In the Drift

by Michael Swanwick

SIGNED by the AUTHOR on the Title page. Signature only A First British edition, First printing. Book is in Near Fine condition. Boards are clean, not bumped. Fore edges have a tiny bit of shelf wear. Interior is clean and legible. Not remaindered. Dust Jacket is in Near Fine condition. Not chipped or crinkled. Not price clipped. Dust Jacket is covered by Mylar Brodart. Thanks and Enjoy. All-Ways well packaged, All-Ways fast service.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Post Apocalyptic, Alternate History, Apocalyptic, Science Fiction Fantasy, Dystopia

195 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1985

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable blend of alternate history and Science Fiction.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the Drift was Swanwick's first novel; it's a post-apocalyptic/alternate history fix-up of an America suffering catastrophic effects (I almost said "fall-out") from the Three Mile Island disaster. (The book was published in 1985, a full year before the Chernobyl incident.) It's a more violent and brutal tale than what one normally associates with Swanwick anymore, but it's a very well-told tale, and was an intelligent and well-written alternative to the wave of post-apocalyptic books that appeared in that decade.

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

Even after catastrophe, people are going to be people.

"Chernobyl" wasn't in the lexicon at the time Swanwick wrote this, and his uncontrolled, unmitigated Three Mile Island incident vastly outstrips any historical equivalent, laying waste to large sections of Pennsylvania and permanently impoverishing the United States.

It is of course a very ugly book and the author pulls no punches. In addition to the ongoing devastation are the people left hardscrabbling the outskirts and the people exploiting those people.

I'll admit that the thing that almost broke it for me was the casual use of racial slurs. If it was to reinforce the overall ugliness, then mission successful.

[Elliott · Rating 1 out of 5]

What began as an interesting premise was then diluted into a very dull fix-up of interrelated stories all taking place in a world where the crisis at Three Mile Island was not averted and the plant melted down taking out a good chunk of Pennsylvania with it. The uninhabitable zone is the aforementioned "Drift" of the title. Swanwick sets his story approximately 100 years from the meltdown and his cast of characters include mutants, city workers, and regular citizens dealing with a world changed by the meltdown. The changes are at times inexplicable: Quebec has separated from Canada, and the North Eastern states too have left the United States. Aside from a few brief mentions of the former U.S. states being an independent nation this is largely unnecessary to the plot, as is Quebec leaving Canada, which is really mentioned only in this beginning map, and never again. the mutant plot line was overdone to the extreme and so lost much of its appeal by the end of the work while the writing was sub-par at best.

[Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before Chernobyl, there was Three Mile Island. People were scared to death of meltdowns. They knew the short term consequences of radiation but could only imagine the long term repercussions of a meltdown.
Few people had written about what it might be like trying to survive in a nuclear wasteland. Swanwick's In the Drift is as powerful and elegaic as any fiction ever written on the subject.
Turning a pair of strong novellas into a seamless multi-generational novel is a feat that few writers could pull off better than Swanwick does here.
This 1985 classic has aged brilliantly and its message about the resilience of the human spirit is timeless.

[Psychophant · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is Swanwick's first novel, but we can already see both his strengths and weaknesses. His strength in making unforgettable characters and settings in a few paragraphs, and his weakness in weaving the story through more than a few pages. So we get a episodic novel, more like three short stories with connecting chapters than a true novel.

Atomic catastrophes are now a past fad, but I am old enough to remember how worrying it was at the time. The story reads as a precursor to the Fallout series of computer games, even if here the catastrophe is an accident and is quite limited in area. Very well done, without the excess of other post-apocalyptical works, mainly because here the apocalypse was limited.

Maybe it is because it reminds me of my youth, but it has aged quite well. The future world has lost some of its technology, so the fact that they lack some advances does not grate much.

[Adrian Coombe · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at page 70. I can't get past the portrayal of the one woman in the book so far (knocked off her bike, not taken to the hospital but put to recover at the guys flat, obviously naked and then he sleeps with her). 2 days later on the road the guy is irritable because he is tired and had 2 nights sex less. As if a man and a woman (strangers) can't escape a weird radioactive cult without not wanting to copulation. I mean, this is just beyond cringey. I have no involvement in it. Maybe i'll flick read the rest, but this is just not doing anything for me and I'd rather move on.

