After the Revolution
By Robert Evans
Published by AK Press, 2022
380 pages, paperback
From AK Press:
What will the fracturing of the United States look like? After the Revolution is an edge-of-your-seat answer to that question. In the year 2070, twenty years after a civil war and societal collapse of the "old" United States, extremist militias battle in the crumbling Republic of Texas. As the violence spreads like wildfire and threatens the Free City of Austin, three unlikely allies will have to work together in an act of resistance to stop the advance of the forces of the Christian ethnostate known as the "Heavenly Kingdom."
Our three protagonists include Manny, a fixer that shuttles journalists in and out of war zones and provides footage for outside news agencies. Sasha is a teenage woman that joins the Heavenly Kingdom before she discovers the ugly truths behind their movement. Finally, we have Roland: A US Army vet kitted out with cyberware (including blood that heals major trauma wounds and a brain that can handle enough LSD to kill an elephant), tormented by broken memories, and 12,000 career kills under his belt. In the not-so-distant world Evans conjures we find advanced technology, a gender expansive culture, and a roving Burning Man-like city fueled by hedonistic excess. This powerful debut novel from Robert Evans is based on his investigative reporting from international conflict zones and on increasingly polarized domestic struggles. It is a vision of our very possible future.
Praise for After the Revolution...
"Evans never shies away from showing the ugly results of political unity failing, and he eschews picking easy targets for disapproval, giving equal time to a wide variety of viewpoints and social arrangements. Bullets fly furiously, but the emotional costs of violence are paid for in full. This is smart, pointed military sci-fi."
—Publishers Weekly
"A fierce book: leftist military science fiction of the first order, full of transhuman ultraviolence and all-too-human consequences."
—Cory Doctorow, author of Walkaway
"A world as deep as The Expanse, yet a story so close to home."
—Chelsea Manning
"Evans brings years of experience as a storyteller and a war correspondent into this remarkable debut. After the Revolution is somehow both realistic and fantastic, both hopeful and sobering. It is both an introspective analysis of human society and a roaring and readable adventure."
—Margaret Killjoy, author of A Country of Ghosts
“Robert’s debut novel kept me glued to the pages—a smart, well-crafted, action-packed military science fiction story that deals with the horrors of war through a trauma-informed lens.”
—Justine Norton-Kertson, editor-in-chief of Android Press and Solar Punk Magazine
"This is the type of novel where nudist cyborg super-soldiers ride robot horses into battle against bloodthirsty theocrats. Stuff blows up. More stuff blows up. Dudes kill other dudes and then even more chaos ensues. The action all works. Other authors have spilled a lot of ink over America’s internal contradictions, but After the Revolution is unique in its gusto."
—Joe Streckert, Portland Mercury
"After the Revolution is part of the rich vein of speculative fiction that considers Texas as its own republic…For writers interested in imagining how a diverse population might organize itself after being oppressed and ignored by those in power, our state is an ideal setting.”
—Susan Elizabeth Shepard, TexasMonthly
