3 / 5 Stars
‘Population Doomsday’ (192 pp., Pinnacle Books, 1970) was originally released as ‘1989: Population Doomsday’. The cover artist is unattributed. I note that the ‘gas mask’ theme of Eco-catastrophe SF used for this book was to be employed for the cover of John Brunner’s novel ‘The Sheep Look Up’, issued two years later.
Don Pendleton was the author of the very popular ‘Executioner’ series of action novels. He was inspired to write ‘Population Doomsday’ after reading Paul R. Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb, and in fact ‘Doomsday’ has a preface consisting of a letter to Ehrlich from Pendleton:
But if your population bomb is science, Dr Ehrlich, then my population doomsday is prophecy and as valid as any educated projections of the best scientific information presently available.
‘Doomsday’ is set early in 1989, when Ehrlich’s predictions have come true, and America is in the grip of an Eco-catastrophe. Most of the population of 390 million are forced to wear gas masks to cope with the dense smog in urban areas. Food and water are rationed, and people resort to profligate drug use to try and escape the depressing circumstances of their lives in a grossly overcrowded, polluted nation.
As the novel opens, Bill Vance, a newspaper editor and reporter, attends a news conference given by his friend and newly elected President: Royal Hackett. Desperate measures call for desperate solutions: Hackett is banning use of all motor vehicles save for those required for vital services. It’s just one of a number of quasi-dictatorial measures Hackett plans to unleash in an effort to prevent a disastrous breakdown in the social and economic order.
Whether Hackett's measures will be effective is open to question, as Vance soon finds himself invited to cover a disastrous smog event in Gary, Indiana. Vance and a detachment of troops don NBC suits and venture into the stricken city, there to find disturbing evidence of the toll taken by the smog event. This section of the book is very effective, recalling the memorable chapter in Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain when the Wildfire Team surveys the silent town of Piedmont, Arizona.
Within a matter of weeks, other disastrous outbreaks of lethal air pollution begin to roil the US. President Hackett implements drastic measures to rein in the national economy, including a cessation of all heavy industry; mass layoffs; government-sanctioned euthanasia; and even tearing up airport runways to plant food crops.
But are these measures enough to prevent the extinction of mankind ? Or will Hackett be forced to take even more dramatic measures to ensure that some remnant of humanity survives ?
Like his contemporaries Louis L’Amour, Evan Hunter (‘Ed McBain’) and John D. MacDonald, Pendleton earned a living by writing at least one, more often several, short novels a year (this in the era before word processors). Like those authors, he was skilled at delivering an engaging narrative within the confines of genre novels of 200 or fewer pages. The first 10-20 pages of such novels are used with great efficiency to give the reader necessary orientation in the setting of the narrative, and familiarity with the main characters. After that, the plot takes over and the story flows rapidly to its conclusion. Lengthy expositions revolving around plot points, or in-depth passages designed to showcase character development, simply weren’t included.
Readers looking for a more thoughtful and contemplative treatment of Eco-catastrophe SF may find ‘Population Doomsday’ a bit superficial compared to the novels by Brunner or Harry Harrison. But Pendleton's novel has its merits in its fast pacing and economy of style – something I often wished Brunner had employed when I was plodding through some of his chapters.
‘Doomsday’ is a worthwhile example of how one writer of ‘genre’ fiction was influenced by the apocalyptic tenor of neo-Malthusian tomes such as The Population Bomb. If you find it on the shelf of a used bookstore, I recommend picking it up.
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