Blackout (Elsberg novel)

Blackout: Tomorrow Will Be Too Late
Cover of the German edition (2012).
Author Marc Elsberg
Original title Blackout – Morgen ist es zu spät
Language German
Subject Power outage
Genre thriller
Publisher Black Swan
Publication date
 2012
Published in English
 2017
Pages 350
Awards Wissenschaftsbuch des Jahres 2012[1]
ISBN 978-1784161897 (first edition in English)
Followed by Zero – Sie wissen, was du tust

Blackout: Tomorrow Will Be Too Late is a disaster thriller book by the Austrian author Marc Elsberg, described by Penguin Books as "a 21st-century high-concept disaster thriller".[2]

Published in German in 2012, as of 2016 it had been translated into fifteen languages and sold a million copies worldwide.[2] The English version was published in 2017.[2]

The novel is about a European power outage due to a cyberattack. For realism the book is written on the basis of interviews with intelligence and computer security officials.[3]

Plot

The novel starts with a collapse of electrical grids across Europe, plunging the population into darkness and disaster.[2][3] The prolonged electricity cut causes major problems: no more petrol, no telephone, no food in supermarkets, no cash machines working, nuclear disasters, etc.[3][4] A former computer hacker and IT professional tries to find out the root cause for this. While doing so he himself becomes a hunted person as officials find suspicious e-mails sent from his laptop and think that he is involved.

See also

References

  1. ↑ In the category "Unterhaltung" (entertainment).
  2. 1 2 3 4 Blackout (Marc Elsberg), Penguin Books (page visited on 3 September 2016).
  3. 1 2 3 (in French) Blaise Gauquelin, "Coût de la panne. Marc Elsberg plonge l’Europe dans le noir avec l’aide de hackers", Libération, 6 May 2015 (page visited on 4 September 2016).
  4. ↑ Nico Fried, "Innenminister in der Kritik - De Maizière stellt Zivilschutzkonzept vor", Süddeutsche Zeitung, 24 August 2016 (accessed 4 September 2016). In this article, the German Federal Minister of the Interior, Thomas de Maizière, cites Marc Elsberg's book Blackout to illustrate the vulnerability of the power supply infrastructure.
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