Subject: Review of Michaela Roessner's _Vanishing Point_

From: [email-masked] (Ken Cox)
Date: 29 Sep 93 00:57:22 GMT

VANISHING POINT
Michaela Roessner
A review by Ken Cox

Suppose that one night ninety percent of the human race simply vanished
without a trace.  The survivors woke up to find everyone else gone --
sometimes from the same bed -- with no clue as to what happened, or how,
or why, or if it might again.  Though it's an unusual premise, the result
is a not-particularly-outstanding post-holocaust novel.

While reading _Vanishing Point_, I was reminded of _The Postman_ by
David Brin and _The City, Not Long After_ by Pat Murphy.  Part of the
similarity was setting -- all three novels take place on the West Coast
after a disaster (war in _Postman_, plague in _City_) that wipes out
most of humanity.  But the deeper connection is each novel's focus on
the institutions that the survivors have constructed to help them cope
with their loss and uncertainty.

This is really where _Vanishing Point_ excels, as it examines the little
micro-societies ("cults" might be a better word) that sprang up after
the Vanishing.  The Homers, deep in denial, try to maintain the empty
houses for the eventual return of their owners.  The Watchers sleep in
shifts, believing that no one will disappear if someone is watching
them.  The Heaven Bound think that the Vanished went to heaven, and
that those left behind will follow -- but only when everyone believes
in the Heaven Bound doctrine.  And so forth, through perhaps a dozen
interesting and generally believable groups.

Unfortunately the entire novel can't consist of these descriptions, and
I'm afraid that most of the rest didn't impress me.  The pacing is a
bit slow at times (it is usually a bad sign when I put down a book and
re-read a Terry Pratchett novel, and I did this twice while reading
_Vanishing Point_).  Roessner also, IMHO, makes a major mistake when
she attempts to explain the Vanishing.  The result is some of the most
horribly-cliched pseudo-pop-science I've ever read.  As soft SF, the
Vanishing works; the attempt to make it hard fails.  The last several
chapters also suffer from major _deus ex machina_, but at least the
trapdoor through which the _deus_ descends is hinted at earlier in the
novel. 

%T Vanishing Point
%A Michaela Roessner
%I Tor Books (Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.)
%C New York
%D 1993
%G ISBN 0-312-85213-4
%P 381pp
%O hardcover, acid-free, US$21.95

Ken Cox
[email-masked]