Aurora audiobook

When nothing works anything goes. -------------------------------------- Be Prepared! - Boy Scout MottoEver since the Neolithic and the introduction of sedentary farming, we are a species that has evolved to rely on external supports to keep us going, an infrastructure that provides water, transportation routes and means, manufacturing, either by hand or machine, of things we need that we do not or cannot make for ourselves, and means of communication that do not require direct line of sight, or being within proximate hearing distance. So, what happens when one of the absolute necessities undergirding all our infrastructures vanishes? It’s not like the K-Pg asteroid that obliterated vast numbers of species across the planet in a day, 66 million years ago. How might people react when there is a sudden, if not immediately lethal, change in our way of living? Will we devolve to warring tribes? Will we come together for the common good? Some combination? Something else entirely?David Koepp - image from his site This time it is a major solar flare, aka a CME or Coronal Mass Ejection. Which I prefer to think of, because I am twelve, as massive projectile solar vomiting. (Probably had too much to drink at that intergalactic frat party. It likes beer!) We have not seen the likes of such a mass ejection since 1859. (If we do not count the Braves-Padres game of August 12, 1984, when 17 players and coaches were asked to leave, but I digress). When it arrived back then it did not really make that much difference. We were a pre-electrical civilization. Telegraphy had a bad day. A few wires got fried. This and that went wrong. But no big whup, really. This time the solar storm is the same, but the results will be dramatically different. These days we are a species that is reliant on electricity for almost everything. Very big whup this time. The power spike of power spikes. Everything shuts down, or close enough to it.There are a few scientists who see what is about to happen. They warn the people who need to be warned, or try. Think the film Don’t Look Up, or almost any disaster film. Of course, the reaction of world leaders is not what Koepp is looking at here. The notion of extraordinary global events that deprive us of power—in ways both literal and figurative—is something I’ve explored in the past. But it was fascinating to shift my focus from the global to the hyperlocal, and the ways in which tiny communities might come together or split apart during hardship. - from the acknowledgmentsThere was a wonderful series of ads on in 2020 and 2021, for a shingles vaccine. A person would be shown doing something healthful, or telling how they take care of themselves. The sonorous voice-over would interrupt with “Shingles Doesn’t Care,” which was pretty funny, and memorable, getting the advertiser’s message across that people over 50 should get vaccinated. I thought of that while reading this book. No, no one in the book is suffering from that virus-based ailment, but we are reminded over and over that the best laid plans of mice and men…(Actually the original, from the poem To a Mouse by Robert Burns, goes The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley), which we will translate here into the modern patois of Doomsday Doesn’t Care!There are the usual suspects who insist that the bad thing is never gonna happen, deniers at full volume. (Sadly, these are all too much a mindless, know-nothing, demagogic trope in real life, so no reaching is required.) Why waste precious government resources (which reminds me of precious bodily fluids from another era) on things like girding for a known, expected emergency, when it can be redirected to building walls, jails, ethnic hatred, religious intolerance, and paranoia, or cutting taxes for the richest. Doomsday Doesn’t Care!Ok, so a very hard rain is gonna fall, and we need some folks to be our eyes and ears through the experience. Aubrey Wheeler is our primary POV. She is 38 and the default parent of her step-son, Scott, 16. Her ex, Rusty, is a disaster, enough so that when he left, Scott opted to remain with Aubrey. The guy who impressed Aubrey when they met has taken a nose-dive straight to the bottom, drugs, crime, amorality, and a willingness to use anyone to get what he wants. Rusty was a “shit,” used in the classical sense of “waste matter expelled from the body,” because he had been an enormous misuse of her time, resources, and love. They reside in Aurora, Illinois, a city of nearly 200,000. But within that, a much tinier slice. Cayuga Lane fit the model of what Aubrey had been trying to build since she was little. Ten minutes from downtown, it was short cul-de-sac with six houses, most of them old builds from the 1920s or ‘30s. Small community number one.How