"Wolf and Iron" and Human Wave

I'm going to toss out an idea here. Gordon R. Dickson's book "Wolf and Iron" (linked below) is a remarkably dark view of a post apocalyptic world. In that world the apocalypse consisted of a widespread economic collapse leading to a breakdown in various "services". Communities become more "insular" as larger organizations fail, with individual neighborhoods practically becoming independent city-states. Roving bands of bandits complete the breakdown of rule of law, particularly when combined with any traveler or travelers not strong enough to protect themselves is seen as prey by those in more settled circumstances.

It's very grim and very bleak, at least in the story's short term. But it's also got an upbeat component. Jeebee, the protagonist, is the sole surviving (so far as he knows) repository of a brand new field of "computational" social science, one which actually predicted the collapse although in true clueless intellectual fashion he never personalized the results of his work until it was almost too late. And, so, he works to preserve that knowledge so that when the world recovers from the current collapse it can be extended and, it is to be hoped, used to prevent such collapses in the future. There's a strong undercurrent of "no matter how bad things seem now, we'll get through this and we'll make things better down the road".

That undercurrent I believe makes this book "Human Wave" and so Wolf and Iron illustrates that "Human Wave" does not have to be all sweetness and light. It can be quite dark and still be Human Wave.

Wolf And Iron