Ill Wind - Hardcover

Kevin J. Anderson; Doug Beason

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312857608 ISBN 13: 9780312857608

Publisher: Forge, 1995

Synopsis

When a supertanker crashes off the coast of San Francisco, creating the largest oil spill in history, a multinational oil company releases an untested virus designed to break up the spill and causes a biotechnological disaster.

About this title

Reviews

A promising disaster scenario fizzles as Anderson and Beason (coauthors of Assemblers of Infinity and The Trinity Paradox) succumb to lightweight plotting, facile characterization and an apparent need to allude to as many pop-cultural artifacts as possible. When a panicky oil company tries to clean up a major spill in San Francisco Bay by dropping genetically engineered oil-eating microbes on it, the little organisms go berserk and start devouring most of the world's long-chain polycarbons (gasoline, plastics, etc.). Within the first 150 pages, this leads to a breakdown of communications and information-processing systems. From there until the end of the novel, however, affairs are basically limited to several displays of plucky ingenuity (during which one character compares the work of his group, unfavorably, to that of the Professor on Gilligan's Island). Meanwhile, an acting president and a general, independently, attempt to enforce martial law on an unwilling populace. The heroes are heroic, especially scientist Spencer Lockwood and pilots Billy Carron and Todd Severyn (the latter atoning for having unwittingly dropped the petrol-eating organism in the first place). Todd's girlfriend, Iris Shikozu, stages a post-apocalyptic rock concert at the Altamont Speedway. Almost all the chapter headings are titles of old pop songs, books or movies (Good Vibrations, The Stand, Urban Cowboy). It's possible that those who care, as Iris does, about Kansas's live comeback album will find this fascinating, but most readers are likely to feel that The End of the World As We Know It deserves better handling.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Coauthors of the Nebula nominee Assemblers of Infinity (1993), Anderson and Beason return with a high-action, best-seller-caliber disaster novel grounded in unsettlingly accurate science. When an oil-carrying supertanker collides with the Golden Gate Bridge, dumping its million-barrel cargo into San Francisco Bay, the offending oil company releases an experimental microbe designed to clean up the spill. Yet no one anticipates the private vendetta against big oil harbored by the microbes' suicidal inventor, who substitutes a more lethal airborne strain that consumes not only oil but all petrochemicals everywhere, including gasoline and plastic. As all ground and air traffic grind to a halt and wire-based communications collapse, government control also begins to crumble, and the nation slowly descends into lawlessness. Using the standard disaster novel format of multiple characters and plot lines, Beason and Anderson maintain a suspenseful, breakneck pace that carries us to a thrilling finish. Carl Hays

Two best-selling authors team up to confront a biotechnological catastrophe.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Forge
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312857608
• ISBN 13: 9780312857608
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 383