Steven Amsterdam

I've had this book for ages, and I decided to read it now as part of a slow effort to clear the TBR at Library Thing. (I (haphazardly) post reviews there, but my TBR is at Goodreads, so the 213 books at LT have been there for a very long time). I've read and liked two further novels by Steven Amsterdam, What the Family Needed and rel="nofollow" target="_top">The Easy Way Out, but Things We Didn't See Coming is his first novel, and it won The Age Book of the Year in 2009 and was longlisted for the Guardian's Best First Book Award in 2010.

What I was not expecting, because the cover blurb tells very little about the book, was to discover just how prescient it is, in this era of the pandemic. (I was going to write 'Year of the Pandemic', but alas, it's been more than a year). Things We Didn't See Coming is a series of nine interlinked short stories, set in an alternative future that loomed when Y2K was on the horizon. The Offspring (a computer nerd) told me not to worry, but he was at the time doing consultancy for major banks and the prison system, to protect their computer systems from doing anything untoward when the clock rolled over from 1999 to 2000. Although some people dismissed the Millennium Bug as hype, it caused considerable concern and there was a flurry of survivalists who thought that the disruption was going to be much more serious than it turned out to be.

Steven Amsterdam has imagined a world of things we didn't see coming. The first story, called 'What We Know Now' is set on New Year's Eve 1999 when many of the digital clocks in the world's computers were expected to roll back to 1900 instead of 2000 and no one knew what might happen. The unnamed narrator is a teenager with attitude. He doesn't believe all the Y2K hype:

I'd like to be in a plane over everything. We'd be flying west, going through all the New Year's Eves, looking down just as they happen. I'd have to stay awake for twenty-four hours of night time, but I'd be looking out the little window and watching ripples of fireworks below, each wave going off under us as we fly over it. I start to talk about this idea, but decide to save it for Grandma. Dad doesn't think planes are safe today either. (p.9-10)

Indeed he doesn't. The family are packing up the car to go to the countryside, and the narrator humours his father over his fears. This is the first hint that there are ethical and social dilemmas to be tested in what turns out to be an horrific future.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/03/04/things-we-didnt-see-coming-by-steve-amsterda...… (mer)