Well plotted but highly irritating book written by a wingnut for wingnuts. My first clue as to the political persuasion of the author came when I realized that this book, set approximately 20 years in the future, made absolutely no mention of climate change (which makes the desire of the earth-firsters to destroy civilization seem mysterious at best). Farther in, it becomes obvious that conservatives and Constitution-worshipping Republicans are heroes (1 character actually has children named Tra...

Originally published at Mhairi ReadsSet in mid 2020's USA, Directive 51 opens with protagonist Heather O'Grainne investigating a social phenomenon known as 'Daybreak'. Made up with people from all walks of life and beliefs, united by their desire to take down what they call the 'Big System', Daybreak is about to become a terrible reality. With civilisation rapidly collapsing as biotes and nanoswarm devour anything plastic or electronic, the US government struggles to minimise the damage and main...

What I thought was going to be a good post-apocalyptic thriller turned out to be a compelling political thriller set in a post-apocalyptic America. I've been looking for a well written post-apoc story (the last few I've read have been underwhelming to say the least), so I was a little taken aback when I realized this was more about the politics and struggle for power after the government, and technology, in the US has vanished. I was taken aback, but pleasantly surprised.Directive 51 is a real p...

I wanted to like this one better than I did. It's a solid premise, and I dig both techno-thrillers and disaster novels. I'll even cheerfully ignore the caricatures of steel-jawed heroes and slimy politicians that traditionally inhabit this kind of story. However, I also want the disasters to make sense, both on a technical and a human level. Directive 51 succeeds on a technical level -- the nanomachines and bioweapons portrayed seem chillingly possible -- but I don't buy into it at all on the hu...

First of all, I usually enjoy the 'end of the world' disaster type books (Dies the Fire, Armageddon's Children) and movies (Mad Max, The Day After Tomorrow, Resident Evil) but this one I found unbearable. The premise was solid, but the characterization was awful. The author was obviously politically far right, which is fine, as a few of my favorite genre authors are quite conservative politically (S.M. Stirling, Brad Thor, possibly William R. Forstchen), but all of his characters were so far to

There are chunks of this book that are quite good, and some interesting ideas are presented. But there are just so many things wrong with this book. I don't care if Barnes is a right-winger. He doesn't try to hide it and it has a minor effect on the overall story. Comments follow, Loaded with spoilers, you were warned. Shaunsen. Wow. Anticipating Trump by five years, Barnes produces a total wacko who slithers into the presidency. But really, he was just so silly I laughed several times. Jar Jar...

I learned about Directive 51, the first book of the Daybreak trilogy, from a Big Idea post in John Scalzi's blog.The novel is an apocalyptic work where the failure of technology leads to the collapse of civilization. Recent works in the genre include One Second After (America brought down by electromagnetic pulse), Dies the Fire (which I haven't read, though where the cause is magic-like), and TV's Revolution (nanobots).Daybreak is in the "grey goo" technological terror sub-genre, using a combin...

So, we all know about the cloud, right? The whole of human knowledge and interaction connected through a big bunch of internet servers stationed all over the planet. Never has so much information been so available to so many. Never have so many comment threads been available to so many trolls.But what if they aren't trolls? What if this assimilation of information and connectivity allows all the disgruntled patriots/anarchists/skinheads/tea partiers/greenies/terrorists a "room" in which to feed

I enjoyed this twist on the post-apocalyptic story for the most part.A sort of collective-consciousness "system artifact" movement called Daybreak spreads the idea of taking down "the Big System" i.e. modern toys and technology. The novel mainly focuses on how the Big System begins to fail by following the actions of multiple characters (some Daybreakers, some not) and detailing how each comes to learn of, fights, or accepts the havoc Daybreak has broached upon the world. In a way, the Daybreake...

pretty much a waste of ink but i suppose the daybreak people would be delighted. too many abbreviations. i can't shake the notion that, that seems a cheap trick to sound high tech or slick with no substance.

