Power Play

by Kenneth M. Cameron

Power Play

351 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Kenneth Cameron, AKA George Bartram, is the author or co-author of more than thirty books, including historical novels and novels of espionage, a critical history of the African safari, and an award-winning analysis of films about Africa (Africa on Film - MLA Independent Scholars Award). He has had plays produced Off- and Offf-Off Broadway and on the London Fringe. His first publications were two poems in the Best Poems of 1955. He lives part of the year in the woods of New York State’s Adirondacks, part in a small city in the South.

Together with his son, Christian Cameron, he wrote a series of military thrillers published under the name Gordon Kent.

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fairly pedestrian effort from 1979 that fictionalizes several 'hot button' issues of the era that include the OPEC Oil Crisis of the mid 70's, US inflation rates that topped out at 14% by the late 70's, the widely accepted belief that that moral weakness would lead to societal breakdown, and the utter horror of a woman in a position of power in the executive branch of the government of the United States.
The the plot is driven by a calamitous power outage in the Northeast that leads to the destruction of the national grid, and plunges the nation into darkness and chaos, and the author features several characters as they confront this rapidly changing and hostile environment. The novel's weakness is that it's very difficult to accept the changes that these characters undergo. Garrett begins as a rather docile, henpecked husband who morphs into a feudal warlord, Frederika is a spoiled rich kid who inexplicably changes into an urban guerrilla, and her sheltered and pampered friend, Miriam, is sexually tortured and then becomes the partner of a very important man in the New Society. And, Hallie Dickson portrays the first female vice president of The United States, and when she is sworn in as commander in chief, wonder of wonders!!!, she pulls it off about as well as any equally qualified male could have done.
I guess the appeal of these kinds of books is that they present ordinary individuals who are thrust into extraordinary circumstances, and they must rise above the catastrophic events, and this trajectory is taken much more seriously than reasonable or credible character development. However, I found that I could enjoy the tale if I didn't scrutinize too closely.

[M · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is apocalyptic fiction predicated on the energy infrastructure of the U.S. crashing (more appropirate scenario for India). Basically, the power goes out, and then all goes to hell, really fast. I did not like the book. Written in the cynical doldrums of 1979, the scenario is predicated on the power infrastructure of the U.S. collapsing. The protagonist is a guy who is impossible to like. Frankly, I was wishing he would die rather than everyone else. Also, the author has a preoccupation with emphasizing sexual events happening to characters that were not necessary to the plot development and just plain bizarre in some situations.