John Varley is always an interesting writer. His stories are very reminiscent of Heinlein and other Golden Age masters, but with a contemporary feel. So, I was looking forward to his latest novel, Slow Apocalypse. It starts in a way that is very similar to one of my favorite movies, Miracle Mile, in the slow buildup with one person knowing a disaster is coming and snowballing into madness. Unfortunately, after a good beginning, the book sort of peters out amid the humdrum details of life after the apocalypse. Let’s check out what happened.

Dave Marshall is an Los Angeles based sitcom writer who had one big show and has been struggling to find his next big project. He’s slowly drifting away from hiw wife, Karen, who has a sense of entitlement from his years on the top and is unwilling to face the reality of his current struggles. His daughter, Addison, is a typical teen who loves horses, but he’s unsure if he will be able to afford her future horse related needs. With this as the background, Dave finds himself talking to a military man with a secret. A scientist who works with bacteria has created a new bacteria that will destroy all oil. The scientist created the bacteria to punish the Middle-East, but it mutated and soon all oil across the world were destroyed. And the oil destruction lead to horrific explosions from the oil fields.

Dave has a story, but he’s not sure what to do. He half-heartedly starts a screenplay, which he hopes will be his ticket back to the top. But, as things start coming true, he makes plans to get whatever he needs to survive (food, weapons, downloading books on survival, etc.). His daughter is his secret ally, though his wife thinks he’s going crazy. Then the Los Angeles oil fields start exploding and it’s almost every man for themselves. Neighborhoods start growing together for mutual assistance and defense. Dave and his wife take a scooter tour of Los Angeles to survey the damage. The plans to run away to Oregon, never quite get off the ground. And, once the apocalypse begins, it’s just not that interesting anymore. The characters are fairly flat and the plot just meanders around for a long while.

Overall, the book is just sort of there. It’s not horrible, but it is fairly boring. There isn’t anything to carry the story once disaster strikes and the characters just wander through the apocalypse (literally at times). Karen goes from stereotypically bitchy wife to competent partner in about three pages and that is the extent of character development. Dave is the everyman the book needs as a lens through which to view the disaster. But his everyman character means that he doesn’t bring much to the story. This book needed either more plot or better supporting characters and it had neither. I wish this was a better book because it’s such an interesting premise, but I can’t really recommend it. Not recommended.