- Birmingham, John.
Without Warning.
New York: Del Rey, 2009.
ISBN 978-0-345-50289-6.
-
One of the most common counsels offered to authors by agents and
editors is to choose a genre and remain within it. A book which
spans two or more of the usual categories runs the risk of “falling
into the crack”, with reviewers not certain how to approach it and,
on the marketing side, retailers unsure of where in the store it should
be displayed. This is advice which the author of this work either never
received or laughingly disdained. The present volume combines a
political/military techno-thriller in the Tom Clancy tradition
with alternative history as practiced by Harry Turtledove, but
wait—there's more, relativistic arm-waving
apocalyptic science fiction in the vein of the late Michael Crichton.
This is an ambitious combination, and one which the author totally
bungles in this lame book, which is a complete waste of paper, ink,
time, and money.
The premise is promising. What would happen if there were no United
States (something we may, after all, effectively find out over the
next few years, if not in the manner posited here)? In particular,
wind the clock back to just before the start of the 2003 invasion of
Iraq, and assume the U.S. vanished—what would the
world look like in the aftermath? You ask, “what do you mean by the U.S.
vanishing?” Well, you see, an interdimensional portal opens between
a fifth dimensional braneworld which disgorges 500,000 flying saucers
which spread out over North America, from which tens of millions of
10 metre tall purple and green centipedes emerge to hunt down and devour
every human being in the United States and most of Canada and Mexico,
leaving intact only the airheads in western Washington State and Hawaii
and the yahoos in Alaska. No—not really—in fact what is
proposed here is even more preposterously implausible than the saucers and
centipedes, and is never explained in the text. It is simply an absurd
plot device which defies about as many laws of physics as rules of
thumb for authors of thrillers.
So the U.S. goes away, and mayhem erupts all around the world. The
story is told by tracking with closeups of various people in the
Middle East, Europe, on the high seas, Cuba, and the surviving remnant
of the U.S. The way things play out isn't implausible, but since the
precipitating event is absurd on the face of it, it's difficult to
care much about the consequences as described here. I mean, here we
have a book in which Bill Gates has a cameo rôle providing a
high-security communications device which is competently implemented
and works properly the first time—bring on the saucers and giant
centipedes!
As the pages dwindle toward the end, it seems like nothing is being
resolved. Then you turn the last page and discover that you've been
left in mid-air and are expected to buy After America next
year to find out how it all comes out. Yeah, right—fool me once,
shame on you; fool me twice, not gonna happen!
Apart from the idiotic premise, transgenred plot, and side-splitting
goofs like the mention of “UCLA's Berkeley campus” (p. 21),
the novel drips with gratuitous obscenity. Look, one expects soldiers
and sailors to cuss, and having them speak that way conveys a certain
authenticity. But here, almost everybody, from mild-mannered
city engineers to urbane politicians seem unable to utter two sentences
without dropping one or more F-bombs. Aside from the absurdity of the
plot, this makes the reading experience coarsening. Perhaps that is
how people actually speak in this post-Enlightenment age; if so, I do
not wish to soil my recreational reading by being reminded of it.
If we end up in the kind of post-apocalyptic world described here,
we'll probably have to turn to our libraries once the hoard of
toilet paper in the basement runs out. I know which book will be
first on the list.
- Wilczek, Frank.
The Lightness of Being.
New York: Basic Books, 2008.
ISBN 978-0-465-00321-1.
-
For much of its history as a science, physics has been about mass and
how it behaves in response to various forces, but until very recently
physics had little to say about the origin of mass: it was
simply a given. Some Greek natural philosophers explained it as being
made up of identical atoms, but then just assumed that the atoms
somehow had their own intrinsic mass. Newton endowed all matter with
mass, but considered its origin beyond the scope of observation and
experiment and thus outside the purview of science. As the structure
of the atom was patiently worked out in the twentieth century, it
became clear that the overwhelming majority of the mass of atoms
resides in a nucleus which makes up a minuscule fraction of its
volume, later that the nucleus is composed of protons and neutrons,
and still later that those particles were made up of quarks and
gluons, but still physicists were left with no explanation for why
these particles had the masses they did or, for that matter, any mass
at all.
