Book: New Wilderness by Brian S. Matthews

First off, I’ve never met Brian S. Matthews, however I’m very much aware of his work as a screen writer, as he’s written all the episodes of the online web series I work on, Star Trek: Helena Chronicles. He’s also scripted the feature Operation Beta Shield, which brings back major characters from the Hidden Frontier days and brings along the crew from the Scotland web series, Star Trek: Intrepid. He’s also scripted the season ender of Star Trek: Odyssey, due later this year along with the first episode of the four-part miniseries, Star Trek: Federation One.

So he’s prolific.

Anyways, before he became the writer of these web shows, Matthews wrote two novels he published himself. New Wilderness was released in 2005, and is the first part of a trilogy of tales about what happens on one lazy June 10 day (no year is given, but there is enough pop culture references to assume it began sometime in the late 1990's), when the animal kingdom - for some yet to be revealed reason- turned on the human race and brought about a world-wide devastation of civilization.

Over the years, I’ve read a few end-of-the-world type novels, and have seen many TV shows and movies about the same subject. Stephen King’s The Stand is perhaps, for the modern age, one of the best. While The Stand used a virus to wipe out most of humanity (one that seemed somewhat plausible back in 1978, but more horrific today), New Wilderness uses the animals like cats and dogs, our friends, to kill us, along with a whole host of other beasties. Is the author trying to say that in some way nature will strike back for what we’ve taken?

While the novel opens with the Turn, its primarily set a decade after New Wilderness (which is also a wink, wink at media’s attempt to title its news reports). Set in the Canadian west, near Vancouver, humanity is still trying to survive. But like any good end of the world tale, human greed seems to have survived (along with good guys and bad guys), as groups of people, holed up in various areas, are cornering the market on such necessities as technology, medicine, and gas.

The novel is, ultimately, a worthy addition to the genre, as Matthews keeps the pace going at a stride that makes you want to continue to read on, long after you should’ve gone to bed. There is plenty of violence and buckets of gore, but that I can forgive, if only because I believe something like this could happen to us once all our favorite things, the comfort stuff, is taken away. Mobile phones, iPods, our cars and how much money you make should not define your humanity, but God knows it will if the End of Days comes next Tuesday.

But, I also think its about 75 to 100 pages overlong -I could’ve done with out the flashbacks to some the characters life during the initial crisis. It wasn’t that those scenes were boring, just felt they really did not add to the plot. And the creepy ending, with the perverse kids who prey on young boys and worship a very bizarre God, borders on sadistic -even if it’s a plot point - and sort of reminds me that if there is one constant in the universe in novels of these kinds, homosexuality is still to be treated with universal hate.