Yesterday I read Cory Doctorow’s apocalyptic novella, When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth, which was hyped quite a bit on Boing Boing etc but I had no interest in reading until I saw it was included in an anthology of apocalyptic SF. As you may know, I love apocalyptic fiction of all kinds. This post notes some of the works I’ve enjoyed.

The best overall TEOTWAWKI book I’ve read has to be A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller Jr. It’s got all the great elements of the apocalypse, with a few unique elements that make it great. I won’t spoil it, but the outline is, the world ended in thermonuclear war, many of the survivors blamed technology and went on a book-burning freakout trip, and as a result, the human race centuries hence has only an archaeologist’s understanding what what life was like Before. The Catholic Church has survived, and resumed its Dark Ages role as guardian of literacy and knowledge, though with some striking differences to today’s Church. Outstanding book, though the sequel bored me to tears and isn’t worth the trouble.

Of course, no list of TEOTWAWKI fiction is completed without a mention of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which I’m sad to say is an Oprah’s Book Club book, though I urge you not to judge it too harshly. What really struck me about this book is the incredibly sparse nature of the prose, which fits in perfectly with the desolate world in which the story is set. As a philistine, I don’t get alot of exposure to that sort of multi-dimensional literary expression, and it kind of scares me, but in a good way.

So where does Sysadmins fall? Actually, I thought it left alot to be desired. The reason I enjoy the post-ap genre is that it provides a literary experience that I can more easily immerse myself in. For whatever reason, when I read stories that feature all manner of emotional plot devices, I experience them as a spectator (which I often enjoy, to be sure). It’s only post-op fiction that I can get into myself, such that I experience the story more immediately, as though I’m there and witnessing the end of the world myself. I don’t think this is so much due to the masterful literary genius of post-ap fiction writers, as it is due to an odd quirk in my personality, but nonetheless it makes it easy for me to enjoy this genre.

That said, Sysadmins fails what for me is a basic post-op test: plausibility. When one is writing about the end of the world, there’s a requisite suspension of disbelief involved already, and there’s not much left over for far-out TEOTW scenarios. Nuclear holocaust is safe, as is pandemic. I’ll even accept world-killing asteroid or alien invasion. However, in Sysadmins, Doctorow wants me to accept a spontaneous, uncoordinated day of bad behavior on the part of every terrorist organization and nutjob in the world, catalyzed by we-dont-know-what. You’ve got your EMP, your bioweapon, your nukes, your conventional bombs, your dirty bombs, etc. As someone who will happily accept an alien invasion plot, I must say the Sysadmins plot defies belief.

Apart from that, Doctorow nails all the geek archetypes perfectly, and for that reason alone Sysadmins was amusing and worth my time. However, it’s not going into the annals of post-ap kickassery.