Weasel! Stay Home!
Another book completed but I don’t have a sense of accomplishment yet. This latest book is the first in a three-part series by S.M. Stirling. The first book of the trio is Island in the Sea of Time. This is an older series that I’ve not read before, but is a companion to the Dies the Fire double trilogy. I don’t know if you remember the series, but in Dies the Fire, a strange event reset the world back to the 14th century and disable all forms of technology including steam power. In later books we discover that the event began in Nantucket and the hero of the last book sets out with a band of friends to discover the source of the problem. Along the way they meet all kinds of adventures and pick up new friends, fight evil, and save a few needy souls. Very mythic journey kind of thing. I haven’t read the final book yet so I don’t what they find when they get to Nantucket, but I expect they’ll find bronze age Indians in an untouched island.
The reason I think this is that the series I just began begins with ‘Island in the Sea of Time’ and tells the story from the point of view of Nantucket. In this book the island, with surrounding ocean, is scoop up like a celestial melon baller and dropped back to 1250bc. The scoop manages to capture a coast guard training vessel that operates with a reserve engine and sail power, staffed by lots of cadets. They also come with a few fishing boats, a ferry, and several scientists who’ve come to Nantucket for a short vacation. Technology still works but the surrounding world is bronze age. What would it be like to find yourself cut off from the mainland and from your millennium? The only technology is what you have and no supplies are coming in. If something breaks you have to fix it or learn to do without. Trade is a possibility but America is peopled with stone age Indians and England has proto Celts and leftover druids fighting it out for possession of mud huts and shaggy little feral cows.
The best part of the story is when they realize they’re cut off from the rest of the world and stranded in the distant past. Some people don’t cope too well, others decide to take advantage of the locals and go into the local warlord business. There aren’t many job openings for warlord but when your resume is padded with 21st century weapons, medicine, and trade goods, you’re pretty sure the search committee is going to bring you in.
It’s a good read; I like scifi and the characters dimensional, if a little too ‘good vs bad.’ Real life is never that easy, but we do get to follow along as everyone partners up. All that’s lacking is the down and dirty on how they made their adaptations. Since they still have technology there’s no real falling apart of the small society. Everyone has to go to work to plant crops, tend livestock, or go whale hunting for oil when the electricity is shut down at 4pm each day. The sea around Nantucket is teeming with fish, whales, bi-valves, all those water bug things that cost so much but taste good in butter.
In the other series, Dies the Fire, technology was rendered obsolete and so were all the survival skills of the world. Figuring out how to make fire, craft weapons, hunt with traps and bows – that’s the fascinating part of the book.
Just to clarify, it’s great to read about it, not live it. I’m not a back to nature kind of girl. I’m perfectly willing to camp out in a motel over the weekend or hike out to the far end of someone’s backyard to plink BB’s at paper target. Dealing with nature in a world that’s had a major hissy fit and cancelled my; not so much fun. Living in a modern world suddenly bereft of power, medicine, ammunition, or communications of any kind? Move over Walt Disney, let me climb in the cryo-unit. Wake me when it’s civilized again.
This book gets the Best Friend read, but I’m not sure it will last after our kids grow up.
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