In this compelling book, Nobel Physics laureate and extraordinarily
gifted writer Frank Wilczek describes how one of the greatest
intellectual edifices ever created by the human mind: the
drably named “standard model” of particle physics,
combined with what is almost certainly the largest scientific
computation ever performed to date (teraflop massively parallel
computers running for several months on a single problem),
has finally produced a highly plausible explanation for the
origin of the mass of normal matter (ourselves and everything
we have observed in the universe), or at least about 95%
of it—these matters, and matter itself, always seems to
have some more complexity to tease out.
And what's the answer? Well, the origin of mass is the
vacuum, and its interaction with fields which fill
all of the space in the universe. The quantum vacuum is a
highly dynamic medium, seething with fluctuations and
ephemeral virtual particles which come and go in instants
which make even the speed of present-day computers look
like geological time. The interaction of this vacuum with
massless quarks produces, through processes explained
so lucidly here, around 95% of the mass of the nucleus
of atoms, and hence what you see when stepping on the bathroom
scale. Hey, if you aren't happy with that number, just remember
that 95% of it is just due to the boiling of the quantum
vacuum. Or, you could go on a
diet.
This spectacular success of the standard model, along with its
record over the last three decades in withstanding every
experimental test to which it has been put, inspires confidence
that, as far as it goes, it's on the right track. But just
as the standard model was consolidating this triumph, astronomers
produced powerful evidence that everything it explains: atoms,
ourselves, planets, stars, and galaxies—everything we
observe and the basis of all sciences from antiquity
to the present—makes up less than 5% of the total mass
of the universe. This discovery, and the conundrum of how the
standard model can be reconciled with the equally-tested
yet entirely mathematically incompatible theory of
gravitation, general relativity, leads the author into
speculation on what may lie ahead, how what we presently know (or
think we know) may be a piece in a larger puzzle, and how experimental
tests expected within the next decade may provide clues and open the
door to these larger theories. All such speculation is clearly
labeled, but it is proffered in keeping with what he calls the Jesuit
Credo, “It is more blessed to ask forgiveness than
permission.”
This is a book for the intelligent layman, and a superb
twenty page glossary is provided for terms used in the text
with which the reader may be unfamiliar. In fact, the glossary
is worth reading in its own right, as it expands on many
subjects and provides technical details absent in the
main text. The end notes are also excellent and shouldn't
be missed. One of the best things about this book, in my
estimation, is what is missing from it. Unlike so
many physicists writing for a popular audience, Wilczek feels
no need whatsoever to recap the foundations of twentieth
century science. He assumes, and I believe wisely, that
somebody who picks up a book on the origin of mass by a
Nobel Prize winner probably already knows the basics of
special relativity and quantum theory and doesn't need to
endure a hundred pages recounting them for the five hundredth
time before getting to the interesting stuff. For the reader
who has wandered in without this background knowledge, the
glossary will help, and also direct the reader to
introductory popular books and texts on the various topics.
- Pipes. Richard.
Communism: A History.
New York: Doubleday, [2001] 2003.
ISBN 978-0-8129-6864-4.
-
This slim volume (just 175 pages) provides, for its size, the best
portrait I have encountered of the origins of communist theory, the
history of how various societies attempted to implement it in the
twentieth century, and the tragic consequences of those grand scale
social experiments and their aftermath. The author, a retired
professor of history at Harvard University, is one of the most eminent
Western scholars of Russian and Soviet history. The book examines
communism as an ideal, a program, and its embodiment
in political regimes in various countries. Based on the
ideals of human equality and subordination of the individual to the
collective which date at least back to Plato, communism, first set out
as a program of action by Marx and Engels, proved itself almost
infinitely malleable in the hands of subsequent theorists and
political leaders, rebounding from each self-evident failure (any one
of which should, in a rational world, have sufficed to falsify a
theory which proclaims itself “scientific”), morphing into
yet another infallible and inevitable theory of history. In the words
of the immortal Bullwinkle J. Moose, “This time for sure!”
