![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowI'm not going to give a full-bore review of George R. Stewart's _Storm_, but I do want to make a few comments.
First: a book with that title nowadays - or any time since, say, 1970 - would have an exclamation point attached; the titular storm would be, at the very least, a Category 3 hurricane; and Irwin Allen or someone like him would produce the film version. That is not this book. "Maria", at her peak, is an extremely large rainstorm, stretching from south of LA to the Bay Area. There is lots of rain - flooding in the Sacramento Valley; lots of snow - Donner Pass is briefly blocked; and the occasional gale-force wind, but nothing sustained for long.
The book is mostly about the people who have to deal with the storm: meteorologists, utility workers (both the linemen out repairing breaks and the coordinators shunting electricity and phone lines around the breaches), airport personnel, the people who manage the weirs and dams to mitigate flooding... Their tasks, the decisions they make and the labor they put in, are the true content of the story.
It is notable that many of the main characters are never named, only identified by title: the Junior Meteorologist, the General whose job it is to try to control flooding, and a dozen more. There are people with names, but almost all of them are outsiders - drivers caught in the snow, a pilot struggling with sudden turbulence, and others whose safety lies in the hands of the titled. The list of named characters and the list of casualties are almost identical: a couple of named people survive, and likewise one or two titled people die. The point, I think, is that Stewart valued these characters on the basis of their responsibilities and abilities, giving due honor to the nameless engineers and Sons of Martha who work behind the scenes to keep the rest of us safe. (There are a couple of passages in _Earth Abides_ which express a similar view.)
It's a good read, not a great one, but if you found value in _Earth Abides_, you'll find at least a taste of the same in this book.
First: a book with that title nowadays - or any time since, say, 1970 - would have an exclamation point attached; the titular storm would be, at the very least, a Category 3 hurricane; and Irwin Allen or someone like him would produce the film version. That is not this book. "Maria", at her peak, is an extremely large rainstorm, stretching from south of LA to the Bay Area. There is lots of rain - flooding in the Sacramento Valley; lots of snow - Donner Pass is briefly blocked; and the occasional gale-force wind, but nothing sustained for long.
The book is mostly about the people who have to deal with the storm: meteorologists, utility workers (both the linemen out repairing breaks and the coordinators shunting electricity and phone lines around the breaches), airport personnel, the people who manage the weirs and dams to mitigate flooding... Their tasks, the decisions they make and the labor they put in, are the true content of the story.
It is notable that many of the main characters are never named, only identified by title: the Junior Meteorologist, the General whose job it is to try to control flooding, and a dozen more. There are people with names, but almost all of them are outsiders - drivers caught in the snow, a pilot struggling with sudden turbulence, and others whose safety lies in the hands of the titled. The list of named characters and the list of casualties are almost identical: a couple of named people survive, and likewise one or two titled people die. The point, I think, is that Stewart valued these characters on the basis of their responsibilities and abilities, giving due honor to the nameless engineers and Sons of Martha who work behind the scenes to keep the rest of us safe. (There are a couple of passages in _Earth Abides_ which express a similar view.)
It's a good read, not a great one, but if you found value in _Earth Abides_, you'll find at least a taste of the same in this book.
