The Miocene Arrow

Sean McMullen

This is a bit like a post apocalyptic type sci-fi novel, but it is not one of the “after a nuclear war type cliché plots, with a twist of evil scientific experiment gone wrong. For the most part the “Disaster” is all background history to help understand why things are as they are.

Instead of some loony starting a nuclear exchange, or a virus that kills everybody it revolves around the discovery of a preserved prehistoric whale like creature. Someone clones it in order to study it.

It turns out this creature is super intelligent and eventually manages to orchestrate its own escape into the ocean where it multiplies and leads a whale revolution.

The sea creatures develop a method to lure the humans towards the sea, this of course causes havoc and kills a lot of people, eventually the humans congregate in areas where the 'call' is less frequent and society comes back together.

The new society that is formed is basically a chivalrous feudal society, with knights being replaced by Air Marshals, basically pilots who fly around in propeller driven planes with diesel engines.

The hardware is revered, the engines having their own names, some of them hundreds of years old maintained by guilds, the guild masters able to identify the engines by their distinctive sounds.

There are very distinct chivalric rules for engagement and dueling that have been in place for hundreds of years that have been stuck to in settling all arguments, until one day some terrorists from what used to be Australia show up and start to influence heads of government of one of the more powerful nations/factions.

A war begins with some very un chivalrous strategies used by the aggressors, until one of the other factions fights back and changes the rules again, using some more interesting strategies.

The rules for maximum speed and size of vehicles both flying and land based are based on the fact that there where once sentinel satellites that would shoot down anything that broke these limits. These were activated after all hell broke lose in the instant past, they had been destroyed quite some time ago, but nobody knew this.

The tip that this could be achieved came form another Australian faction that opposes the terrorists.

It is a very in-depth story and interesting in the way that it uses a blend of pretty much modern technology blended with a medieval society structure. The overall story contains a nice blend of intrigue and action to top off the interesting ideas involved.