Soft Apocalypse

by Will McIntosh

What happens when resources become scarce and society starts to crumble? As the competition for resources pulls America's previously stable society apart, the "New Normal" is a Soft Apocalypse. This is how our world ends; with a whimper instead of a bang."It's so hard to believe," Colin said as we crossed the steaming, empty parking lot toward the bowling alley."What?""That we're poor. That we're homeless.""I know.""I mean, we have college degrees," he said."I know," I said.There was an ancient miniature golf course choked in weeds alongside the bowling alley. The astroturf had completely rotted away in places. The windmill had one spoke. We looked it over for a minute (both of us had once been avid mini golfers), then continued toward the door. "By the way," I added. "We're not homeless, we're nomads. Keep your labels straight."New social structures and tribal connections spring up across America, as the previous social structures begin to dissolve. Soft Apocalypse follows the journey across the South East of a tribe of formerly middle class Americans as they struggle to find a place for themselves and their children in a new, dangerous world that still carries the ghostly echoes of their previous lives.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Post Apocalyptic, Dystopia, Apocalyptic, Ebooks, Speculative Fiction

258 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Will McIntosh is a Hugo Award-winning science fiction author, and a winner or finalist of many other awards. His alien invasion novel Defenders, is currently optioned for a feature film, while his Middle Grades novel The Classmate has been optioned for a TV series by Disney/ABC.

Along with ten novels that have been translated into nine different languages, Will has published over sixty short stories in magazines such as Asimov's Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, and Lightspeed.

Will was a psychology professor before turning to writing full time. He lives in Williamsburg, Virginia, and is the father of twins. You can follow him on Twitter @willmcintoshSF.

Reviews

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I may have just found my favorite dystopian SF. Maybe not as good as, say, The Postman or The Stand, maybe, but out of all the last decade's dystopian runs, I like this because of the freaking REALISM.

What? So it's like The Road?

NOPE. Not gritty like that. The title is okay but it really should be named SLOW Apocalypse. This is how it will probably land on us. You know, putting a frog in a pot and set the temp to low. This is how the world ends. Not with a bang... but a whimper.

We're damn suckers for that kind of destruction. :) We might not like to admit it, of course, and all these dystopias like the plagues and the radiation and the zombie outbreaks... but what happens when we run out of resources and our natural cupidity and incompetence drags us down?

The usual. Death. Destruction. But what will it REALLY be like? Especially if it's SLOW?

People will adjust to the new norms. Try to have relationships. Grumble about the new depression. Perform hugely boneheaded stunts. Eventually, run out of road. And all the while, just trying to get by.

That's REALISM for you. Doing good where you can or letting it all rot, trying to find a bit of happiness in the crap and sticking with friends where you find them. No huge rape-fests. No blowout fight of good versus evil. There are still dicks with guns and politicians without a clue and nuclear warheads going off in this novel, but events are spread out as the apocalypse comes to a full boil. You wake up from your 1950's dream to see the 1980's. You wake up from your 1980s' dream to see the 2010's. Only it's worse. Much, much worse.

You still hungry? Trying to sell a few tampons for a piece of bread? How about all that murdering of illegal immigrants by the trainload?

Oh, yeah, this is rather timely. And you know what? It's very realistic. It might even be happening to us right now. How's that for scary?

[Checkman · Rating 1 out of 5]

An interesting concept. As a student of history I understand that when Human societies have collapsed it takes awhile and it progresses slowly. Meanwhile people continue to live their lives remembering the "good old days" as everything gradually collapses around them.

Nobody really knows if they are living in such a time. Usually every generation, at some point, thinks that it is living in such a time. This time is ours. Just the way my parents viewed the 1970's as that decade was happening.

Well ,whatever the case might be, this novel starts out on an interesting premise. However ,like so many other dystopian stories, the writer soon reveals his political stance. It comes out in full force.

The good people are poor. They're educated. They're tolerant. They're racially diverse. They're wise and eventually they'll play a role in building a new and better society.

The bad people are rich. They consume resources and laugh at those who are less fortunate. They are bigots and ,for the most part, they are white. The corrupt and evil goverment officials are white. The military veterans who run rampant and rape and murder are mostly white. Do I have to go on?

The author's political and social beliefs come out in this story. In many ways this novel is just as bad as the right wing post apocalyptic novel. It might be better written, but it reminds me of Out Of The Ashes by William W. Johnstone. Not to mention many others.

Why do so many authors of dystopian and post apocalyptic novels feel the need to use the genres as their soapboxes? I understand that there is going to be some editorializing. After all it's the writer's fictional world. He or she can do with it what they want, but there are times when it becomes too heavy-handed.

As I said before it's an interesting concept, but the execution is flawed. Marred by the inability of the author to reign in his political opinions and world view.

