At various points during the past two days, as I have coped with lack of electricity and air-conditioning, erratic battery-operated devices, and barely intermittent cell phone service, memories of The Trigger Effect have returned, unbidden, to my head. In 1996, I wrote: "On the day I saw The Trigger Effect, David Koepp's disquieting thriller about survival and suspicion in the wake of a massive power blackout, I spent several hours cajoling, coaxing and sometimes even cursing as I tried to talk an unreliable laptop into working properly. (Meanwhile, half a continent away, impatient editors fumed.) So in the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit I was especially susceptible to Koepp's paranoid vision of a world in which most of us rely much too heavily on technology that we know little about." To that, in the wake of Hurricane Ike, I have to add: Things have only gotten worse. Much worse.