Cover image of "Gleanings," a novel with a hopeful view of the future

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

All too often dystopian fiction paints the future all in black and gray. But Alice Sabo’s inventive Changed World series is full of life and color. After a killer pandemic late in what seems to be the twenty-first century, one community—presumably among many—painstakingly crawls its way back into self-reliance after the human race gradually dies off to virtual extinction. These beautifully paced novels depict a hopeful view of the future after the Apocalypse.

In Lethal Seasons, the first book in the series, we learn about the annual “flu” pandemic unintentionally set off by a madman determined to kill off the humanoid “biobots” who serve humanity. Sabo introduces us to the High Meadow Medical Center, where a brilliant couple are struggling to reconstruct a functioning community around the high school where they’re located.

How humanity might reclaim civilization

Their story continues in Scattered Seeds, as starving survivors from around the region join them. And now, in Gleanings, High Meadow is gaining population, hundreds at a time. And Angus and Tilly Moss, its leaders, are moving ever closer to establishing formal government structures. Yes, in this hopeful view of the future, we can see a time down the road when life has resumed in something resembling just a little what we today view as “normal.”

This is superior science fiction, a worthy and realistic projection of how humanity might reclaim civilization after nearly losing all.

Gleanings (A Changed World #3 of 6) by Alice Sabo (2016) 365 pages ★★★★★

Photo of a small Pennsylvania town like the setting of this novel with a hopeful view of the future
Aerial view of a small Northeastern town like the setting of the Changed World series. Image: Linda on the Run

A cast of continuing characters

This is a big story with vast implications. But Sabo tells the tale through brief excerpts from A History of the Changed World, the work in progress of Angus Moss chronicling life after the Apocalypse and the growth of the community at High Meadow. A quotation, a blurb, really, leads off every chapter. At the same time, we immerse ourselves in the lives of a small cast of continuing characters. By now, in the third book in the series, we’ve gotten to know them well.

  • Angus Moss, the soft-spoken older man who leads (never rules) the High Meadow community
  • Tilly Moss, his capable and efficient wife who is, in effect, the community’s manager or chief operating officer. As the population grows, it becomes increasingly necessary to establish specialized committees and organizations to tend to the growing needs for food, shelter, clothing, medicine, entertainment, and education for the children.
  • Nick, a former FBI agent who takes on the role of managing trade relations with outlying farms and villages
  • Martin, formerly a special operator in the US Army, who commands what are now three militias guarding High Meadow: the Watch, who protect High Meadow from the vicious Raiders; the Sentinels, who patrol the borders Angus has set out; and the Rovers, who roam through the territory seeking retail stores with valuable goods
  • And Wisp, a biobot who is an empath capable of feeling at a distance the emotions of people and animals. He roams far and wide, looking for people hiding out from the Raiders in homes and farms throughout the territory. Wisp is one of five “brothers,” biobots of the same generation, each of whom has specialized skills in such fields as medicine and chemistry.

About the author

Photo of Alice Sabo, author of this novel with a hopeful view of the future
Alice Sabo. Image: Amazon. com

Alice Sabo writes in the brief bio blurb at the end of this novel that she “grew up in suburban New Jersey with a brother and three sisters. . . After attending college in New Jersey and Massachusetts, she finished her Bachelors in Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico. Since that time, she has worked a variety of jobs on both coasts and in the middle—Boston, Los Angeles, Grand Junction, Long Beach Island. And now she lives in Asheville, NC, where she gardens and writes.”

Previously I reviewed the first two books in the Changed World series:

And I’ve also reviewed the fourth: Lessons Learned (Changed World #4 of 5) (Recovering from the Apocalypse).

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