Yes I consider myself to be a conservative. However I pride myself in having an open mind and have enjoyed many novels written by novelists who I don't necessarily agree with. But this novel is not one of them.

[carol.]

Bought this. 1) "Apocalypse" in the title. 2) Will McIntosh. 3) $0.99 is cheap.

Set more like serial episodes, with significant time and place gaps from chapter to chapter. While each chapter feels satisfying, it does lend itself to treating the book as a set of short stories. I set it down and haven't picked it back up.

[Sandi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the most recent Free Friday offering for the Nook. I started reading Friday morning and finished by Monday. It really belongs on an apocalypse bookshelf rather than a post-apocalyptic, but I don't want to add another shelf.

Most literary apocalypses are sudden and unexpected. One day, the characters are going about their normal business, the next they're fighting off zombies or looters to survive. In this bleak novel, the apocalypse is slow and nobody really realizes it's happening even when they're in the middle of a crumbling world. They live as if it's really possible to recover from the 40% unemployment rate at the opening of the story. They keep trying to keep their way of life going even though incomprehensible numbers of people are homeless. Needless to say, things just keep getting worse and worse, especially with home-grown bio-terrorists and gangs running rampant.

When I finished, I took a look at the reviews on B&N and was surprised at how many of them were negative and how quickly people had given up on this book. I finished the first chapter shortly after downloaded it and was completely wowed by it. It seemed like a completely realistic way for civilization to end and for humanity to find a way to go on. McIntosh created a near-future America that really came to life in my mind. I felt like I was there.

I highly recommend this book for a completely different take on the end of life as we know it.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Last weekend, our power went out, and this was one of the books that was somehow downloaded to the Kindle app on my iPad, which still had 90% power. It was a bit unnerving to read an apocalypse book during a power outage - how far are any of us from a "soft" apocalypse? In the world of this book, people who have lost their jobs, or are from other places, are suddenly persona non grata, rounded up or pushed out, forced into packs of roamers. The world also has been developing more biological weapons (viruses) and ... pervasive bamboo? Somehow the stakes didn't quite seem all that high, and the author's choice to trip through time by making every chapter 2 years or 2 months or 3 days later made it hard to feel very close to the characters. The ending was an ending, but as a person who rereads 1984 every few years, perhaps too close to that ending. Still, I finished it. It made me want to go reread The Handmaid's Tale, which I did.

[Stefan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jasper and his tribe of formerly middle class Americans describe themselves as nomadic rather than homeless: they travel around the Southeastern U.S., scraping together the bare minimum to survive by spreading out solar blankets or placing small windmills by the highway to collect energy from passing cars, then trading the filled fuel cells for food. Fewer and fewer people want to deal with the “gypsies” who use up dwindling resources, and often they meet with indifference or even violence. Jasper was a sociology major, but those skills are no longer in demand in 2023, about ten years after an economic depression set off the Great Decline and society as we know it gradually began to fall apart. So begins Will McIntosh’s excellent debut novel, Soft Apocalypse.

One of the most interesting aspects of Soft Apocalypse, and something I’ve rarely seen done so well in a dystopian novel, is the fact that it shows society in the early stages of dissolution. Many post-apocalyptic stories show a finished end product, an established dystopia in which the Earth has already been torn apart and people are trying to survive the aftermath. Other stories show the events right before and during the actual earthquake/meteor strike/plague, with people trying to make it through the disaster as it happens. Soft Apocalypse instead happens during a period of gradual but inexorable decline: as the back cover says, the world ends “with a whimper instead of a bang.” If Robert Charles Wilson’s excellent Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd America is set in post-collapse U.S.A., when enough time has passed for society to fall back into established structures and classes, Soft Apocalypse could almost be set in the same world, but a couple of centuries earlier and during the gradual collapse of the previous system.

“Gradual” is the key here: Soft Apocalypse shows normal people clinging to the shreds of life as they knew it, while things slowly go from bad to worse. Many still hope that the economy will pick up and life will go back to what it used to be. Even though the streets are filled with homeless people and unemployment stands at 40%, others can still drive a car to work. Walmart still operates its stores, even if they raise prices to extortion-like levels whenever there are reports of a new attack or designer virus. When they can afford the electricity, people still watch cable news to find out about wars and disasters abroad, and even if there’s a developing pattern of widespread war, it’s all distant enough to seem unreal—until it starts getting closer and closer.

Soft Apocalypse consists of ten chapters and covers about ten years, with anywhere from a few years to a few months passing between chapters. Jasper narrates the story in the first person, dividing his attention between his struggle for survival in the slowly disintegrating society and his attempts to find love—because even during a slow apocalypse, people still crave romance, improvising dates and respecting the social niceties. When it comes to his love life, Jasper sometimes reminded me of a less music-obsessed version of High Fidelity’s Rob Gordon: a generally nice, sensitive and intelligent guy who isn’t aware of how clueless he occasionally acts when it comes to women. Throughout the novel, Jasper tries to find love while doing his best to survive the dangers of the collapsing society around him.

