The novel begins with two laboratory workers, Brian and Carl, fighting over the same girl in an office love triangle. A newscast on the radio in the background is discussing an ambitious cryogenics project happening in Afghanistan conducted by Soviet scientists. A defector among the scientists is warning the media that these experiments could cause a worldwide failure of all electrical products.
And then poof! The lights go out at the lab. Brian and Carl are dispatched by their boss to see how far the outage stretches and return with a full report of that the men find. In 1964, losing access to your transistor radio was like an internet outage today.
Once outside, Brian and Carl see the extent of the outage. As the book’s cover betrays, everything is out of order — cars, clocks, flashlights, phones — all dead. The laws of nature surely have changed. Human hysteria and lawlessness follow.
The author spends a lot of time (too much, in fact) rationalizing the science behind this science fiction. There are explanations of electron gas that carries a current and hydrometer testing. Most of this can be easily glazed over, so the reader can get to the evolving anarchy.
The journey through a post-apocalyptic wasteland has been done a million times in survivalist literature - although this is a fairly early entry in the genre. You have your wandering nomads and warlords turning to analog weapons to gather power. Pretty standard stuff - all very readable.
The Day the Machines Stopped is a decent entry in the post-apocalyptic genre. It’s been done better elsewhere but this short and entertaining paperback is probably worth your time if you have it in your library. Just don’t spend a fortune chasing it down. Get it affordable HERE.
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