In 2027, America Will Fall. Collapse - a dystopian thriller about the future downfall of America.
BOOK ONE in the NEW AMERICA series.
America is falling, ready to join the Roman Empire as a distant memory in the annals of history. The year is 2027. Tired and desperate, the American people are deep in the middle of The Second Great Depression. The Florida coastline is in ruins from the most powerful hurricane on record; a second just like it is bearing down on the state of Texas. For the first time in history, the Middle East has united as one and amassed the most formidable army the world has seen since the Third Reich. A hidden army of terrorists is on American soil. This is the story of three men: Howard Beck, the world’s richest man, also diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. Richard Dupree, ex-Navy SEAL turned escaped convict. Maxwell Harris, a crippled, burned out Chief of Police of a small Texas town. At first they must fight for their own survival against impossible odds. Finally, the three men must band together to save their beloved country from collapse.
BOOK TWO in the New America series, entitled "Resistance" is slated for a summer 2013 release.
Professional Reviews
Slings like Clancy, pops like Emmerich
A rumbling maelstrom churning until the last word...
There's something very wrong, more than the Second Great Depression plaguing this new America. Within the first few pages of Collapse author Richard Stephenson quickly draws us into a world teetering toward collapse. Blame it on a failing education system. Blame it on bickering leaders in Washington. Blame it on extravagance. Blame it on Americans who had a chance to do something and could not, or made the wrong choices.
Presence, after all, is the requisite for causality. Who participates and conversely who does not greatly influences outcome. We see that played out everyday in our headlines. So often we credit the people sitting at the bargaining table for their ability to defuse or devise the next step. Timing, Stephenson suggests, is far more basic: a series of junctures linked through causality dependent on mavericks and managers to navigate circumstances already set in motion. Call Collapse a Tom Clancy and Roland Emmerich mash-up: a clear case of too many off switches and a predictable enemy on foreign soil.
Classify Collapse under dystopian? Not quite. I'll explain. The story doesn't awaken within a dystopian state. That's key. What Stephenson does clearly establish are the events that would create a dystopian future--a prequel, if you will--in which we see men and women determined to prevent democracy's wholesale slaughter. Distracted by the threat of nuclear war, destruction brought about by a hurricane, the Second Great Depression, it's a cocktail of just too many off switches. Powerless to prevent the downfall, our heroes remain resolute (yes, even reckless) as the story hones in on each character, hope blazing. They believe hope is within reach. And because they believed, I cheered them on.
Fantastic Must Read!
I've read a lot of best sellers in my day and this book is better than most of them! A real page-turner, I couldn't put it down. Very impressed with how the story flows so seamlessly and the characters are so real to me. Can't wait for the sequel!
As Scary as it is Plausible
Author Richard Stephenson has hit one out of the park with his novel, Collapse. Watch the America we know literally collapse under the weight of natural disasters, rouge nations and damned scary power-hungry politicians.
I found Collapse to be entertaining, intriguing and scary as hell. To say that the premise of the novel is believable would be an understatement. Although it takes place in 2027, there is not reason that most of this (except Beck's AI technology) couldn't happen in the next six months. Keeping that thought in the back of my mind helped to propel me through reading this book in just a few sittings.
Richard counts on us embracing the characters and that's easy enough to do. The Navy Seal is iconic as one of the protagonists and is balanced nicely by his cell-mate and cohort Tank. It poses an interesting contrast. And while Beck (The world's richest man) is initially a spoiled and prissy little turd, he eventually steps up and does the right thing.
Collapse is rich with sub-plots that seamlessly converge and everyone ends up where they're supposed to be. I enjoyed reading the book and was excited to see that the ending leaves the door wide open for a sequel.
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