Negatives? Very few, if any, and definitely all qualified with a solid “but.” Early on, the novel feels more like a collection of connected short stories because so much time passes between the chapters, but Jasper and a well-drawn cast of side-characters pull everything together until a plot emerges, and even before that happens, the story is hard to put down because of the gorgeous but bleak descriptions of life during societal collapse. Also, “bleak” may be too mild a term for some of the horrors that Jasper and his friends encounter: there were a few times I just didn’t expect Will McIntosh to push things that far, but at the same time, you have to admire him for not shying away from scenes that would surely be cut from the Hollywood version. The plot sometimes seems driven by random, often violent events, but then again, life in this novel’s environment would probably be full of random, violent events. More importantly, even though it may not seem that way early on, all of them have a meaningful impact on Jasper’s personality, leading to an ambivalent ending that I’m still coming to terms with.

Soft Apocalypse, while not perfect, is a great achievement for a debut. It took me by surprise early on and never let go. It’s a short, effective dystopian novel that should go down well with people who enjoyed the aforementioned Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd America by Robert Charles Wilson or even The Rift by Walter Jon Williams. (Maybe not coincidentally, Will McIntosh participated in Williams’ Taos ToolBox workshop in 2008.) The real sadness of Soft Apocalypse is seeing normal people operating under the illusion that life will still go back to what it used to be. They try to hold down a job or complete a post-grad degree, and even though the world falls apart around them, the changes are too gradual for them to lose hope completely. It’s like watching rats in a maze, unaware that their paths are slowly being closed off around them and the maze is starting to catch fire at the edges. A soft apocalypse, indeed.

(This review was originally published at tor.com on 4/13/2011.)

[Jeffrey Caston]

No rating on this one because I’m too conflicted as to what to rate it. This is one of those situations where I don’t think a star-rating system works for me in this instance. There was stuff I loved and stuff I didn’t care for and they were interspersed throughout the book so I was kind of mixed overall.

When I heard an NPR story about Soft Apocalypse, I was instantly intrigued. When I got a Kindle, it was one of the first books I got. But as it happens, it got lost in the shuffle of my TBR pile and it’s just now that I got to it. I’m not sure how I would have reacted to it had I read it in 2011 when it came out instead of reading it in 2024, when some of the story takes place.

The story is told in first person and relates the journey, travails, and experiences of Jasper, an ordinary guy in Savanah, Georgia just trying to make his way into a society—and a world—that is falling apart, slowly.

There was a lot to like. On one hand, it was eerie reading events that depict a gradual decay of society before it collapses. I read a lot of it thinking, dude was prophetic… stuff he has in the book is more or less transpiring now! It was clearly very well thought out and even 13 years later, you can see the world going in this direction if we, as humans, don’t get our act together. The book had some very very powerful moments and parts where I personally felt the narrative was so chilling, while also credible, it will stick with me. One such scene was when Jasper sees Ange getting killed by the farmers from whom they are trying to steal. That scene is going to stay with me for a long time. The tone and actions by Jasper and his tribe had a degree of credibility because it was a bunch grouped into a nomadic “tribe” as they put it without discernible survival skills to start because they had built up their lives to participate in a society that was no longer functioning according to plan. It doesn’t flinch from the smaller-scale cruelty and death created by desperate people, which also gave the story some credibility. It makes you, as a reader, think how you would approach the same circumstances. There are things I would have done differently than Jasper and his group did, but that was what helped it feel immersive at certain stages.

But I kept thinking it should have been more enthralling in parts than it really was. There were parts that held my attention, but a lot that were like a bit blasé to me. The chapters were really long. That affected the pace to me. I get that it might have been intentional to tell the story in long stages in order to create the sense of exhaustion and weariness that Jasper was feeling. but then I felt like it also should have been more tension, with things happening quickly and out of control. It left me, throughout a lot of the book not feeling as strongly as I should have been. However, there were parts, mostly toward the end where society truly had gone past the tipping point and was falling into total chaos.

Another thing I wasn’t crazy about was Jasper’s personality. There’s no delicate way to put this diplomatically but dude was thinking with his dork way too much. Guy can barely feed himself, world’s falling apart, people are feeding him nasty stuff, gangs are taking over, but yet he’s thinking of how much he was sexually attracted to a woman. I can understand it to a point, because if you have no discernible future, you don’t know if you are going to survive much longer, and you have questionable housing situation. But it just felt contrived in a lot of the book. That could just be my opinion. I also wasn’t crazy about the ending but it allowed for the reader to think about how the world will ultimately turn out and to think about whether Jasper and Phoebe made the right decision.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in a very plain style that sometimes almost seems to buffer the reader against the horrors being described, this post-apocalyptic novel is, as the title suggests, not about nuclear war or alien invasion or zombie plagues or anything like that bringing down civilization, but a slow slide into the sort of social and economic meltdown that preppers have been warning us is coming for years.