about if you set up a safe house, a place where you can weather the storm, whether it is months or years, lots of supplies on hand, expertise being shipped there as we speak, lots of nice insulating earth between y’all and the incoming energy burst? Someplace out of the way, say, outside Jericho, Utah. Small community number two.Thom Banning is an obnoxious billionaire tech sort, brilliant in his way, but maybe not the most gifted person on Earth with people skills. He has reconfigured an old missile site as his personal bug-out retreat in the event of a catastrophe like this one. He even figured in all the professional sorts he might like to have at hand for a long time away from everything. Security, power, comms, food, food-prep, transportation, living space, lots of cash. Excellent Boy Scout work. But then there is that people-person chink. He aspires to reconcile with his wife there. Thom is Aubrey’s big brother. I was in NYC when superstorm Sandy set Con Ed’s Manhattan transformers sparking and popping like slow-sequence firecrackers. Prep all you like. Doomsday Doesn’t Care!There are smaller looks elsewhere. A city area does not fare well. Reports come in from other places, generally not in a very hopeful way. But the how-are-they-faring focus is primarily on Aurora, and Thom’s redoubt. Koepp wanted to write a ground-level, personal perspective to a disastrous global event, while contrasting someone who was uber-prepared with someone who was not prepared at all. The story alternates between Aubrey, in Aurora, and Thom, et al, in his tricked-out missile silo, living La Dolce Vita relative to most of humanity, with a few breaks to see through other eyes.The supporting cast is a mixed lot. Rusty is a baddie from the build-a-loser shop. We have to wonder, even though Koepp offers us a paragraph of explanation, how Aubrey did not see through his act way sooner. He is a powerful presence, but pretty much pure id. There is more going on with Scott, the stepson. A young scientist photobombs the story then vanishes until called on for a cameo later on. An elderly scientist offers a nice touch of deep, zen-like appreciation for the wonders of nature, while shedding bits of goodness and optimism like a seed-stage dandelion on a windy day. The idea of how different communities might respond to disaster certainly offers us the chance to consider how things might develop in our communities. Would our neighbors come together to forge a way forward, or form armed bands to take whatever they wanted?The relationship between Aubrey and Thom is a connective thread that sustains a tension level throughout. What is the big secret, often hinted at, which binds them? What level of crazy will Rusty reach? How far will he go? I would have preferred a bit more on the science and details of how a newly power-free world slows to a stop, with discussion about what would be needed to crank things back up. But that’s just me. The story in no way requires this. Aurora does not break new ground with its local-eyed view of global phenomena, but it works that approach effectively enough. Aubrey is an appealing lead, disorganized, very human, flawed, but very decent at heart, thus someone we can easily root for. Characters do grow (some better, some worse) over the duration, which is what we look for in good writing. You will want to know what happens next, and next, and next, so should keep flipping the pages. There is not a lot of humor here, but still, I caught a few LOLs sprinkled in. It seems to have been written very much for the screen, with a minimum of internal dialogue, and an absence of florid description. Plot is uber alles here, driving the engine forward.Movie rights have been sold, which is not at all surprising, given the author’s impressive career as a screenwriter and director. Kathryn Bigelow has been signed to direct it for Netflix. This is a wonderful Summer read, mostly a thriller to keep the juices flowing. Hopefully, it prompts you to give at least some thought to how your community might react when faced with a comparable crisis. High art it ain’t, but it does not intend to be. No Sleeping Beauty here, this Aurora is a page-turner of a thriller and will keep you wide awake while you read. …last year, things made sense. Last year, you walked into the grocery store, you paid a fair price, and you came out with your dinner. This year, you beg somebody to sell you a week’s worth of groceries for a thousand dollars. ‘if you’re lucky, they say yes, and you eat. If you’re not. They beat you to death, take your money, and they eat. Review posted – June 24, 2022Publication date – June 7, 2022 This review is cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi!=============================EXTRA STUFFLinks to the author’s personal, and

