A Secret History of Time to Come
By Robie Macauley
The united states falls into a race war that causes the rest of the world to isolate themselves. The lack of the US at the UN leads to the destabilization of the rest of the world. Russia sends nuclear missiles over towards China and well.... That's about as much as you learn about how the world ended in he book. An interesting idea. I guess.
The first 1/4 or so of this book didn't really hold my interest. The story kept jumping around. First between characters and then you realize it jumps from the past to the future.
We learn about how the world ended by journal entries left by a newspaper reporter in Chicago. He has visions of a man dressed in animal skins roaming the country side. Then the chapter jumps to the man in the animal skins who has dreams of the reporter. We learn about the idea that the soul of a dead man can enter the lost spirit of another to maintain or instruct him.
Then the book goes forward 100 years? in the future and starts to pick up. The book mostly follows Kinkaid, a healer from Pennsylvan-land who following an old Esso road map. He makes his way west with the intent of finding Chicago. To see if the tales of the forefathers have any truth to them. The story deals with his encounters along the road, the story of the Esso map and ends where it begins. With the journal left by the reporter.
I enjoyed how the characters looked at the ruins of civilization and they try to fathom what the purpose of the objects and structures they see were for. It brought back the saying how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. They describe objects with their own view of the world and we the reader are often left wondering what it is they have found until enough of the description is given for us to be able to figure out what it is they have found. A lot of this reminded me of bits from the history channel show Life after People (now in it's second season!) Most buildings are crumbled. Metal objects have mostly rusted beyond use, (bullets seem to have survived) and roads are over grown with plant life or washed out, broken up, collapsed or otherwise mostly lost back to nature.
The book also reminded me of the ending of the BBC show Threads. As schooling is almost nonexistent, many populations have their own broken English with these unlearned groups unable to communicate with the ones that still speak proper English.
Overall I enjoyed the imagery in the book and the wonder at the leftovers from the forefathers (our civilization). The book was hard to get into initially. It reads more like an episode from the middle of a series rather than the stand alone story that is is