There is no one SHTF event in this near-future world. The narrator, who starts as a formerly middle-class dude just trying to get by, knows things are bad because as the book begins, he is one of a "tribe" of nomads wandering homeless through Georgia in an America where there are still wealthy people in actual homes and an increasingly narrow slice of middle-class existence to which he is now excluded.

Eventually, he finds a subsistence-level job and a place to live, and he and his "tribe" are, if not thriving, at least surviving, which makes it seem like things will turn around eventually, as he obviously hopes. However, exactly as he's warned at one point, things don't turn around: they just get worse.

There are science fiction elements here: the infectious virus that makes people "happy," creating a sort of movement that is almost like a cult and could be metaphorically compared to zombies, though the degree of free will they have is an important discussion point later in the book. And the bioengineered bamboo that grows through everything, even concrete, in a matter of hours, bringing many cities to a grinding halt.

But these are all trappings in the story about one man and his friends trying to survive a "soft apocalypse" in which America has become just another third-world country with hordes of starving lawless refugees banging on the remaining gates of civilization.

There are, of course, some horrific events (not described in graphic detail, but horrible enough), and the narrator is not always likeable, particularly as he spends much of the book going through a succession of girlfriends and whining about how he can't find true love.

But the horrible events, because they are so believable and because they just happen without any dramatic setup, make this apocalypse not "soft" in the sense that it's nicer or less violent, just in the sense that it might sneak up on us. How do you know when you're in an apocalypse if there are no bombs or zombies or invading armies? Is it when the power goes out? Is it when food becomes scarce? Is it when you're in daily fear for your life? Fact is, even at its worst, the apocalypse described here is no worse than daily life for large portions of the world.

A quick, easy, page-turner, maybe not the most dramatic or memorable post-apocalyptic novel ever, but one that deserves its place in the genre.

[Dale · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, that was awful. I mean really, really awful. This novel of the near future could not make up its mind as to what it wanted to be. It started out ripping off journey-style novels like The Road. Then it went into a remnants of civilization type novel where the lead character finds salvation working at a convenience store. Then for a few pages it becomes, of all things, a superhero novel but quickly gives that up. Then we're back on the road when the prototypical Government Crackdown happens. Finally, utopia is found and the characters (presumably) settle into a drug-induced fulfilling ending.

Along the way, McIntosh rips off Grapes of Wrath, Brave New World, Clockwork Orange, Civilization: Call to Power, Batman (at least here he admits it), and who knows what else I'm missing. Sure, most literature borrows from somewhere but this wasn't borrowing it was whole sale ripping off slapped together for a few pages before moving on to something else with no transition whatsoever Additionally, the protagonist proudly beds or tries to bed, a married woman, a rockstar, his friend and really whoever else will stand still long enough.

Oh, and think my review is disjointed and barely makes sense? Try reading the book. I kept waiting for it to be tied together and get better. Nope, never happened.

[The Captain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ahoy there me mateys! When I last read a book by this author, I was reminded that I had never read his debut novel. In fact, it was the only one I hadn’t read. That oversight had to be remedied. Apparently this novel was a finalist for both the Locus Award for Best First Novel and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best SF Novel. So I finally snatched up a copy and loved it!

At the start of the novel, the United States is in the midst of an extreme economic depression with unemployment hovering at 40%. To put this in perspective the highest period of unemployment to date in the U.S. was 25% in 1933.

At the start, the protagonist, Jasper, is an out of work, homeless sociologist who is traveling with his “tribe.” The tribe is a random collection of folks who are helping each other out while waiting for society to improve. And for Jasper and certain members of his tribe, life does seem to get better in small increments. But what happens when the apocalypse doesn’t arrive in one large explosion but rather in small seemingly incremental changes?

Well ye get this delight of a book. It takes place over 10 years. We follow Jasper and through his eyes watch the world slowly crumble. Bad things happen. People adapt. Jasper’s life improves. More bad things happen. Jasper’s life gets worse. There is action in this book but it is a slow burn of overall destruction.

While watching the consequences of the world slowly imploding, ye get to see Jasper’s relationships and personality evolve and his ideas on love and survival change. This book takes place mostly in and around the environs of Savannah. The author certainly seemed extremely familiar with the area. I adored the format, the writing, the characters, and well, everything.

As usual if ye haven’t read anything by the author, I suggest ye hoist those sails and get moving!