Regardless of the nature of the society in which the
communist program is undertaken and the particular
variant of the theory adopted, the consequences
have proved remarkably consistent: emergence of an elite
which rules through violence, repression, and fear;
famine and economic stagnation; and collapse of the
individual enterprise and innovation which are the
ultimate engine of progress of all kinds. No better
example of this is the comparison of North and South
Korea on p. 152. Here are two countries which
started out identically devastated by Japanese occupation
in World War II and then by the Korean War, with identical
ethnic makeup, which diverged in the subsequent decades to such
an extent that famine killed around two million people in
North Korea in the 1990s, at which time the GDP per capita
in the North was around US$900 versus US$13,700 in the
South. Male life expectancy at birth in the North was
48.9 years compared to 70.4 years in the South, with an infant
mortality rate in the North more than ten times that of
the South. This appalling human toll was modest compared
to the famines and purges of the Soviet Union and
Communist China, or the apocalyptic fate of Cambodia
under Pol Pot.
The Black Book of Communism
puts the total death toll due to communism in the
twentieth century as between 85 and 100 million,
which is half again greater than that of both
world wars combined. To those who say “One cannot
make an omelette without breaking eggs”, the
author answers, “Apart from the fact that
human beings are not eggs, the trouble is that no
omelette has emerged from the slaughter.”
(p. 158)
So effective were communist states in their “big lie”
propaganda, and so receptive were many Western intellectuals to its
idealistic message, that many in the West were unaware of this human
tragedy as it unfolded over the better part of a century. This book
provides an excellent starting point for those unaware of the reality
experienced by those living in the lands of communism and those for
whom that epoch is distant, forgotten history, but who remain, like
every generation, susceptible to idealistic messages and unaware of
the suffering of those who attempted to put them into practice in
the past.
Communism proved so compelling to intellectuals (and,
repackaged, remains so) because it promised hope for a
new way of living together and change to a rational
world where the best and the brightest—intellectuals
and experts—would build a better society, shorn of
all the conflict and messiness which individual liberty
unavoidably entails. The author describes this book as
“an introduction to Communism and, at the same
time, its obituary.” Maybe—let's
hope so. But this book can serve an even more
important purpose: as a cautionary tale of how the best
of intentions can lead directly to the worst of outcomes.
When, for example, one observes in the present-day politics
of the United States the creation, deliberate exacerbation,
and exploitation of crises to implement a political
agenda; use of engineered financial collapse to advance
political control over the economy and pauperise and
render dependent upon the state classes of people
who would otherwise oppose it; the creation, personalisation,
and demonisation of enemies replacing substantive debate
over policy; indoctrination of youth in collectivist
dogma; and a number of other strategies right out of Lenin's
playbook, one wonders if the influence of that evil mummy has truly
been eradicated, and wishes that the message in this book were more
widely known there and around the world.
- Post, David G.
In Search of Jefferson's Moose.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
ISBN 978-0-19-534289-5.
-
In 1787, while serving as Minister to France, Thomas Jefferson
took time out from his diplomatic duties to arrange to have shipped
from New Hampshire across the Atlantic Ocean the complete skeleton,
skin, and antlers of a bull moose, which was displayed in his residence
in Paris. Jefferson was involved in a dispute with the
Comte
de Buffon, who argued that the fauna of the New World were
degenerate compared to those of Europe and Asia. Jefferson concluded
that no verbal argument or scientific evidence would be as convincing
of the “structure and majesty of American quadrupeds” as
seeing a moose in the flesh (or at least the bone), so he ordered one
up for display.
Jefferson was a passionate believer in the exceptionality of the
New World and the prospects for building a self-governing republic
in its expansive territory. If it took hauling a moose all the
way to Paris to convince Europeans disdainful of the promise of
his nascent nation, then so be it—bring on the moose!
Among Jefferson's voluminous writings, perhaps none expressed
these beliefs as strongly as his magisterial Notes on the State of
Virginia. The present book, subtitled “Notes on the State
of Cyberspace” takes Jefferson's work as a model and
explores this new virtual place which has been built based
upon a technology which simply sends packets of data from place
to place around the world. The parallels between the
largely unexplored North American continent of Jefferson's
time and today's Internet are strong and striking, as the
author illustrates with extensive quotations from Jefferson
interleaved in the text (set in italics to distinguish them
from the author's own words) which are as applicable to the
Internet today as the land west of the Alleghenies in the
late 18th century.
Jefferson believed in building systems which could scale
to arbitrary size without either losing their essential
nature or becoming vulnerable to centralisation and
the attendant loss of liberty and autonomy. And he believed
that free individuals, living within such a system and
with access to as much information as possible and the
freedom to communicate without restrictions would
self-organise to perpetuate, defend, and extend such a polity.
