The Man Who Watched The World End (The Great De-evolution)

I honestly have no idea how to describe this book. It was so interesting to read, but it is bleak in many ways. I'm glad I read it, but the concept is terrifying and I hope nothing like this ever happens to our world.

This book was good fodder for our book group discussion. I probably would not have enjoyed it as much without discussing it with others following. It's a quick read. Points for some original concepts.

Having watched horror stories and read all I could get my hands on,I truly believed that I had witnessed mankind's demise in every way possible..either in movies,books or verbal tales told. I WAS WRONG! This is truly the ultimate horror,and so sad. No hope..no solutions.Ultimate death with no line in it can not cross. And now all of mankind are finally seeing themselves as equals..nothing to fight over,with only the hope of maybe being not alone at the time of their death.Did humankind ever truly exist? Nothing and no-one left to see or care. You must read this eye opener. It's only fiction isn't it?

Who would have thought a book with only one character could be so good. The author was able to keep the self-talk interesting, crescent to the character and current situation. Was an interesting take on the end of man. Enjoyed and could not stop thinking about it. Thought provoking.

No zombies, just an old man and his brother. Thought provoking--sad--makes you question what is right and wrong with this world, and also makes you look at family values and relationships more deeply. All I could think of is, this is how the world will end--not with a bang, but a whimper. Nature will reclaim what we took from it. Will written words remain? Will there ever be anyone to find them? This book is a more likely scenario that any other I have read on the subject.

This book feels like Children of Men but written by Vonnegut. It has a different take on a post-apocalyptic scenario where 100% of children are born as Blocks. They are born with no mental faculty. The burden of taking care of these Blocks, along with the inevitable fading out of human-kind poses some really great philosophical questions. One of the major points I took away from this was perception on wasted effort.

The story is written in a journal format full of anecdotes of growing up during the emergence of this phenomenon, the changes imposed by the Blocks on society, and what the narrator is currently experiencing. There are some great thought provoking portions of this book which I was able to take away and digest when I put it down. If you are looking for an action-packed Madmax style story, this is not for you.

I think this is a must-read for anyone that has to take care of a special-needs family member or the eldery. It really put things into perspective for me.

If you like The Road or Children of Men, I would highly recommend this book.

Chris Dietzel creates a new twist on a post-apocalyptic world. Too bad it's so simplistic.

The idea is definitely thought-provoking, borrowing from the movie Children of Men, but in this case, women aren't barren - they simply produce babies who are 100% non-responsive to stimuli but healthy in every other way. The ratio of normal births to Blocks (I think Blanks might be more descriptive) quickly soars to 100%. Humanity is over. The only sentient humans left are all aging, slowly but surely, until there are none left.

We get invited into the diary of one of the remaining functioning humans, who dutifully takes care of his brother and wonders if he shouldn't have headed "south" with the rest of the dwindling population of mankind. There is an inevitability about this story that casts a pall across the entire novel, but there are certainly allegories to the end we must all face as humans, taking care of Blocks or not.

Unfortunately there is a boatload of logical disconnects in the otherwise-interesting world Dietzel creates. The main character is on record as saying he'd do anything to take care of his non-functioning brother, and also lets us know that the Internet still functions among the ever-small groups of remaining humans...and then tells us that he's essentially too lazy to reach out and ask for help from these people, instead preferring to battle the encroaching wildlife to investigate what happened to his neighbors a block away. Makes no sense.

It also makes no sense that, in a world where there are no humans left to handle infrastructure and support, fresh water continues to pour smoothly from the taps. Dietzel creates a narrative incorporating incredibly wondrous human technology to keep the dwindling population fed and with electricity, but he misses many other details, and sometimes his words seem hurriedly written to explain away a writer's corner he's written himself into.

All of this is forgivable with the final chapters, and the message there is universal and poignant, and probably the reason for the awards given this book. For my money, it feels a bit half-baked and and less integrated than it could have been. The sole reliance on a diary style didn't help.

We'll see how the author might evolve with the next book in the series. I suggest you give this book a try, knowing that it's great for emotion if short on the details of the post-apocalyptic universe created.