Side note: While researching fer this blog, I discovered that Mr. McIntosh had a book come out in June and has another coming out in October! Arrrrr!!! I must get me hands on the booty!

Check out me other reviews at https://thecaptainsquartersblog.wordp...

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

What happens when our government begins to lose it's authority, disease is rampant and unemployment is the norm, not the exception? A "soft apocalypse", that's what. No asteroids, no nukes, no zombies. Just an agonizingly slow decline into chaos.

This is the story of Jasper and his "tribe" as they make their way through Georgia to Savannah and try to live as "normally" as possible in a world gone a little mad. There are designer viruses and out-of-control militias. There are truly frightening cults with drugs like Dr. Happy which makes everything "better" and there are crazy extremists who horrific stunts to make their statement.

I found this scenario entirely believable and could identify with their bewilderment as civilization as they knew it declined. If you like this genre, give this one a try. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

[Teel · Rating 4 out of 5]

OMG, so much better than Parable of the Sower(/Talents), by Octavia Butler, despite so many similarities in the scope & type of tragedies & journeys they detailed. This book had all the pain and misery and horrors and multiplying levels of humanity being its own worst enemy, but without being so relentlessly grim or turning into torture porn. In fact, despite all the monstrous, painful, difficult things going on in this book, I thought the tone stayed refreshingly light & maintained an appropriate sense of humor.

I've been looking at other people's reviews & a lot of people didn't seem to understand the jumps forward in time between chapters, when it was obvious within 2 or 3 of them that this book only details Jasper's relationships; their beginnings and endings, mostly. The book isn't about the end of the world, it's really about one man's attempts to find companionship - and if you're someone who has gone through the sort of emotional journey Jasper finds himself on with respect to relationships with the opposite sex, it will be no trouble to become deeply engaged by these characters and their lives. Of course, it being the case that the book does not show the parts of Jasper's life where he does not have a significant emotional relationship with another person, does the end of the book (& the book ending where it did) imply that his & Phoebe's fears about Doctor Happy are true?

Yes: violence, language, sex, & death. Also: life, love, family, & hope. Outside of the sometimes-too-light-in-tone YA dystopias I've been reading, Soft Apocalypse has been the lightest in tone I've found. Refreshingly frank & honest about a real possibility for global decline, while being refreshingly free of the dark, gritty, grimness of other dystopian fiction.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. This was an interesting concept. If world disasters are happening, the economies are failing, how do we know if it’s this time that we can’t recover? How do we know we are not in the middle of the apocalypse right now? This story gives us snapshots of one character’s life over the twenty final-ish years of global catastrophe. He is not completely likeable, but you start to see how, however good a person you are, over time and in these conditions, in order to survive there is some compromise to your humanity.
This really isn’t so much post apocalypse as continuous apocalypse. As a novel, what this means is the pace is slower and less dramatic, although the story is still grim. A thought-provoking read, by far the most likely scenario for End of Times, I imagine.

[Jose Brox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Las ideas relativas al apocalipsis suave son muy realistas y están muy bien transmitidas. La novela pierde un punto por dedicar demasiado espacio a los amoríos del protagonista (una chica por capítulo), que aportan un cierto punto de realismo egocéntrico, pero impiden una visión más global que me habría gustado aún más.

[Marcos Castro roqueñi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me sobra mucho amorío y me falta acción. Está bien, para pasar un rato, es corto y se lee rápido, pero sin más.

[Ken Badertscher · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sadistic and relentlessly grim.

There are two kinds of people in McIntosh’s post-apocalyptic future: evil bastards and really malevolent bastards. The difference is that the merely evil bastards, who the book follows through more than a decade of hopelessly ever-increasing decrepitude, sometimes regret the horrible things they have to do. You have to be an evil bastard to survive, but feeling bad about it makes it okay. Their evil acts and the really malevolent bastards’ horrible deeds gnaw endlessly at their souls, driving them to deeper and deeper despair. The horrors they witness numb them to the misery in which they wallow, until an even more unspeakable experience comes along, shattering their emotional barriers, and making their existence even worse.

I should also mention that if you have any fondness for dogs, you should avoid this book. The author must hate them, considering the variety of ways he came up with to make dogs suffer and die. The dogicide was even more repulsive than most of the human death and misery, and that’s saying something, because the human death and misery was explicit and vile.

Lest you think I’m exaggerating, and it can’t be that bad, I’ll give an example from early on in the book. On the way home from an uptown night club where he spent all his money to get in and meet someone only to be thrown out of the club in a span of minutes, Jasper stops by an art gallery on the wealthy side of town. A gang of anarchist thugs starts shooting up the art gallery and lines up the patrons in the back alley. The thugs mumble unanswerable questions to each patron and then casually shoot them in the head when they don’t answer correctly. Because Jasper is poor, they decide to let him go, but first they dump a bucket of urine and feces over his head, and force him to chew and swallow a cat fetus. This is just one example of many, and it’s not the worst in the book.

