I was recommended
this book for it’s ‘Edgeland’ or liminal feel, but I couldn’t find that
feeling. Perhaps as a European I was unable to tap into the real scope that MaCauley
was driving at with his vision of an American Midwest that has broadened in
distance due to a technologically-strapped future that must rely on foot and
horse for travel. We aren’t given much of a time frame for this future, and I
feel it unfortunately falls into that nebulous ‘in the time before’
storytelling, also somewhat reflected in the over-the-top and jumbled choice of
title & subtitle. This is also prominent in the referral to our own era as
the time of the ‘forefathers,’ with ruined ‘forefather cities’ and roads treated
with wonder. More interesting was the treatment of geography; Lake Erie, without
constant use and treatment by humans, changes shape, casting a long swamp over
much of its flood plains, covering roads and settlements under swamp and lake.
The few
passages we get on the race war that consumed the US preceding any kind of
collapse were the main hook for me, feeling like the inevitable end of a
chaotic nation from a writer standing in the cold war era (originally published in 1979.) Some have read this sub-plot
as a racist prediction, claiming the black population of the United States is
blamed for its doom, even comparing the book to the infamous Turner Diaries,
but I feel it was fairly implicit that we are rooting for the black
liberation movement as it is shown to us through the eyes of an African-American
intellectual and former reporter whose protected and hidden journal we are
exposed to. We are shown the natural conclusion to white ignorance; as the
world creeps closer and closer to a nuclear war the United States Government
(or USG as it is referred to as a faction in this near-future civil conflict)
becomes immaturely obsessed inward, becoming “genocidal” against a more and
more promising black power movement resulting in a war that bursts from the
tension of maltreatment of African-Americans as they increasingly make up the
population of urban areas.
The race war was the drawing moment
in the early pages- and then it stops. We are never again given a glimpse of
this pivotal moment in this ‘secret history,’ and are instead told that the
Black Liberation movement (BLAC- Black Liberation Army Corps) led by ‘Brother
Soul’ in this near-future instance (set in 1983-6) were defeated and a
successful genocide waged on African-Americans, the horrific beginnings of which
we witness as BLAC and the USG clash in Gary, Indiana. African-Americans become
canonized as a ‘shadow people’ who cause the end of the ‘forefather’s’ world-
but the reader has been told the truth of nuclear strikes in the ex-reporter’s
journal. The remnants of the USG become the villainous slavers, the ‘horsemen,’
becoming more and more stylized as a sort of future confederate army.
MaCauley then settles in to the far future, telling a story of only whites, with simply too many shadows of story cast before being lost; we are told about different factions, individuals and their choices, even fictional cultural nuances, but not necessarily where it all goes or what it all means. Perhaps this is a disservice to the bulk of the story which is fundamentally the story of Kincaid, the wanderer as he follows his Esso road map and intuition to explore an area made vaster and vaster by it’s unknowns. A fairly likeable story of individuals striving for knowledge and freedom, but I can’t help but be hung-up on the dead end treatment the civil war was given. Perhaps as he wrote in a melting pot moment, with debates on race within the context of Vietnam, South Africa still in apartheid and riots such as the Los Angeles riots on the horizon, MaCauley didn’t realize that the contemporary teetering edge of society he was portraying was the more interesting part of the story.
A Secret History of Time to Come: A Chilling Vision of the Far Future by Robie Macauley (London, Corgi Books) 1983.
