Customer Reviews

Y2K: The Day the World Shut Down

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Okay: Y2K didn't happen. Got that? There was no "Y2K Crisis." Civilization as we know it did not come to an end at one second past midnight on the morning of January 1, 2000. So if you got into an argument with someone who said it wouldn't happen, and maybe suggested that his doubts were due to a limited mental capacity, or that he was simply too lazy to consult the latest "information" on the subject, then perhaps you owe that person an apology, because nothing that was predicted to accompany the arrival of the year 2000 due to the absence of two decimal places in the year fields of programs and operating systems EVER happened! NOTHING! I know because I was there, along with about 6 billion other people. And many of us monitored the progression of the new millennium as it began at the International Date Line and moved west through Asia, Australia, Europe, to where I was then living in the Chicago area, and beyond. Our public utilities continued to function, our computers continued to work, and our nuclear missiles remained in their silos. People on life-support systems in hospitals didn't turn up dead, refrigeration systems didn't fail, and our water supplies remained safe. In short: nothing happened. NOTHING! Even though virtually every important industry in our global economy admitted that the "Y2K Problem" was still years away from being completely solved, and that the "Y2K Bug" would still permeate our systems for quite some time, NOTHING HAPPENED. The supposed "bug" that was going to be responsible for the "problem" that would inevitably lead to a "crisis" that would send us back to the Dark Ages while perhaps triggering Armageddon NEVER happened! Was there ANY result from this Y2K fiasco? No. Instead, the ultimate mega-event of all recorded history became known for primarily one thing: that nothing happened. We waited for something to happen. We looked for something to happen. January 1 went by. January 2 went by. January itself went by, and through February and March of 2000 we still thought something might happen, but nothing did. Nothing, that is, except that for a certain cadre of unscrupulous authors, such as the ones who wrote this book, the party was over, and there was no more money to be made off uninformed and/or gullible readers from THIS particular scare scenario. For them, it was time to cash-out. Live to write another day. Take the money and run. I hope they invested it all in Enron.

Here is a novel by an accomplished author who obviously had insufficient time to create a work of more depth. Its plot and characters are embryonic; however, it is easy to see how they might have become much more memorable. Homeric themes give the story a charming archaic tone which is wholly absent from most modern novels, and the emphasis placed on community and family is very refreshing. By the book's conclusion, the reader discovers that the authors' intent was not to provide a sensational account of apocalypse; but to show that, whatever its outcome, no catastrophe can ever subsume our highest call to family and covenant community.

I really wanted to like this book.

The author wraps an excessively complex, pointless "plot" around a thin discussion of Y2k issues. In Priam's Y2k, everything works pretty well, except there are a few National Guard checkpoints? Oh, that's scary.

First reaction after finishing the book... "Hunh? That's IT?". Second reaction, I flipped it over to see what I had paid... glad I got a good deal at Amazon

The authors have used Y2K to stuff their pseudo-moralizing Christian religious views down the readers' throats. All philosophies other than Christian are discarded as "hoaxes" and "junk". A very conceited, typically Christian view indeed.

Here is a novel by an accomplished author who obviously had insufficient time to create a work of more depth. Its plot and characters are embryonic; however, it is easy to see how they might have become much more memorable. Homeric themes give the story a charming archaic tone which is wholly absent from most modern novels, and the emphasis placed on community and family is very refreshing. By the book's conclusion, the reader discovers that the authors' intent was not to provide a sensational account of apocalypse; but to show that, whatever its outcome, no catastrophe can ever subsume our highest call to family and covenant community.

I really wanted to like this book. I have been preparing for Y2k for the better part of a year and wanted to see what vision the authors would apply to the days, weeks, and months following January 1st, 2000.

Unfortunately, the first two thirds of the book dwells on the year and a half leading up to Y2K. Worse than that, someone who is already familiar with the Y2K mythos will be bored to tears, as the authors launch into lengthy descriptions of what Y2K is and what it might do.

There is a sub-plot involving a Computer Hacker who takes advantage of Y2K to build back doors into systems he repairs, allowing him to loot the company's funds later. But at the end of the novel he goes off the deep end, shooting up the farmhouse of the consultant that got him into the business, destroying all of his Y2K supplies, and kidnapping his daughter to boot. I could not for the life of me figure out what was motivating this joker or the goon squad with him.

The moral of the story seemed to be that it is pointless to make individual preparations, as paramilitary Ninjas will just raid your house and take it all away. The moral seemed to be that you should just band together with your neighbors and sing Kumb-ba-ya and ride out this whole Y2K thing together.

In fact it was hard to tell that much of anything that was happening post Y2K because of the book's narrow focus on the central characters. From what little I could painstakingly deduce it looked like the "Bump in the road" or no big deal scenario.

This book was a waste of time and money. There is much better material out there than this, from both a literary and a contentual standpoint.

Don't waste your hardearned money

I have to confess, the only reason I read this book at all was that my wife insisted that I do. I am a Y2K skeptic and have been horrified by all the scare-mongering by fundamentalist Christians. Amazingly, this book caught my attention right from the start. I was fascinated by the literary character of the book, the balanced information it gave, and best of all, the substantiveness of the faith it evokes. This book is the real deal. For people who want comic book thrillers like Jason Kelly's awful book, Hyatt and Grant have definitely got a different agenda here. This book is genuine fiction, not tripe. It made me think. It made me reconsider my position on Y2K. And it made me realize that the Christian faith need not be mired in pop psychological silliness or eschatological triviality. This is a great book. I highly recommend it. It is a genre-breaker. It's just too bad that it had to be couched in a story that will be moot in just a couple of months. I hope these guys write again--this time on a more lasting subject.

The story started out okay but lost steam and direction about 1/3 of the way in. Even the title was inaccurate because in the story, everything did not all shut down in one day. Wordy, too much Tennesee history and other stuff that was totally irrelevant to the overall story. Some characters were interesting but they didn't do much. There was no closure to the story. What happens to everyone now? I liked "Y2K : It's Already Too Late" by Jason Kelly much better. The characters and story line were believeable and you felt like although bad things happened, the story ended with closure and an upbeat ending. If Michael Hyatt wrote this book "Day the world shut down" to scare people, it was wholly inadequate. If was meant to lead Christians back to their faith, it was also inadequate. I would have liked to see Noah get saved at the end.

This book is obviously quite amazing--just look at the reviews here on the Amazon site: folks either love it or hate it; there is no equivocation whatsoever. What it appears to boil down to is folks who get it and those who don't. Readers of fiction seem to like the book, and for good reason. This is a story redolent with literary allusions--and not just classical ones. I saw nods to Homer and Hessiod but also to Belloc, Buchan, Chesterton, Scott, Shakespeare, and Milton. But folks looking for propoganda, either techno-fear or fundamentalist-endgame, clearly don't like and don't get what is going on here. It appears that some of the criticisms of the book's hurried plotting and violence fail to take into account that this must have been an instant book--the sort of thing publishers put together quickly to address a current issue. That being the case, this work is all the more remarkable for its depth and breadth. In the end, it is clear that this book does what great fiction always does, it provokes. It's no Iliad, but then it never pretended to be. It is a book about Y2K for heaven's sake. But it is an amazing book about Y2K, and like the issue itself, it is bound to polarize the unwashed masses and the cognizent alike.