After reading halfway through this book, I had to force myself to finish it. I did not enjoy it at all. Soft Apocalypse is well-written but thoroughly unpleasant.

[Lawyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1925, T.S. Eliot published his poem "The Hollow Men." The final lines are probably the most quoted from his poetry:

"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."

It is impossible to read "Soft Apocalypse" without recalling that stanza. It is 2023 and world civilization is crumbling. Our protagonists are a tribe of nomadic young people, dissolute, impoverished, and having no destination worthy of reaching.

Will McIntosh never presents us with a clear reason for the collapse of society just as Cormac McCarthy never revealed the circumstances that set his father and son pair on "The Road." Just accept the fact that whatever happened it was really, really bad.

I'm not saying that McIntosh is a writer to be easily dismissed. His short stories have brought him acclaim beginning in 2003. His story "Bridesicle" won the Hugo for best short story in 2010. "Soft Apocalypse" originally appeared as a short story and was well received. Perhaps McIntosh should have chosen another tale to debut in novel length.

McIntosh received his PhD in social psychology from the University of Georgia in 1990. Another short story is slated for feature film release this year. I'll be watching for more of McIntosh's work in the future. I wish I could say I enjoyed his debut novel more. The three star rating is a stretch. The novel deserves better than a two. However, without attempting to insert any spoilers, McIntosh has written a tale of resignation, acceptance and surrender--just not my cup of tea.

[Teresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like "Soft Apocalypse," but I really didn't. I had the hardest time getting through it, even though it was so short. Even skimming it was a hardship.

The author has no talent for imagery and there are huge issues with the passage of time, both within single chapters and between. It seems like he had difficulty gauging how he should transition from scene to scene, so he didn't. In that aspect it's like something written by a child, "They/he/she were/was walking/standing/sitting and something/everything/anything happened and then this and then that and then something else."

Perhaps the biggest issue was my hatred of the characters. Jasper was an immature, superficial idiot; his half-assed search for an attractive companion at the end of days was ridiculous and annoying. Most of the supporting characters were throw aways. If it's an apocalypse, even a gradual one such as this, a certain amount of emotion needs to be invested by the reader. The only thing I recall feeling while reading "Soft Apocalypse" was a vehement wish that all the characters would just die and be done with it.

If I must say something positive, it is that the book picks up in the last three chapters. But most people won't get that far and I won't say it's worth the effort to bother.

I can't believe this book isn't free anymore.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the very best books with a dystopian theme I have read. I found it very realistic and emotional, and despite some issues here and there that may not be perfect, it made me engage in the story and I keep thinking about several parts of the story after finishing it (which I think a good book should do).

The language is at times "mature", but I found it fitting for the story. The characters where great, their feelings and actions were sometimes expected, sometimes surprising, yet understandable. I liked the emotional struggles of the main character. I recommend this book to anyone interested in science fiction or dystopian books.

[Joelle.P.S · Rating 2 out of 5]

halfway through Soft Apocalypse:
Society collapses. In every chapter (so far), our narrator seeks a date/girlfriend/lay.

[Eloi Puig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ressenya en català:

http://www.elkraken.com/Ressenyes_Cat...

Reseña en castellano:

http://www.elkraken.com/Esp/A-esp/R-A...

[Antonio Diaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una novela como esta, que te abre los ojos al declive de la civilización en la que vives, es especialmente dura leída en unos tiempos como los que corren (con el COVID-19 campando a sus anchas).

Espero no llegar nunca a vivir una caída tan lenta y suave como la que nos cuenta McIntosh.

Gracias Álvaro por animarme a echarle un vistazo.

Todavía tengo sudores fríos.

[manuti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesante y entretenido. Resulta aterrador el parecido con nuestra realidad de la segunda década del siglo XXI.
En realidad, es una historia sobre los amores y desamores con la búsqueda de la media naranja de Jasper el protagonista. Rodeado de unos Estados Unidos sureños, la novela transcurre en su mayor parte en Savannah, en lento pero inexorable declive con pinceladas de lo que ocurre en otras partes del mundo.
Durante la lectura apunté varias ideas:

Primer capítulo: Amor y apocalipsis suave.
Me salté el prólogo de Emilio Bueso, pero lo leeré al final del libro. Y la verdad es que me está gustando, el Apocalipsis además de lento es solo la música de fondo para la vida y amores del protagonista, aunque creo que eso permite mirarlo de lejos y la distancia que pones te lo hace más real.
Estrella de Rock - otro amor en la vida de Jasper y otro peldaño en la degradación de la civilización.
Capítulo 4 - Recuerdos de "Más verde de lo que creéis" y de "El rebaño ciego".
Cinco - aquí me ha recordado a "Alta fidelidad" pero rodeados por el caos, al que se han acostumbrado.
Seis - y este capítulo podría ser parte de "El verano del pequeño San John" al menos de su intro.
Siete - hoy se ha hecho viral la foto de los zapatos de un profesor de universidad en Venezuela. El Apocalípsis suave ha llegado ya a algunas partes del mundo.