Aurora July 12, 2022First let me say I am a huge post-apocalyptic fan and I immediately scooped this one up. I really enjoyed the set-up and premise that is well-drawn and creative. This is a quick-read and is engaging all the way through. The characters are motivated for the amount of conflict. And therein lies the rub. Because the idea and set-up, is so well done, the result (or the “action” in MAR--motivation, action, reaction) fell a little short, at least for me. I personally wanted more of the disaster instead of a microcosm focused in one area. This story focuses the conflict on the individuals involved in the disaster which is fine, but I also prefer the disaster to carry the same weight as a main character. If not more. I couldn’t fully visualize the full picture of the effect. There should’ve been planes falling from the sky and disaster scenes viewed through the character’s eyes instead of being told about them in a general way. I wanted to see and feel the fear, almost be able to taste it like in some of the greats: The Passage, The Earth Abides, The Stand.What really worked was the way all the plot points came together at the end. It was violent and at the same time tender. Well done and difficult to do. It takes a skilled author to pull it off. I loved the book and will most definitely pick up the next one.David Putnam author of the Bruno Johnson series. P.S. Glocks do not have a safety switch.

Primarily, this is the story of a brother and sister - both very different from each other - and their lives in the wake of a massive solar storm that leaves most of the world without power. When it will be restored, who knows, months possibly even years? This was not what I was expecting, if you're looking for dystopian shenanigans look elsewhere, this was more of a family drama with some interesting characters, set against the backdrop of a world changing event. It was surprisingly light, a quick, entertaining read that I enjoyed well enough, soon to be a Netflix production I believe. 3.5 stars rounded up

What would happen if America's infrastructure became moot, and access to electricity was lost? This is an interesting story with compelling (if extremely unlikable) characters about the months following a natural disaster. It has the vibe of a zombie apocalypse, except without the flesh-hungry monsters. The world is dystopian, but there’s hope that everything can eventually go back to the way it was before. Set shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic, this book provides a lot of realism, both in the ways that politicians handle these types of emergencies, but also in the selfishness that you see in how people react in these types of crises.While the characters were initially quite unlikable, the writing style is compelling, and everything that happens is laced with humour, making these ordinarily unpalatable decisions made by unpalatable people much more, well, palatable. That said, I loved how the characters evolve throughout the book. Some become even more unlikable, others redeem themselves.All in all, this is a book worth reading, especially if you enjoy realistic dystopian suspense! POPSUGAR Reading Challenge 2022: This book fulfills the "A book about a manmade disaster" category. - While it’s technically a natural disaster, if the governments had listened to the scientists, the societal collapse would never have happened!

*www.onewomansbbr.wordpress.com*www.facebook.com/onewomansbbrAurora by David Koepp. (2022). **Thank you to HarperCollins Australia for sending me a free copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review; published 6 July 2022** When a solar storm hits the earth, the lights go out across the planet. The blackout could last for years. Aubrey and her stepson Scott now face the biggest challenge of their lives. Soon there are rumours of riots, the struggle for food is real, and the rule of law is collapsing. Aubrey's estranged brother Thom is a self-made billionaire and retreats to his desert bunker to ride out the crisis in luxury. But the complicated history between the siblings is far from over and what feels like the end of the world is just the beginning of a personal reckoning long overdue... I really enjoyed this novel. I suppose technically it's an apocalyptic thriller type story, however I think it has strong domestic drama vibes. I say this because the narrative concentrates more on the characters' relationships and dramas with each other in the context of the blackout rather than the blackout even itself. The beginning of the novel alternates between several different characters as we learn about the coming solar storm, and the narrative does continue to alternate between a few, but the storyline primarily concentrates on Aubrey and her brother Thom; they deal with the blackout in contrasting ways. This book is quite an engrossing and entertaining story, and would make a great media adaptation. Overall: happily recommend this one for readers that enjoy apocalyptic fiction which focuses on character tension and drama.

As a fan of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic tales, I scooped this book up! It wasn’t quite what I expected, but I think it was better because of it.A solar caused blackout affects all electronics, lights, electricity, etc. This story gives the point of view of two different groups of people and how they fare.A neighborhood comes together and takes care of each other in one of the groups, and in the other group, a billionaire takes off for his secret bunker full of supplies for himself and his family, but also brings along servants. This was an interesting tale of a near future world just coming out of the COVID pandemic and then into the worst kind of disasterous event. It also had elements of a thriller and crime, and I could barely put it down. I believe it’s being turned into a movie and I can’t wait!

As we are living through the COVID pandemic, I often wonder, what else could catastrophically occur? In Aurora we find out, as a solar storm knocks most of the world into complete darkness, frying the electrical grids. Though the premise sounds like a dystopian novel right out of the gate, I promise you that Aurora is anything but that. It's the story of two siblings, Aubrey and Thom, and they very different ways they prepare and struggle to survive the Black Sky. Aurora is a novel filled with fear, action, reactions, history, science, technology and a sense of community. It's also about family dynamics and the struggles of not only brother and sister relationships, but of step-parents, teens and divorce. Koepp weaves all of this together to create a fantastic blend of suspense, joy and fear.

