Trying to Find a Young Adults SF Book - Help!

[Ziesmer]

Hi Folks;

My first time posting, so please forgive me if I need to pose this question elsewhere.

I've been trying to find a "young adults" S.F. book for years, and I 've finally decided to see if someone else knows what I'm talking about.

I read it some time ago (mid 80's), and it was about some teenagers who visit a government bomb shelter with (I believe) their father on a regular "inspection". Apparently the earth is at war with some alien civilization, and the aliens hit earth with a beam that kills most life on the planet (I can remember a section about the tires on the father's vehicle slowly disintegrating). The snag: these kids and the father are down in the shelter when everything goes wrong, so they survive, along with some other humans throughout the world. The remainder of the book is set some years later, when mankind is working to rebuild some semblance of a society (primarily agriculturally-based, as I recall), but there is regularly surprise by the people when they see technology (i.e. electric vehicles from the shelter).

Anyway, I can still visualize parts of the book, but I know neither the author nor title. Any assistance or at least a point-in-the-right-direction would be most appreciated.

Sincerely,

Daniel

[dwndrgn]

Welcome to the forum Daniel. Unfortunately this one doesn't ring a bell with me. Hopefully someone else here on the boards will know.

[GOLLUM]

UM.. doesn't ring any bells. I may be able to help you if you can give us any other specific information like the name of the town it occurs in, or the state etc.. name of the father or any teenagers or other characters in the story, name of dog, cat etc.. Basically anything that helps to hone the search down, any knid of even small detail but still specific detail could help.

Is this a UK, US book etc..??

Also did you borrow, buy the book, ie. where did it come from becasue if you knew that then it may be a good source to track from, although you may have already done this..

Bye for now..

[Ziesmer]

Hi again;

I checked it out from the local library here in the States, but after 20 years it seems as though they've cycled out some of the older books for fresher authors/titles. I honestly don't remember any of the names of the characters, and as best I recall it never specified a particular town or place, although I believe it was uniquely American (I can recall something about the president never making it). I also remember that one of the big "items" for the bunker was the fact that it had a geothermal energy supply to generate limitless electrical power, and so the idea that decades later there were still electric carts around wasn't far fetched. There was a lot of emphasis on the fact that - in the later future - the carts would deliver the annual seeds for crops (the bunker was supposedly very well stocked), but I know that probably still doesn't help much.

Let me ask this - is there any good source for looking over brief descriptions of science fiction books? I've always figured that if I had the "back covers" of books available, I'd probably be able to pinpoint the book pretty quickly.

Anyway, I don't know that any of that will help or not, but maybe it will click something for somebody.

Thanks!

Daniel

[dwndrgn]

Amazon does this nowadays but only with newer books. Books that old would have to be sifted out through a used book store or an old library that doesn't rotate stock often. You may be able to use a roundabout way to find it like looking up a similar book at amazon and seeing what 'related titles' they come up with. Also, you might be able to find out which YA authors were writing around 20 years ago and see what you come up with there. You might find more clues by searching the biographies of authors like Alan Dean Foster and Piers Anthony who I know have both written for the younger crowd and have been around awhile.

You mentioned the back cover - do you recall what the book looked like at all? Any of the cover art or anything like that?

Sorry I'm not much help but I never read YA back then - I went straight into adult fiction by raiding dad's old boxes of books

[GOLLUM]

Dwndrgn's comments are pretty much spot on.

I'm afraid unless you can provide something more specific like a character name you're going to have a tough tmie tracking this down via the internet.

Someone may have read this book however.

Good luck!