and storyline. \u00a0He creates characters that you start to care about and want to know what happens to them. \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.\/gp\/product\/0425262138\/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0425262138&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=patsmilhisblo-20\">Slow Apocalypse<\/a>\u00a0is another great book and story from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.\/John-Varley\/e\/B000APXAUM\/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;qid=1380005381&amp;sr=1-2-ent&amp;tag=patsmilhisblo-20\" target=\"_blank\">John Varley<\/a>\u00a0that is well worth reading.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"http:\/\/rcm-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/cm?t=patsmilhisblo-20&amp;o=1&amp;p=8&amp;l=as1&amp;asins=0425262138&amp;ref=tf_til&amp;fc1=000000&amp;IS2=1&amp;lt1=_blank&amp;m=amazon&amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;bc1=000000&amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;f=ifr\" height=\"240\" width=\"320\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Slow Apocalypse\u00a0by John Varley is one of those books that only come along once every few years. \u00a0It is a book that makes you think without even realizing it. \u00a0The first Varley book I ever read was Steel Beach\u00a0and Slow&#8230; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/2013\/12\/book-reviews-slow-apocalypse-by-john-varley\/\">Continue Reading &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,333,270],"tags":[31,369,272,492,495,279,496,787,696,494,500,493,1026,271,273,498,337,499],"class_list":["post-3511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-fiction","category-science-fiction","tag-book-review","tag-david-drake","tag-david-weber","tag-eric-flint","tag-frederick-pohl","tag-john-ringo","tag-john-scalzi","tag-john-varley","tag-kim-stanley-robinson","tag-larry-niven","tag-michael-z-williamson","tag-robert-heinlein","tag-science-fiction","tag-sf","tag-steve-white","tag-timothy-zahn","tag-tom-kratman","tag-travis-s-taylor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}