While Europeans, notably
Montesquieu,
believed that self-governance
was impossible in a society any larger than a city-state, and
organised their national and imperial governments accordingly,
Jefferson's 1784 plan for the government of new Western territory
set forth an explicitly power law fractal architecture which,
he believed, could scale arbitrarily large without depriving
citizens of local control of matters which directly concerned them.
This architecture is stunningly similar to that of the global
Internet, and the bottom-up governance of the Internet to
date (which Post explores in some detail) is about as Jeffersonian
as one can imagine.
As the Internet has become a central part of global commerce and
the flow of information in all forms, the eternal conflict
between the decentralisers and champions of individual liberty
(with confidence that free people will sort things out for
themselves)—the Jeffersonians—and those who
believe that only strong central authority and the
vigorous enforcement of rules can prevent
chaos—Hamiltonians—has
emerged once again in the
contemporary debate about “Internet governance”.
This is a work of analysis, not advocacy. The author, a law professor
and regular contributor to The
Volokh Conspiracy Web log, observes that, despite being
initially funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, the
development of the Internet to date has been one of the most
Jeffersonian processes in history, and has scaled from a handful
of computers in 1969 to a global network with billions of users
and a multitude of applications never imagined by its creators,
and all through consensual decision making and contractual
governance with nary a sovereign gun-wielder in sight. So
perhaps before we look to “fix” the unquestioned
problems and challenges of the Internet by turning the
Hamiltonians loose upon it, we should listen well to the
wisdom of Jefferson, who has much to say which is directly
applicable to exploring, settling, and governing this new
territory which technology has opened up. This book is a
superb way to imbibe the wisdom of Jefferson, while learning the
basics of the Internet architecture and how it, in many ways,
parallels that of aspects of Jefferson's time. Jefferson
even spoke to intellectual property issues which read like
today's news, railing against a “rascal” using
an abusive patent of a long-existing device to extort money
from mill owners (p. 197), and creating and distributing
“freeware” including a design for a uniquely
efficient plough blade based upon Newton's Principia
which he placed in the public domain, having “never thought
of monopolizing by patent any useful idea which happened to
offer itself to me” (p. 196).
So astonishing was Jefferson's intellect that as you read
this book you'll discover that he has a great deal to say
about this new frontier we're opening up today. Good
grief—did you know that the Oxford English Dictionary
even credits Jefferson with being the first person to use
the words “authentication” and
“indecipherable” (p. 124)? The author's
lucid explanations, deft turns of phrase, and agile leaps between
the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries are worthy of the
forbidding standard set by the man so extensively quoted here.
Law professors do love their footnotes, and this is
almost two books in one: the focused main text and the more
rambling but fascinating footnotes, some of which span several
pages. There is also an extensive list of references and
sources for all of the Jefferson quotations in the end notes.
- Niven, Larry and Jerry Pournelle.
Escape from Hell.
New York: Tor Books, 2009.
ISBN 978-0-7653-1632-5.
-
Every now and then you read a novel where you're absolutely certain as
you turn the pages that the author(s) had an absolute blast writing
it, and when that's the case the result is usually superbly
entertaining. That is certainly true here. How could two past
masters of science fiction and fantasy not delight in a
scenario in which they can darn to heck anybody they
wish, choosing the particular torment for each and every sinner?
In this sequel to the authors' 1976 novel
Inferno, the protagonist
of the original novel, science fiction writer Allen Carpenter,
makes a second progress through Hell. This time, after an
unfortunate incident on the Ice in the Tenth Circle, he starts
out back in the Vestibule, resolved that this time he will
escape from Hell himself and, as he progresses ever downward
toward the exit described by Dante, to determine if it is possible
for any damned soul to escape and to aid those willing to follow him.
Hell is for eternity, but that doesn't mean things don't change there.
In the decades since Carpenter's first traverse, there have been many
modifications in the landscape of the underworld. We meet
many newly-damned souls as well as revisiting those
encountered before. Carpenter recounts his story to Sylvia Plath, who as a
suicide, has been damned as a tree in the Wood of the Suicides in the
Seventh Circle and who, rescued by him, accompanies him downward to the
exit. The ice cream stand in the Fiery Desert is a refreshing
interlude from justice without mercy! The treatment of one particular
traitor in the Ice is sure to prove controversial; the authors
explain their reasoning for his being there in the Notes at the end.
