Tor.com has a post about 'Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd century America' by Robert Charles Wilson, the first of a three part interview with the author. It tells the story of the titular character in a future America depleted of fossil fuels, reverted back to a very 19th century technological level and Puritan attitude.
"...an America 163 years from now that looks a bit like the 19th century but feels, in unexpected and delightful ways, very much like the present. In Julian Comstock, with the demise of oil, America has returned to preindustrial levels of technology. The nation’s calamitous fall—involving a thorough depletion of the population and the collapse of the political system as we know it—is a hazy historical memory, replaced by a larger-feeling country, more sparsely populated and more difficult to control."
Fine summer reading in these current economic-meltdown-environmental-collapse-end-is-nigh times. No small coincidence that Wilson is interviewed by Brian Slattery, whose book 'Liberation' takes place in a post-economic collapse United States.
I read the short story 'Julian: a Christmas Story" that introduces Julian Comstock as a young man a few years ago, and I can't wait to read the new book.
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