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A review by jgn
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson
5.0
Wow. This novel by the distinguished science fiction (really, I should say: speculative fiction) author Robert Charles Wilson is about a North America existing long after most of the oil is gone, and disease has ravaged modern society. Everyday life has returned to nineteenth-century technology and mores. The author is Canadian, and great use is made of settings in the Canadian prairies and in Quebec and Labrador.
There are two aspects of this book that I found stunning:
(1) The style is a pastiche of boys' adventure books from the 19th-century. It is very wittily done. The narrator is either unaware of what he's telling, or he's exercising some very sophisticated double-irony.
(2) The big conflict is between the remnants of the American governmental system, which has declined into something like a monarchy; and, opposing that, a very strong religious state. It's not unlike Iran.
Good stuff.
There are two aspects of this book that I found stunning:
(1) The style is a pastiche of boys' adventure books from the 19th-century. It is very wittily done. The narrator is either unaware of what he's telling, or he's exercising some very sophisticated double-irony.
(2) The big conflict is between the remnants of the American governmental system, which has declined into something like a monarchy; and, opposing that, a very strong religious state. It's not unlike Iran.
Good stuff.