A theme which runs throughout is how Hell is a kind of Heaven to
many of those who belong there and, having found their niche in
Eternity, aren't willing to gamble it for the chance of salvation.
I've had jobs like that—got better.
I'll not spoil the ending, but will close by observing that the
authors have provided a teaser for a possible
Paradiso
somewhere down the road.
Should that come to pass, I'll look forward
to devouring it as I did this thoroughly rewarding yarn. I'll wager that
if that work comes to pass,
Pournelle's
Iron Law of Bureaucracy will be found to apply as Below, so Above.
- Forstchen, William R.
One Second After.
New York: Forge, 2009.
ISBN 978-0-7653-1758-2.
-
Suppose, one fine spring day, with no warning or evident cause, the
power went out. After a while, when it didn't come back on,
you might try to telephone the power company, only to discover
the phone completely dead. You pull out your mobile
phone, and it too is kaput—nothing happens at all
when you try to turn it on. You get the battery powered radio
you keep in the basement in case of storms, and it too is
dead; you swap in the batteries from the flashlight
(which works) but that doesn't fix the radio. So, you decide to
drive into town and see if anybody there knows what's going on.
The car doesn't start. You set out on foot, only to discover
when you get to the point along the lane where you can see
the highway that it's full of immobile vehicles with their drivers
wandering around on foot as in a daze.
What's happening—The Day the Earth Stood
Still? Is there a saucer on the ground in Washington?
Nobody knows: all forms of communication are down, all modes
of transportation halted. You might think this yet another
implausible scenario
for a thriller, but what I've just described
(in a form somewhat different than the novel) is pretty much what
the sober-sided experts of the
Commission to Assess the
Threat to the United States from
Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack sketch out in their April
2008
Critical
National Infrastructures report and
2004
Executive Report
as the consequences of the detonation of a single nuclear weapon
in space high above the continental United States. There would
be no thermal, blast, or radiation effects on the ground
(although somebody unlucky enough to be looking toward
the location of the detonation the sky might suffer vision
damage, particularly if it occurred at night), but
a massive
electromagnetic pulse
(EMP) created as prompt gamma rays from the nuclear detonation create
free electrons in the upper atmosphere due to the
Compton effect
which spiral along the lines of force of Earth's magnetic field and
emit an intense electric field pulse in three phases which reaches
the ground and affects electrical and electronic equipment in a
variety of ways, none good. As far as is known, the electromagnetic
pulse is completely harmless to humans and other living organisms
and would not even be perceived by them.
But it's Hell on electronics. The immediate (E1) pulse arrives at the
speed of light everywhere within the line of sight of the detonation,
and with a rise time of at most a few nanoseconds, gets into all kinds
of electronics much faster than any form of transient protection can
engage; this is what kills computer and communications gear and any
other kind of electronics with exposed leads or antennas which the
pulse can excite. The second phase (E2) pulse is much like the
effects of a local lightning strike, and would not cause damage to
equipment with proper lightning protection except that in many cases
the protection mechanisms may have been damaged or disabled by the
consequences of the E1 pulse (which has no counterpart in lightning,
and hence lightning mitigation gear is not tested to withstand it).
Finally, the E3 pulse arrives, lasting tens to hundreds of seconds,
which behaves much like the fields created during a major
solar/geomagnetic storm (although the EMP effect may be larger),
inducing large currents in long distance electrical transmission lines
and other extended conductive structures. The consequences of this kind
of disruption are well documented from a number of incidents such as
the 1989 geomagnetic storm which caused the collapse of the Quebec Hydro
power distribution grid. But unlike a geomagnetic storm, the EMP E3 pulse
can affect a much larger area, hit regions in latitudes rarely vulnerable
to geomagnetic storms, and will have to be recovered from in an environment
where electronics and communications are down due to the damage from the
E1 and E2 pulses.
If you attribute much of the technological and economic progress of the
last century and a half to the connection of the developed world by
electrical, transportation, communication, and computational networks
which intimately link all parts of the economy and interact
with one another in complex and often non-obvious ways, you can
think about the consequences of the detonation of a single nuclear
weapon launched by a relatively crude missile (which need not be
long range if fired, say, from a freighter outside the
territorial waters of the target country) by imagining living in
the 21st century, seeing the lights flicker and go out and hearing
the air conditioner stop, and two minutes later you're living
in 1860. None of this is fantasy—all of the EMP effects were documented
in nuclear tests in the 1960s and hardening military gear against
EMP has been an active area of research and development for decades:
this book, which sits on my own shelf, was
published 25 years ago. Little or no effort has been expended on
hardening the civil infrastructure or commercial electronics against
this threat.