Just finished this story today and found it an interesting and fresh premise and extremely well written . I highly recommend this author to anyone who likes a good story . Read this as soon as you can .

This was a sad, thoughtful dystopian story. It follows through a few months of two elderly brothers struggling to live in a world gone wrong. Definitely worth the read and definitely thought provoking. Actually makes you think about what it might be like if you were the last man standing.

The author has created an interesting concept but he fails to reveal the cause of it in this book or the other one he's written on the same premise. I don't believe he has any clue himself as to how to get out of this hole he's dug himself. If he'd even suggested a possible cause or hinted at it in any way I probably would have gone for four stars just for originality. I won't read any more from this author until I hear he's found a way to dig himself out. I think he's in the same boat as Stephen King when he wrote "Cell."

It sorts of scary, imagine you're watching as the world project to its end.

What it takes to devolution the human race, to get back being a caveman? Or humankind wipe out of its existence. It doesn't even need a generation of "Block" children to stop it. All it needs is to STOP the motor of the world, which is "man's mind". Just a generation of uneducated children, eradicate books, chaos, diseases, and take all the capacity of productive people to make them lazy, and do nothing....it will surely end the world.

Block human---{ have a regular immune system function the same as normal adults. They are stuck in motionless bodies with minds that never learned how to process the things going on around them.}

Great read! I highly recommend this book! Very unique plot and very though provoking! The Dietzel has a strong writing style. Combined with the very interesting plot this makes for a great read. I generally do not have much time to read but managed to finish this book quickly. Couldn't put it down.

I haven't any recollection of reading a more depressing book. The story is basically a journal of one of the last remaining humans due to an incurable affliction that eventually rendered all babies incapable of future reproduction. About halfway through I considered moving on to a different book, because of its depressing nature, but I kept thinking, "surely there's more to this story than THIS?!" Sadly, I was mistaken. 3/4 way through the book I reconsidered again whether to proceed, at which point I figured the end was so near why not keep going? I'm glad it's over, and glad I finished it; despite it's depressing concept, and anti-climatic ending - if nothing else I am relieved to be through with it. Despite the aforementioned, I rated this book 3 stars, but I'm uncertain whether it's a fair rating. The writing is decent and the primary concept interesting, however it seems to be stuck in a rut - as though the writer had an initial vision for something with great potential, but couldn't develop a story beyond a singularly depressing main concept. I would not recommend this story to just anyone, but I'm sure there are those who would like it more than I did.

This story started out with so much promise. I really wanted it to be good.
Unfortunately it just dragged on repeating the same things over and over.
A couple of
Decent scenes just weren't enough to make it better.
I'm also disappointed that the ending wasn't even an ending.
I rarely wish I hadn't wasted my time reading a book but this one was not worth it.

This has turned into one of my favorite books. It gives a different perspective to a dystopian future which is really refreshing. Here the author presents you not with the chaos of a world falling apart but the quiet and haunting aftermath.

Just…What? I thought the account of an 80 something year old man in his adventures through the End of the World would be entertaining, but it was just not to be. The author did not think his plot (was there even a plot?) through before he decided to put it into a novel. Please, allow me to present to you a number of reasons why this book is not worth your attention. You can thank me later.
1. The laws of nature are ignored. The main character says it himself that he doesn’t know how this happened. As everyone knows, nature has a way of balancing itself out. Yet this author claims that there are more carnivores roaming about than prey. Packs of once-domesticated dogs now roam the streets. The deer population is sparse. Anything that feeds on deer would be dead. Disease would run rampant and kill off animals once overpopulation occurred. Many would starve. Domestic animals would probably go extinct all together. This was my first red flag in how unrealistic this novel was going to be.

2. Dogs are racist. The main character reminisces about a time he spotted a vicious pack of Chow-Chows racing down the street. Or the pair of Golden Retrievers that lived beneath the porch of an abandoned house. He fears bands of Rottweilers and Dalmations. If domesticated dogs escape into the wild, they breed with other domesticated dogs without discrimination. This world should be inhabited by a bunch of mutts. Their breed would be indistinguishable. Go take a look at any pack of strays. Can you pinpoint their breed?