This is a well-written suspense novel populated by fascinating, believable characters. I've been thinking about the book ever since I finished and I have to confess that I've also done a mental inventory of my food pantry and freezer, wondering just how long my household would last in a similar situation and how we would cope. Good story, well done!

4.5 -- I won an ARC of this book through a GoodReads giveaway and WOW! I was invest from the very first pages. Such an eerily real idea for a book. As I turned page after page I just kept thinking this could happen. This could happen today or tomorrow and I think that was why I became so invested so quickly. As if the COVID pandemic wasn't enough to deal with a CME blasts the world back to the bronze age, at least most of the globe. The trials and struggles people go through from crime lords, to meth heads. From the middle class to the filthy rich. Everyone is affect and everyone handles the possible end of times differently. Everything is so real so expect to get down and dirty. I was anxious, annoyed, heartbroken and at peace all within the 289 pages of this book. I cant wait for it to come out so more people can and enjoy and read it. I will be recommending it.

In March, Netflix announced a film adaptation of David Koepp’s latest novel, AURORA. Koepp is a celebrated screenwriter, so it’s only natural that his story may end up being acted out on screen.The book follows Aubrey Wheeler during a post-COVID solar storm that disrupts electricity to most of the world for many months. Aubrey lives with her ex-husband’s 15-year-old-son, Scott, and they find themselves surprisingly well equipped to survive. Less prepared for survival are Scott’s father, Rusty, and Aubrey’s brother, Thom. Rusty and Thom actually make the dark months more dangerous for Aubrey and Scott as they try to adjust to a world in which civilization is at risk of total collapse.Perry St. John, a researcher who monitors solar events at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is one of the first to notice the impending coronal mass ejection, which is big enough to catastrophically mess with electrical systems across the globe. He calls his mentor, retired physics professor and solar scientist Norman Levy, in Aurora, Illinois. Norman’s quick study yields the same results: the world must prepare for this event as soon as possible.Aubrey and Scott are Norman’s neighbors on Cayuga Lane. Aubrey runs a conference business that pivoted to online events during the pandemic. She has continued to step-parent Scott ever since he refused to leave with his father when she and Rusty split up. The uneasy but pragmatic partnership between Aubrey and Scott deepens as the CME looms and then becomes a reality. They have to prepare for the worst while also keeping the devious and dangerous Rusty out of their way. Scott brings his girlfriend, Celeste, to live with them, and the trio keeps an eye on the sweet and wise Norman after the electricity is gone. As time goes on, Aubrey leads her block to a vision of cooperation and sustainability that verges on idyllic.As Aubrey does her best to take care of Scott, Celeste and her neighbors, she also must manage her precarious long-distance sibling relationship. Thom is a genius tech billionaire who has been doomsday prepping for years. Whereas she and the others on Cayuga Lane try to ration their water and canned goods, he has relocated to a state-of-the-art survival bunker with his wife, children and a carefully selected staff.But Thom realizes almost immediately that he has lost control of the situation for which he spent years preparing. His wife wants nothing to do with him, and his staff chooses to take their chances in the increasingly dystopian landscape rather than stay in his employ. And Thom is really worried about Aubrey. After a disastrous attempt to help her and a frightening phone call, he drives cross-country to check on her and Scott, knowing that he is coming into a perilous situation and hoping to pay off a decade's old debt.AURORA is an exciting disaster-adventure novel, but Koepp infuses it with a remarkable tenderness for some of his characters. Aubrey is tough and smart, Scott and Celeste are an unexpected look at teen romance, and the relationship between Aubrey and Thom is complicated in interesting ways, even though Thom is occasionally a caricature more than a character. Norman steals every scene in which he appears; he is, in many ways, the heart of the novel.Koepp subtly addresses current anxieties about climate, violence and economic disparities without moralizing, resulting in an astute and entertaining outing. With smooth writing, solid plotting, great characters and a compelling premise, AURORA is a thrilling, action-packed yet thoughtful book that you will want to immerse yourself in.Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

I really enjoyed Aurora. I was introduced to dystopian fiction in 1980 in a 9th grade Civics/English class taught by two women who made learning fun and interesting. The first dystopian book I still read regularly was Alas, Babylon and as we prepped for lockdown in 2020, a lot of lessons in that book were adopted by me as we readied for supply chain issues. Aurora, as an audiobook, was very reminiscent of Alas, Babylon, focusing not so much on the event, but on the people who live through it. Thats my vibe. How does the average person adapt and thrive? Or not.At 9 hours it's a quick book and kept my interest throughout.

