John Ringo Comments On New Book ‘The Last Centurion’

Best-selling SF author John Ringo told SCI FI Wire that his new novel, The Last Centurion, felt like dictation from the future, but, given the subject matter, he prays to God it wasn’t.

“Many of the subjects discussed in the book are subjects I’ve studied for other reasons, some of them for decades, but the genesis was a voice whispering in my ear: ‘Go and search beyond the ranges,’” Ringo said in an interview.

The novel was written in a rush, over an 11-day period. “I thought at first it was just going to be a short [story],” Ringo said. “Then a novelette. Then it was suddenly a novel. And it felt, eerily, like someone was dictating from the future. It wasn’t my normal sort of writing frenzy, and the book is not at all like my normal books. It is a memoir told in blog-style format similar in essence to any of the current books where people take their essays and blog entries and compile them with some additional explanation.”

The first part of the book is essentially one long rant that sets up the conditions of the novel. “It talks about what happened to create the worldwide catastrophe, both the uncontrollable aspects (solar-driven global cooling and a pandemic) and the controllable aspects (complete failure of most governmental control and response systems) that is central to the events in the novel,” Ringo said. “That sets up the second part, leaving the main character, a company of Stryker infantry and 60 Nepalese cooks stranded in Iran,” Ringo added. “The last part details the main character’s experiences upon returning home, initially as a celebrity and quickly thereafter a political pariah.”

There are two key factors that cause the worldwide disaster. “[The causes are] a reduction in solar-wind output signified by a lack of sunspots and H5N1 (avian bird flu) virus becoming human-to-human (H2H) transmissible,” Ringo said. “At the time of writing in 2007 there was no evidence to expect the former, and the latter was considered genetically unlikely. Since writing the novel, the first is taking place as we speak (along with shifts in global currents to cold cycle) and the second has happened sporadically throughout the Old World.” –John Joseph Adams

Source: Scifi Wire