[Icy_Space_Cobwebs Join the Penguin Resistance!🐧🐧&#x1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review Pending

[Betsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This post-apocalypse novel takes place after an event at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant that resulted in widespread contamination of most of Eastern Philadelphia with radioactive contamination. There are four factions with interests in this area: the northeaster part of what had been the us, east coast states south of PA, the city of Philadelphia, and the people who live in the contaminated area called The Drift. Generally a pretty good story I found some of it confusing. The action jumped from one time period to a later one abruptly several times. It took some reading to understand how the events in the new time linked up to what had gone before. In particular, one of the main characters (Piotrowicz) behavior and motivation in the later part of the book were confusing.

Treatment of the Drift people struck me as possibly being intended as social commentary on the treatment of people in the coal belt at present. (Consider the John Denver song Paradise about Muhlenberg county and the coal industry). In spite of the shortcomings I mentioned, the book was quite good.

[Romolo · Rating 5 out of 5]

“A sheet waterfall splashed into a shallow pool. By its edge, a vendor sold copper coins to throw into the fountain.” When I read this sentence in Michael Swanwick’s “Vacuum Flowers”, I suspected his singular talent and impulsively ordered four of his novels from an online second hand book store. “In the drift” was the first one to arrive, and did not disappoint.

Maybe I am exaggerating here with a 5th star, but this book was just so punk, weird, vibrant with politics and with just the right amount of literary styrofoam to seal the edges.

George Martin praised it as “a potent new myth (…), an episodic tale of life, war and survival in post-meltdown Pennsylvania”. Swanwick’s writing has an incredible, beautiful density and speed, the dialogues carry wit and spirit, the characters are fascinating (Victoria, the enigmatic mutated vampire revolutionary!) and not easily categorizable (bum Keith makes all moral compasses spin around in tilt)- all the while the plot just jolts forward, sometimes with unexpected shifts of narrator or time jumps of decades.

Swanwick’s prose is reminiscent of Bruce Sterling (but maybe less excentric), and of course of William Gibson, but (forgive me) somehow less cerebral. Most remarkably, I felt like a human heart beats underneath these pages, and it is the writer’s— his unmistakable faith and love for human beings, even in the direst of worlds.

[Andi · Rating 5 out of 5]

As usual, Swanwick pulls no punches. I found the changing POV characters difficult to stay emotionally attached to (especially the reporter. Why would Victoria love him? He's so boring! Was it just the psychic link?) but as usual his writing overcomes most of the plot and character shortcomings. I really wish Fitzgibbon had a chance to tell his story, too. The ending was frankly unexpected but necessary.

[Kyle Cisco · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best Post Apocalyptic stories. There’s no punches pulled in this story. With surprisingly no nuclear war that caused it but a meltdown of three mile island. Can’t explain how much I enjoyed this book.

[Mark Cheverton (scifipraxis) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Swanwick's alternate history where the three-mile island disaster creates the Drift - a nuclear wasteland home to an abandoned population in a post-collapse America. A balkanised society is rebuilt amongst the radiation of the Drift, seeking autonomy while being squeezed on all sides.

We're introduced to Keith and follow his coming-of-age awakening to the deception, politics, and cruel ritual that runs the world at the edge of the Drift. This plays out through a series of experiences as he comes to terms with his naivety and lack of agency, and ultimately knuckles down becoming part of the establishment. 

Then we switch to Samantha - a vampire who can see radiation. An older Keith, now in a position of power, moves to a secondary role and the narrative dips into fantastical territory as mutations take hold in the population. As they travel through the Drift, you get a deep feel for the impact on the wildlife, the people, and the resulting subsistence society that is barely hanging on. At times, the politics and motivations between the factions were less than clear as things were implied that I needed to be more explicit. Ultimately this feels like a bridging story - a journey through the wasteland establishing the political forces at play, painting a graphic picture of what's at stake, and setting up Sam's daughter to take the lead for the third act.

Victoria leads the Drift resistance as a messianic figure, while Keith attempts to use the people of the Drift for his own gain. An increasingly desperate resistance undertakes a morally challenging plan to decide the war once and for all, raising tension between its military leader and Victoria's mystical approach, and leading to an emotional resolution that had me gripped, adding a whole star to my rating!

The flawed characters of the novel are convincingly realised, but it suffers from being a fixup novel - just as a character feels rounded they move to the background and we switch focus to a new protagonist. Swanwick is an excellent writer and I would have loved to have seen this as a fully realised novel - I'll be seeking out more of his work.