This wonderful novel holds a lot of power for what could potentially be the next big issue for the planet after the pandemic, I mean according to scientists we’re overdue to be hit by electromagnetic plasma. The author opens the book talking about the Carrington event in 1859 which knocked out the electrical systems on earth, and how the sun ejects electromagnetic plasma that in our direction every day, but once every 150 of so years that plasma will hit the earth.This book features such an event that knocks all power out across the globe and everywhere pretty much north and south of the equator is left without power. And as we all know, in the midst of a crisis the human population can do some awful things. This story is no exception. The wealthy hide in generated bunkers, the government don’t listen to scientists warnings, and the rest of the population descend into anarchy as social order breaks down and anything goes. This book was absolutely phenomenal and I’m in desperate need of it to be turned into a movie, please and thank you. I love books that contain real world scenarios, and if the scientists are anything to go by, I can’t help but wonder how long it’ll be until we have another Carrington event, and just how long it’ll last. Sometimes technology isn’t the best thing in the world to rely on, huh?Definitely preorder this one and get it on your TBRs! I couldn’t put it down and managed to get through it in a couple of hours. Thank you to HQ Stories for having me on the blog tour and sending me a proof to review.

If you read reviews on my blog for a long time then you might notice a pattern, it is the retro sci-fi books that are often history lessons on the author and their place in the canon. Often, I am making a case for why this writer is important. The more modern books are often under the hood look at the tactics the modern storyteller uses. That is an excuse for me to study the state-of-the-art methods of my favorite authors. That is why the interviews on the podcast that goes with this blog are so nuts and bolts about storytelling. This review is going to be a blend of those things. The reason why this will be a part history lesson is David Koepp is a respected screenwriter, and one of my favorites but somehow remains underrated. Now you may be wondering how can a writer who is responsible for some of the high grossest movies of all time be underrated? The thing is when you write scripts for Spielberg (Jurassic Park & War of the Worlds, David Fincher (Panic Room), Brian Depalma (Snake Eyes), Steven Soderberg (Kimi), and Rami (Spider-man) the writer is not really the one who gets the credit or is remembered. That said David Koepp is a favorite of mine not because of those scripts, although I am a huge fan of Panic Room which is a masterclass in building suspense and tension. It is the underrated movies that Koepp has written and directed. Stir of Echoes (which got overshadowed by being released shortly after The Sixth Sense) is a horror masterpiece. It was hilarious to me that Koepp faithfully adapted a novel written in the 50s and lazy filmgoers thought he was ripping off M.Night. Please…Stir of Echoes is a masterpiece for many reasons. It is the best adaptation of Richard Matheson not adapted by the man himself. It took a story written in the 50s and smartly updated it to take place in 1999 seamlessly. He did that and most importantly it was scary at the same time. In a career of amazing performances, it was a stand-out role for Kevin Bacon. Koepp also did a smart adaptation of a lesser Stephen King novella Secret Window that despite being a recycled Dark Half he managed to make do the rare act of improving the story in the film.Premium Rush with Joseph Gordan Levitt is an underrated thriller. It was his return to horror with Kevin Bacon in an early pandemic release You Should Have Left adapting a German horror novel that I really loved. It is a great combination of Panic Room and Stir of Echoes. Perfect for Koepp’s skills. Koepp after all is great at details that build suspense. It is why he worked so well with a Matheson story as that is a strength they share. Koepp is always thinking about how character moments can build out the story and keep the audience/reader nervous. Koepp keeps you just slightly ahead of the character, like that moment when you are about to stub your toe but it is too late to avoid it. The Koepp story exists in a gasp before impact. I was excited when I heard he was writing novels. It is long story of why I missed his first novel, I am going to fix that but here we are. Aurora is David Koepp’s second effort in prose but he is such a gifted storyteller you will detect no growing pains. This novel shares a title with my vote for best Science Fiction novel of the 21st century in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora, but they are very different novels. I admit that might become confusing for me. It appears Koepp’s Aurora is being marketed as a thriller. It is fair to call it an end-of-the-world thriller, a collapse thriller or a science fiction thriller. I am a believer in wider scopes