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Primarily asking this question because of that new TV show "Revolution". I remember reading this novel back in the 80's about a mysterious monolith that renders all electronics in the world inoperable. The novel never explains where the monolith came from, only how civilization adjusted.

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This isn't the book you're looking for, but if you like that sort of thing you might want to read S.M. Stirling's Protector's War series. They are very good. – SaintWacko Sep 18 '12 at 12:51
I remember bits of it vary vaguely. Scientists were trying to open up the monolith before everything lost power. No tools were able to open it up (much like "2001").. – Broudie Sep 18 '12 at 13:47
I think I came here looking for the same book. Certainly the show sparked the memory. The cover art included a symbol virtually identical to the "upvote" symbol on this web site, i.e. a triangle within a circle. It was published in the mid-70s or earlier. Its title was very short, possibly just one or two words. The problem was not solved at the end; the possibility was that life would continue this way. It did not make some of the mistakes the show has; diesel engines, for example, still operate. – user8902 Sep 20 '12 at 10:42
Probably its not what you're looking for, but a complete suppression of all electricity on earth is a major plot point of the film The Day the Earth Stood Still. From Wikpedia, it doesn't appear there's any similar event in the source novel Farewell to the Master. – The Photon Dec 17 '12 at 6:20

4 Answers

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Perhaps it might have been Fade-Out by Patrick Tilley?

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Could you summarize the book, so we get an idea of whether its plot matches the question? – Gilles Jan 9 at 22:14
Sorry, my bad. I read this book not long after it came out in 1975 so my memory is a bit rusty but I think it involved the Americans detecting an alien spacecraft approaching Earth followed by the appearance of a mysterious pyramid in Montana. The book mostly concerns the intricacies of the political and military response of America and the USSR (it was 1975 remember!) to the appearance of an unknowable object but I'm sure I remember it starting to send out a field that shut down all electrical devices within an increasingly wide area that eventually encompassed the planet. Hope that helps! – Lee Mason Jan 10 at 21:05
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The premise of the show reminded me of Robert Silverberg's "The Alien Years". Although that novel is not about a monolith, but rather about an alien invasion.

Fifteen feet tall, the Entities land in cities across Earth. Ignoring humankind, they wall themselves in impenetrable enclaves, enslaving a few willing collaborators with their telepathic PUSH. Then they plunge humans into a new Dark Age without electricity, allowing us to live--but no longer as a dominant species.

But a few refuse to submit to fate, including the Carmichael family, whose patriarch, an aging colonel devoted to resistance, will inspire a daring new generation of dissidents. United in spirit, these diverse rebels--an aging hippie, a cold-blooded Muslim assassin, a prodigal son, and a renegade hacker--will carry on the colonel's legacy as they attempt to kill the mysterious Prime Entity and free the planet.

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Very unlikely since this book was published in 1997, not the 80s or earlier – Izkata Sep 21 '12 at 3:19
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Your description reminds me of the classic French SF novel Ravage by René Barjavel. The story describes a future society in which all electrical devices have suddenly become inactive. The reason for the disappearance of electricity is not an important part of the book, I don't remember whether it's stated or left unsaid. The alien monolith may have been a very low-key element of the book or may have been a plot element not taken from the book.

I can find a lot of web pages that link Revolution to Ravage, but only in French. This article, among others, attributes an explicit influence of Ravage on J.J. Abrams. I can't find any authoritative reference for that, however, so I don't know whether there was a direct influence or merely plot similitude.

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I thought of the 2001: A Space Odyssey but that's a movie. So I would assume you mean the Novel of the same name or the short story it was based upon The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clarke.

But I don't remember it rendering electronics inoperable.

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Neither The Sentinel nor 2001 involved rendering electronic inoperable. – Keith Thompson Dec 15 '12 at 23:04

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