(post by Liam Jacetta)
Most, if not all, of my book buying, has been done with a preconceived idea of what I’m buying. Whether that be an author I’m specifically looking for or an exact book, I have never gone in blind. Upon going into the store I was somewhat trying to avoid authors I had heard of before. I wanted to expand the variety of authors I have read and was looking for something different. I was mostly going off of the title and cover art. The Day the Machines Stopped had very interesting and retro cover art and the title alone drew me into the story.
The book is about a laboratory worker battling with the struggles and conflicts that come with a complete blackout. When the world falls into total electrical power outage there will soon be total anarchy. Their journey to find alternative power sources and navigate the disintegrating societal framework is unlike stories I have read before. All this happening while the story also follows a familiar plot line of protagonists fighting over a love interest: a coworker.
In comparison to some of the stories I have read to date, this is a pretty tame science fiction novel. There are no previous scientific anomalies or advancements that the characters have dealt with. Unlike stories that take place totally in the future or a more advanced time, the characters of this story have never dealt with anything unexplainable by their modern science. This leads to a great story in which you discover all of the supernatural problems along with the characters.
This book is great because it highlights an uncommon but very plausible kind of apocalypse. Most plagues and apocalypses are survived but the rich. Those who are prepared, or have enough money to become prepared quickly are usually the ones rising to the top. In such a crisis as is outlined in this book, there is no way to easily pay your way out of this issue. The solution to the problem does not lay in waiting out the apocalypse, but in finding a solution to restoring the power. This unites scientists, much like the two this story most closely follows, even if there is such a divide between them like a love interest.
I would recommend this book to those who are not looking for a hard-core science fiction or supernatural story. I quite enjoyed this book and I am looking forward to reading more by the author.
Anvil, Christopher. The Day the Machines Stopped. Derby, Connecticut: Monarch Books, Inc, 1944.
(Liam Jacetta)
The first thing I did when I saw the title was do a double-take, as E.M. Forster has a famous short story called “The Machine Stops” It’s highly likely that Anvil (or rather Crosby) chose the title precisely because of Forster’s story. Anvil’s was a prolific short story writer whose work Campbell loved. Lots of gadgets and engineering. Glad you liked this! I will have to check out more his works. I have a sense they are rather “positivist” (in the sense that science can solve all things), and may be very white-male-hero heavy, but given the time in which he was writing, that is no surprise.