[SciFi Pinay · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can't believe this is the same guy who wrote "Vacuum Flowers"! It is a passionless and hollow postapocalyptic story with very dry writing, lazy exposition and deplorable character development. There's a scene where the protagonist calls a woman a "dead weight" or burden during their trek through the city, and the woman proceeds to get naked to try to 'console' or appease him 😆 I get that "desperate measures, desperate times", but that's the thing -- Swanwick fails to create a believably desperate atmosphere for these characters to act in certain ways. (Even in this setting, I would've cried in indignation first at the guy and have lashed out, yelling "How dare you call me a dead weight!") This author has written an awesome female protagonist in "Vacuum Flowers", so I'm shocked at how bad this is. It's as if he has been forced to write about a nuclear fallout postapocalyse and he's like, "Screw it, I need the money." Finally, some readers would've been first turned off by his use of racial slurs (the N-word), and even if the story may have seemed tolerable, IDK if adding racial slurs is an effective/necessary way to emphasize the grittiness of the superficial world building (maybe he could've focused on other aspects), which I'm guessing he's been too lazy to have researched on. This has very little to offer to the already saturated postapocalyptic subgenre. DNF, and too embarrassed to recommend this to anyone.

[Heather Warner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very freaky and very realistic at the same time. I didn’t like it at first but then I was really drawn in and then I could not put it down. The characters were layered and intriguing-more time was spent with some but they were all important. There was several time jumps pulling the thread of the story through them. This is a dark & sad book, fast-paced and enthralling, and absolutely horrifyingly real. Excellent book and one of my favorites of the year.

“It’s been one hundred years since Three Mile Island went into full meltdown, filling the atmosphere with a radioactive poison that would contaminate the skies for hundreds of generations. Since then, the area around the island—now known as the Drift—has been a wasteland of disease and deformity, madness and monsters. It’s been one hundred years since humanity knew what order and hope were. The Drift has a law unto itself—one of vampires and mutants and outcasts left to struggle for daily survival. Within its bounds, the simplest act—even asking the wrong questions—can mean death. Or worse. Praised by George R. R. Martin as “a potent new myth from the reality of radioactive waste,” In the Drift is an inventive and unsettling look at the lives of those who are left to deal with the fallout of a nuclear disaster—a towering work of postapocalyptic fiction that provokes conversation and consideration even as it produces nightmares.” (From the book blurb)

[EM3 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting take on the post apocalyptic genre

When I heard about this book I bought it expecting a novel length story; I did not realize it was a collection of stories touching on a theme. That theme is The Drift, the area in PA affected by all the radiation and decay from a complete meltdown at Three Mile Island. I enjoyed the tales, some more than others. Most center on PA, NJ, NY and MA. Some hints are thrown in about how the rest of the US was affected. As for the rest of the world, barely any mention.

I'm not a scientist, I cannot say whether the radiation and it's effects are portrayed accurately, but it did seem as though Swanwick balanced some hard sci-fi with soft. The effects of the various kinds of radiation on living tissue and the environment was interesting to see, as were the adaptations made by society to this new threat. I bought the eBook version and, like so many eBooks, there are some typos that interrupt the story.

Overall, an enjoyable read. I live in SW PA and was hoping to recognize some of the references. Unfortunately the story took place too far to the East of the state; I only recognized Philly.

[David H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the Drift is Swanwick's debut novel, a fixup novel that includes "Mummer Kiss" and "Marrow Death" with interlinking materials. It's set a hundred years after a nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island and features "the Drift," a radioactive zone affecting Pennsylvania and surrounding areas. Lots of mutants and mutations, lots of the standard post-apocalyptic scenarios, even though it's relatively focused geographically. We start off following Keith, but make way for Samantha and later Patrick, and I just... didn't really enjoy myself. I did think it was quite interesting, including some unique aspects of post-apocalyptic settings, but the ideas weren't enough to make up for unlikable characters and politics I never quite grasped. I'm a big fan of Swanwick's short fiction throughout his long career, so it's interesting coming up against his first novel and seeing some of the cracks that I know he'll figure out.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Swanwick, Michael. In the Drift. Ace, 1985.
It seems that every other novel I pick up in these pandemic times is some sort of apocalyptic or postapocalyptic dystopia. Where are the optimistic technologists of the early nuclear age, gone every one, not so long time passing? At any rate, what we have here is a rewrite of the Three-Mile Island nuclear disaster. This time, the meltdown is complete, and it destroys the U. S. economy and turns a good hunk of Pennsylvania into a fallout zone with hotspots and central-casting mutants. A century later, folks in the mean streets of Philadelphia think they are safe, but nope. The first half of the story focusing on a street kid dealing with the Philly crime lords hooked me, but then we jump into the future, the kid is a crime lord himself and we are now with a rebel army of mutants. Sigh. Total Recall anyone?