This novel looks at what life might be like in the year following
an EMP attack on the United States, seen through the microcosm of a
medium sized college town in North Carolina where the protagonist
is a history professor.
Unlike many thrillers, the author superbly describes the sense
of groping in the dark when communication is cut and rumours
begin to fly, the realisation that with the transportation
infrastructure down the ready food supply is measured in
days (especially after the losses due to failure of refrigeration),
and the consequences to those whose health depends upon medications
produced at great distance and delivered on a just in time basis.
It is far from a pretty picture, but given the premises of the
story (about which I shall natter a bit below), entirely plausible
in my opinion. This story has the heroes and stolid get-things-done
people who come to the fore in times of crisis, but it also shows
how thin the veneer of civilisation is when the food starts to
run out and the usual social constraints and sanctions begin to
fail. There's no triumphant ending: what is described is a disaster
and the ensuing tragedy, with survival for some the best which can be made
of the situation. The message is that this, or something like it
although perhaps not so extreme, could happen, and that
the time to take the relatively modest and inexpensive (at least
compared to recent foreign military campaigns) steps to render
an EMP attack less probable and, should one occur, to mitigate its
impact on critical life-sustaining infrastructure and prepare for
recovery from what damage does occur, is now, not the
second after the power goes out—all across the continent.
This is a compelling page-turner, which I devoured in just a few days.
I do believe the author overstates the total impact of an EMP
attack. The scenario here is that essentially everything which
incorporates solid state electronics or is plugged into the power
grid is fried at the instant of the attack,
and that only vacuum tube gear, vehicles without electronic
ignition or fuel injection, and other museum pieces remain
functional. All airliners en route fall from the sky when
their electronics are hit by the pulse. But the EMP Commission
report is relatively sanguine about equipment not connected
to the power grid which doesn't have vulnerable antennas.
They discuss aircraft at some length, and conclude that since
all commercial and military aircraft are currently tested and
certified to withstand direct lightning strikes, and all but
the latest fly-by-wire planes use mechanical and hydraulic
control linkages, they are unlikely to be affected by EMP.
They may lose communication, and the collapse of the air traffic
control system will pose major problems and doubtless lead to
some tragedies, but all planes aloft raining from the sky doesn't
seem to be in the cards. Automobiles and trucks were tested
by the commission (see pp. 115–116 of the
Critical
Infrastructures report), and no damage whatsoever
occurred to vehicles not running when subjected to a simulated pulse;
some which were running stopped, but all but a few immediately
restarted and none required more than routine garage repairs.
Having the highways open and trucks on the road makes a
huge difference in a disaster recovery scenario.
But let me qualify these quibbles by noting that nobody
knows what will actually happen: with non-nuclear
EMP and other electromagnetic weapons a focus of current
research, doubtless much of the information on vulnerability
of various systems remains under the seal of secrecy. And
besides, in a cataclysmic situation, it's usually
the things you didn't think of which cause the
most dire problems.
One language note: the author seems to believe that the word
“of” is equivalent to “have” when used
in a phrase such as “You should've” or
“I'd have”—instead, he writes “You should of”
and “I'd of”. At first I thought this was a dialect
affectation of a single character, but it's used all over the
place, by characters of all kinds of regional and cultural
backgrounds. Now, this usage is grudgingly sanctioned
(or at least acknowledged) by the descriptive
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary
of English Usage (p. 679, item 2), but it
just drives me nuts; if you consider the definitions of the
individual words, what can “should of” possibly mean?
This novel focuses on the human story of people caught entirely by
surprise trying to survive in a situation beyond their imagining one
second before. If reading this book makes you ponder what steps you
might take beforehand to protect your family in such a circumstance,
James Wesley Rawles's
Patriots (December 2008),
which is being issued in a
new, expanded edition in April 2009,
is an excellent resource, as is Rawles's
SurvivalBlog.
A podcast
interview with William R. Forstchen about
One Second After is available.