Leído finalmente el prólogo no destripa nada, pero aprovecho para indicar que considero que en muchos aspectos "Cenital" de Emilio Bueso está mucho mejor resuelta, así que es otra lectura recomendable dentro de este subgénero del post-apocalipsis.

Me ha sobrado un poco la invasión de bambú, aunque sirve para acelerar la decadencia y su existencia es muy importante para la trama. Pero se lee con buen ritmo y se merece unas buenas 4 estrellas.

[Anne · Rating 1 out of 5]

When you’re reading a book and wonder why, you are probably reading this one. I picked it up because I find Apocalypse theory books interesting. It���s fun to see what various writers come up with in a format on that topic. As no one knows what will/if it will ever happen, it’s a mystery, and gives an author an opportunity to throw his 2cents into the mix.

The only thing apocalyptic about this book was the “hero” and his attraction to women. It was ridiculous. I can see some interest in finding a pal, a partner perhaps, but hooking up with some sort of rock star and numerous others? No. The author tried to place himself into a what-if scenario but used the mindset of a pubescent boy. The character was 30 years old! The only apocalyptic thing going on was him.

Complete waste of your time if you want a good apocalypse story. Yes. The premise of the book was civilization on a slow decline, but no attempt was made to face the music and do something about it. Very disappointing. Very juvenile.

Maybe the whole book was a double entendre, what with the title and all, and was meant to have nothing at all to do with an actual civilization apocalypse? Perhaps the author never intended the book to have anything to do with that, but instead took the opportunity to write something else?

A big “skip it” in in my estimation.

[Sue Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

What impressed me about this novel is the way the author developed the protagonist's character so that he was not a caricature nor some kind of "ideal" man of the 20th century. Instead, he was a product of his time, not a tough, macho guy but an ordinary college graduate searching for love and companionship as well as trying to survive in an impossible world. Also, each of the episodes of the book offers a powerful scenario of what could very well happen in the next 10-20 years (literally and metaphorically).

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Right now, I needed this book. That is a statement one would reserve for having just read a terrific book, which I can not say I just did, but it would be said in response to a string of monotonous reads that was interrupted by a great one, and I find myself in a quite equal-but-opposite manner. That is to say, I am in a continuity of amazing reads, and I needed a palate cleanser to reset my taste. Or maybe palate greaser, as it were. I've absorbed so many other books that I immensely enjoyed, that I was hit with a Law of Diminishing Returns, and couldn't appreciate what I was reading. Context can be everything, and if disliking this book enhances the next few books, just in comparison, then it was worth it.

Soft Apocalypse has an interesting concept, an Armageddon that takes decades before anybody notices. " This is how our world ends; with a whimper instead of a bang." It's told through Jasper's eyes, which view how life is slowly eroding in Savannah, GA. With an unemployment rate of around 40%, random diseases killing people (put out by the government!?!???!*), and quasi-terrorists sowing chaos, it's a hard life for Jasper. Especially since apparently, he never knows where his next date is coming from. Jasper spends most of his story complaining about never finding love, or being lonely, which is funny, because he is nearly always with somebody. Why spend time worrying about how civilization is falling apart, when you can hook up with psycho pop singers or married women, or just involve yourself in the mother of all "friends with benefits" relationship. I would have loved to know more about how the world began eating itself (pun not intended, as cannibalism somehow does not make an appearance in this book), but instead we're stuck in the head of Apocalypse's most forlorn lover**. And yeah, he finds true love in the end, and yeah, it's with a girl that he meets way back in the beginning (Soft Apocalypse spans 13 years). And yes, I was long past giving any f--ks about Jasper or society by this point. The second half of SA is better than the first, but only kind of. Jasper is so damn shallow for most of the story, and unchanging even through the decimation going on around him, and every time I felt like I was going to get some answers on what exactly was happening to unmake the world, that was when the author pulled the rug out from under me and began another relationship failure. If society was falling around me or you in the manner of SA, I'm not saying we wouldn't pine for someone to commiserate with. But it might occasionally take a back seat to the actual suffering and despair that was crawling up to our door. Jasper seems content to play the field, and ignore the smoking, burning stands around him. By the time he does start to change in the second half, it feels tacked on, and the ending, which actually brings up an honest-to-god philosophical quandary***, is, by that point, putting icing on a cake long left stale.