[Pádraic · Rating 2 out of 5]

Post-apocalyptic pulp from the nuclear anxiety age. It starts off expected enough, and I thought I was in for something like Eva Fairdeath, that fevered rush out into the madness of the wasteland. Instead, after the first section, we move forward and then forward again, protagonists becoming side characters and vice versa, cutting forward years and decades, a wider view of the degradation of this place called the Drift and those that cling to life on its edges.

There are some nice touches, but mostly I found it too brief in its parts to form real connections to what was happening, and frequently just a bit silly, particularly in the relationships between the characters.

[Albert_Camus_lives]

Es una hipótesis, pero estuvo a punto de convertirse en realidad. La Fusión, en el accidente nuclear de la Isla de las Tres Millas, ha llegado hasta sus últimas consecuencias. Y el mundo, en lo que a Estados Unidos se refiere, ya no es el mismo que era. Una enorme zona en torno al lugar del accidente se ha convertido en un lugar de larga cuarentena, una zona de muerte: la Deriva. Una región donde los vientos radiactivos han matado toda la vida, donde el cielo arde con un malsano color azul y los efectos de las radiaciones crean monstruos que han de ser perseguidos y eliminados, y donde los buscahuesos, las diminutas partículas que arrastran consigo el cáncer, la leucemia y las mutaciones, persiguen implacablemente a los seres humanos.
Pero la vida continua

[Chrissy · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars are a generous thing.

I got this book for free on Kindle Unlimited, just saying. But it was in the horror section, so...I can handle a little sci- find. Not a big fan of it. All sci- fi. It was a pretty good concept, post apocalyptic world, but he doesn't really explain why. He has a bunch of characters that you want to like, but the development is hap- hazard at best. There is no explanation, his characters appear and disappear with not really a basic timeline, and his conflict ( one of many ) that could have been explored is just confusing. I read alot, and I was disappointed, even after I trudged through it, hoping it would get better.....it didn't.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an okay "after the end of the world" story. For some reason, the nuclear apocalypse in this case was a reactor meltdown at 3 Mile Island, rather than than the more usual nuclear war. In fact, the story would probably make more sense if there had been a nuclear war. According to Swanwick, a nuclear disaster in the Eastern US would plunge the entire world into economic depression and cause a regression to 19th century technology (along with creating some crazy mutant powers in later generations). Maybe? But he seems to exaggerated the consequences for the sake of creating a more dramatic Mad-Max style barbaric post-apocalyptic world.

[Joachim Boaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

3.25/5 (Above Average)

"In The Drift (1985), a fix-up novel comprised of two Nebula-nominated short works–“Mummer Kiss” (1981) and “Marrow Death” (1984), maps a new way forward in an ecologically and genetically ravaged post-apocalyptic age. The entire concoction decays with a sense of grim unease and cavorts around piles of dead that would make a triumvir from the Late Roman Republic [...]"

[Mitchell Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

In The Drift had a lot going for it: surprisingly well written characters, decent themes, and a well realized political landscape. For the most part it was good, but there were some issues. My biggest problem was with the pacing. This was apparently originally a short story, and that kinda comes through, as the pacing seems a little fractured. The last third of the book happens really quickly, and I would have liked for the last two characters to have been more flushed out. Over all though, this was really well written, and I'm now going to be on the lookout for other Ace published novels.

[Jessica D Kaufman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok.

This was ok. It was interesting though didn't completely engrosse me. The idea of massive radiation causing the results in this book are clearly not accurate given what we know of how nature responds to radiation events (chernobyl). I feel like that is obvious but the author didn't bother to understand it.

[Daniel Polansky]

Machiavellian politicking in a United States shattered by nuclear accident. A familiar premise elevated by deft but brief world-building, nuanced characters, and irregular, episodic plotting compressing decades of time into a few hundred pages. I liked it enough to read several more of his in rapid succession.

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Highly imaginative world-building in a post-apocalyptic setting, but the story turned out to be a good bit more formless than is usually expected.

[Eric N. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave up started well,lost interest.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fixup that needed a bit more fixing.

[Luca Gonella · Rating 2 out of 5]

Una trama che raccoglie più filoni differenti, accomunati da una classica atmosfera post-apocalittica. Libro godibile, ma non eccelso.