Vanishing Point

by Michaela Roessner

Hardcover, 1993

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Genres

Science Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Collection

Fantasy & Science Fiction

Publication

Tor Books (1993), Edition: 1st Tor ed, 384 pages

Description

"It Happened one night, suddenly, without warning: 90% of the human race disappeared without a trace. Vanished, never to be seen again. There were no portents, no notes, no bodies, no clue as to where they went or whether they would ever come back again. People woke to find their lovers no longer beside them. Children woke to find their parents missing, parents woke to empty cribs. Neighbors found empty houses, empty apartment buildings." "Civilization collapsed." "After a few months of violence spawned by fear and rage, a measure of peace was restored in the Bay Area. Enclaves formed and established defense pacts against the wandering bands of fanatics. They set about surviving, renewing contact with the rest of the world, establishing trading ties with each other, and trying to discover what had caused the Vanishing." "Now, thirty years after the Disappearance, Dr. Easterman is coming across the continent from the Carnegie Institute to work with the Hackers Center in Silicon Valley, continuing a promising line of research on what caused the cataclysmic event. At the House, where a community of survivors has made a good life while continuing to build the Winchester Mansion, a young woman named Renzie is in the middle of the political struggles between various groups in the Valley." "And up in the Oakland Hills a huge band of Heaven Bounders is gathering. The 'Bounders believe that the Vanishing was Judgement Day, and the Vanished have ascended to heaven. They believe that the only thing holding back their own salvation is the disbelief of others - disbelief that is manifested in building houses and growing food. If those others were dead, the Heaven Bounders believe, then Judgement would be fulfilled, and they would join their loved ones in Heaven."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member worldsedge

Rather uneven. 90% of humanity vanishes, this book takes place 29 years after that. Entertaining but forgettable, or would be except for the kind of interesting forever being built upon house.

5 more

LibraryThing member yonitdm

Fascinating premise interesting characters and great descriptions. The end does peter out a bit.

LibraryThing member ropie

A really great 'post-apocalypse' novel, in a field of already rather brilliant novels. This one satisfied me as much as any of the better known ones (cf: The Stand, Earth Abides, Canticle for Leibowitz). A novel that is much better than the sum of its parts, if suffers at times from some woolly

dialogue and too many minor characters, but Roessner brings everything together in a way that means the book succeeds extremely well. I wished it had gone a little more into the 'weirdness' hinted at, just enough to pry open the cracks we see a little more, but it was all more than intriguing enough to stick in the memory.

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LibraryThing member memccauley6

This book kept me up late reading and I was sorry to see it end, I would like to read a sequel to see what becomes of the characters. It is a rarity in the science fiction world: a novel with well-developed characters with believable motives and a realistic look at love and relationships.

Thirty

years after most of the world’s population disappeared, a band of survivors inhabiting the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California try to find the cause of the catastrophe and rebuild a society despite the depredations of kamikaze cult members out to destroy them. The author makes you feel as if you are as much a part of the house as the characters who live there, I definitely have added a visit to my “bucket list”. The ending of the book brought to mind Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear.

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LibraryThing member sturlington

Thirty years ago, 90 percent of the world's population suddenly vanished in the middle of the night, and those who are left are still searching for the cause as well as trying to move on from the catastrophe.

This one was a mixed bag for me. Here's what I enjoyed: It had a strong sense of place,

making particularly good use of the well-known Winchester Mystery House and the surrounding environs. The characters were well-done and believable people. It presents a more benevolent view of post-apocalyptic society than most books in the genre, offering a vision of a rather attractive communal society; yes, there are threats, but humankind has not devolved utterly in the face of catastrophe. Solving the mystery of why everyone vanished (no spoilers!) keeps the story moving.

Here's what I didn't enjoy: I found the writing very choppy and in need of editing; in many places, it felt like an early draft rather than a polished work. This is science fiction, and the science seemed--to me, at least, without a lot of technical knowledge of these things--very hand-wavey; I wanted to believe, but a lot of it sounded like gobbledygook. The pacing felt off, too slow at the beginning and then so fast at the end that it was somewhat hard to follow.

So a middling book, likely underread but of interest to those who have plowed through all the well-known titles in the post-apocalyptic genre.

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LibraryThing member ScoLgo

This was ok but not a real stand-out read for me. Quite a large cast of characters left me not fully connected with any of them. The meta-physical alternate-reality stuff was also rather unfocused. In a fantasy world, (Zelany's Amber, for instance), I am more able to accept that type of thing. When

it is being sold as pseudo-science/physics, it needs to be better explained if I am going to go along for the ride. Brasyl by Ian McDonald comes to mind as a SFnal world built on more solid underpinnings than the one found in Vanishing Point.

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