Without Warning »

John Birmingham is the author of Final Impact, Designated Targets, Weapons of Choice, He Died with a Felafel in His Hand, The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco, How to Be a Man, The Search for Savage Henry, and Leviathan, which won the National Award for Nonfiction at Australia’s Adelaide Festival of the Arts. Birmingham is also the recipient of the George Munster Prize for Freelance Story of the Year and the Carlton United Sports Writing Prize. He has written for The Sydney Morning Herald, Rolling Stone, Penthouse, Playboy, and numerous other magazines. He lives at the beach with his wife, daughter, son, and two cats.

In Kuwait, American forces are locked and loaded for the invasion of Iraq. In Paris, a covert agent is close to cracking a terrorist cell. And just north of the equator, a sailboat manned by a drug runner and a pirate is witness to the unspeakable. In one instant, all around the world, everything will change. A wave of inexplicable energy slams into the continental United States. America as we know it vanishes. From a Texas lawyer who happens to be in the right place at the right time to an engineer in Seattle who becomes his city’s only hope, from a combat journalist trapped in the Middle East to a drug runner off the Mexican coast, Without Warning tells a fast, furious story of survival, violence, and a new, soul-shattering reality.

Publishers Weekly

Australian author Birmingham (Axis of Time) explores an unusual and intriguing scenario: immediately before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, an unknown radiation engulfs the North American continent from Canada to Mexico, destroying all animal and human life. Suddenly the U.S. is reduced to Alaska, Hawaii and part of Washington State, along with several million citizens overseas. Birmingham concentrates on several small groups of survivors-a Seattle city engineer struggling against an army takeover, a yacht carrying survivors to Australia, a spy hunting a Muslim fanatic in the midst of a French civil war-and contemplates how various countries would react to the power vacuum. This well-thought-out alternate history will appeal to fans of hard SF and techno-thrillers. (Feb.)

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