An entertaining and informative top-to-bottom peek at the clash between science and politics.
From the author of Fieldwork (2014) comes a science thriller about trying to predict the next devastating earthquake in the Pacific Northwest.
Carl Strega is a retired geophysicist living in Birkett Valley, Oregon. After leaving a university post because of the politics that impeded his scientific work, he began researching on his own. While studying data collected by GPS stations throughout the Pacific Northwest regarding slow-slip events—which happen every 14 months, below “the part of the interface between the [tectonic] plates that is normally locked by friction”—he hypothesizes that the next SSE, due in 11 months, could trigger a major earthquake and a tsunami. Carl quickly assembles a team of professors and students to pore over the mounds of data that will allow them to create as accurate a prediction model as possible. They try to work secretly, to keep the public from unduly panicking; a leak nevertheless allows the Oregonian newspaper to break the story. A media frenzy soon follows. When plans to build a high-end golf resort become jeopardized, the local tourism association sics Herman Stackhouse, a character assassin, on Carl. Will rationality prevail—and lives be saved—in an environment engineered to trample science and help big business? Scholz, himself a professor of geophysics, confidently loads his novel with a bevy of details that will help lay readers navigate the fascinating realm of earthquake prediction. Occasionally, the science is dense, but when readers need clarification, Scholz offers bracing metaphors: “If you’re trying to push a heavy object...it often proceeds in jerks, accompanied by screeching….That jerky motion is stick-slip.” His direct, brisk narrative likewise adeptly portrays the various sides in each controversy. David, a science reporter, wants Carl’s work available to the public on ethical grounds, later saying about large companies (like oil and tobacco) and the far right: “Their greatest fear is of a world organized according to science-informed public policies.” Mentions of Fox News following Stackhouse’s slanderous blog are humorous though frightening.
An entertaining and informative top-to-bottom peek at the clash between science and politics.Pub Date: July 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-1497349513
Page Count: 326
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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