It's titled Revolution. They're shooting it in Atlanta, so I've seen quite a few short articles about extras and who's here in town. In every single one, it's described as "a band of survivors struggle to navigate a world in which all forms of energy have mysteriously vanished." My eyes have been rolling painfully.

As someone on io9 noted, that's the basis for Stirling's Change series, which, despite my fondness for post-apocalypse fiction, I have not wanted to read since I saw the premise was explicitly based on changing the laws of physics. In that case, it's apparently manmade energy, including, dog help us, disabling gunpowder.

There are several series in which things like electricity and motors don't work, but magic does. That's the premise behind Stephen Boyett's Ariel, one of the worst books ever published.

Part of the concept can be done sanely, by having much of existing tech fried by some version of EMP. Raymond Jones' The Year When Stardust Fell, a book I loved as a kid, posits a substance from a comet that fuses the parts of any metal-metal friction, so ball bearings, motors and the like freeze.

I'm willing to buy almost any well-designed premise, but I insist on the laws of physics remaining the same.

I don't know, I could see some situations (attack on laws of physics by magical forces, impingement of another dimension with different physical laws) doing some things along those lines. But you can't mess too much with the way basic electrical and mechanical forces work or it would make human and animal biology impossible as well.

I can't even formulate my reaction to that premise properly. I think it might convey negative information.

So, apparently, not only do they not mean "all", they don't mean "energy". Seriously "they" should just give up using English. There is a point at which metonymy approaches gibberish. And it doesn't have as much place in science fiction premises as it does in other pieces of text.

If not energy, then what?

Things like energy. Things regulated by Energy Commissions. You know fossil fuels, and non-fossil fuels, and renewable resources, and, you know.

Why are you asking me? You're evidently expected to already have communed this information directly from the group mind.

So it's not a series about the heat death of the Universe?

I can think of several things that would be intereting:

For example a world in which conventional electrical generation and storage don't work - so you could have IC if you hand lit the engine. No batteries, not cranks starters like early autos. You may have to light something with a match and set a clockwork to ignite the engine in 30 seconds and have to run for the car seat. Of course making this design without electricity would be interesting.

Incidentally Zelazny did fairly convincing universes in which electricity and conventional gunpowder did not work, in the Amber series, but this was in a magic multi-verse and he did not pretend there was a scientific explanation. I'm fine with fantasy that either simply says "this is magic not science" or that say "huh this is weird and none of the charactes have any idea of how it works".

Heinlein's "Magic Incorporated" was very funny and pretty convincing too. Set in our world, after some engineers are caught muttering spells to keep a nuclear reactor running, and it turns out that science has been a fraud all along - everything has really been running by magic. So now it is well after that discovery, and it is mystery, danger and political intrigue in a world where the magic is now open, and we ride magic carpets that are no longer disguised as jets...

It does include Heinlein's usual attitude towards women, plus a bit of racism he thinks is tolerance. So not without eyerollingness, But the premise gets points for me for sheer chutzpah .And if you can ignore the stuff you pretty much always have to ignore with Heinlein, it is quite entertaining.

For example a world in which conventional electrical generation and storage don't work - so you could have IC if you hand lit the engine.

But why wouldn't it work? No conductive metals? Only specific chemical reactions don't work? These things bother me. I can imagine a culture in which something other than electricity drives most technology and electricity is a parlor trick. That's steampunk, more or less. I'm happy enough with a technology based on handwavium, as long as the rest of physics is left alone.