Harry Turtledove has turned his talents away from
alternate history to explore a disaster
scenario in Supervolcano: Eruption. Beneath Yellowstone
National Park there lurks a massive volcano which last erupted more than
half a million years ago. Still considered to be active, Turtledove
imagines a world in which this volcano erupts and the devastation that it
would cause to the United States. Evidence indicates that an eruption of the
Yellowstone caldera would dwarf even the largest volcanic eruptions of
recorded history, giving Turtledove plenty of horrors to deal with. However,
that horror often takes a back seat.
The volcano doesn't erupt until the book is well
underway. By the time it does, Turtledove has created vibrant, if
often unsympathetic, characters and has begun to look at their relationships
and ambitions. His main character, Colin Ferguson, only knows about
the possibility of an impending eruption because of a chance encounter with
Kelly, a geologist he met at Yellowstone. Despite difference in age
and location, the two strike up a relationship as Colin is trying to get
over his failed marriage to Louise. When the eruption does occur,
vindication of Colin and Kelly's warnings is foregone as Colin's family is
more concerned with their survival as ash blankets Denver and causes rapid
climate change in New England.
One of the problems with Eruption
may be the issue of expectations. When
reading a disaster novel, all too often the protagonists attempt (with
varying degrees of success) to reign in the destructive power of the Earth.
In Eruption, the Ferguson
clan and their dependents simply attempt to survive and lead their lives as
normally as possible given the environmental changes wrought by the
supervolcano. While Turtledove portrays his characters and their
interactions realistically, the volcanic eruption often seems to recede into
the background as Colin continues to track a serial killer, Rob’s band
tries to find gigs in an increasingly isolated Maine, and Marshall continues
his career as an undergraduate. Rather
than focusing on Kelly’s research, the character whose life is most
affected by the eruption is Vanessa’s.
If readers can accept that Eruption is less a
book about the disaster and more a look at how a somewhat dysfunctional
family deals with their own issues while the world around them does its best
to isolate them from any chance of helping each other or over-coming
adversity. By having his characters in different parts of the United States,
Turtledove is able, as he often does, to show the different affects of the
eruption. Vanessa flees Denver ahead of the ashfall and finds herself
in a displaced person camp and a bitter winter strands Rob and his band, but
Colin, Louise, and Marshall are mostly affected by a slight drop in Los
Angeles temperatures and a rise in prices and scarcity for gas and food.
However, Eruption is only the first book of a projected trilogy and
most of the the characters are left adrift at the end of the novel, waiting
to see what life brings them and to figure out how they are going to change
with a world which has substantially changed.
Eruption gives the feeling that not much has
happened despite the tribulations of its characters. The first half of
the novel sets up the titular eruption, which comes almost as an
anticlimax. The book as a whole seems to be setting up for the
subsequent books in the series. Although some of the characters are
cold and distant, Turtledove does provide enough hooks that readers can and
will find themselves rooting for the characters and, even when the
characters are at their most dislikable, dreading the horrors, both natural
and man-made, which they face.
