A Meeting in Corvallis

S. M. Stirling's new book "A Meeting in Corvallis" will be released this coming Tuesday. This is the final book in the "Emberverse" trilogy, which is set in the Willamette Valley ten years after an event called "The Change" renders electricity, explosives and firearms inoperable. In a blink, technology fails.

There is actually another trilogy planned as a sequel to this one, set 25 years after "Meeting in Corvallis." For now, I'm going to have to find a copy of the first book, "Dies the Fire," simply out of curiosity. Not many fiction books are set right here in little ol' Corvallis.

S. M. Stirling's website actually has resource material for readers of the trilogy, including maps and flags of the local area and other parts of Oregon. I find it hilarious that Silver Creek Falls has been renamed "Mithrilwood," now occupied by the Dunedain Rangers (guess the diehard Tolkien fans survive this Change intact), and that the Corvallis flag has good old Benny Beaver.

I'm always being badgered by well-meaning (and geeky) friends to read more sci-fi and fantasy, so I was a bit surprised that I'd heard nothing about this author or series previously. A glance at Wikipedia shows an odd dichotomy: Stirling says the world would be better off if Islam vanished entirely, but he doesn't want to be lumped in the same category as the neocons, and his books tend to be more liberal in content.

Who knows? Who cares? It's fiction, not an autobiography. I'm going to have to read the series, just because I'm curious to see the Willamette Valley is depicted in this dystopian manner.