Module 8: Ashfall

Hello, I'm Richard Nimz, prospector of the written word and literary explorer extraordinaire.  Well, we've moved into my favorite genre today: speculative fiction.  I love this genre, although I prefer Star Wars-style escapism to Avatar-style 'contemplation'.  However, there appears to be one exception to my rule: disaster fiction, which, if done well, feels like a survival guide with an intriguing plot.  Did Michael Mullin's Ashfall meet this criteria?  Well, wait and see.

Citation: Mullin, Michael (2011).  Ashfall.  Terre Haute, Indiana: Tanglewood.

(Huh, a book that was not published in New York City.  Make a wish, folks.)

Summary:  In the not too distant future, the Yellowstone caldera erupts, leaving the United States buried in ash.  A few days later, an Midwestern teenager named Alex decides to set off in pursuit of his parents and sister, who were off visiting relatives in Indiana.  He soon finds, though, just how hard travelling across the new ashen wastes are in winter, with bandits, cannibals, and snowstorms at every turn.  He soon has the help of the irascible Darla, but that might not be enough to succeed in his quest, or even survive...

Impressions:  Mixed.  On the one hand, it presents an interesting view of a catastrophe that I thought might happen in my lifetime (although I've found since then that the likelihood of that happening in my lifetime is slim, courtesy of the United States Geological Survey (Lowenstern, Christiansen, Smith, Morgan, & Heasler, 2005)).  The main characters are alright.  Although the main character is really unsympathetic at the start, he gets better as the book goes on.  Also, how the author depicts survival in this world is pretty nice, and I could imagine using this book as part of Survival Day at the library (toilet tank water is apparently good enough to wash your hands with in the real world, given what Tokyo is doing).  While there is a gay couple early in the book, they're not there to make an annoying or intrusive political statement of any kind, they're just being people.

Alas, there are two big holes in the book.  For starters, there's a scene near the beginning where a Baptist friend of the religion-not-disclosed-but-OK-with-premarital-sex main character claims to have a way to survive the ashfall...which turns out to be fasting and praying in the hopes that her and her congregation (which is also doing this) will get taken up to Heaven.  I'm a Catholic with several Baptist relatives: I was offended.  While I don't doubt this would occasionally happen, it just felt wrong, even though other Baptists show up later as relief workers in a FEMA camp.

Oh, there's my second point: the United States government apparently runs refugee camps in disaster zones the same way the Schutzstaffel ran the concentration camps in Nazi Germany, minus the forced labor.  This just feels completely wrong, and there's one example that caps it all off.  Apparently, as a result of the eruption, the United States is struggling to make ends meet.  Fair enough, the bread basket is now covered in ash, after all.  As a result, food and shelter are hard to come by, even in the FEMA camps (I'm wondering where the relief from other countries is, but maybe it's somewhere else).  But, by good fortune, Alex and Darla happen upon a whole fleet of cargo ships on the Mississippi river bearing grain.  Alright, relief is in sight!  Nope.  Apparently that grain belongs to someone and the United States can't do anything with it until they lawfully acquire it.  They can't just seize it as an act of desperation, that would be easy.  As an added bonus, the camp guards seem to be corrupt, just in case we were on the fence about the poor conditions being the result of merely not having enough to go around by far.  While it's possible that other camps are honest, this is the only one we see, and thus it's easy to stereotype the others as being like it.

Bottom line, here's a review from Thea James of The Book Smugglers: "...I still was engaged with this novel and certainly have an emotional investment in Alex’s story. I’ll be back for more, and, if you’re a disaster/apocalypse junkie like me, Ashfall is certainly worth the read."  To get my opinion, just delete the second sentence and soften the first a little.

Auxiliary sources:
Lowenstern, Jacob B., Christiansen, Robert L., Smith, Robert B., Morgan, Lisa A., & Heasler, Henry (2005).  Steam Explosions, Quakes, and Volcanic Eruptions--What's in Yellowstone's Future? | USGS Fact Sheet 2005-3024.  Retrieved from http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2005/3024/.

James, Thea & Grilo, Ana (4 Nov, 2011).  The Book Smugglers | Joint Review: Ashfall by Mike Mullin.  The Book Smugglers.  Retrieved from http://thebooksmugglers.com/2011/11/joint-review-ashfall-by-mike-mullin.html.