PowerSwitch

This arrived yesterday from DODGY TAX AVOIDERS. I've read the first few chapters and so far it's good stuff.

Anyone else got a copy?

Here's the link: http://www.DODGY TAX AVOIDERS.co.uk/World-Made-Jame ... 374&sr=8-1

I noticed no-one's reviewed it yet ( subtle hint alert)

Okay - so I've finished it now so here goes. First off - it's a good read.

"World made by Hand" is set some time in the future after a collapse. It is a novel about how people in one area started to pick up their lives and move on after disaster.

The book doesn't shy away from the losses suffered by the many characters portrayed and in places it is a heart-wrenching read. Yet despite the lawlessness that results from the breakdown of society, the book does show hope for the future.

I wonder if Kunstler is planning a sequel as some of the loose ends are not tied up and there is obviously so much more that could happen next.

I think you could read it just as fiction without any anticipation that this future might really happen. (A bit like Planet of the Apes films!) Yet K does spell out the changes in the facilities available.

All in all this is a better read than I expected. I read the Long Emergency and was concerned that the novel could be a lecture. It's not.

Any one else?

I've purchased from DODGY TAX AVOIDERS but waiting for it to arrive. Will post some comments in due course.

RenewableCandy wrote:I noticed no-one's reviewed it yet ( subtle hint alert)

There are some reviews on DODGY TAX AVOIDERS.com.

Read it..

Loved it...

Probably as good a prediction as any about the future of humankind.

I think the ?long emergency? could take a lot longer that JHK predicts, from high flying software programmer one year, to subsistence carpenter five years later, or so. (I'm badly misrepresenting him here), seems unlikely, I think the current institutions will do their utmost to hold onto power and BAU, and make everyone?s life a lot more difficult in the process. (Look at Zimbabwe!)

I?m anticipating a fairly bumpy ride until we reach the picture that ?World made by hand? paints, and this transition may take the rest of my life.

I really enjoyed this book. JHK gave four examples of post-Long Emergency communities - the tiding over community, the organised pseudo-religious community, the gang, and the post-peak city. Primarily, the book is about the interaction between the different possible societies. Its a decent tale, very readable, although fairly short.

Much of it often had a similar feel to George R Stewart's "Earth Abides", without quite the same level of apocalypse. Its hard to work out the timescales involved though the collapse does seem to have happened to a greater degree a lot quicker than I personally imagine.

Even so, I highly recommend it for the peak aware and unaware. Its not as depressing as I thought it might be - Kunstler seems to look forward to the day this might happen, and each of the communities is appealing on at least one level.

The 'Earth Abides' feel is definitely there.

Sadly the pre-defined groundwork the book starts from is rather weak.

No solar power, no radio communications, no wind-up radios or torches, no mopeds running on biofuel ... just a plummet into an agrarian community.

You can't tell me that amateur radio and other networks will simply disappear in a few years.

Kunstler deliberately minimises the amount of useful stuff & techniques which would survive PO plus/minus killer flu.

A ripping yarn ... but maybe not an accurate representation of an early-stage PO world.

I thought it was a brilliant book. although the I thought the twist let it down.

I've been quite enjoying the KunstlerCast http://kunstlercast.com/

I've been musing further.

Nope, the book is definitely NOT a good novel covering PO.

I certainly would not recommend it as such to others.

It's simply a 6-out-of-10 End Of The World genre novel.

I was very disappointed by “World Made by Hand” as it comes over essentially as an opportunistic, sales pitch, film script treatment and musical sound track in a back to the future, cowboy, western frontier genre.

It is set in upstate New York sometime in the 21st century now running like the early 19th century. The action is all there - sex, excessive drug and alchohal consumption, violence, old time preachers, spooky paranormal happenings and posees riding out on horseback to set piece showdowns with dressed in black baddies. It would all look great shot in 35mm technicolor and sepia featuring photogenic actors with improbably white and regular teeth.

Boy do the people, left after oil and a major die off, know how to party. It leaves you with an intense lasting clear mental image of the scenes and sounds of the events and relentless action. The question is if it is a wry comment on life in pointless activity obsessed US currently, or post oil, or both? What exactly are we meant to deduce or learn from it?

Does Kunstler do irony and why does he protest so much about not reading science fiction? There is clear evidence of his recycling a number of post apocalypse motifs and themes popularised more convincingly and with better characterisation years ago by the late Phil Dick amongst others.

As interesting as what is included, and handeled deftly I must say, is that which is excluded either by being conveniently killed off or ignored. In this way Kunstler seems to clearly signal implicitly who and what he believes to be the Good, the Bad and the irredeemaby Ugly!

At least two axes of evil, Soddom and Gommorrahs of contemporary freedom, in the form of the US film industry and Federal Government, are disposed of early on for the sake of scene setting, with little concealed glee I must say.

This is achieved by contriving conveniently devastating Jihadi terrorist nuclear bombings of Los Angeles and Washington DC which of course seriously shortens the existensial longness of the implicit emergency leading up to the deliberately ill defined time frame of the action

The central viewpoint character, who one must assume to be the authors alter ego, is bereft of wife (killed off) and family (gone away and killed off). He is thus free to have a variety of women throw themselves at his wrinkly eminence as he persues his heroic man interest things and arty lifestyle in his cool, tastefully crafted bachelor pad. The world outside the immediate area of Saratoga Springs is lost to sight largely by him and it’s other inward looking, isolationist, self obsessed, college educated, Gamma Epsilon Delta allumni, white, middle class professional occupants.

Electricity seems now largely to be regarded as another evil force of the dark side to the extent nobody in town even thinks to scavange a PV solar panel and a car battery to provide even a little electric light or recorded music. When electricity does appear it uses the unconvincing device of the suply grid magically springing back to life just long enough to power up a hifi tuner amplifier revealling only ranting preachers on the FM and AM airwaves.

The electromagnetic spectrum is thus also identified as yet another evil axis so that of course nobody even bothers to scavange CB radios to set up even some form of rudimentary communication based on those nasty un american Hertzian rays.

This world also seems very nearlly exclusively white and cultish prosletysing protestant, maybe that is what upstate New York is like. Certainly any other faiths, not to mention other ethnic groups all seem to have been been conveniently disposed of.

Interestingly the two major villains in the story, who both get their terminal deserts, are both certainly not law abiding, white middle class professionals with well developed musical and artistic talents, but particular outsiders – one a blue collar trucker and leader of the trailer thrash commune the other a parody of an Irish American political mobster complete with his own magnificent ersatz Tammanay Hall political machine!

I could go on more but in conclusion I must say whilst it is a good read I did not learn very much and began to lose track of what message exactly the book is trying to convey. Perhaps we have to buy “The Long Emergency” as a companion text to understand what he is getting at. To that extent I was disappointed because I had high expectations based on Kunstlers excellent no holds barred blogs.

After it was trashed by Sharon Astyk for (among other things) its pathetic portrayal of women, I knew I needn't bother buying it