3. Food Processors/Generators. Apparently food now comes from nothing. This old man doesn’t have to lift a finger to get food. He pushes some buttons on his food processing machine, and BAM! Out comes some mushy lasagna. No need for oven, stove, or refrigerator (except they do have a fridge, for some reason). He doesn’t need to fill it with anything, it just magically makes him dinner.

4. It’s basically a sob story. The book is in journal format, and the protagonist just keeps talking about how the houses are all desolate and dark, Andrew won’t move and is a vegetable, a bear is in the backyard, and he wants the Johnsons to come back. I mean, just how many times does this author think he has to tell me all the houses on the block are dark? I figured it out the first time! This is interspersed with memories of the beginning of the end, how his parents told him he should love Andrew, and so on and so forth. Nothing really happens for the longest time, or ever, really. They just sit around and watch movies and throw comic books on the fire. The entire books seems to be one big flashback. Aren’t journals to record what you’re doing right now, not what you did 20 years ago?

5. The Internet still works. I really don’t think the Internet would still work. It may seem like it, but the Internet does not pop out of thin air. The author hinted at some sort of communication plan the government started, but never explains it, which makes me think he has no idea what he’s doing.

6. Packs of domesticated cats hunt deer. Yeah. That happened. I know cats are pretty much only half domesticated anyway, but are they really going to try to take on a deer? I don’t think so. Mr. Flufflebottoms will stick to small rodents and bugs, thank you.

This entire novel feels like the author is trying to be some great philosopher on society and the human condition, but it just comes off as absurd and ridiculous. Every chapter is akin to the chapter before it: “Today I felt sad and saw dark houses. I saw a pack of Labradors. Here is a memory I just remembered. Now I must go check on Andrew.” The plot holes (there wasn’t really a plot) and unknowns are extensive and distracting. Repetitive and stagnant are the words I would use to describe this piece of work.

I'm generally not one to label entertainment media "depressing" because my ideas on the subject often don't match up with the general consensus. Hell, I squint irritably at the sun and rejoice when the clouds pour rain all day. If I want to improve my mood with music, I often punch up some ambient black metal where artists from countries like Norway or Finland screech an incoherently nihilistic dirge over fuzzed out, muddled and distorted guitar lines. So when I make the definitive statement that this book is DEPRESSING, all-caps bolded, you can believe that is in fact the case.

A conundrum, then - The Man Who Watched The World End depressed the shit out of me, yet I gave it a 4 star rating. What gives? Well, three things: First, to evoke an emotional response that strong, the author has to be getting a lot of things right along the way. And while Dietzel's authorial debut isn't perfect, it is highly effective in what it sets out to accomplish - a (more or less) solitary man's account of the inevitable last days of the human race, and the circumstances which led it there.

Second, there simply was no other way to tell this story. No matter how misanthropic we sometimes pretend to be in our daily lives, the fact is none of us really wants the human race to disappear for good. The very idea is harrowing in its finality, and Dietzel excels in helping the reader understand why that is.

Third, Dietzel had a bunch of fantastic ideas that turned the typical post-apocalyptic plotline inside out. Essentially he turned the story into a treatise on the behavior of a human race that knew with certainty that its days were numbered. And for the most part, I believe he succeeded in that regard. I also loved the notion that nature - and the animal kingdom - would quickly reassert the order of things given a diminished human race. I was often reminded of the superb Cable TV series Life After People (History Channel). Perhaps Dietzel took inspiration from this series or perhaps not; either way, an excellent job of forecasting the worst case scenario for humanity.

The bottom line is, I was captivated by this book from beginning to end, and even cracked a smile a time or two while reading. But make no mistake, this is a bleak, utterly hopeless vision of the future. Due to the circumstances of the "apocalypse," there is literally no hope for the human race to survive. So unlike many novels in the crowded post apocalyptic arena, this book doesn't focus so much on the struggle for survival. Rather, it focuses on one man's struggle to maintain his sanity and make sense of circumstances completely beyond his control, all the while contending with the encroaching forces of nature in an effort to simply maintain the status quo.

I'd strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in "dark" apocalyptic stories and books that make you really think about the hard questions encompassing human existence on this planet. In all, a fine debut effort. I'm eager to see further visions Dietzel has to offer.