Things We Didn’t See Coming Themes

Early on in Steven Amsterdam’s apocalyptic novel Things We Didn’t See Coming, the unnamed narrator and his Dad are involved in a car accident. Though the woman in the totaled car wants help from the narrator and his family, Dad, panicking that the world is about to end, just keeps driving. Despite his mother Cate’s insistence that he should “not learn one thing” from Dad’s decision, the narrator mimics this behavior for the…

Over the course of Steven Amsterdam’s episodic book Things We Didn’t See Coming, nearly a dozen apocalypses intersect and overlap. The unnamed narrator, along with his sometimes-girlfriend Margo and his paranoid Dad, must face political conflict, food shortages, toxic air, rampant floods, deathly influenza outbreaks, oil fires (and the arsonists who start them), and the lifelong health consequences of each of these events. Yet as the various crises catalyze and bleed into…

Over the course of Steven Amsterdam’s episodic book Things We Didn’t See Coming, massive floods destroy entire communities, fires lead to food shortages, and a deathly pandemic spreads through the nation’s cities. Yet even as the world around them collapses, the characters still treasure fancy tapestries, antiques, and (most of all) diamond jewelry. Those who cannot afford food cling to their expensive goods, which retain value on various black markets even as entire…

The unnamed narrator of Stephen Amsterdam’s novel Things We Didn’t See Coming, which details a series of overlapping apocalypses, spends much of the story alone. His solitude comes in part from a belief that it is important to “travel light […] when push comes to shove”: to be flexible and adaptive, ready to adjust to each new crisis without having to consult with another person. Yet as the narrator gets increasingly entangled with Margo…