The start of the book was terrifyingly realistic as a mix of terrorists, earth-firsters and religious nuts spread the nanotech, biologic weapons and terror attacks to destroy modern technological society "the Big System". The middle was somewhat disappointing as society melts down along with technology but the narrative does not match the start. Many characters who don't have much to do with the whole story or get killed off just as they are defined. By the end, I was rolling my eyes at the loom...

This book was something of a disappointment. I really enjoyed John Barnes's YA space opera Losers in Space, and I generally enjoy apocalyptic scenarios, and this is a smart, contemporary one, in which nanotech run amok is what ends civilization. Dubbed "Daybreak," Barnes describes interestingly the vast conspiracy that brings it about, bringing together disparate groups of anarchists, environmentalists, Muslim terrorists, rapture-ready Christians, Marxists, and everyone else convinced that the S...

What started as a good idea on the storyboard, probably that is, lost itself between then an publication. The premise of a terrorist attack is nothing new, yet right from the beginning the book seems more like a first draft than something ready for print. The use of exact times, rapid switching between locations, and the divisions between 'chapters' served no purpose in the actual timeline. Knowing that at such a time in the pacific the same thing was going on at 3:02 PM in DC exactly made no im...

I gave up on this book after getting about halfway through it. The author's political biases read loud and clear. This is usually a complaint by conservatives about what they perceive to be liberal biases in matters read, but this one is even more blatant in the other direction. Children named after Ann Coulter, enviros presented as very stereotypical and therefore a facade of real people, Republicans in the Washington establishment packing heat and knowing how to use it, by God!, libertarians i...

"It's the end of the world as we know it..."In Directive 51 John Barnes sets about destroying civilization as we know it and then examining what it would take to put the world back together again from those various pieces. In 51, the end of civilization is brought about by a fringe group that one day decides to release a nano-virus plague that feasts on much of our modern technology, rendering it useless. It can also eat the rubber in tires, thus removing the automobile from the equation as well...

This book is definitely geared for the techno-babble reader. Presenting a doomsday scenario where an undefined group has determined to wipe out the "big system" by creating nano technology that destroys electronics, plastic and apparently, synthetic rubber, as in tires. The premise is that the group responsible isn't organized but rather is made up of people who just talked on the internet and spotaneously decided this would be the right thing to do worldwide. They also managed to coordinate wor...

This is a densely packed techno thriller. It is the first book in a trilogy, so not all questions are answered. It reminds me in many ways of Kim Stanley Robinson's 40 Days of Rain. It is densely populated with a large cast of characters, from the people who helped bring about this end of civilization, called the Daybreakers, to the politicians and government types that make up the DC world. Most of the book is focused on the government - how it reacts, what department's do, succession questions...

This book has planted itself at the top of my list of favorite Science Fiction books. I will admit that this list doesn't have many books, as SF has never been my favorite genre, but I'm glad I picked this one up. It's one of the better-written books I've read in quite some time. It was a long 500 pages (inasmuch as the type-face was small), but it flowed very well. I became engaged in the lives of the characters, and I was happy that he showed them, even the ones that should have been good guys...

Post apocalyptic books, TV shows, and movies are certainly quite popular right now and I can see why. There are set in a world that is both familiar and yet also transformed. They follow ordinary people thrown into extraordinary circumstances. Stripping away the comforts of civilization, law, and order and seeing what is left of a man or a woman is often a major (and engaging) theme. The sense of not knowing, of that there is a great unknown land out there now, hiding maybe something better (did...

Directive 51 is an entertaining end of the world - or at least, end of the contemporary technological world - novel. It requires more suspension of disbelief than most near-future sci-fi thrillers, but it's generally worth the effort.I felt that the central characters seemed quite weak until about halfway through the book, at which point they began to grow much more interesting as individuals (continuing to grow in the sequel). Politicians especially seemed shallow, and as "Directive 51" is a po...