(12) PATRICK TILLEY –
THE AMTRAK WARS (1983-1990)
Patrick Tilley was best known for his Amtrak Wars series of (six) books, although both he and the Amtrak Wars are less well known these days – sadly because it’s pure post-apocalyptic pulp fun.
There was just something about the 1970s and 1980s for apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic SF fiction. The Amtrak Wars is the third of my holy trinity of post-apocalyptic SF after Judge Dredd and Mad Max, albeit with nowhere near the same profile of Dredd or Max.
The Amtrak Wars series is closer in premise to Judge Dredd, not least in its setting in the former United States rather than Australia. Ironically, the books were apparently optioned by an Australian production company which might have brought them closer to Mad Max but nothing came of it.
The nature of the apocalypse – a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union characteristic of 1970s and 1980s post-apocalyptic fiction – is either now shrouded in myth or is a closely guarded secret of the Amtrak Federation’s ruling elite, the First Family.
Speaking of the Amtrak Federation, they are somewhat like the Justice Department and Judges of Dredd’s Mega-City One, except if transplanted to Texas and the neighboring states as well as far more antagonistic. So, you know, not unlike Texas City as opposed to Mega-City One in Judge Dredd.
The Amtrak Federation originated from the elite who survived the nuclear war in an underground bunker in Texas – although the overwhelming majority of the Federation is not elite but the grunts of a highly militarized, totalitarian police state. The Amtrak Federation adapts its name from the American railway system, except for the subterranean network between its bunker-cities but even more so the heavily armed ‘wagon-trains’ they use to wage war against the other American survivors, the Mutes. So very much like the mutated residents of the Cursed Earth in Judge Dredd.
As their name indicates, the Mutes are the descendants of those who survived the war but are mostly mutated by radiation, with some exceptional individuals. More interestingly, they have adopted “a warrior ethos and tribal society” ironically like that of the native Americans but with twentieth century urban ghetto patois – not least in their religion, with the matriarchal Great Spirit figure Motown.
Much like the native Americans with the former United States, the Mutes would have no chance against “the Federation’s vastly superior technology and weapons”, except that this time the Mutes have a ghost dance on their side – actual magic as well as the Talisman Prophecy of ultimate victory.
It gets way more complicated and intricate than that, including yet another major faction mysteriously on the Atlantic coast of the former United States. It gets particularly complicated for the protagonist born and raised as a loyal Amtrak Federation citizen who learns that almost everything he (and we as readers) start off knowing is not what it seems. And while the Mutes may have literal magic on their side, the Federation’s First Family plans to at least go out swinging – co-opting not only Mute magic but the Talisman Prophecy itself for their own side.
Apparently more books were planned for the series but never completed. However, the series does come to something of a satisfactory conclusion, albeit open-ended.
RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
