John Smith: Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars

John Smith: Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars
Roland Hughes
Logikal Solutions
ISBN: 978-1-939732-00-2
Trade Paperback
2012
274 pages

Do you ever reflect about how your life could have been different if you had made different choices twenty, thirty, forty years ago? Imagine yourself sixty-eight years now in the future. What choices should you have made now on November 13, 2013? How could these affect your life and every living creature on the planet?

On November 13, 2013, the world ceased to exist as we know it. Now, sixty-eight years later, John Smith attempts to explain life before this time. He wonders if finally people are ready to understand the history that created the world of today.

Now, people live at a basic survival level without the use of our established means of transportation, communication, health care, and food service. How do you prevent the catastrophe of the past from ever happening again. In the hopes that this history will never occur again, John Smith has left his isolated world to communicate the mistakes of the past to a world that has no memory. He is the only known survivor from this event sixty-eight years ago.

John Smith was only eleven years old at this time making his age of seventy-nine the oldest known person alive today on the planet. On that fated day, John's family had built a bunker when the Microsoft Wars started where he was trapped for ten years.

Susan Krowley is a newspaper reporter for The Times which is published twice a month with the widest circulation of 5500. Reading newspapers is not a common activity and only for the few and the privileged. She is thrilled to be able to conduct this interview for her newspaper. This is her story of a lifetime interviewing John Smith who is the only known living person who actually experienced the Microsoft Wars.

The world is much different now. People travel on horseback. Schools of the past no longer exist, including colleges. Everyone learns from their home. Jobs that formerly required college degrees now are filled within families. Technology as we know it does not exist. Knowledge and books are limited. Life is at a simplistic level. Even access to books is extremely limited. Without the widespread usage of computers, telephones, and nuclear energy, life is very different.

The seven continents are now twelve. There is no way to travel or communicate from one continent to the next with an ocean covering much of the center of the United States. John was very fortunate that his bunker was in an area that had not been covered by an ocean.

"John Smith: Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars" is thought provoking. The author reviews much of our technological advances throughout the years, while also demonstrating the uneven advances and questionable uses and obvious abuses with the ethical practices. This book is a warning of what could happen if we continue without a complete understanding of our societal choices.

This entire book is written as an interview between John Smith and Susan Krowley, as a question and answer format. Within the responses are the elements of action usually in a novel. This is definitely a different perspective of a novel and the message within the story.

Who is the intended audience? Everyone who inhabits this planet. The relevance of this novel is a perfect example of cause and effect and even goes beyond that concept. This is required reading for everyone.