*= I'm not going to spend a lot of time complaining about this, but the government just randomly throwing out diseases to (I guess?!?) cull the population makes no damn sense, if you really think about it. Especially given that, in the book, the US is involved in a couple of wars or skirmishes at some point.

**= I've complained about this with female characters in books like Twilight, so I have to say something now...I can not stand it when characters like Jasper are moaning about how they are lonely, or undesirable, even when they have no problem actually finding mates, and/or are beating off potential suitors left and right. There's being humble, and there's being an ass.

***= The decision at the end is this (SPOILER!) - Do you attempt to live in an apocalyptic wasteland, where your two main options are starvation and death, but your faculties are your own? Or do you join a community that protects and feeds you, but the caveat is that you have to succumb to a virus that, while not affecting your health, warps your brain to the point that you are unnaturally happy all the time?

[D.A. Schneider · Rating 4 out of 5]

Toward the end of this book I was thinking 3 stars, but it had a good ending and i bumped it up one.

To start off; I like the plot of this story. After a second depression hits the world slowly but surely falls into decay. Numerous man-made viruses are infecting millions, the unemployment rate at the beginning of the book is at forty percent and declining, crime is sky rocketing and the police have reached the point where they're not milling to risk their lives for anyone. I can see this as a more likely end to the world as we know it than any events depicted by The Bible or the Mayan calender, but that's just my opinion. Some of the stuff in this book is a little off the wall (like bombs that set off massive bamboo growth over vast areas) but if I can suspend my imagination for flying airships and vampires I can do the same here.

The writing was handled very well, with great detail taken in the development of the supporting cast, but the biggest problem I had with the book was its main character. Jasper is in the midst of the end of American civilization yet he thinks and acts like a neurotic school girl, looking for his true love. I'm sure anyone in the situation these people are in would crave companionship, but the way the author set it up seemed a little too labored. If we've learned anything from the Star Wars prequels it's that romance in stories of chaos should be handled much more subtly.

In the end, as unlikeable as Jasper was, the book ended with some good suspense and surprises making it a decent read.

[Tudor Ciocarlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Because of the mixed reviews, I thought hard about reading this book. Now I'm very glad I've read it (thanks A.C.). This book is the perfect companion to Jack Womack's Random Acts of Senseless Violence, because unfortunately Soft Apocalypse begins where Randoms Acts ends. From the first chapter we already have a broken world and a homeless main character. It's more like the middle and the end of a slow apocalypse. A beginning with the build up to the no return point, a little less coincidences and the absence of viruses (I've felt that McIntosh cheated a little with the use of viruses, they have no place in the exploration of a soft apocalypse) would've made this book a perfect one. Anyway, this kind of apocalypse is a great way to explore what make us human, what drives us and what is really important in life. Much more than the classic apocalypse where our instincts and our animal side are much more prominent. And Will McIntosh succeeds very well in shattering our humanity into pieces and studying them through a magnifying glass. The best debut novel of 2011.

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a fan of apocalptic and post-apocalypstic fiction and, as a fan, I must say this book was quite a ride. It has all of the great qualities of the genre that make it appealing. The reasons for the slow-coming apocalpse are plausable (probably too plausable which is why it is depressing in parts); the responses of individuals and groups are poignant, and both surprising and believable at the same time; the protagonist shows strong development/change as a result of the events, thus proving his "roundness" as a character. By novel's end, I found myself really sympathizing with this character (and others), rooting for them, understanding them, seeing myself with them on their journey - again, all examples of great plot and character development. It would be interesting, too, to continue the discussion of the conclusion of this novel - was it hopeful or not? For me, another characteristic of a great novel. So many rich characters put into fantastical but realistic situations. If you like this genre, this one is definitely worth the read. I much prefer it to _The Road_.

[Ignacio · Rating 4 out of 5]

La premisa de Apocalipsis suave es contar la crisis definitiva de la sociedad de consumo occidental huyendo de acontecimientos catastróficos. Relatar la caída de la civilización en EEUU a la manera de un pequeño deslizamiento de tierras. Desde un futuro cercano sumido en una depresión económica hasta la creación de una comunidad capitidisminuida donde los residuos de nuestra sociedad tienen la oportunidad de perdurar en un porvenir incierto con la única certeza de la reducción de expectativas.

McIntosh huye de grandes gestas, arroja sobre sus personajes una tras otra las plagas de nuestro tiempo, las confronta cuidados paliativos habituales y conduce a su narrador hacia una amarga aceptación. El desenlace consecuente para el horror sosegado expuesto.

Con sus particularidades, me ha recordado a clásicos como el recién reeditado La Tierra permanece, la hoy olvidada Más verde de lo que creéis, la amarguísima La muerte de la hierba o novelas tan recientes como Cenital o Un minuto antes de la oscuridad. Una tradición en la que no desentona lo más mínimo.