within a genre and this is a speculative novel, in an undeniable way. The maguffin of the story happens in space and the story hinges on science. Harper Collins might not have put the label Science Fiction on it but that is what it is. David Koepp has no problem writing rich three-dimensional characters that balance nicely with his other storytelling chops.Aurora is the story of a CME, a coronal mass ejection. Bill Nye the science guy just did a fantastic episode of the End of NYE (on Peacock) about this potential disaster. Imagine a solar flare sends a pretty but destructive light show into our atmosphere and plays havoc with our magnetic field and fry most of the electronic transformers and brings down the grid. This is a very real possible looming disaster, something NASA is devoting research into trying to predict. What would this event do to society and why is it a setup for an SF thriller?Consider this scene when Aubrey's shady junkie ex walks into a Casino. "It was busy today, for sure, a lot of last hands being played, and the big-screens TVs all around the place were tuned to sporting events. Unless you knew already, you'd have no idea ten thousand billion metric tons of highly charged coronal mass were headed toward the earth at just over six million miles per hour."You may want to keep doing your normal but society is suddenly going dark which would cause many a crisis. This firmly puts Aurora in the sub-genre of warning novels. While most associated during the cold war with nuclear warning classics the warning novel is most often used to highlight fears of the Climate Crisis. A blackout is the theme of Koepp’s underrated first film the Trigger Effect from the 90s about an LA blackout. About a decade ago William R. Forstchen in his fantastic novel One Second After laid out all the worst cases and made a super scary novel. One thing I like about Koepp’s Aurora it is a thriller and exciting but it doesn’t present all the most brutal worst-case options. A lesson he repeats from his War of the Worlds script (one I think inspired Stephen King’s Cell BTW) is not to focus on generals or leaders just ground zero of one family. In this case a Brother and sister. The brother is the ultra-rich Thom and his sister is Aubrey Wheeler. The dynamic between the two is the heart of the story that uses one of my two favorite keys to stories - parallels and reversals. The parallel at the heart of this novel is Thom the wealthy prepper prepared prepper, who ends up alone and hiding and his sister who has few resources and didn’t prepare who thrives. That is the reversal. Koepp uses his strength for suspense and details to create creepy moments that signal everything has changed. When the Aurora comes the neighbors all go out to watch the light show, and for a bit, the power stays on, and people ignore the warnings thinking the media was fear-mongering. Like the moments when the storm passed and NOLA thought they escaped Katrina. The moment the power goes out is not a huge moment but subtle and creepy."In the living room of Aubrey's house, the seventy-seven-inch Sony TV winked, unceremoniously, and went dark. Scott, who had fallen asleep on the couch, failed to notice."Aubrey has not always made the best choices, her junkie ex-husband Rusty knows her brother has money and if he wants. His the live-wire character that you know is going to be the source of problems. This is where Koepp puts us ahead of the characters wanting to scream "Don't do it!"One excellent part of this book that might go underrated is how the characters as they are introduced don't seem to have any relationship with each other. Koepp does weave the characters together nicely including the one government official in the story who Thom happens upon in an Iowa gas station. This is an excellently written scene in the final act, where we know more about the two characters than they know about each other thus giving us great tension. Aurora is a sneaky good novel. The concept is not groundbreaking. There is nothing that makes me think that I have to tell everyone they can't miss it. To me, it is a page-turner for one major reason. This is a storyteller driving a few narrative threads perfectly in the dance of parallels and reversals. This might is a storyteller's story for that reason. So for me, it is a 5-star novel that gently warns us about a potential crisis with suspense and a little humor, and hope. That is something that most warning novels don't or can't do. Oh, wait before we go... Speaking of Matheson I want to also note that Koepp gives a tip of the hat to the author when the character Perry St.John mentions "He could create fortress Perry right here in Bethesda. Maybe he'd turn into a sorta-latter-day Robert Neville, the hero of Perry's favorite book of all time, I Am Legend, the famous last man on earth, fighting his lonely battle with a world of vampires. It worked out OK for Neville, forging and killing in the daytime, building a house full of booby traps, the book had made it sound kinda fun, well until the ending."As a massive Matheson fan I had to shout out this scene.